Historic Dive Into The Ocean's Deepest Depths

Have you heard the news? Check this out!!!

There's a more complete video on the National Geographic website, but try as I might I can't seem to be able to embed it!

James Cameron is now the third person (and the only one to have done it solo) to have reached the Ocean's deepest point in the Mariana Trench! I first happened upon the story via the fabulous site io9, and while reading the story I just linked to, what particularly hit me was the fact that humans have only visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench ONCE, in 1960 (there have also been two unmanned trips)! To think, we've sent more ships to the moon than we have to explore the ocean's depths...

You can find out more about the amazing National Geographic DeepSea Challenge at their website:

"We know less about the deepest points on our planet than we do about the surface of Mars. The DEEPSEA CHALLENGE team is dedicated to advancing the world�s understanding of our ocean�s vast range of biological and geological phenomena. The historic expedition to the Mariana Trench�s lowest point, the Challenger Deep, which lies 6.83 miles (10.99 kilometers) below the ocean surface, is the first extensive scientific exploration in a manned submersible of the deepest spot on Earth. Piloting the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, which is outfitted for scientific exploration, James Cameron will conduct tests, collect samples, and document the experience in the high-resolution 3-D for which he�s known globally."

I for one look forward to seeing more footage of the dive and reading about any possible life he might have seen down there! :o)

What's squishy and crawls and swims?

Hi there! Since the theme of this year's World Oceans Day is Youth, I decided to join in the fun because kids and I have always gotten along! Indeed, they always seem to be really excited to meet me whenever they get the chance...

Let's see how long it takes you to guess who I am? ;o)

• I'm an invertebrate - that means I don't have a skeleton!

• Like most oceanic inhabitants (except for those pesky mammals) I breathe by filtering seawater through my gills. 

• I can crawl and I can swim.

• I live on the ocean floor, in dens under piles of rocks (that I either find or clear for myself), and I block the entrance with bits of shells and other rocks so it's hard for you to find me.

• I take up a lot of space, and yet I can squeeze myself through impossibly small holes!

• I have 3 hearts! They pump blue blood throughout my body. 

• Someday I'll die for my offspring (if I'm a male then I'll die shortly after I mate, if I'm a female then for the couple of months it takes my eggs to hatch I won't leave them alone for a moment and will die soon after).

• I have a big head with a pretty decent brain (I excel at memory tests and puzzle solving. Good luck keeping me locked up in a tank, I'm a regular Houdini!).

• My eyesight's pretty good thanks to my two big eyes, and I have a great sense of touch and taste. But I'm deaf!

• I have a beak which allows me to kill my prey (crabs, scallops, snails, fish, turtles...) by biting it.

• You know what they say about the best defence being a good attack? HA! Not for me! In my world the best defence is invisibility! So I'm a pro when it comes to camouflage, thanks to thousands of pigmented cells called cromatophores in my skin I can change my colouring to match my environment.  Good luck spotting me! ;o)

• If you do happen to spot me and come too close for comfort I'll disappear in the blink of an eye (yours not mine) and leave you blinded by a dark cloud...

• My cousins have 10 legs (or arms, your call!) while I've only got 8, and when we grab hold of something we don't easily let go! But that's not all they're good for, my legs/arms help me with eating, moving, hunting, tasting and mating. Check out our fabulous suction cups:

Who am I?

So, how'd you do? Have you figured me out yet? C'mon! That last clue was EASY!!! Let me help: my number of legs is what gives me my name! The ancient Greeks called me ??t?p??? (oktapous) which means "eight-footed". *hint* *hint*

I'm a mollusc.

         I'm a cephalopod.

                  I'm an..................

OCTOPUS!

Want to see how I'm put together?




Can you spot my siphon sticking out in this picture?

I don't know how I'd survive without it! I lets me squirt water out and propel me along either slowly or quickly (depends on how fast I squeeze), and if I'm in trouble that's where my jet of defensive ink will come out of!

I particularly enjoy this video, showing off just how smart I am! ;o)

You've probably heard of my famous German cousin Paul, right? The media made quite a fuss about him last year... I really don't get what the big deal is about opening a box and eating a mussel... let me at it and I'm sure I could open it twice as fast as him! And any football fan worth his salt knew Spain was destined to win the World Cup!!! ;o) Ahhh... but the poor fellow has moved on and can no longer defend himself so I guess I'd better let him be. He did a lot for octopus rights and he will be sorely missed.

Well, it's time for me to sign off and let you get back to enjoying World Oceans Day! I'll be sea-ing you! ;o)

Do you want to know more about me and my family?

How Stuff Works: Octopuses

Read about octopus legends

Come meet the largest member of my family, the Giant Pacific Octopus!

and of course there's always Wikipedia.

This post is part of the 2011 Oceanic Blog-A-Thon  and the World Oceans Day Beach Party over at Shellbelle's Tiki Hut! Come join us in celebrating World Oceans Day!!! :o)

Fishy Fridays ep. 11: Special News Flash!

We interrupt our regular broadcast (which has been on hold since February, lol!) to bring you a special announcement!

The freshwater stingray population in the Li�ge Aquarium has recently been increased by two!

keep reading!

Oceanic Blog-A-Thon 2010

Oceans of Life for World Oceans Day!

Welcome back for our second Oceanic Blog-A-Thon! With 3/4 of the planet Earth covered by these interconnected seas and oceans... I've always wondered who chose Earth as our name? Ocean would be much more appropriate! Must be due to the bias of some long-lost land-lubber...

To celebrate World Oceans Day we (a random group of bloggers who care about our oceans) have decided to take a moment and reflect upon the importance of the oceans, for us personally, for our planet, for our future, for our past. We're sharing information, memories, feelings, wishes... about the Oceans with our readers.

With the current on-going oily catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico there has never been a more pertinent time to stop and think and act. What can we do for our Oceans? Reduce our waste? Volunteer in coastal clean-up projects? Be more careful of the seafood we buy to consume for ourselves by finding out if it comes from sustainable fisheries? At the very least we can "Wear Blue and Tell Two!" as Ocean Project suggests. So on June 8th, WOD, I suggest you deck yourself from head to toe in the colour blue and share at least two facts about this wonderful environment or the critters who inhabit it to those around you. Need help with the kind of information you can share with people? I'm afraid I haven't had time this year to write a whole post of oceanic factoids, but last year's are still valid so check them out! Ocean Project also has some good ideas on their website (click on the Wear Blue link above) such as the impact of global warming on loss of diversity in coral reefs or links to sustainable seafood guides.

Antarctic krill (photo by CrazyCris)

Aha! Thanks to two of our participants I just thought of another factoid I could share with you: the oceans' largest animals eat some of the smallest! The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) are the largest mammal and fish in our oceans, measuring up to 33m (108ft) and 12.6m (41.5ft) respectively, and they both survive on a steady diet of krill or similar zooplankters... shrimp-like animals that are so small (a few centimetres) we need a magnifying glass to see them in all their detail!

Read on for more fascinating, inspiring, educational oceanic tales brought to you from Bloggers around the Globe!

keep reading!

Coming Soon: World Oceans Day and Oceanic Blog-A-Thon!

AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

Is it June already?!?!

Is WORLD OCEAN'S DAY really just around the corner? Or should I say, 'round the weekend?!?!?!

Damn! Sorry for the lateness of this announcement... I had fully planned on working my way up to WOD over a month-long period, but life has just gotten in the way! :o(

Enough with the self-recriminations... let's start over:

June 8th is World Oceans Day!!!

keep reading!

Fishy Fridays ep. 7

Time to peek into our last "temperate" seawater tank at the Li�ge Aquarium and see who's there... ready for a swim? ;o)

These guys are all pretty much Mediterranean inhabitants, and I've run into all of them on more than one occasion when I've gone through the effort of squeezing myself into a wetsuit and jumping into the water. How about I introduce you to them one by one?

keep reading!

Fishy Fridays ep. 6 (late!)

It's time to give the fishies a rest and talk about another group of underwater critters: crustaceans!!!

Huh?

You know, those things with lots of legs, usually a set of claws and a hard shell around their body (which they have to ditch by moulting every time they want to grow...)?

Like this guy:

keep reading!

Fishy Fridays ep. 4

Welcome to the Mediterranean!

Ahhh, it's so good to be home! Even if it's just through the glass of a couple of Aquaria... ;o)

We group our fish based on their origin, and while the first two groups I introduced you to were present in both the Mediterranean and the North Sea, the next two tanks will be 100% mi casa!!! (well, they also hang out along the northern Atlantic coast of Africa)

Do these guys look familiar to you? They should if you've been hanging around here over the summer! I told stories about each of the three species present in this Aquarium when I took you diving under the Island of Benidorm! ;o) They're all present close to the coast, among the rocks and seagrass beds, usually not much deeper than 60m.

Remember them?

keep reading!

Darwin anyone?

For those of you lucky enough to live in the US with access to that wonderful channel that is PBS... you might be interested in watching this tonight:

I wish I could! And then check out their website, there appears to be plenty more information there!

One of these weeks I'll finish getting things organised enough to to a "Darwin Week", big double anniversary this year: 200th birthday (if he were still alive that is, lol!) and 150th anniversary of the publication of his revolutionary "On the Origin of Species".

Fishy Fridays: and so it begins...

Hello, hello, HELLOOOOOO!

I'm feeling kind of fishy today (and no not smelly, I promise I have showered recently!)... I went down to the Li�ge Aquarium this morning (website will be available in English as soon as I finish translating it! oops!) to re-acquaint myself with its aquatic inhabitants, and simultaneously introduce them to a bunch of 5th and 6th graders. FUN! Was one of those groups of kids that makes guiding a real pleasure and their interesting Qs&As brought the visit to the 2h mark! :o)

So, in honour of that, and just because I like the sound of the name (aren't alliterations fun?!), I'm going to try and be organised enough to launch (and maintain) a series of posts called FISHY FRIDAYS. Need I specify the subject of said posts? Well ok, FISH! :p
Hmmm... maybe not just fish... sometimes I might diverge into other marine/freshwater critters or some aquatic ecosystems. Just being back in the city where I'm supposed to be doing my PhD brings my marine biologist side bubbling back to the surface and I need to find a way to release all those bubbles before they burst my English-teaching balloon (I'll be teaching English these 3 months, to science students).

I might share some scuba memories, I might laugh over an Aquarium anecdote, I'll probably end up introducing you to most of the inhabitants of the Li�ge Aquarium (at least while I'm here), and I'll send you along to other pages with interesting fishy tidbits! For example, ever thought about Sea Cucumbers? Despite their name (how on earth did they get it by the way?) they're not actually aquatic plants!!! These critters are related to sea urchins and starfish (all echinoderms) and brittle stars (see photo below),


and the blog Mauka to Makai has a pretty cool and informative post up about them, go check it out here! And for some squishy images and cooking info from Squidoo go here.

If anyone else wants to join me in this latest zaniness please feel free to do so! I can coordinate the posts like with the Oceanic Blog-A-Thon and so send some more people back your way! You can share a favourite fishy story, a food, a phobia, a photo... Join in one week, keep quiet the next, do as you please! In any case I'll try to be here weekly.

And now I'm going to go work on finishing translating that website! :p

Has the mystery of sex been explained at last?

"SEX is the ultimate absurdity. Forget the hormonal rushes, the sweat and the contorted posturing. Forget about the heartache, the flowers, the bad poems and the costly divorce, just think about the biology. It's nuts. Cloning makes far more sense.

Forget the sweat and contorted posturing, just think about the biology. Sex is nuts. Cloning makes much more sense.

A clone, after all, just quietly gets on with copying itself. And since every clone can produce more clones, cloning produces far more offspring. There is no need for males - a waste of space, as hard-line feminists and evolutionists agree.

What's more, each clone has a combination of genes that has already been found fit for purpose. Sex, by contrast, randomly mixes genes into new and untested amalgams. And the horrors of sex don't end there. There is the problem of finding a mate, and fighting off rivals. Not to mention the risk of picking up horrible diseases like AIDS and all sorts of selfish replicators that exploit sex to spread themselves through the genome."

Curiosity piqued? It's from a New Scientist article my sister sent along (there are two crazy biologists in the family, she's studying ancient penguin DNA). To find out why sex is so important and how it all came about, head over to New Scientist.com

And be sure to check out the related slide show "Cloners vs sexuals: The great breeding wars"! ;o)

Oh, and for those who think cloning is science fiction... it's rare but several species of vertebrates have been know to do it! In animals it's called parthenogenesis, when a mother gives birth to a child without having being fertilised by a male (hmmm, where have I heard this story before?). We have a shark in the Li�ge Aquarium that laid several eggs... and she had NEVER been in contact with a male before. Several of her offspring are now in the Aquarium.

World Oceans Day: Life in the Oceans

Oh boy, all this running around getting the rest of the posts up... and mine is the one giving me the most trouble! My marine biologist side got combined with my teaching side and I put together a power point as a kind of intro into Marine Biology and life in the oceans. I even figured out how to save it as a video file with music and everything! (after several tries to get the timing right) And now it turns out that neither Blogger video nor YouTube support the .mov video format (after I left them uploading when I went to teach this afternoon) and I can't upload it here! :o(

Serves me right for trying to be so technical at the last minute... :p

Well, thankfully there's a website called SlideShare that's basically YouTube for Powerpoint Presentations! So, while I can't give you the video, you can still see the slideshow! I hope you find it interesting! You can either hit PLAY or go slide by slide (might be preferable, the thing goes by a bit quickly).

So do me a favour, find a recording somewhere of waves crashing or some nice music (as originally intended) and then dive in:

Life In The Ocean

View more OpenOffice presentations from cbeans.

This is meant as a sort of companion piece (the scientific side) to the Redheaded Shutterbug's Aquatic Critters From Down South. After reading everyone else's I worry mine might feel a bit drab now! Hope not!

Dress in blue, tell two...

Two what? Tall fishy tails? Aquatic factoids? Conservation tips?

I've been asked for a few to help prepare for World Oceans Day... so here goes!



Funky fishy factoids:

• Many sharks have a rather unique reproductive system: they're ovoviviparous! O.k. as that term probably won't mean much to non-biologists so I'll explain. Ovo = egg, vivi = alive, parous = birth. Fish (and birds and reptiles) are oviparous i.e. they lay eggs. Mammals and some sharks are viviparous i.e. mothers gestate their young within a placenta and the young are subsequently born fully formed. So ovoviviparous is like a combination of the two. Imagine the embryos being protected by egg sacs, but instead of laying the eggs, the mother shark keeps them within her uterine cavity until birthing time. In some cases (such as makos, nurse sharks or sand tigers -pictured, from NatGeographic.com) the embryos actually swim freely (no more egg sac) within the uterine cavity. This can lead to uterine cannibalism... i.e. the first shark out of its egg sac will feed on the others. Talk about sibling rivalry!

• And speaking of shark... have you ever eaten one? I can pretty much guarantee you have! What's that? "Never" you say? HA! Ever had a can of tuna? Voil�! You've eaten shark! Those old enough will remember all the "Save the dolphins" anti-tuna-fishing campaigns some 20-30 years ago. I just remember the explanation of the "dolphin safe" symbol on tuna cans. Well nobody ever bothered to ask for "shark safe" tuna!!! The basic problem with tuna fisheries is that they go out with these enormous nets and circle around a school of tuna. Now tuna don't usually hang out alone. They're following smaller fish species in the hopes of a decent meal. And they're not the only ones. Many species of dolphin prey on the same fish as tuna do, ditto quite a few sharks (and seals and birds etc.). And then there are the bigger sharks crazy enough to try to actually eat a tuna (ever seen a tuna? damn thing's scary and huge!!!). So all these critters are going to get caught up in the same net. Now the fishermen make an effort to get the dolphins out of there ("dolphin safe" remember, still not 100% effective), but no one asked them to do that extra effort for sharks. So what happens to them? Well, a shark is a fish (almost) like any other, and perfectly edible (and some can be quite tasty although I've never had the pleasure). So they just chop 'em up and mix 'em in with the tuna that's headed for the cans. Now in principle this wouldn't be that big of a problem (depending on the species, some are endangered), there are shark fisheries after all, they're edible animals and are avidly consumed in many parts of the world. Scientifically the problem is we have no bloody idea just HOW MANY sharks die each year in this manner. Why is the number important? To establish quotas. To be able to tell fishermen "you can't catch more than this many of a given species each year 'cause otherwise there won't be enough of them left to re-establish the population". And sharks, being mostly big and at the top of the food chain are slow growers and not very frequent reproducers. In other words high risk species when it comes to over-fishing.

• Orcas (killer whales) are dolphins! Well, they belong to the dolphin family, its largest member! ;o)

• If you cut a starfish into pieces... you get that many new starfish! As long as each piece has a bit of the center, it will grow back the rest of the body! (but don't try this, it's still painful!)

• A sponge is an animal!

• A sea anemone is basically a jellyfish turned upside-down and stuck on a rock! :p (well, it's a bit more than that, but they are close cousins) Also, anemones can move! Anyone who's had one in a fish tank (or gone regularly to an aquarium) can attest to the fact that anemones do get around (albeit very slowly).

• The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from space! Coral reefs are made by millions of tiny polyps which are basically teeny-tiny anemone. They are unique in that they live in symbiosis with a single-celled algae Zooxanthelle which does photosynthesis and provides them with food in the form of waste products! This relationship is why coral reefs are in such danger from Global Warming, the algae are highly susceptible to temperature fluctuations and if the temperature increases by a couple of degrees they die, leaving the polyps without a source of food.

• Many fish can change sex at some point in their lives! For example clownfish. In Disney's Nemo, when Marlin's wife gets killed by the shark and he's left alone with the anemone and a single egg (Nemo), well to be biologically correct he should have changed into a female and then taken another male as a mate! Oh, an addendum: male and female clownfish mate for life (so the male only changes sex if his mate dies)! And if the couple live alone in a small anemone (as opposed to this picture) then you can easily ID the two sexes: females are bigger than males!
  

• I don't know if this is true in other countries, but in Belgium fishermen frequently measure the size of their catch in beer cans. Unfortuntately the animal's true size many vary depending on whether those were full or empty cans! ;o)

For more oceanic facts check out MarineBio here. Personally I like this one (reminds me of my thesis): "A mouthful of seawater may contain millions of bacterial cells, hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton and tens of thousands of zooplankton."

Want to know more about sharks? Southern Fried Science has a very interesting post on "Four Things You Need To Know About Sharks"


What can I do to help?

• Keep our beaches clean! See, nice and simple! When you go to the beach be sure to carry back out everything you've taken with you. Don't leave any trash behind that could get swept by the winds and tides out into the ocean... you never know where it will end up and what kind of harm it will do! And it wouldn't hurt to pick up a bit extra either, it might not be your trash, but it's going to harm your ecosystem. Just think: plastic bags last forever... and sea turtles have the nasty habit of confusing them with yummy jellyfish (medusa)! What do you think happens when a turtle eats a plastic bag?...

• Don't eat shark fin soup! Yeah I know I said earlier that lots of shark species are fished and eaten, but the practice of fin fishing is one of the most cruel there is! Fishing fleets that head out to catch sharks for the shark fin market catch the larger species, haul them on board, cut off the fins, and then toss the animal back in the sea. Why just the fins? Well shark fins sell at a very high price (up to 500$ per fin), so although the rest of the shark is perfectly edible, well he's just not worth as much and would therefore take up valuable space on-board ship. What's the problem with a shark swimming around without fins? Well just the teensy-tiny little detail that the animal can't swim properly without its fins! (never mind the pain and blood-loss from having an appendage slashed off). And a shark who can't swim... sinks (they can't float!). Why is sinking a problem? Scuba divers know this one already. For the rest, well you've dived down to the bottom of a pool, right? How about those ears? Any idea why they hurt? The pressure! Water weighs more than air, and the deeper down you go, the more pressure your body suffers (which is why humans can only dive down so far). Most sharks are adapted to living within a certain depth range, if they go below that then the pressure will kill them. So no fins = no swimming = sinking = R.I.P. For more info on what you can do to help sharks, check out this blog: The Shark Safe Project. Shark fin and shark fin soup photos from
  http://www.acoupledives.com/2009/01/scuba-diver-fights-against-shark.html

• Recycle batteries. This might seem obvious as part of the obvious things one should regularly recycle, but this actually important for the oceans! Mercury and cadmium from the batteries make their way into the oceanic food webs, accumulating each step of the way so that the higher up a predator is in the marine food chain, the more likely it is to have high levels of cadmium (if it eats squid and other molluscs) or mercury (if it eats fish). I did my master's thesis on this subject... and it made me not want to eat certain species of fish caught in the North Sea...
  

• Ask your local aquarium if there's anything you can do to help out. They usually have cleaning campaigns or awareness campaigns for which they need volunteers. It's a good way to pitch in and give a helping hand, make new like-minded friends, and learn more about the environment!
  

• And in general anything that helps reduce the effects of Global Warming will help the Oceans... our first line of defense against this phenomenon.

Any more ideas? I'm going to leave it at that as I'm afraid I'm a little brain dead at the moment... and I still have to put together my Oceanic Blog-A-Thon posts for two blogs!

I'm going to end on an old childhood joke:

"Mom, why are fish called brain food?"
"Because they swim around in schools dear."
(image from NYTimes)

and a question:

"Have you hugged a sea turtle lately?"