This week in ocean news

Duplicitous sand dollars and tenacious sea worms 8

A federal appeals court ruled that a Hong Kong company should not have been forced to give up the proceeds from 32 tons of shark fins seized by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2002 from the vessel King Diamond II. The 64,695 pounds of shark fins were valued at $618,956 ...

... a three-year study found a thriving reef fish community around three freighters sunk off the coast of Florida ...

... a graduate student discovered that sand dollar larvae can clone themselves in an effort to escape predation ...

... Japanese researchers found that the Gulf Stream current pumps warm air up to seven miles into the atmosphere, affecting weather patterns around the globe ...

... rockfish in the Puget Sound, including bocaccio, canary, yelloweye, greenstripe and redstripe rockfish, will be considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act ...

...for the first time in 60 years, honeycomb worms were observed creating reefs off the northern coast of Wales ...

... researchers discovered references to Arctic air pollution as long ago as 1870 ...

... the band Fall Out Boy was set to play Antarctica ...

... and a 69-year-old Japanese man set across the Pacific in the world's first boat propelled by wave action. In 2002, he traveled the ocean in a yacht made of recycled beer cans.

Andrew Sharpless is the CEO of Oceana, the world’s largest international nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation. Visit www.oceana.org.

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  1. caniscandida Posted 4:37 am
    22 Mar 2008

    Hey Amazing!You should check out that Japanese guy's boat powered by wave action.  It sounds like it is right up your alley.
    I assume that when the boat is stationary, energy is collected from wave action coming at the boat from any direction; and when the boat is moving, and the force of the wave action is relatively reduced, energy is then collected from the resistance of the water into which the boat is heading.

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
  2. caniscandida Posted 5:02 am
    22 Mar 2008

    Pete and the penguinsI have already commented on the very cute but very confused Pete Wentz, and his band's concert in Antarctica, in the collection of news items put together by the Sarahs, signaled by the photo of the penguin with the remarkable golden plumes.  (A Royal penguin?)
    The reader is strongly advised NOT to do a Google-images search for "pete wentz."  Yesterday, when I tried it, an X-rated photo popped right out at me, so to speak: one in a series of photos actually documenting either a wardrobe malfunction that befell poor Pete, or else just something that might happen to any man fiddling with his waistband while drunk.  Or else the point was to illustrate what is meant by "falling out."

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
  3. caniscandida Posted 5:29 am
    22 Mar 2008

    honeycomb wormsHere is an earnest page on the annelid (segmented) worms of the Class Polychaeta who live in the waters off Cornwall, just south of Wales:
    http://www.pznow.co.uk/marine/annelida.html#Honeycomb%20W ....
    The bit on honeycomb worms is way at the bottom, with two photos of their rather delicate, sandy mini-reefs.  There is a worm in each tube, and it pokes its head out when it is safe to feed.
    Apparently the polychaete worms, who are mostly marine animals, do a lot of ecosystem-creation with their engineering feats on the ocean floor.

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
  4. Tasermons Partner Posted 9:42 am
    22 Mar 2008

    While we're at it......is there any news on that salmon fishing cancellation?  Did it pass muster?
  5. caniscandida Posted 9:59 am
    22 Mar 2008

    Yes!Sir!CorporalFishHereSir!Good question, TasPar.  I assumed it had, and that the latest battle was between those scientists who are saying "It has to do with the ocean, and new GW-related conditions!," over against those who are saying, "No no, it has to do with the Central Valley, and how the river is disgracefully managed!  Damn you ocean people, you ignore us time and time again!"

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
  6. caniscandida Posted 10:22 am
    22 Mar 2008

    Petey-pie's penguin, otra vezOr, mejor dicho, the Sarahs' penguin:  Now that I looked afresh at the photo and observed its black head, I rule out its being a Royal penguin (Eudyptes schlegeli -- and you E.M. Forster fans will remember that the heroine-sisters in "Howard's End," perhaps his greatest work, are the Schlegels), and think rather perhaps it is a Snares penguin (E. robustus).
    U.Cal.Press's "Encyclopedia of Animals" says:
    <<

    Snares penguins live off the southern end of New Zealand, and capture their food (crustaceans and cephalopods) by pursuit diving.

    >>
    Which leads us to conclude (among all sorts of conclusions, actually): Whatever Pete Wentz will be observing, in a vaguely awake state, during his GHG-emitting not-clearly-purposeful hit-and-run visit to Antarctica, he will NOT be seeing any golden-plumed penguins.
    Unless of course one of the international scientists brings along a pet Snares penguin to the concert.

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
  7. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 1:25 am
    24 Mar 2008

    Disraeli Gears

    So, did 19th Century Britain have a bunch of proto-Greens going around about melting icebergs and what not?

    "In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -- Galileo
  8. caniscandida Posted 1:59 am
    24 Mar 2008

    Arctic air pollution in 1870The young researchers at the University of Utah are to be commended for pursuing this line of inquiry, seeing that their textual source material is in Norwegian and French.  Given the great divide that exists between the sciences and the humanities, and given that scientists are used to a state of affairs in which they do not really need to know any language other than English, it is admirable that these researchers did not at once drop their inquiries, but boldly pressed on.
    Presumably they have acknowledged in their formal article the persons who helped them with translations.

    Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

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