Cephalopodcast

Today is Steve Irwin Day. It has been over a year since the charismatic, animal-loving Aussie passed away in a freak stingray encounter. There are a number of ways you can remember, appreciate and celebrate Steve’s influence and ethic. The most obvious one is to wear some khaki pants. Or just get outside and enjoy nature.

Steve Irwin Day on November 15 will be a day for remembering the one and only Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. The day will represent the many things Steve was passionate about; family, wildlife and FUN. You can get involved in a number of ways including visiting Australia Zoo for an action packed day, having a Backyard Campout or donning your khakis for Khaki Day.

All proceeds raised from these activities will go to Australia Zoo Wildlife Warriors Worldwide.

The Best of Ocean Blogging

The idea of a blog carnival is to highlight the best blog posts on a specific theme during a given period of time. Someone collects all those posts and turns them into one uber-posting called a “carnival.” Thus the Blue Carnival is a community of ocean-related blogging and bloggers representing the other 70% of our planet. It was kicked off on World Ocean Day 2007 by Mark Powell (blogfish).

The Cephalopodcast

I am pleased and honored to host the Carnival of the Blue here at the Cephalopodcast Web Site this month. I started this little blog and podcast back in 2005. The site is mostly about science, especially marine science, and science education, particularly in the K-12 arena. It’s also about how technology is changing the way we gather and understand information about the world around us. And it’s about cephalopods too, of course. The actual podcasts are produced irregularly as time and tide permit. More details here, including an exciting colophon and disclaimer.

Any errors or omissions in this entry are my own. For corrections or additions, please contact me at pulpodcast [at] gmail . com.

On With The Show

The first entry was sent in by the annotated budak, and takes us on a night out at a sandy/seagrassy shore on the east coast of Singapore and a walk through the Sungei Buloh mangroves and wetlands. Some of the imagery seems more like verse than prose. And the tidepool photos are wonderful.

An underbelly of worms, larvae and living crawlers

There is a serenity in this swamp that lies between the narrow sea and the fetid heartland. Beneath their toes of lignin, the stilted trees bind the outpouring of inland soils, holding fertile wastes in trust and dispensing the interest in servings of nutrition too minute for turbid exuberance. Serving two masters, they form a living levee against the encroachment of saline floods and host the fruit of the sea whose unripe bounty shelter in their protective shade. More…

Surfing on over to the Daily Kos, Mark from the Biomes blog contributes an entry from his excellent Marine Life Series, this one devoted to mole crabs.

If you’ve ever visited a beach on the East Coast, you most likely have encountered mole crabs without even knowing it. Perfectly camouflaged, if exposed by a wave, a person’s foot or a child digging at the surf’s edge, it will dive back under the sand before your eyes can even register that it was there. More…

Like the mole crab, I’ve taken an interest in the intertidal recently, but confine my collection to the uninhabited castoffs of the critters there. Unfortunately, Rick from Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets reminds us that there is a rather robust trade in marine life as curiosities, both living and dead.

Dust for your pleasure

The international shell and ocean curio trade places a tremendous pressure upon tropical coastal resources. Much of the shells, sea stars, and other ocean life that appear in markets (from specialty shell shops to megastores like Walmarts) are sourced from the Philippines…Honestly, if I were to think where I’ve seen the most sea stars in my life, the answer would probably be in miscellaneous friends and families bathrooms. More…

Originally, the saying may have been “happy as a clam at high water,” suggesting that a clam at high tide was pleased to be safe from aquatic predators. But not so for the quahog that Mark describes over at blogfish. New research suggest that these creatures might be the oldest living animals on earth. And you may have unwittingly eaten them in your chowder.

The real fate of the world’s oldest animal is missing from the news. Everyone’s talking about one old clam, without noticing that we eat these little buggers. Scientists found a 405 year old ocean quahog in the ocean off Iceland, from a depth of 260 feet. This “Shakespeare” clam, alive when the bard was still writing plays, was only about 3 1/2 inches long. More…

Taking another look at this matter is Kate Wing, from the NRDC Switchboard. In her entry, Harder, vaster, older, longer, she also shows us how to think about tiny things becoming big things in the sea.

For both the clam and the garbage patch, persistence is a matter of small, constant steps, which aggregate into a larger achievement: a really old clam, or an enormous soup of waste. It’s part of the magic of the ocean that through currents and gyres and sheer tenacity it can transform the tiniest particles into something much greater, for better or for worse. More…

Mike from 10,000 Birds takes us on a different wing with the Siren Song of the Seawatch

The truth is that the ocean is teeming with birdlife. To take in the pelagic birds like tubenoses, jaegers, skuas, and alcids, you usually have to cruise out beyond the continental shelf. But if you stake out the right stretch of seashore, you can spot all of those birds and metaphorical boatloads of others. What is a seawatch? It’s nothing more or less than watching birds at sea. More…

It’s easy enough to grab a pair of binoculars to observe and appreciate your favorite megafauna. But if you are interested in looking at some of the many little things in the sea, you need different technology, as discovered by Hugh Powell from surf.bird.scribble. He wrote about how scientist have recently captured micro-flotsam in holographic action movies.

…imagine my surprise when I learned today that far from being a passe (and possibly cheesy) method of listening to classic rock, laser holography is totally brand-new. And you use it for watching killer plankton hunt down their prey inside a drop of water. More…

As mentioned earlier, these micro-flotsams are the beginnings of much bigger things in the sea. This notion was framed rather well by Carl Safina from the Blue Ocean blog. On a recent trip to Alaska, he had a unique opportunity to observe for himself how small changes can make a big difference.

As ice melts earlier, the whole marine ecosystem is changing. Rich spring plankton blooms used to happen when ice melted around April. At that time there was enough sunlight for photosynthesis by single-celled plant plankton (phytoplankton) but it was too cold for tiny animal “zooplankton.” The plant-plankton bloomed and sank, taking nutrients to the bottom, creating rich seafloor populations of shrimp-like amphipods and shellfish that were heavily relied on by Gray Whales, Walruses, diving ducks, and others. More…

Miriam Goldstein’s Oyster’s Garter is a new entrant to the carnival this month (tagline: Science, technology, and shellfish gone wild. Set in horrifically sunny San Diego). Echoing some of Carl’s concerns about cliamte change, Miriam wrote about several schemes to manipulate algae growth on a massive scale.

• A series of tubes: Good for the internet AND global warming!
• The return of the son of the spawn of iron fertilization
• Carbon export is dead stuff and poop, and so are Planktos’ arguments

Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-blogger from the Intersection sciblog and the PBS/Wired Correlations blog also had some filings from the field of iron fertilization. But a more ironic topic she covered was new research suggesting that small scale fishermen are actually having a bigger impact on loggerhead sea turtles than industrial factory fleets.

Never underestimate the impact of the little guys…at least when it comes to fishing practices and North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles…small-scale operations are a greater threat to the survival of loggerheads than large industrial practices. This finding comes after 10 years of research and what makes it interesting is the result is not quite what we’d expect… More…

Conservation of a different kind was on the mind of Kevin from The Other 95% blog. He spent some time trying to figure out the economics of Indonesia swapping national debt for reef protection

…Indonesia is promising greater coral reef protection in exchange for forgiveness of portions of its national debt. Congress is expected to approve…Will bribing Indonesia to protect [it']s reefs work? Indonesia has the financial incentive to protect its reefs without any additional rewards. I think this reflects the lack of long-term thinking in politics. More…

And Jennifer from the Shifting Baselines blog co-created this video for your consideration:

Last year 417 manatees in the U.S. were killed, most of them by motorboats. It’s enough to make your heart explode. Literally. Watch this contribution from Shifting Baselines.

Cephalaneous Items

A couple of entries for this month’s carnival don’t fit the format, but they’ve got cephalopods, so sucker it.

First up is my entry for the carnival. The biggest day in Cephalopodcast history happened this past month. On October 8, 2007, visits to the blog more than quadrupled for Cephalopod Awareness Day. The idea was kind of like a mini-carnival, with folks blogging about and celebrating cephalopod diversity. My thanks go out to PZ Myers and the +50 others who contributed posts. It was a lot of fun, and I hope to have an even bigger, more coordinated effort next year. So start planning now!

Also, even though it is a little old, I like the entry from Chris of the Ouroboros blog.

I’ve always considered cephalopods (specifically, octopuses) fascinating from a neuroscience perspective, ever since I found out that they could get depressed…Do cephalopod brains suffer from neurodegenerative diseases as a function of aging, and do they share with mammalian brains the greater sensitivity of neurons to protein aggregation? More…

Finally, Lise kindly pointed me to the Cephalopod Along Web site. It’s a knit along party for folks who like to create cephalopods. Everyone needs a little tentacle in their lives. It’s the kind of project that can get under your skein.

Dive in Again Next Month for Carnival of the Blue #7

Carnival of the Blue #7 will be hosted on Natural Patriot blog. Send your submissions to Emmett Duffy (jeduffy [at] vims . edu) or Mark Powell (mpowell [at] oceanconservancy . org). Remember to include: post author, URL and a brief description.

Also, if you are interested in hosting the Carnival of the Blue on your Web site, contact Mark for available slots.

Blue Carnival LIVE event, 01/19/08

A couple of Blue Carnival clowns regulars will be hosting a panel discussion at the NC Science Blogging Conference on January 19, 2008. The topic will be: Real-time blogging in the marine sciences. Please join us in North Carolina if you can, or join the conversation online. More details appearing soon at the wiki.

Previous Blue Carnivals

• Carnival of the Blue #5: Shifting Baselines
• Carnival of the Blue #4: The Saipan Blog
• Carnival of the Blue #3: Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets
• Carnival of the Blue #2: blogfish
• Carnival of the Blue #1: blogfish

The Carnival of the Blue Web badge is available under a Creative Commons license in a variety of sizes and a couple of colors.

The Byford Dolphin Accident

I am hosting the Carnival of the Blue today, Monday, the 5th of November. I thought it would be interesting to check Wikipedia to see if there was anything especially nautical or oceanic that happened on this day. What I found was rather grim.

The Byford Dolphin is a semi-submersible Norwegian oil exploration rig converted from a diving rig. It floats in the North Sea to find and drill crude oil deposits.

As a drilling rig, the Byford Dolphin is near the top of its class. It is equipped with advanced drilling equipment and has to meet very high levels of certification under Norwegian law. However, the rig has suffered some serious accidents, most notably an explosive decompression accident in 1983 known as the Byford Dolphin diving bell accident that killed five workers and badly injured one more.

At 4:00 AM on November 5, 1983, four divers were in a Decompression chamber system attached to a diving bell on the rig, being assisted by two dive tenders. One diver was about to close the door between the chamber system and the trunk when the chamber was explosively decompressed from a pressure of 9 atm to 1 atm in a fraction of a second. Five of the men were killed; the other was severely injured.

If you want to read what happens next, click the link. It’s pretty grisly. And a reminder of the risks that diving and exploration entail.

• Wikipedia: Byford Dolphin

Yesterday, the aquarist at work carved pumpkins while underwater in the Mote shark tanks.

• See also: Tirck-or-Treat [sic]

As mentioned on Cephalopodcast #6, anyone who needs a last minute costume for Halloween can try this Instructable from Tool Using Animal. You can probably assemble it in less than 30 minutes out of commonly available office supplies. Plus an option for glow-in-the-dark action!

• Super quick last minute Squid costume

Another more involved invertebrate Instructable is the Halloween LED Jellyfish Costume.

It’s National Chemistry Week from October 21-27, 2007. And October 23 is an especially auspicious day, since it is Mole Day.

Celebrated annually on October 23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m., Mole Day commemorates Avogadro’s Number (6.02 x 10^23), which is a basic measuring unit in chemistry. Mole Day was created as a way to foster interest in chemistry. Schools throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Mole Day with various activities related to chemistry and/or moles.

For a given molecule, one mole is a mass (in grams) whose number is equal to the atomic mass of the molecule.

• Wikipedia: Mole Day

Unofficial International Cephalopod Awareness Day is on October 8.

This is a good a day as any to celebrate cephalopods. So embrace your inner octopus and let the world know what you think of our tentacled fiendsfriends. If you have a website, consider writing about cephalopods on this day. Share any links, stories or images that you have.

Why October 8? Hope that one is obvious. Spread the word.

• Official Unofficial First International Cephalopod Awareness Day webpage, with links to cephalopod aware bloggers
• Original discussion on tonmo.com
• Free ICAD blog badges in different sizes and colors (black and white)

Tomorrow is the International Coastal Clean Up Day.

In 1986, a staff member of The Ocean Conservancy was appalled by the amount of trash she found littering the shores of South Padre Island, Texas. She took responsible action by organizing a beach cleanup. In three hours, 2,800 Texans picked up 124 tons of trash from 122 miles of coastline. With that, Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup was born.

That event was just the beginning of a movement for cleaner beaches and waterways. Later, it grew to encompass the shorelines of 25 U.S. states and territories. In 1989, the Cleanup went international, with the participation of residents of Canada and Mexico. To date, over 6 million volunteers have removed over 100 million pounds of marine litter from a grand total of 170,000 miles of beaches and inland waterways.

If you are in my neck of the woods, the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program is having a shoreline restoration at Herb Dolan Park in Bradenton Beach. They need help removing rubble and planting 2600 plugs of Spartina grass. The Eco-Sarasota Meet Up Group is also organizing a cleanup on Otter Key.

And here is a funny idea from Jaehyung Hong mentioned over at Yanko Designs that is supposed to get kids excited about conservation. It is a piece of plastic that you stick other pieces of plastic into and is vaguely shaped like an octopus. But it seems a bit daft to me. There are only six openings for the legs.

• Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup
• Toy Octopus Encourages Beach Clean Up

The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, WA, will host the traveling Smithsonian exhibit In Search of Giant Squid from September 22-December 31, 2007. The have a FREE Teacher Workshop & Open House on Thursday, September 27, 2007.

This 2-hour workshop for teachers will introduce useful resources from the Burke Museum and the upcoming Smithsonian traveling exhibit, In Search of Giant Squid. Learn how to use this exhibit to reinforce your marine science curriculum, including the scientific process, ocean research, and deep-sea ecology. The workshop will feature a presentation by a museum curator, a guided tour of the exhibit, an introduction to the exhibit curriculum created by the Smithsonian, a small-group activity, and a review of available teacher resources.

The workshop and curriculum is ideally suited for teachers of grades 5 through 8, but can be adapted for younger and older grade levels.

• Workshop Flyer [PDF]
• More Burke Squid Events

National Iguana Awareness Day was September 8, in case you missed it. I did.

It’s Microbial Week over at Deep Sea News. They’ve kicked it off by linking to Ode To The Microbe by Daniel Pie.

Here are some other gems inspired by germs.

• The Other 95%: O Bacteria [mp3]
• Jonathan Coulton: Bacteria [mp3]
• Food Safety Music: We are the Microbes, a strange little animated music video that combines germs and World of Warcraft set to Queen’s “We are the Champions”
• Look Around You: Germs

Know of any others?

[via Practical Fishkeeping]

The way that taxonomy normally works, the person that describes a new species also gets to give it a new name. This bit of binomial classification is often a staid affair, although sometimes it can get a little silly. However, some researchers have cottoned on to the idea of selling off the privilege of naming rights to raise funds for more research. And this scheme recently gained a little more chic with the addition of Chrisite’s as the auctioneer and the patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco.

The Blue Auction is an historical event offering individuals, companies and organizations the opportunity to bid for the privilege of having their name (or a name of their choice) forever attributed to new marine life species recently discovered off the coasts of the Bird’s Head Seascape in Indonesia by Conservation International.

A total of 12 lots shall be auctioned by Christie’s, and the proceeds will benefit marine conservation programs associated with the long-term preservation of such species as well as other environment and biodiversity-related programs. Participation to the gala event is for qualified bidders and by invitation only. Donations from interested parties and unsuccesful bidders are welcome.

Auction lots include:

• Melanotaenia _____, a freshwater rainbowfish
• Pseudochromis _____, a saltwater reef basslet
• Paracheilinus _____, a flasher wrasse, very striking
• Pterocaesio _____, a saltwater fusilier
• Corythoichthys _____, a pipefish
• Pictichromis _____, another beautiful basslet
• Pseudanthias _____, a fairy basslets
• Chrysiptera _____, a damselfish
• Pterois _____, a lionfish
• Hemiscyllium _____, a shark
• Also opportunities to name a patrol vessel and a research expedition

To see the habitat that these funds will be used to protect, check out the interactive photo essay over at National Geo.

So how much would you pay to name a new species? Which of these organisms do you think will get the highest bid? I reckon the shark will be the most sought after. And what about this whole notion about selling off naming rights? Is nothing sacred? Or is the whole notion of binomial classification fundamentally flawed anyway?

• The Blue Auction
• Christies opens auction to name fish species
• I dub thee Hemiscyllium vanschagenii
• Photo essay: Indonesia Undersea
• Previously: Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature
• Previously: Buy a New Species Name for a Loved One
• If You Need To Ask How Much, You Probably Can’t Afford The Cost Of Conservation
• Want to save the world? Sponsor a shark
• New Species Owe Names to Highest Bidder

I’ve added a new item to the Cephaloblog sidebar. You can now see upcoming events posted to the Cephalopodcast Events calendar.

In addition to events directly related to the Cephalopodcast, I am also adding various celebration, anniversaries, festivals, happenings, holidays and activities related to science education and ocean information. For example, did you know that there is an Ocean Film Festival in Savannah, GA in September? Or that the NC Science Blogging Conference is on January 19, 2008? Well, sign up for the Cephalopodcast Events calendar and you will be in the know.

Also, if you have any events or annual observations that you would like me to add, drop me a note. Or leave a comment on this post.

• View the Cephalopodcast Events calendar online
• Subscribe to the Cephalopodacst Events calendar (.ics)
• iCal Events Plugin for Wordpress

[via bioephemera]

ATTENTION!

Sunday is the first annual International Rock-Flipping Day.

The point is simply to have fun, and hopefully learn something at the same time. We don’t want to over-determine what that something should be: those of a more scientific frame of mind might focus on i.d.s or ecological interactions, while those of an artistic or poetic bent could go in a different direction entirely. Pictures alone would suffice, of course. But whatever you do, please be sure to replace all rocks that you flip as soon as possible, so as not to disrupt the natives’ lives unduly.

Here at Cephalopodcast HQ we are making plans to visit our favorite rock flipping site. You can share your results via Flickr or email your efforts to the organizers below.

• Official IRFD proclamation by Dave Bonta
• More IRFD details from Bev Wigney
• IRFD Flickr pool
• JM reminds us that this weekend is also the Wisconsin State Cow Chip Throw. Maybe there is a bonus for flipping a chip instead of a rock.

UPDATE: I made a couple of optional and complimentary web badges to accompany any IRFD events. Available in various sizes and with or without a grass border.

Tomorrow I will be participating in the second cephalopod conference organized by the TONMO.com community, TONMOCON II.

Conference-goers will enjoy a full day of back-to-back presentations and panel discussions on various subjects pertaining to cephalopods, including octopus and cuttlefish care, cephalopods in art, cephalopod study in marine biology, and much more. Dr. Steve O’Shea is the featured speaker, covering “Giant Squids, Whales, Sex and Conservation.”

There is the possibility of a live webcast/Skypecast/Talkshoecast of the event. Or at the very least, audio recordings of the sessions will be made and posted. More details and the agenda are available here.

[via Tony Wu]

Watch the birth of a baby mantra ray literally unfold.

Video of the world’s first live birth of a manta in captivity. Healthy baby female, about 1.9 metres across, born at the Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. Video is from a TBS news broadcast.

I am curious to know if the animal mated and reproduced in captivity or if it was captured while pregnant.

• Live Manta Birth in Captivity
• Churaumi Aquarium (English) and link to their manta news details
• More on manta rays here: The Manta Network

UPDATE: The story at Japan Probe and Yahoo News suggests that the parents mated while in captivity.

UPDATE II: Sadly, the baby manta has died.

Keepers believe the baby died of bruises and cuts, apparently caused by its abusive father that constantly chased after the baby, often slamming into it, the aquarium said.

The reason for the father’s violence was not immediately known, and the baby’s death was still under investigation, the aquarium said.