diving dork

I've dived and gone to heaven Click here to get more mini-SharkBreak widgets - www.SharkBreak.com

[divingdork-blog]

Closer view of the Jorunna funebris 

[divingdork-blog]

Spot the chunky Jorunna funebris munching on some sponge. Thank you @mad-as-a-marine-biologist for the photo id help! :) 

[ratience]

[beawareofsharks]

IMG_0246 (by Carl. B.)

[scuba-padi-blog]

Potato Cod by richard ling on Flickr.

[vurtual]

[robot-husbando]

I once took my family to SeaWorld, and of course the kids gravitated for the underwater viewing glass and it all seemed alright. One of the small girl whales was being very tender towards them, it really surprised me. It just so happened some of the trainers were loitering and speaking with people and thus made their rounds to me. They had the orca before us do a few of these so-called behaviors. After providing a short spectacle for the kids I left them to go about and play with the animals through the glass as I spoke to one of the trainers. That trainer then slipped up something that set off a few red lights in my head. Quote: “But yes we’re really blessed to be able to work with these animals day-in, day-out, I’m glad your family enjoyed their tri—performances.” Unquote. …. I sat in silence for several moments before pretending I didn’t hear the slip up. I -knew- they were going to say “Tricks.” For these reasons I’m holding their identity and the fact the trainer looked -extremely- nervous, perpetuated me. I wasn’t going to get mad at them or anything of the sort but I decided to leave it. Why they continue to disguise these tricks with the mis-leading, confusing, ‘uppercrust’ title of ‘behaviours’ I don’t understand. That’s misinformation for one thing, and out of everything I saw nothing they did was what their wild counterparts executed on the daily bases. Then after some research and finding the park was built on nothing but violence, dead animals, and lies, I can see why they would lie about teaching them tricks, too. They just bloody lie about everything and disguise it all. So I sat back and wondered “What in the -hell- is wrong with this park!?” To top it off, when we left SeaWorld that day I felt no more educated on dolphins and whales than I did entering it. They didn’t teach us anything, only that the whales were pretty and they did fancy moves. Where’s the education and appreciation in that? Even my two kiddos admitted that before I did!

Submitted by Anonymous (Be request)

[5191518]

Title:

Great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, Isla Guadalupe, Baja, Mexico

Photographer:

Wayne Lynch

[astronomy-to-zoology]

Montage of some Frogfish (Antennariidae) eating a Turkeyfish (Dendrochirus sp.) and a Cardinalfish (Apogonidae).

Video source(s)

[rhamphotheca]

Field Research: Shark on the High Seas Actually a Home Body

by Erik Stokstad

Feared for its feeding frenzies in the high seas, the oceanic whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus) is also highly prized for shark fin soup. That culinary predilection has contributed to a steep decline in the number of whitetips, which are critically endangered in the Atlantic. Now, the first detailed tracking study of these sharks, published today in PLOS ONE, provides some good news: Female whitetips stay close to the protected waters of the Bahamas. “It’s a key question for conservation,” says Elizabeth Babcock, a fisheries biologist at the University of Miami in Florida who was not involved in the study. “It really makes a big difference whether there are parts of the population that are in protected areas.”

Oceanic whitetips are more mysterious than most other shark species. Only four tagged whitetips have been recaptured, and just a few have been tracked by satellite in the central Pacific. Data from the satellite showed that the sharks travel up to 4000 kilometers but neither data set had revealed any pattern to their movements. Demian Chapman, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in New York, wanted to know more, so he teamed up with Lucy Howey-Jordan, a classmate from graduate school, whose family runs Microwave Telemetry Inc. in Columbia, Maryland. The company donated 11 satellite tags, which cost upwards of $4000 each…

(read more: Science NOW)           

(photos: Lance Jordan/Microwave Telemetry)

[fhauvhebsucbejdiak]

Purple Blood Stain

Some marine arthropods have a blue copper based oxygen carrier instead of the red haemoglobin. Known as haemocyanin, the substance is suspended directly in the haemolymph and are not bound to blood cells.

Under cold conditions with low oxygen concentration, haemocyanin is more effective than haemoglobin at transporting oxygen.

Jerry Kirkheart on Flickr

[earth-song]

Majestic Turtle by *manaphoto

[fhauvhebsucbejdiak]

Blue-Ringed Octopus (Hapalochlaena sp.)

Blue-ringed octopuses are recognized as one of the world’s most venomous marine creatures. When provoked, its blue rings appear, warning the predator of its toxicity.

Its toxins cause total paralysis of the body, however, consciousness is maintained. The bite is small, often painless, but can cause death in several minutes.

Saspotato on Flickr

[captainatlantic-blog]

The Deep Sea Alien Worm, Tomopteris

[armenianweezy-deactivated201307]

nope

[the-shark-blog]

Great White Shark Friends by George Probst 

[secretofthesea]

The deep sea is the largest museum on Earth: There are more artifacts and remnants of history in the ocean than in all of the world’s museums, combined.

[scienceyoucanlove-deactivated20]

This is the velella (Velella Velella), a small free floating hydrozoan. It’s currently the only known species in the genus.  They’re also known as sea-rafts or by-the-wind-sailors, for the obvious reason that it uses the the “sail” you can see in this image for locomotion. Because of this, they are often found washed up on beaches.