Cephalopodcast

The Consortium for Ocean Leadership has a couple of interesting opportunities for teachers and students.

First, is the National Ocean Science Bowl. I will be volunteering at the regional Spoonbill Bowl competition this weekend and hope to report on that soon.

Second, is called the Deep Earth Academy, which is the education arm of their scientific ocean drilling program. In addition to resources to teach climate change and Activities of the Month, they have a free color poster for middle and high school students that shows what an oceanic survey cruise looks like and what kinds of information scientist gain from them.

…this (Anatomy of a Seamount Survey) poster shows the ship’s track, 3D bathymetry plots from the survey, and images from the ship’s dredging operations. On the poster’s reverse side are included: background information on site surveys, mini-profiles of some of the expedition’s key personnel, and four science challenges for middle school students.

You can also request oceanic core samples for use at your school courtesy of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program.

Third, they have a fellowship for one lucky teacher to help them develop new content. Deadline is Monday, March 3, 2008.

Deep Earth Academy Teacher Fellowship 2008-2009

The Consortium for Ocean Leadership is seeking an enthusiastic teacher for a one-year fellowship in Washington, DC. The teacher will work with DeepEarth Academy staff to develop ocean science curricula, produce teacher-training workshops, maintain communication within a community of educators and assist with conference logistics. The position requires a minimum of 3 years classroom science teaching experience, a strong background in earth or ocean sciences, and temporary relocation to Washington, DC. Strong writing and computer technology skills are a plus. Salary will be commensurate to incumbent¹s current salary. Full time and part-time schedules will be considered.

To apply for the position, send a cover letter, resume, curriculum sample or list of professional development offerings and three letters of reference to learning@oceanleadership.org or mail to Deep Earth Academy, 1201 New York Avenue NW, 4th floor, Washington, DC, 20005 by Monday, March 3, 2008. For more information visit www.deepearthacademy.org

Finally, the COL is also hosting a number of events from February 25-29, billing it as 2008 Washington Ocean Week. This is not to be confused with the other Ocean Week in June.

With the release of the President’s budget earlier in the month and the appropriations season in full swing, this is a critical time for the oceanographic community to sound its voice in the nation’s capitol.

• Consortium for Ocean Leadership
• Deep Earth Academy Teacher Fellowship 2008-2009
• Anatomy of a Seamount Survey poster
• Deep-Sea News: A Valentine’s from Congress

I have an avatar in Second Life called Calamari Ricardo. He wandered into the lair of Grendel’s Children the other day and came across a new undersea option for avatars (see below).

Randy Olson cheekily suggested that the next Science Blogging Conference be conducted in Second Life. If so, maybe we could hold it on the newly expanded NOAA sim and all the ocean bloggers could go dressed up as Vent Nymphs.

Vent Nymphs
MiniHUD controls the black smoker effect & sound, and includes a unique skin and sculpted tubeworm growths! Both genders included. Created by Flea Bussy.

See also:

• NOAA in Secondlife via Hack’s Haven
• The Abyss of Secondlife

Back in February I cheekily proposed a new Internet adage called Gorton’s Law. It was an allusion to the more well-known Godwin’s Law and is the notion that in any discussion of sea life, no matter how rare, strange or repulsive, some knucklehead will quickly sour the conversation by asking how well it goes with lemon or butter. An addendum to this is that it will usually happen within the first 10 comments and that they might also propose some other condiment.

My intent was to highlight how prevalent the attitude is that sea life is there merely for us to “harverst.” That the primary purpose is for our consumption and not for any intrinsic value or ecological roles those flora and fauna may contain.

Deep-Sea News has now officially formulated this notion into an actual equation.

Gorton’s Measure states that the time for someone to ask “Can you eat?” when discussing a marine species is directly proportional to the rareness, strangeness, and repulsiveness of the species.

where theta=time for someone to ask “Can you eat?”
t=total people in room
alpha=species’ rareness
sigma=species’ strangeness
delta=species’ repulsiveness

This is related to Gorton’s Constant (Gamma) that states that the question “How well does it go with lemon and butter?” will occur at a very high percentage approaching infinity despite relative changes in audience size (n).

My thanks to Craig for working out the maths. Of course, now that it is officially formulated, I regret a little going for the more amusing Gorton’s Law and not the more eponymous Robertshaw’s Law. At least that way I would have been know for something. Oh well.

See also:

• Another most excellent World’s Fair meme. Give us your personal scientific eponym.
• HOW TO GET YOUR OWN SCIENTIFIC EPONYM, AND, INTRODUCING THE ARBESMAN LIMIT

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

David McRee (aka, the BeachHunter) has a new write up of the Point-of-Rocks area of Siesta Key, FL. Readers of this blog know my fascination with the place. Like most of Florida, there are a lot of tacky ads to wade through on the BeachHunter site (and an ocean of matted photos). But the information is thorough and can help you navigate through the half-flower hedges to the best public access beaches.

And why would you want to visit Point-of-Rocks? It’s the only area I know of on the SW coast of Florida that has tidepools.

• BeachHunter: Point-of-Rocks
• Previously: Cephalovlog #3: 60 Seconds of Rock-Flipping at POR.

[via SeaSpan]

The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History is offering free marine educational materials for undergraduate and professional-level teaching. Many of the materials are authored by Tundi Agardy, Pew Advisor and executive director of Sound Seas, and cover marine conservation biology, marine protected areas (MPA) and MPA networks, and marine conservation policy.

In order to use the materials, you have to register with NCEP website and promise to use the materials for good, not evil.

• Sample module: Why is Biodiversity Important?

Washington Post staff writer Marc Kaufman will be online Monday, Oct. 15 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss a Navy project to learn how sonar and other loud ocean noises affect the deep-diving beaked whale.

• Submit a question or comment now or during the discussion.

Celebrate Cephalopod Awareness Day, October 8, 2007

AKA: World Octopus Day, Squid Appreciation Day

We begin our celebration of the First International Cephalopod Awareness Day with a look back. I found this little carbuncle on the Internet Archive, and it proves you can mix the great taste of peanuts butter and octopus. It’s a 1950s show called You Asked For It, and it features a moment in the life of Ben Frick, octopus trapper, Washingtonian and “delightful fella.” Skip the knife thrower and fast forward to minute 07:00 to see all the action.

EDIT: Sorry folks. Internet Archive embedded player isn’t playing nice with Wordpress. Click the image above to open the movie in a new window.

Apparently, octopus wrestling used to be pretty popular in the States around this time, as evidenced by this 1949 article in Modern Mechanix: Octopus Wrestling Is My Hobby. And this one from a 1965 edition of Time, Adventure & the American Individualist:

Merely to minnow about underwater is no longer enough, and such sports as octopus wrestling are coming increasingly into vogue, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where the critters grow up to 90 Ibs. and can be exceedingly tough customers. Although there are several accepted techniques for octopus wrestling, the really sporty way requires that the human diver go without artificial breathing apparatus.

It would seem that the Japanese continue this tradition, albeit with less lively opponents and the disadvantage of being on land.

• Read more about International Cephalopod Awareness Day, including posts by other bloggers
• “You Asked For It” (ca late 1950s)
• Previously: Vintage Ocean and Science Fair Footage

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)

The fifth Carnival of the Blue is currently hosted over at the Shifting Baselines Blog.

Highlights include

• The Loom: Alien Eels, Pufferfish, and Other Novelties
• Blogfish: Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability
• Deep-Sea News: Non-Profit Submersibles
• Kate Wing’s Blog: Poaching is personal
• The Other 95%: A World Inside a Coconut

Many more ocean posts are listed at Shifting Baselines. Wondering what a shifting baseline is?

Shifting Baselines is a relatively new term, coined primarily in 1995 by fisheries biologist Dr. Daniel Pauly in his paper Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries. It refers to the loss of perception of change that occurs when each generation redefines “what is natural.” Pauly developed the term in reference to fisheries management in which fisheries biologists sometimes fail to identify the correct “baseline” population size (how abundant a fish species population was before human exploitation) and thus are working with a “shifted baseline.”
[via Wikipedia]

Also note, the Carnival of the Blue icon is available in different sizes and colors. Details and links to past CotB posts available at the mother site.

And next month’s CotB will be hosted right here at the Cephalopodcast. If you are interested in participating, send an email to pulpodcast [at] gmail . com

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

Thought I was generally familiar with the federal agencies tasked with ocean management. But I have never heard of this one before: Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, part of the Department of State.

The Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) is a bureau within the United States Department of State. It coordinates a portfolio of issues related to science, the environment, and the world’s oceans.

The Oceans and Fisheries Directorate has two offices dedicated to international oceans issues. The Office of Marine Conservation focuses on international fisheries matters and related problems and the Office of Oceans Affairs has primary responsibility for international ocean law and policy, marine pollution, marine mammals, polar affairs, maritime boundaries, and marine science.

• Wikipedia: Bureau of OES

The Pacific Science Center has a variation on a popular numbers game.

Do you Sudoku? Well, here’s a twist we think you’ll love. We call it PacSci-Doku…Instead of filling in the blanks with numbers, use letters. Hidden in one of the columns or rows is the answer to a science question. The question in this edition is:

What ancient sea reptile lived during the age of the dinosaurs in what is now Europe?

To find the answer, complete this PacSci-Doku using the following nine letters:

A O U S D L R P C

This might be a fun supplement for educators following along when National Geographic premieres its new giant screen film Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure on October 5th.

Stunning photo-realistic computer-generated animated transports audiences back to the Late Cretaceous, when a great inland sea divided North America in two. The film follows a curious and adventurous dolichorhynchops – familiarly known as a ‘dolly’ – as she travels through the most dangerous oceans in history. Along the way, she encounters long-necked plesiosaurs, giant turtles, enormous fish, fierce sharks, and the most dangerous sea monster of all, the mosasaur.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear to be playing anywhere close to me. However, it’s not only a movie, it’s also a multimedia marketing blitzvideogame for the Wii, Nintendo DS, and Playstation 2.

I have to think that combining these games with the standards-based lesson plans would make for a pretty interesting classroom assignment.

• PacSci-Doku - “Ancient Sea Reptile”
• Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure Trailer
• Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure Teacher Guides for grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
• See also, Nat Geo’s previous productions: When Monsters Ruled the Deep
• See also, BBC: Sea Monsters adventure game and Sea monster facts
• Puzzle hint: A O U S D L R P C: Bizarre ‘Walrus-Turtles’ of the Triassic

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?