Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘marine biology’

The Extreme Life of the Sea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Masaki Miya et al. Wikimedia Creative Commons
Anglerfish use bioluminescence to attract their prey in the darkest depths of the ocean.

When John was little, he liked a book called Fish Do the Strangest Things. Strangeness is a great focus for a nature book, because everyone likes offbeat critters.

Steve Curwood, founder of the radio show Living on Earth, recently interviewed the author of a book that focuses on the strangeness of ocean life.

CURWOOD: “In an engaging new book called The Extreme Life of the Sea, biologist Steve Palumbi and his novelist son Tony deepen our understanding of how strange sea life has managed to survive against all odds. … Why did you write this book. Why now?

PALUMBI: “Well, the real reason is that we’re trying an experiment: can you take the narrative style and approach that a novelist would use and combine it with what a scientist would do? … You don’t really care about the plot until you care about the characters, and so we wanted to write a book that made you care about the characters.

CURWOOD: “Now, you write about the extreme life of the sea, the oldest, the hottest, the shallowest, to name a few. Why did you choose this approach?

PALUMBI: “Because it was a way of getting people’s attention to the really sort of amazing things that these critters do. Organisms in the sea live in some of the hottest places, they live in some of the coldest places, and how they do that is something marine scientists have paid a lot of attention to. So it was really a way to make it more engaging, more fun, and to let us move credibly between different kinds of organisms all in the same chapter. …

CURWOOD: “You had one extreme that you called immortal.

PALUMBI: “That’s an amazing jellyfish called turritopsis, and it has the remarkable ability to age in reverse. So when the environment is bad, this animal can essentially go from its adult body form back, back, back to its larval form, and then start all over again. … It’s called transdifferentiation. It’s the only critter known to be able to do that.”

More here, where you can read the rest of the transcript and listen to the recording. It’s all pretty amazing.

Photo: Eddie Welker, Flickr Creative Commons 2.0)
Clownfish

Read Full Post »

Ocean Design by Puffer Fish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 21, 2013| 4 Comments »

The website “This Is Colossal” has a lovely bit on a fish with artistic tendencies.

Japanese photographer Yoji Ookata “obtained his scuba license at the age of 21 and has since spent the last 50 years exploring and documenting his discoveries off the coast of Japan. Recently while on a dive near Amami Oshima at the southern tip of the country, Ookata spotted something he had never encountered before: rippling geometric sand patterns nearly six feet in diameter almost 80 feet below sea level. He soon returned with colleagues and a television crew from the nature program NHK to document the origins what he dubbed the ‘mystery circle.’ …

“The team discovered the artist is a small puffer fish only a few inches in length that swims tirelessly through the day and night to create these vast organic sculptures using the gesture of a single fin. …

“Apparently the female fish are attracted to the hills and valleys within the sand and traverse them carefully to discover the male fish where the pair eventually lay eggs at the circle’s center, the grooves later acting as a natural buffer to ocean currents that protect the delicate offspring.” Read more.

Never imagine that there is nothing left to discover. After all, “According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration less than five percent of the world’s oceans have been explored,”

Photo: This Is Colossal.
The male puffer fish makes this nest to attract a female.

Read Full Post »

Great Science Videos for Kids

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

As a scientist with young children, Gregg often tweets ideas for engaging kids in science. Recently @gfavalora tweeted about a website with instructive and fun videos. It’s called The Kid Should See This.

The site describes the video below thus:

“To celebrate World Ocean Day 2013, director and animator Akiko McQuerrey created a Papa Cloudy stop-motion music video: Overfishing Song from Papa Cloudy’s Restaurant.

Overfishing—catching fish faster than they can reproduce—is an urgent and devastating issue, and may be the single biggest threat to ocean ecosystems… The global fishing fleet is operating at 2.5 times the sustainable level—there are simply too many boats chasing a dwindling number of fish.

“What can we do to help? With more sustainable practices, our oceans can be healthy and plentiful for everyone. Recommendations from the Monterey Bay Aquarium suggest that we select sustainable fish from restaurants and stores, and diversify the kinds of fish we eat beyond just the popular choices.

“To help make these choices easier, they created a Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch pocket guide and mobile app. They even have recipes and more information about how to solve our ocean challenges.”

More videos here.

Read Full Post »

Sea Creatures Made of Glass

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

Have you ever taken out-of-town guests to see the glass flowers at Harvard? They are among the area’s must-see attractions.

The Czech father-son team Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka created the flowers in the 19th century, when they also made glass replicas of sea creatures.

Now scientists are comparing the duo’s marine life to what exists today. Have the creatures evolved? Are some extinct?

“I’ve been a marine biologist my entire professional life,” write C. Drew Harvell in the Science section of the NY Times, “spending more than 25 years researching the health of corals and sustainability of reefs. I’m captivated by the magic of sessile [attached by the base]  invertebrates like corals, sponges and sea squirts — creatures vital to the ecosystem yet too often overlooked in favor of more visible animals like sharks and whales.

“The filmmaker David O. Brown and I want to change that. To make a documentary, Fragile Legacy, we are on a quest to lure these elusive and delicate invertebrates in front of the camera lens.

“Our inspiration springs from an unlikely source: a collection of 570 superbly wrought, anatomically perfect glass sculptures of marine creatures from the 19th century.

“These delicate folds and strands of glass make up the Blaschka collection of glass invertebrates at Cornell, of which I am the curator — enchanting and impossibly rare jellyfishes of the open ocean; more common but equally beautiful octopus, squid, anemones and nudibranchs from British tide pools and Mediterranean shores.

“They are the work of an extraordinary father-and-son team, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.”

The rest of the story is worth your time. Check it out.

Photo: Kent Loeffler
A glass sculpture of Facelina drummondii, a sea slug in Cornell’s Blaschka collection.

Read Full Post »