Sponge(Bob forage Pant)s

The discussion on sponges in yesterday's class was thought provoking. I believe that sales of the bath sponges would plummet if the eco-crowd reminded mothers that sponges were over exploited - and animals. I am not sponge people - other that an hearty appreciation for Sponge Bob Square Pants (good attitude, nice smile). I think sponge use might be a gender thing, synthetic "dish sponge" excepted. A little Googling and I find that some Dolphins use sponges as a tool while foraging. Apparently, it protects their snouts. According to the article, it was observed that sponge using dolphins were mostly females. Crazy old planet.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475

Thanks again to Kelly Bates for the original sea critter idea.

Heat Your Home with Fish Oil

I was driving to school today, when I saw a sign from Wilson's, advertising their biofuel.The sign said that the fuel is made from fish oil!?I went to the website http://homeheating.wilsons.ca/services/index.php?id=53 and it was interesting - they take fish oil, cut it with ethanol and then blend it 20-80. I don't know how much fish oil that ends up in the furnace; not much, I suspect. Even more interesting was the reference to Ocean Nutrition Canada. It turns out it is run by John Risley, and do they have have a lot of product with Omega3 stuff in it. http://www.onc.ca/Products/Products-DS.php

Question: Do I want to know where they are getting all that 'fish oil' from?

Fog

Fog is one of the icons of Atlantic Canada, as it is of many coastal areas
One of the best lines of the term was having it described as "Clouds at Sea Level".
You could market a place with imagery like that.
Strangely, the is something peaceful about fog; the way that it shrouds and insulates the immediate from the distant.
I was stuck in Ottawa once when an early January thaw caused ground fog at the airport.
They couldn't deal with it.
In the Maritimes, one slows down and trys to enjoy it.
It would make a great name for a soccer team too - The Atlantic Coastal Fog.
(Actually, the championship ball team from Clark's Harbour are the Foggies!)

Invasive species - the Sea Lamprey

Again, slogging through "The Song for the Blue Ocean", I was suprised to see that lampreys are on the west coast. I was at a conference where Sea Lampreys were considered an invasive species in Central Canada. Apparently, Great Lake trout were ravaged in the 1950's. Many techiques have been employed to abate their influence and this has largely been considered a success. Imagine spending your day with one of these bad boys stuck on your side!

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/Publications/article/central_arctic/sea_lampreys_e.htm

(Thanks to Kelly Bates for the original concept)

The Guest Speakers were great

It is late November. One more week and classes are complete.

Back to work!

It is both good and bad.

One of the highlights of the last few months was all of the guest speakers that came to share their knowledge and experiences with the class. I saw them in Geog 2305, 3315, and 3454.It was amazing: how uniformly good they were, how well they were accepted and how much I learned from them. All the more amazing was the fact that I knew many of them before now - but just to see them in a hallway or meeting room. I would not admit to who my favourites were but the one that seemed to captivate the crowd the most was Steve Campana and his talk about sharks.

Slogging through "Song for the Blue Ocean", I was delighted to see that, ten years ago, the were also employing satellite implants to track the movements of aquatic animals. Also, retrieved implants are still worth $1000 (exlusive of exchange rate). I wonder how many have ever been returned.

Sparks visit - Oceans: Critters and Litter don't mix

This week, the two eldest daughters and myself, got to talk to mom (aka "Sunshine"), the youngest daughter and the rest of the sparks for a few minutes. It was just enough time to talk about a possible future trip to BIO, hand out some neat Species at Risk activity books and discuss how important it was to not litter becuase of the damage it will do to the water environment. It was like taking coals to Newcastle; one spark knew the species much better than I did. That is more than ok by me.

Since we are flushing, let me get this off my chest..

(image from 13 Nov Dartmouth Community Herald)

Ok, I am probably too cynical about this, but this smells bad to me. Earlier on, we were given the chance to help out the fresh water mussels by relocationing them whilst their Lake Banook home was tidied up. Well, according to the article in 13 November Dartmouth Community Herald (the local ad-wrapper, but it always has a few good local news items), the HRM water folk are lowering the lake 0.5 metres (and then another 0.75 metres?) to install a big new sewer pipe that links Burnside, Dartmouth Crossing, and Port Wallace with the new trunk sewer (heading to ... the harbour?). The pipe is bigger, better, gravity fed - so it is 'cheaper' and 'safer'. They will cover it up and build a walkway on top of it. Earlier this year, the young swimmers and paddlers had some nasty swimmers itch and a few weeks without swimming, courtesy of e coli - supposedly caused by the half dozen ducks that were in the Lake. HRM said, no problem with sewage leaks and, since they don't provide life guard services at that location, they don't ensure that the water is tested frequently. It seems to me that, if there is on ongoing contamination problem in an absolute jewel of a location (home of this year's Canadian Paddling Championships and next year's World Championships), and there is now a bigger pipe bringing hitherto non-existent contaminants and run-off that had been directed elsewhere, through this area, then environmental monitoring should be the standard. Vented and dizzy, I descend from atop the soapbox.

Tidal Power2 - Ebb and Flow

Interesting ...

There was indeed a story on the CBC (unreferenced at cbc.ca?), similar to the article in last week's Halifax Chronicle Herald. Some of the players are having trouble with either their gear and/or their test bed locations. The Minas Basin Power folks had their kite design overwhelmed by the tidal current. Another had to change locations - from a steep sloped sediment laded original to a flat bottomed, hard rock location 10 km away. As one principle noted, it is a technology that is in its infancy - with promise but challenges ahead

Power to the People

Clean, Green Tidal Power is coming to the Bay of Fundy.

We debated it in Geography 3454 - it is a definitely maybe.

According to the NS government website. There is enough flow in the bay that, using just a couple of locations, enough power could be generated to supply 100 thousand homes.

Personally, I would like to keep it local and small scale as opposed to the MEGAPROJECT. They key is to take it slow but make it go.

I figure that, as long as we can keep in moon in a stable orbit and keep the tectonic plates from unduly squishing together, this one is a long-term winner.

The photo is of the in-stream device favoured by the folks at Minas Basin Pulp and Power.

http://www.gov.ns.ca/energy/renewables/public-education/tidal.asp

Plastic - another bubble burst

I love plastic.

What is not to love?

Plastic is flexible, moldable, lightweight, versatile and waterproof.

Oh, we have a little plastic addiction, but nothing we can't handle.

Or so I thought.

I saw a report on PBS last night that took the lustre off my plastic rose.

The link has the full story at the end of the rainbow but the gist is that the ocean is becoming chock a block with plastics. It turns out the stuff breaks down but never biodegrades. There are sea critters with more plastic than food in their stomachs. That can't be good. My favourite factoid - Santa Monica CA installed a rig to skim plastic from the town's storm drain/ street water runoff. In one year, they got 40, 000 pounds of plastic!

(Ok, so if we promise to re-use the stuff, we are still cool, right?)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/science/plasticoceans/index.html

Selling Science - the old fashioned way

After I made mention of the new critters in the CTV story, I open the newspaper and BAM, they found a new jellyfish or something. It took me a day or so before it sunk in ... the scientists were chumming the waters, trying to interest the populace in their meeting by telling the media about all the suprising new critters that they have uncovered. It is a far use of publicity and, apparently, a successful one. Still, it unsettles me a bit to think that the scientists are massaging the media. They all look so earnest.

The Zebra Mussel - Invasive species of the week (*)

Zebras are cute. Zebra mussels are pervasive. Since hopping a ride in some ballast water and coming to our shores, they have been getting along famously. The problem is that they are spreading, multiplying, picking on the local mussels, eating all the food, messing with the algae and generally altering the ecosystem. I don't know if anybody finds them good eating but no one has found a way to get rid of them - yet.

Check them out:

http://www.ec.gc.ca/EnviroZine/english/issues/35/feature3_e.cfm

Thanks to Kelly Bates for the orginal idea and inspiration.

Hey Kids - download your own free science!

The census story mentioned that sea critter data could be uploaded to Plos One - a site devoted to accelerating scientific knowledge by making it available online. I checked it out and they have lots of it. Curious about invasive species, I trolled around and found an interesting paper. I didn't digest all of it but the paper makes the point that when a species is introduced or eliminated from an ecosystem, it has ramifications throughout the food web. It cites an example from this region, where dwindling cod means growing sea urchins and that in turn impacts kelp. I'm still not getting the 'double whammy' part where the effect is excerbated by disease in the kelp stocks. I guess I should give it another read (after I find the invasive species for this week [thanks to Kelly Bates for the original inspiration])

here is the link to the article, and by regression, to the pLoS ONE site:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000295

Stand Up and be counted ..

It's Ocean Census time, according to this story.

Scientists are hoping to have it complete by 2010

... but I bet they just keep finding more and more.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081109/Ocean_Stars_081109/20081109?hub=SciTech

Dr. Ballard

..follow the light.

Growing up, the only Dr. Ballard that I knew of was the guy who branded the dog food cans - premium dog food cans.

Dr. Robert Ballard is much cooler than that. He is an Oceanographer by trade and famous for his dives on the Titanic and Bismarck.

As we saw in class and on Dr. Conrad's class blog, he is also quite the inspirational public speaker. I had the opportunity to see him at a conference and he gave a similar talk to the one we saw on the video. It was better live. I think this is because he went a little slower, was more emphatic and he really engaged the audience. What struck me most, in watching the video, is that these guys - the giants in their field - spend tremendous amounts of time traveling, speaking both to inspire and generate support for their missions. He was fine tuning the talk all the while. When I saw him, he added bits of humour and references to NOAA and hydrography. In the video, he spoke of ocean colonization. In both, he used the line that we have better maps of Mars then of the Ocean floor - because NASA's budget is huge compared to budgets for undersea exploration.That is a powerful point. The most moving image was the shot of the university student with the look of wonder on her face. It was great stuff and a great reminder that salemanship is another skill that the giants of ocean science possess.

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/oceanage/05ballard/welcome.html

Picard Out

At the risk of becoming the Ocean's graveyard blog, we report that one of the giants in the deep sea exploration has passed away. Jacques Picard died over the weekend at the fine old age of 86. He is best known for diving on the Mariana Trench - still a world record depth 48 years after the fact.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081101/obit_piccard_081101/20081101?hub=SciTech

The pop culture reference is because legions of Star Trek fans knew that this gentlemen was alluded to be the 'famous' ancestor of the Star Ship Captain. Funny old world.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Jean_Luc-Picard

World Hydrography Day and UNCLOS

This was going to be a post on Prince Rainer of Monaco. He was a great friend of hydrography and the goal of making ocean navigation safe. His generosity enabled the International Hydrographic Office (IHO) to set up in Monaco (hardly a hardship post). His son carries on support for the IHO.

In looking for some information on this, I found instead a reference to World Hydrography Day!

It is held every year on 21 June. This conflicts in Canada with National Aboriginal Day and sometimes with the summer solstice. A shared spotlight does nothing to diminish the Canadian hydrographers from popularizing the cause of safe navigation and from usually enjoying a very fine day. UNCLOS and WHD (you know, it really needs a theme song):

http://www.iho.shom.fr/MEM_STATES/WH_Day/PressRelease-ENG.pdf

Standards

Have you ever noticed that different versions of certain products tend to look similar? You may think that everyone is being lazy and just copying each other. Sometimes that is true. Other times people are painstakingly cordinating to make sure that similar products look similar. This is particularly true for electronic navigational charts. It is important for mariners (and manufacturers) that a hydrographic office's products work on a number of different platforms. Also, it is essential that navigational objects have a common attribution and graphic representation. If something is ambiguous or, even worse, incorrect then serious consequences could ensue, with potential loss of property, life, and/or damage to the marine environment.

Standards - dull as dishwater - but vitally important.

Here is a link to a snippet of the S57 standard:
http://www.iho.shom.fr/ECDIS/s57intro.htm

Evasive Species

I was at a seminar a few years ago and one of the topics was invasive species in Canadian Waters. These are non-native aquatic creatures that are introduced to our waters and find them quite to their liking. The problem is that they can mess up an ecosystem by crowding out (or devouring) a native species. They do this in the absence of their natural predators. Often they arrive here in ships ballasts. One example from this part of the world is the clubbed tunicate. It is a bane to mussel farmers because it competes with the mussels for food.

Alas, I don't have a good picture but here is a link to an article on the scourge and potential solution.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T4D-4MP567J-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3ada75a5899184e6a384578fa3fedeb6

Special thanks to Kelly Bates for her permission to use a derivation of her idea. Hopefully, there will be a few more posts in the future - with pictures.

Creepy Halloween

I hope it is ok that I am doing a little 'creeping' on Halloween - between runs to dish out some tooth rot to the trick or treaters.

See, I was told that checking out someone elses blogging was called 'creeping'.

I kind of like it!

It made me envious of some folks posting craft, other peoples posting frequency! Moreover it gave me a couple of smiles and a couple of ideas. I was particulary smitten withtwoby Robert - the Dicovery Channel commercial and the Sea Turkey. The quasi-poaching idea comes from Kelly Bates and her sea creature of the week. It reminded me of a seminar that I attended. I believe I have verbal permisson to attempt a test blog. Stand by.

Newfie George

George Anderson, known to many as Newfie George, has died.

A strong native of the Burin Peninsula, he was a jackof many trades and a master of most of them. Coxswain, shipper, musician, Santa Claus ,radio personality father of Bruce, husband of Minnie and so forth - one cheerful, professional, hard-working man.

The attached obituary tells the facts more completely but still can only provide a hint at the tales that go with them. He is a great example of a life lived on and by the sea. It surely wasn't all good fortune and smooth sailing but a good life, hard won and well deserved.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/announcements/display.php?anntype=obituaries~2008/10/29~16746059

Way up North (relatively speaking)

During a recent class, we were given the opportunity to help relocate some of the fresh water mussels of Lake Banook. I am not sure if that is a good idea. Nonetheless, following this departure from things marine, I indulge in a special dispensation and I now offer my favourite Canadian geographical triva question:

Imagine yourself in Windsor Ontario. Head to the water. Look north. What do you see?

(I shall post the anwser in a comment but you should Google Earth it. Windsor is the home town of scores of famous Canadians - and many more non-famous but great Canadians)

Nominations from the floor?

While preparing for another class, I noticed on the Bay of Fundy ecosytem partnership web site (www.bofep.org) that it is time for their Annual General Meeting. It is scheduled for October 30th in Joggins. I've done a few AGM's in my day. This notice served to remind me that having a successful organization means having volunteers who are ready to step forward and take on a task. It also means having a necessary amount of rules and procedures, to allow the organization to persist. It is the unsexy part of democracy. A day trip to Joggins would be boffo. Alas, I am committed to a research methods lecture, a family flu shot, a middle child birthday, and the last leg of a parent-teacher day marathon. Truly, I do wish them well and will continue to check out their web site and learn more about the Bay of Fundy.

Lord Kelvin

I was checking out the atlantic cable site (see below) and the name William Thomson popped up. He was on the cable laying voyage and he came up with a way to get more bandwidth out of the cable, using a mirror galvanometer. This was just one of the many innovations and discoveries that this very sharp mind produced. Among other things, he developed an improved method of sounding the ocean and he even devised his own temperature scale!

We know him as Lord Kelvin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Kelvin

Happy Anniversary - A Cable for you (and you and..)

Going back through the class lectures, I came across a link to the

Atlantic Cable website. It is really interesting. The first investors

took a bath, so to speak, but their loss was our gain. The first

official cable was from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan

and it took over a day to send [bandwidth issues!].

Happenstance being what it is, the society is holding the 150th anniversary

of the transatlantic cable tomorrow in Manchester. I will not be able to make it .

I am tempted to call them ...

check out

http://www.cntr.salford.ac.uk/comms/transatlantic.php

Salmon survey

In the 3315 class, I made the suggestion that I might show what I know by asking politicians about Ocean policy. In today's Halifax Chronicle-Herald, I see that the Atlantic Salmon Federation beat me to the punch, by asking the federal parties about some Ocean policy.
"Good for them", I say, properly humbled.

Check it out.

http://www.asf.ca/index.php

Superfly for Super buys

Great News!
I just got my new copy of life, etc [finally got a life].It is the magazine of RBC rewards. The Royal Bank gives you'air miles' points when you use a credit card - the more you buy, the more you get (also the more you owe, but let's not step on the dream).Anyways, they have their own magazine to trump the lifestyle and they sent a copy to me!

Guess who is the featured author in this month's mag?Dr. David Suzuki, that's who. His article is called "A Day in my life".[there is that life theme again]. A busy and blessed life, as it turns out.

Basically, the good doctor takes us chronologically through a day at home and at the office. Throughout, he muses about the eco-friendly choices he makes, from re-usable chop sticks and a 'no farmed salmon' policy, and looks hopefully for future improvements in some areas such as an 'on-demand' water heater [we have timed thermostats, why not water heaters?] Dave is burdened with trying to raise enough scratch for the $6.5 million budget so he is probably missing the irony of being the feature conservationist in a magazine devoted to consumption. I, less encumbered, can spot it from clear across the continent.

As part of a fundraising boost, he is going to make fish prints to give to large donors to the foundation because - he likes fish.

I like fish too.

He will also co-author a book on a threatened species of fish [species unnamed, perhaps to protect the fish or the project] - because he likes fish.

I like fish too.

I am going to write a book and I will make sure that there are a lot of fish in it.

Should it make money, I will share some with the fish.

[not to the tune of $6.5 million per annum though. I'd be spending all my time fundraising]

P.S. Dr. Suzuki started in the field of genetics, working with fruit flies. I am not so fussy about them.

Dead Zones on the Radio

I was driving to class yesterday, listening to the CBC.
The topic was 'dead zones' in the ocean.
Not Wi-Fi dead zones, you understand - fish dead zones.

Apparently, there are hundreds of them. The researcher was looking for
fish beyond the mouth of the Mississippi (?) and not finding any.
The culprit was a huge bloom of algae that was fed by fertilzer run-off, climate,
etc., that made the water column inoxic. Scary.

I am not sure that I caught all of the discussion, focused as I was on the
insane traffic machinations of the HRM. However, have a gander
at the podcasts and see for yourself.

BTW, the link is to their 'hungry planet' series. There is also a pod on
Canadian Seafood.

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/hungryplanet2.html

Batting Cleanup, so to speak

Going back in time ....

I joined SMUGS (for less than cost of a coffee at Starbucks, home of the three dollar cookie) - and then I missed the beach cleanup.

Feeling guilty and hoping to prime the 'show what you know' resume for Geog 3315, I took in the one at McCormacks Beach in Eastern Passage (beside Fisherman's Wharf) the following Saturday morning, whilst the youngest was at dance class.

I was pleasantly suprised by the size of the group - perhaps a dozen and a half volunteers.

There didn't seem to be too much garbage but once you start looking you start finding it: plastics, cups and bottles, personal products and so forth.

Still, not too bad - although I have developed a mild digust for those tipped cigar things that littered the boardwalk, I had my faith in humanity uplifted. There are worse ways to spend part of a Saturday morning than walking on the beach with the eager and the energetic.

BIO Tour

Road Trip!

No, not to DC - to Dartmouth.
(Ok, so I don't get out much).

Even so, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography is a world class facility.
There are even a couple of Nobel Laureates walking the halls:

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/Publications/annualreport-rapportannuel/ar-ra0607/sect3_e.html

(see the bit on the Nobel Peace Prize)

Whenever ocean science conferences are held in the region, a tour of BIO is

often requested. Equally, it is a popular destination for schools and youth

groups. That is part of what makes the place special - it is accessible science

at many levels. It is also very cool that the mailroom staff and the prize

winning scientists and every one in between see each other as peers

because there is no reason not to. I'd love to see the Smithsonian too but

you get my point, I trust.

Jacques

Last week, it occurred to me that we hardly hear the name Jacques Cousteau anymore.
Maybe it is because he is dead.

Still, when I was a youngster, Cousteau was the oceanographer. At least he was the individual that was popularizing ocean exploration. I would bet that if one was to interview marine biologists of a certain age, they would give credit to Jacques for inpsiring them onward. No vessel ramming for this garcon - he was a class act.

Check him out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques-Yves_Cousteau

Thanks, eh

It is Thanksgiving Day today.

I heard a radio program on CBC yesterday (http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/) on the topic of the importance of saying Thank You.

The best line was when the author said (and I paraphrase), "If you don't think it is important to say thank you then try not saying it for a whole day and watch what happens"

I had a delightful trip to the Bay of Fundy last month - a glorious September morning, fresh air, post card scenary and crisp valley apples down the road. Here is a shot from the "Look Off".

Taking a cue from the program, I offer a belated "Thanks for the day, eh."

Non Addictive Ocean Snacks

This blog, although created for the Geography 2305 class, will contain snippets and thoughts that have arisen in other classes, from discussions, issues from work and random bits of wonder.

To that end ...

I had promised myself that I would try a new ocean product before the end of the term. Since I am not normally a fish/seafood eater (how can we protect the fish if we keep eating them?) I had to either swallow my reticence or else get creative. Thanks to the good folks at S*store Sushi section, a compromise presented itself - seaweed salad! The biologists amongst us would know exactly what it was that I ate but I do not. I can tell you that it was awful. It had a strange straw and nodule like texture - kind of like the bottom of a gerbil's cage. It continues to be stocked in the stores so I presume that there are people who enjoy it. That is our big old water world for you.

Craig

P.S. I do occasionally enjoy a [very small] piece of Dulce and I have been carrying around a bag of it since our trip to the Bay of Fundy. Just ask if you would like to try some.

Hello (water) world

A (modified) old joke.
This is my first post ever and, as has been done while learning various computer
programs, "Hello World" is echoed to test the process.

Water world is a Ocean's related pun on that theme.

Waterworld is a Kevin Costner opus:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114898/