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.)
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posted by zarq
on Sep 23, 2011 -
5 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.
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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.
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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)
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posted by WhySharksMatter
on Jul 6, 2009 -
140 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
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
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
