But the purpose of this post is to highlight a clip that’s garnered alot of attention:
I certainly didn’t realize leopard seals were considered a danger to people but apparently their attacks have resulted in the death of at least one marine researcher, making this particular interaction all the more amazing.
National Geographic recently did an excellent article on leopard seals using the photo contributions of Paul Nicklen. Click the picture below to access the feature:
You could say it was the jellyfish, or you could say it was the overzealous fishermen on board. While trying to haul in a catch of several dozen giant Nomura’s jellyfish – one of the largest in the world – a Japanese fishing trawler tipped right over.
According to the Telegraph, “The crew of the fishing boat was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler, according to the Mainichi newspaper. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident.”
It’s no wonder only a few dozen could capsize a boat. Each jellyfish can weigh as much as 450 pounds. This year has seen a big spike in the numbers of these giant jellies, with a similar population boom not occurring since 2005, when the large numbers of jellyfish and their stinging tentacles ruined fishing nets and made catches of fish inedible. Both ideal weather conditions and a smaller number of predators, such as sea turtles and certain fish species have helped the jelly populations grow this year.
Check out the size of these things next to divers:
While they don’t make that great of a meal, fishermen might as well catch what is plentiful and edible – and these certainly fit that bill. In the effort to make something tasty out of the abundant creatures, even high school students are putting their heads into it, making caramel candies out of them…which they’d like to feed to astronauts. Giant jellies invading Japanese water, capsizing boats, and becoming food for space travelers…sound like a teen sci fi book to anyone else?
Even though it might be possible to make something yummy from them, catching them isn’t exactly fun. In 2007, there was a grand total of about 15,500 reports of fishing equipment damaged by the Nomura’s jellyfish. Add a 10-ton trawler to the list of ruined equipment to this year’s reports.
I’ve liked Butterfly Boucher for quite some time now, starting with her first album “Flutterby” released in 2003.
One of the singles off this release:
She finally released a follow-up in 2009 called Scary Fragile. Check out her awsome acoustic performance hosted by PASTE Magazine. What I really enjoy about her is her voice has this really unique quality to it. The guitar sounds pretty different as well.
Here are two songs from the recent album culled from the same Boston show as the above clips:
Colin Hay is mostly infamous for the band he once was part of: Men At Work.
After the band went defunct, however, Hay continued on the solo path, releasing several well-received albums. His music has been featured in films and tv, but arguably one of my favorite songs and appearances of his was when he sang his song “overkill” in an early season of Scrubs:
His song ” I just don’t think I’ll ever get over you” was featured on the Garden State Soundtrack:
The Farallon islands are a group of jagged islands off the coast of California. They’ve become an area of great interest to shark researchers as great whites choose to spend time aggregating there. Author Susan Casey wrote a book about this called Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks (the book is well worth a read but take heed that the story is just as much about the author as about the sharks). Peter Pyle, a shark biologist on the islands, is referenced in the book as well as the clip.
I find this incident interesting on a couple different levels. First, we don’t often think of great whites succumbing to other predators, which seems to have fed into our fear of this creature.
Last Thursday, Nov 12, 2009 As Tall As Lions took the stage to open up for Mute Math.
I wasn’t familiar with them, but I ran into a friend at HOB (House of Blues) who had come just for them, which is always a great sign. My friend also told me that the lead singer had a polyp or something else equally uncomfortable going on with vocal chords recently. Luckily, we seemed to catch the band in full recovery. Their sound is really lush, with really pleasant vocals and the addition of horns on many of the songs. There doesn’t seem to be any videos posted from the performance I saw, but this clip of their song “Go Easy” from the Luxury Wafers Sessions should give you the idea:
The Mute Math part of the show was just indescribable. I’ve seen them four times and they’re definitely in my top five for live shows (and I’ve seen quite alot of shows…). There is this halo of unbelievable energy surrounding their performances. In terms of their sound, they remind me of a sort of cross between the police and radiohead. Their albums are really pleasant to listen to but the music requires the live experience to breathe a real life into it. Paul, the lead singer, is generally hopping around stage and jumping on top of his piano to play keytar. Darren is a fast drummer; so fast, he tapes his headphones around his head with duct tape to keep them from flying off. The band effortlessly switches instruments with one another during portions of the show and produces intensely rhythmic sonic moments. Instruments have been broken and concussions have been incurred during some of their shows. The most rock-n-roll moment of the evening was when Darren beckoned the crowd close, sturdily set his bass drum on top of their eager hands, stood on top of the drum (with some looks of concern from both the crowd and the band members on stage), and dove into awaiting arms to crowd surf. Very, very, cool…
Here’s a few clips from the Boston show. Sound is reasonable, and shaking on the videos are minimal. :
Partial Clip of “control”:
“Plan B”:
“Spotlight”, the end is indicative of the energy of their shows:
“Clipping”:
Alway’s their closer, “Reset”, they let the crowd play this funky homemade sort of instrument:
They spill like stardust over the sides of the container. Little flickers of light, electrical sparks responding to the swirling movement of our hands shaking the bucket as we try and get them to bioluminesce…
The “they” in question are plankton, the tiny plants and animals at the mercy of the ocean currents. I am at Shoals Marine Lab on Appledore Island, part of the Isles of Shoals – a group of islands partly in New Hampshire, partly in Maine. I am taking a marine botany course and we’re out underneath dark skies taking a plankton tow. We toss the net behind the boat, drag it through the summer-cold saline water, and bring it back onto the deck. We later take water samples back to the laboratory and find most of our biological light is being produced by diatoms. Diatoms are part of the tiny planktonic marine plants; they have beautiful, delicate silicon shells arranged in various symmetrical configurations.
Another vivid memory: a night dive at the Shoals, my first. It’s easy to be scared; we are out of our element and enveloped in an icy darkness with only a narrow flashlight beam to interrupt the visual silence. At some point during the experience, we turn of the flashlights and as our eyes acclimate to the blackness, the faintest glimmers are present. We wave our gloved hands and sparks fly around our covered fingertips – even at its seemingly blackest, the ocean has a shine…
There are many different types of creatures that cast a natural glow, both on land and at sea (although this is mostly a marine happening). The phenomenon is called bioluminescence and translates literally to “living light”. An enzyme-mediated chemical reaction is generally responsible for its production. There are several different light-producing chemicals that have been isolated in bioluminescent organisms an are usually all referred to by a catch-all term, “luciferins.” In larger organisms these chemicals can be released in mucuses, inks, or concentrated in special light organs known as “chromatophores.” It’s also been discovered that some organisms concentrate luminescent bacteria in specialized organs – forming a symbiotic relationship where the bacteria corner the market on light-making.
Green Bomber (Swima bombiviridis)
The organisms that cast their own glow are diverse. Natural light is produced by fungi, bacteria, plankton, molluscs, fish, insects, and others. So why waste the energy? Why bother being a beacon in the darkness?
Communication: Some living things use light to send vibrant messages, something like a visual morse code. Fireflies use light to find their special someones. Different species will use different patterns of flashes to find one another, so they’re not wasting their energies on blind dates with incompatible mates.
To escape predators: The concept here is to blind or distract ( “Look, a diversion!”) things that potentially want to eat you. This seems to be the case with the newly discovered deep sea “green-bomber” worms. Some species of squid will eject clouds of bright ink when startled. Also, it’s possible smaller creatures will try to lure bigger predators to snack on whatever’s currently threatening them.
To attract prey:We all know it’s easy to get distracted by shiny objects… This is the way anglerfish get their man (or dinner as it were) by dangling a glowing lure. Predators may spy on potential nom noms as well. Some fish are equipped with what amounts to sneak-a-scopes. Red light is often not a color really deep sea fishes can see. Red light is more easily absorbed and less visible in deeper waters than other wavelengths of light falling in the blue-violet part of the spectrum, and as such, many organisms are not adapted to see or detect it. Sneakier fish take use of this and produce red-light lamps they can use to detect prey without alerting the food source to their presence.
Camouflage – alot of marine creatures employ something called countershading where the top of the organism is darker (when you or in this case, a predator, looks down at it with darker ocean water for background, it appears to blends in) and the bottom of the organisms is pale (to blend in with the incoming light coming from above). A similar effect can be achieved with the production of your own light – it can help you blend in with the light coming from above as a predator stares up at you. This strategy is thought to be used by at least a couple species of squid.
Of course we’re still discovering new variations on the bioluminscence model and developing new ideas about why organisms are putting on light shows…
The following video is from David Attenborough’s Blue Planet Series, and gives a glimpse about bioluminescence in the deep sea. Very little light reaches the murky depths but organisms create light where there is none:
These photos apparently are a result of film footage taken for a BBC Documentary on Manta Rays: Andrea: Queen of the Mantas
The Andrea in question is biologist Andrea Marshall. Apparently, until recently, it was thought there was a single species of manta ray. She noticed discrepancies in the markings and behaviors of some individuals and was able to describe a new species of manta, Manta alfredi.
A Bit of Stardust 