Key Largo - Our trusted Captain Jeff Jarvis told of a magical place where the bate fish were so thick we could not see through them. We had to see that for ourselves in HD. If you look close you will see a Barracuda (their worst nightmare) hanging in the current; upper right corner.
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Continue reading about Anchovies on that Pizza? Amazing Video
Did you know… the earliest known sharks date back more than 420 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs?United Nations wildlife trade body denied three proposals for cross-border commerce of sharks threatened with extinction. Conservationists argued fishing for sharks is unregulated, but Japan led the opposition, arguing management of shark populations should be left to regional fisheries groups, not CITES.
Only one new marine species is protection by the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Porbeagle, a shark that resembles the Mako and is fished for its meat. Bids to impose a global trade ban on seven species of precious coral also fell short of the required two-thirds majority.
The shark species left unregulated commerce are; Scalloped Hammerhead, Oceanic White Tip, and the Spiny Dogfish. The fish are often tossed back into the water after their precious fins have been sliced away. And we thought Michael Vick was a monster? Yes he is a monster. We cannot justify bad behavior by pointing to other bad behaviors; it’s not a sliding-scale. Millions of Hammerhead and White Tip sharks are taken to satisfy a psychotic appetite for sharkfin soup, a prestige food to the uninformed, selfish, greedy, mostly wealthy, mindless classes of morons. Two decades ago these two shark species were common semi-coastal and open-water sharks, but demand for fins have slashed populations by 90 per cent in several regions.
Gus Sant, a shark expert at wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC said: “The decision not to list all of these sharks is a conservation catastrophe. The current level of trade in these species is simply not sustainable.”
“We see clearly now the Japanese motivation for opposing all these marine species proposals,” said Anne Schroeer, a Madrid-based economist with Oceana. “For the whales, they say they are catching them traditionally. For the bluefin tuna, they say they are eating it. But for the sharks, there is nothing but pure economic self-interest.”
More in this FLOG on human cruelty toward sharks, read hawaii-shark-feeding-business see the video clip and hear what Stephen Frink has to say about his favorite animal and how important animals in the Ocean.
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Continue reading about Shark commerce left unregulated by United Nations
NEW DELHI – For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal.
New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.
“What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Hazra. (I respectfully disagree.) Here are the details that were ‘creatively’ NOT published by the emotional media, but was published by the smh.com.au
Professor Hazra said sea-level rise, changes in monsoonal rain patterns which altered river flows and land subsidence were all contributing to the inundation of land in the northern Bay of Bengal. How could the media overlook this important detail from Prof. Hazra?
If so, why isn’t the Ocean rising at the same rate around the globe? Click the map and take a closer look; you will see this wasn’t an island at all, rather a rock in the mouth of a river delta. Take a closer look at image two. Throughout Earth-history rivers have changed course as sediment build up forced the flow to adjust. That’s not global warming, that’s called gravity. Stick a buoy on it!
Tectonic plates shift all the time. The tsunami and the Chilean earthquake are good examples. We live on a dynamic organic planet. It is not benign; it is always moving. Could it be that the sea level in the Bay of Bengal may not be rising, rather the land may be sinking?
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Dear friends and Reef Relief founders Craig and DeeVon Quirolo retired from the Key West based grassroots organization last July, only to begin a comprehensive effort to provide an online resource on coral reefs. Their new website provides all the award-winning educational tools, grassroots strategies, project reports and images of coral reefs assembled during their work over the past 23 years in the Florida Keys and throughout the Caribbean protecting coral reefs. You can find it at www.reefrelieffounders.com.
“We just wanted to insure that others can learn from our experiences and continue the important work of saving endangered coral reefs,” noted DeeVon in a recent note. “Craig’s image archive from all the years he monitored coral reefs, especially those revealing new coral diseases, are invaluable to researchers, students, media, divers and the general public to learn about coral reefs. We hope to inspire a new generation of sea
U.S. Coast Guard|by PO3 Walter Shinn
November 18, 2009 - JUNEAU, Alaska – The Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea, the world’s most powerful non-nuclear icebreaker, will moor at the South Franklin Pier in Juneau and is scheduled to open for public tours.
The Polar Sea is returning to its homeport in Seattle after completing a 101 day deployment, 60 which were above the Arctic Circle. Although the crew of the Polar Sea has conducted multiple patrols in the Arctic, this would mark the cutter’s first science deployment in more than a decade concluding the cutter’s Arctic West Fall 2009 deployments.
The first phase took place over the course of two weeks in mid-September and involved 34 scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory led by Dr. Richard Coffin. The scientists met the cutter off Barrow, Alaska and conducted coring operations to study sediment composition. They were also involved in taking water samples to study temperature, salinity and levels of oxygen at varying
Madrid — The Oceana Ranger catamaran is equipped with a robot that has dived down to 500 meters depth to film species that are rarely spotted, or have never even been seen, in the Canarian archipelago.
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The goal of the expedition is to identify areas that should be turned into marine protected areas. Only 2.7% of the EU’s marine surface area is protected, but the United Nations calls for 10%.
Oceana has found around a dozen species in the Canary Islands whose existence in the archipelago was unknown until now. Glass and rock sponges, ball, white and black coral, and armored searobin are some of the species that have been found. A wide variety of rare species, or species for which hardly any biological information is known, were also able to be filmed live, including channeled rockfish, anglerfish, silver and pink gallo fish, fan coral, bathyal sea fans, Venus fly-trap anemones, and lollipops sponges.
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Too bad more television shows are not produced for young kids. I hear complaints from parents who state most children programming is animation cartoon based. One DVD called The Reef has animated fish, but they don’t teach anything about the Ocean. The fish character speak English, have human-like roles, engage in social situations about every aspect of life with little to nothing about the reef or fishes. Have you ever seen a fish talk? So what is the educational message?
How about a television show about the Ocean in a format kids can enjoy? Young kids can’t experience the reef so let’s bring the reef to them.
Perhaps there is enough kids programming to satisfy the federal mandate, but few are designed to engage kids with science on their level or drive them to the local 
aquariums. Just more of the same after school cartoons. Boring…
With the exception of the host, this is a concept for kids. Unfortunately I missed the awesome opportunity to attend this year’s National Geographic Producers Workshop @ WGBN Boston. Gives my team a year to wait and hope we are selected next time. What a team!
Best view is the HD PodCast on iTunes: “CLICK” or try the pop-up player.
The second video is seven minutes filled with fun and laughs.
Hey Kids, grab your mask and flippers: Play Now | Play in Popup Octopus, Angels, Hammerhead, and Ziggy the Monster: Play Now | Play in PopupI am a huge fan of reduced consumption, pollution, and localizing commerce in an effort to reduce human impact on the planet. When Al Gore took an interest in Ecology it was time for the rest of us to worry. Politicians make promises that are impossible, make snap decisions without all the facts, and spend money they don’t have. Imagine for a moment the Post Office and Dept of Motor Vehicle merging. That the future of socialized medical when the federal government gets hold of it. Wait until we see the new Government Motors line of autos; don’t be surprised if there is a horse involved, most likely pushing.
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Attention Mr. Gore, the Academy (not of science; of moviegoers), and the brain-a-holics at Nobel (again not of science; of peace): Ice is supposed to fall off a glacier. That’s how the system works. Can you say FJORD? Some are hundreds of meters deep. Please tell me, how did that happen?
Al Gore doesn’t know if the glaciers are broken, or if they need fixing. If ice didn’t fall off the glaciers we would be back into an ICE AGE. What Gore did was insight fear and panic into the public opinion for personal gain and glory. Instead he is reward him with an Oscar and Nobel?
Here’s the good
Click to continue reading "Polish Academy of Sciences challenge Gore Theory"
Continue reading about Polish Academy of Sciences challenge Gore Theory
I don’t like being negative, but I recently read an article that a soup of plastic debris floats off the coast of California, a testament to humanity’s reliance on plastic and the failure to dispose of it properly, which is why we Ocean lovers must be diligent and set the ecology example.
I first heard of this plastic-rich portion of the ocean way back in the 1970’s. It is a product of swirling currents, known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, that gather and concentrate debris. Like an iceberg of debris floating in the Pacific Ocean, the mass usually isn’t visible on the surface, but lurks just below. You can’t walk on it.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become an early symbol of what some say is a looming trash crisis. But this floating mass of is hard to measure, few agree on how big it is or how much plastic it holds. That makes it difficult to determine what to do about it.
That hasn’t stopped activists and the media from using only the biggest estimates of the patch’s size to warn of an environmental catastrophe, which really captures the publics imagination, but to characterize it inaccurately is wrong and prone to exaggeration and mis-characterization. One thing is for sure; it is human trash and so it can be controlled.
It is difficult to know how to extrapolate the findings. The borders of the gyre shift between seasons, and some scientists argue that the high-plastic area is concentrated and confined to a relatively small part of the gyre. So what let’s fix it, RIGHT?
I found a very interesting government study based on research from 25 nations took park in the International Polar Year, 2007 – 2008. Follow both links. Over 500 researchers [collectively and cooperatively] discovered dozens of new species in the polar seas. That’s right seas with an s, plural. Both polar seas have species in common that are just now discovered.
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The newly discovered species are mostly invertebrates; simple life-forms without backbones, but all total as many as 235 species were found in both polar seas, including five whale species, six sea birds, and nearly 100 crustaceans.
The question is; With the same species at both poles separated by nearly 7,000 miles, where the pole regions connected in the evolutionary process? During the last ice age, or maybe the ice age before that?
The Earth is a dynamic planet meaning it is always changing, evolving in random cycles and that includes temperature. We just happen to live during a very nice period, so enjoy it. But also take care of it as best you can.
NEWS FLASH: buried on PAGE 14 - Arctic ice sheet discovered
Earlier this week it was reported the global ice sheet was underestimated. In their defense, there is a tremendous amount of ice on the Arctic Circle. How much ice was found amounts to the size of California.
On the other hand: How the heck do you miss something the size of California? The good news is we have more ice.
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PodCast # 008 is about another predator. Why? Because the web is good for bringing quick hits, shock value, what I call “kick-in-the-ass” content. Suddenly here comes HD2O.tv underwater video where everything is soooo sloooow, or is it.
About this shot: As quickly as I got “ICE” to turn the camera this cuda snapped up a small fish near his leg. Look closely; the minnow is in his teeth as he turns off to eat what remains.
Good thing barracuda don’t like the taste of humans? You bet! because he sees us long before we see him. We’d have no chance, so remember ” Do No Harm” in hopes that no harm come to you or your fingers which could be gone in a second if you mess with this magnificent animal in his domain!
Remember: these clips are HD so they are large. I recommend using the ‘pop-up player’ and they may take a moment to start. For best viewing jump over the iTunes and subscribe to our HD Podcast! For absolute best viewing get the DVD from our store here, Or we send a barracuda to your home for a little visit.
Ask a Scientist: How sharks breathe varies by species :: Saving the Sharks :: Care2 Groups.
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This is an excellent explanation of how fish and some sharks draw water with muscles to breathe.
Answer-link : (by Dale Madison, professor of biology at Binghamton University):
Click to continue reading "Ask a Scientist: How sharks breathe"
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