- Photos from Cameron’s Record Dive - and - James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge: a scientific milestone or rich guy’s junket? - - on Deep Sea News - - Marianas Trench on wikipedia

- Photos from Cameron’s Record Dive -

and

- James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge: a scientific milestone or rich guy’s junket? -

- on Deep Sea News -

- Marianas Trench on wikipedia

Folks, it’s on!  Some of you may know of the “race to the bottom”, a confluence of several missions aimed at returning humans to the deepest part of the oceans, the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, south of Guam.  The teams include one sponsored by Richard Branson, one from Sylvia Earle’s sub company DOER, the Triton mission and one sponsored and led by movie maker and documentarian James Cameron.  Read more about it in BBC’s excellent coverage here

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Russian Wreck, South Egyptian Red Sea Known simply as the “Russian Wreck”, this sunken ship is thought by some to have been the Khanka, a Russian spy ship that sank sometime before 1982. Whether or not it is the carcass of the Khanka, most seem to agree that it was a communications and surveillance ship of some sort. The Soviets began to use commercial vessels like fishing trawlers for intelligence gathering from the 1950s onwards and apparently established a surveillance facility in Yemen’s nearby Ras Karm Military Airbase in 1971. 10 Most Incredible Sunken Ships on Earth on Deep Sea News

Russian Wreck, South Egyptian Red Sea

Known simply as the “Russian Wreck”, this sunken ship is thought by some to have been the Khanka, a Russian spy ship that sank sometime before 1982. Whether or not it is the carcass of the Khanka, most seem to agree that it was a communications and surveillance ship of some sort. The Soviets began to use commercial vessels like fishing trawlers for intelligence gathering from the 1950s onwards and apparently established a surveillance facility in Yemen’s nearby Ras Karm Military Airbase in 1971.

10 Most Incredible Sunken Ships on Earth on Deep Sea News

mad-as-a-marine-biologist: The Jaws effect: why we misunderstand sharks Photo: The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer (1899) Article From Nat Geo (by Patrick Kiger, HT to Abel V): Audiences cringed in terror as they watched the 1975 movie thriller Jaws, which depicted shark hunters’ desperate struggle to survive an encounter with a monstrous aquatic serial killer that was powerful enough to turn their fishing cruiser into splinters, and was relentless in its frenzied lust for human flesh. But while Jaws was an escapist fantasy rather than an accurate depiction of sharks, the public didn’t grasp that distinction. In July 1975, a month after the film’s release, the New York Times reported that authorities up and down the East Coast were inundated with reports of shark sightings—most of them probably erroneous—by anxious beachgoers and recreational fishermen. The hysteria provided still more fuel for the widespread stereotype that sharks are evil, vicious, and menaces to humanity that must be feared, if not eradicated. With the release of Jaws in 1975, and the sequels that followed, pushed the fear of sharks to new and outlandish extremes. Interestingly, Peter Benchley, who wrote both the novel that inspired the film and co-authored the screenplay, eventually came to regret his role in creating the image of sharks as killing machines, and immersed himself in efforts to educate the public about sharks and the need to protect them from extinction, according to his 2006 Los Angeles Times obituary. “Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today,” he explained in a British newspaper interview. “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges.”

mad-as-a-marine-biologist:

The Jaws effect: why we misunderstand sharks

Photo: The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer (1899)

Article From Nat Geo (by Patrick Kiger, HT to Abel V):

Audiences cringed in terror as they watched the 1975 movie thriller Jaws, which depicted shark hunters’ desperate struggle to survive an encounter with a monstrous aquatic serial killer that was powerful enough to turn their fishing cruiser into splinters, and was relentless in its frenzied lust for human flesh.

But while Jaws was an escapist fantasy rather than an accurate depiction of sharks, the public didn’t grasp that distinction. In July 1975, a month after the film’s release, the New York Times reported that authorities up and down the East Coast were inundated with reports of shark sightings—most of them probably erroneous—by anxious beachgoers and recreational fishermen. The hysteria provided still more fuel for the widespread stereotype that sharks are evil, vicious, and menaces to humanity that must be feared, if not eradicated.

With the release of Jaws in 1975, and the sequels that followed, pushed the fear of sharks to new and outlandish extremes. Interestingly, Peter Benchley, who wrote both the novel that inspired the film and co-authored the screenplay, eventually came to regret his role in creating the image of sharks as killing machines, and immersed himself in efforts to educate the public about sharks and the need to protect them from extinction, according to his 2006 Los Angeles Times obituary. “Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today,” he explained in a British newspaper interview. “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges.”

(Source: mad-as-a-marine-biologist, via deepseanews)

We are the 99% on Deep Sea News

We are the 99% on Deep Sea News

Sweeping Fishermen’s Human Rights Under the Rug

While some think that being a marine scientist is somehow more elitist than being a fisherman, they can’t be further from the truth. As a marine scientist I feel closer to men of the sea than to anyone. This is why I choose to live in a small coastal Carolinian fishing village. We are kindred spirits and many marine biologists are very empathetic to fishermen’s plights, despite seemingly disparate goals.

This is why this very important report on gCaptian tonight hit me hard. Fishing is a tough occupation. Human rights abuses are ripe in southeast Asia and fishermen from these countries are in a very bad situation. As reported on gCaptain:

Now, an investigation by the University of Auckland has revealed Indonesian fisherman working on Korean-owned vessels in New Zealand waters have found themselves subject to unbelievably savage work conditions and treatment at the hands of their Korean officers.

“Officers are vicious bastards … factory manager just rapped this 12kg stainless steel pan over his head, splits the top of his head, blood pissing out everywhere…,” one informant told the University of Auckland…

keep reading on Deep Sea News

Deep Sea News

Discovery Channel’s  Shark Week is an immensely popular block of programming that focuses on our toothy buddies, the elasmobranchs.  This year Georgia Aquarium will play a central role in the theming for Shark Week, and that’s already started in the form of a new UStream feed of a special camera that’s been added to the Ocean Voyager exhibit to give people a fish’s eye view of the tank’s inhabitants. 

I could watch these things for hours, but to make it a bit more scientific, my challenge to you, readers, is to add in the comments below the names of every species you can identify in the tank.  Bonus points for scientific binomials.  I’ll give you a hint: there are 63 species.

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Tentacle Candlestick Holder via Deep Sea News *click through for link to source

Tentacle Candlestick Holder

via Deep Sea News

*click through for link to source

Deep Sea News

Giant Squid Found off Florida

Robert Benz and his buddies were fishing Sunday about 12 miles offshore from Port Salerno when they spotted something floating in the water. It turned out to be a 23-foot long giant squid.   The main part of the body was about 11-feet long, but with its two long tentacles, it barely fit in the 23-foot boat Benz was riding in.

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Sharks, The News Cycle, and The Madness of Mobs

…48 hours after the latest shark attack became news, in Puerto Juarez [a small port just north of the Cancun Hotel zone], fishermen received an encouraging “go ahead” to basically go out and kill sharks…  In only a few hours, a small fleet of fishermen from Cancun went up and down the coast and in this one outing it turned into a mass slaughter of sharks. By night, 19 hours later, in secrecy, in the Juarez port, they laid out 70 shark corpses, some of them females who were pregnant. The sharks had an average size of 2 meters, although some bigger ones were about 3 meters…

See the article on Deep Sea News
(heads’ up: pics of dead sharks)

-Explorer Recounts Deepest-Ever Ocean Expedition

Wired has an excellent new video chronicling Piccard and Walsh’s descent to the Mariana Trench. To unpublished interview with Piccard from three years before his death in 2005, Roman Wolter, a design student, created an elegantly conceived short animation.  Count this an internet win.

Video: Explorer Recounts Deepest-Ever Ocean Expedition | Wired Science | Wired.com

P.S. If this doesn’t make you want to explore the deep sea…well then you might be incapable of emotion.

deepseanews

DEEP SEA NEWS

Rusty hand tools become animated sea creatures (you want to see this) Click through to Deep Sea News

Rusty hand tools become animated sea creatures (you want to see this)

Click through to Deep Sea News

You Can Thank Mariners for Rock-N-Roll

Jennifer Viegas at Discovery has an excellent piece on first use of the term Rock-N-Roll and the first Rock-N-Roll song.

“That’s All Right Mama” by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup is the world’s oldest rock and roll song, according to Southeastern Louisiana University rock historian Joseph Burns, who also thinks this song could contain the first ever guitar solo break.

But more importantly, we can thank the maritime tradition for the term itself…

Reef Photography Competition on Deep Sea News

Reef Photography Competition on Deep Sea News