"Every day in the U.S., about 500 people lose a limb. About 1,800 amputation surgeries are performed each year in Oklahoma. More than 1,600 of those — about 90 percent — are lower body amputations. So every day in Oklahoma, four people lose part or all of a leg." (Nationally, the most common procedure is toe amputation.) "These are the stories of four people living in Oklahoma — a mother, a senior, a Marine and a student — all living life on at least one prosthetic leg":
Standing Tall [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 7, 2011 -
21 comments
Like a "modern-day pirate," 75-year-old Ray Ives has been diving for sunken treasure for decades. Wearing an ancient, bronze-helmeted diving suit, he searches the ocean floor and keeps a huge collection of marine salvage (including antique cannon balls, 'bottles, bells, swords, portholes and diving gear') in a shipping container "museum" at a British marina.
Ray: A Life Underwater:
Vimeo /
YouTube. (A short film documentary.)
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 23, 2011 -
5 comments
Everything you ever wanted to know about lighthouses -
The Lighthouse Directory -
"which provides information and links for more than 12,900 of the world's lighthouses."
posted by awfurby
on Oct 5, 2010 -
15 comments
The amazing story of the
coelacanth is one of the wonders of the living world that inspires marine biologists such myself. Coelacanths, part of the offshoot lineage of fishes known as "lobed finned ", are very different from typical "ray finned" fishes that you usually think of. Their bizarre
lobed fins are thought to be an intermediate step between fish fins and amphibian legs. Scientists had known that these weird fish existed because of fossils for over a century, but we believed that they went extinct 65 million years ago... until a South African fisherman caught one in 1938.
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Sep 7, 2009 -
49 comments
Most people have heard about how rising CO2 levels are resulting in a
changing global climate. Fewer have heard about the other consequence of rising CO2 levels- when the CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, it disassociates into carbonic acid. This alters the pH of our world's oceans, and it's called "
Ocean Acidification". This changing ocean chemistry has many important and devastating consequences.
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Sep 5, 2009 -
21 comments
By popular demand, your new resident marine biology nerd has compiled some cool information about the Giant Pacific Octopus.The Giant Pacific Octopus (
Octopus dofleini) is one of the strangest animals in the sea- and one of the smartest. Though it is commonly believed that vertebrates are always "smarter" than invertebrates, these guys defy that convention.
As this video shows, they are able to easily open jars and retrieve food from inside. They are also, as the "Giant" implies,
enormous- the biggest one on record was 30 feet across (
according to National Geographic)
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Jul 6, 2009 -
140 comments
Pictures and descriptions of
sea slugs - an absolutely stunning species of marine life
posted by darsh
on Nov 16, 2008 -
16 comments
A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems "What happens in the vast stretches of the world's oceans - both wondrous and worrisome - has too often been out of sight, out of mind. The goal of the research presented here is to estimate and visualize, for the first time, the global impact humans are having on the ocean's ecosystems."
posted by dhruva
on Feb 14, 2008 -
20 comments
Rethink.
The.
Shark.
[YouTube] The
Save Our Seas Foundation [small Flash], a Swiss-based non-profit, joins the growing ranks of a world-wide movement to undo the damage caused by
popular reports and
gross misrepresentation by Hollywood of sharks as human-savoring sea monsters/killing machines. The fact of the matter is that the opposite is true: Current estimates give between 65 million to 165 million sharks being killed worldwide annually via unregulated catch - including
38 million to
70 million [PDF] for their fin alone, with untold numbers of butchered and bleeding-to-death sharks being cast back into the oceans to die slow and gruesome deaths.
[more inside]
posted by humannaire
on Jul 31, 2007 -
38 comments
An "
order of magnitude older than the dinosaurs," even older than clams, bugs, vertebrates, are
jellyfish. At almost 600 million years old, jellyfish are some of the oldest animals on the earth that have survived the test of time.
Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin, (yes, of that
Gershwin family) is a
scientist studying
jellyfish in Queensland, Australia and was recently
interviewed by the ABC. I was particularly disturbed by her gripping description of the tiny
Irukandji jellyfish and how the venom
affects humans. This summer,
swim at your own risk.
posted by gen
on Jun 13, 2007 -
27 comments
The
tromba marina, also known as the
marine trumpet or
nun’s fiddle, is an obsolete,
4-7 foot tall, single-stringed instrument in the viol family. Played with a bow, the tromba marina sounds strangely trumpet-like
(for mp3's, scroll down to the bottom of the first link), hence the name .
Buy one here or
make your own. You can also see one up-close in the
Musical Instrument Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
but they don’t bother putting an image on their webpage, and the gallery’s carpet smells intensely of mildew.
posted by unknowncommand
on Aug 4, 2006 -
5 comments
His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he tried to bear up against intense physical pain and reimagine his life's possibilities
...
But nine months after Loria was wounded, the Army garnished his wages and then, as he prepared to leave the service, hit him with a $6,200 debt. That was just before last Christmas, and several lawmakers scrambled to help. This spring, a collection agency started calling. He owed another $646 for military housing.
...
posted by zouhair
on Oct 16, 2005 -
68 comments
Marine Refuses to Use Guns ... Marine Cpl. Joel D. Klimkewicz converted to the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day saints while in the Marines, and now believes that killing is against Jesus' teachings. As such, he refused to train with a gun though he says he would be willing to clear mines and work the front lines. The result is that the military has jailed him for his religious beliefs, convicting him of disobeying a direct order. Anyone think that Bill O'Reilly is going to say the military is trying to destroy Christianity?
posted by nathanrudy
on Jan 1, 2005 -
71 comments
Career marine forced from job for 'liberal' views - "I was brought up on charges of "Disloyal Statements" under Article 134 of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). Not because anything I wrote was disloyal, but because of my political views...
We now live in a climate of political correctness and false patriotism where anyone who goes against our president is immediately labeled as disloyal; unpatriotic; a traitor; a liberal. Consider the recent scandal involving the White House CIA leak. Because Mr. Wilson disagreed with our President and publicly acknowledged this, his wife's cover was conveniently blown so she could never work as an intelligence operative again."
posted by troutfishing
on Nov 9, 2003 -
26 comments
Heavy Seas is an all too brief gallery of terrifying photos of huge waves crashing down around large boats & drilling rigs. I wish it were a little longer, but I did think the photos were impressive, as one who has never been at sea in very rough weather.
posted by jonson
on Mar 9, 2003 -
29 comments
The
Spiegel Grove was supposed to be sunk upright, creating the largest and most accessible artificial reef ever. Cool!
Unfortunately, the ship had other ideas and now appears to be impersonating a
giant turtle. One of the nation's top
marine salvage outfits has been called to the rescue. Looks like a potential Discovery Channel show in the making. (Check out the pictures on the Spiegel Grove site, they're pretty cool.)
posted by groundhog
on May 27, 2002 -
4 comments
