WaterNotes

Mission Blue talks are still slowly leaking out over on TED.  The latest is from cartoonist Jim Toomey, of Sherman’s Lagoon, one of my all time favorite strips just behind the misadventures of Calvin & Hobbes.  Toomey’s take on conservation for the oceans has been more and more evident in recent years, and you can even find screenshots of a few of his strips around WaterNotes.  I’m pleased to see he was included on Mission Blue, and I love the talk he gives.  It’s a reminder that even those who are not heavily trained in the sciences and out performing field research everyday still have an opportunity to communicate with the public.

Fanciful, liberally animated, and delivered with a positive vibe. That’s the overall flavor of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s newest PSA to help drive their climate awareness in our communities.  Their website recently launched a page dedicated to ocean changes and suggestions for people to help limit those changes.  Its not anything revolutionary or new: ditch the car, reuse bottles, leave behind the plastic bags, and on.  And while we’re still at the same neverending argument of what people will give up versus what is meaningful to give up, this is still a very well done attempt to remind people – just once more – that our oceans need us.

Florida has been extremely rainy the last few weeks.  I have, subsequently, had to muddle through both my outdoor job as well as my volunteer beach cleanups with very soggy sneakers and at least two stolen umbrellas.

On the bright side (despite the constant threat of dark afternoon thunderheads) I’m excited to report that the One Ton Landed project has so far managed to haul in eight hundred and thirteen pounds of debris.  813!!

It is, however, the last week of August and I am starting to wonder if I will be able to clear even half of my goal before the end of the year arrives.  I have 1,187 pounds to go – untold number of Colgate Wisps, soda bottles, plastic bags, and fishing line combined – to truly consider OTL a success.  This does mean, dear friends, that I will be haunting many of you with emails to come and join in the fun.

More from the Mission Blue Voyage, this time with Brian Skerry’s unique perspective after years of underwater photo journalism. He shows us a “cascade of death” in bycatch, highlights the shark finning industry, and marine debris. Above all, I’m enchanted with his photos of my beloved “urban” right whales.

Things have been more than distracting this summer so for those of you still checking in, forgive the lapse in posts. However, since I’m still on hiatus while I roam the wilds of Florida with my camp students, feast your brain on this very interesting essay published by Orion: A Mind In the Water.  It elucidates, at times in disturbing detail, the history of dolphins in zoos, aquariums, and research organizations.  No matter which side of the fence you stand beside when it comes to animals in captivity, this is definitely worth the read.

Peter Tyack of Woods Hole took the TED Mission Blue folks through a spectacular view of the acoustics of whales and dolphins in his talk during the voyage. It was recently posted to TED.com and it may be my new favorite TED talk ever!  I am floored by the graphic representations of sound waves produced by the whales – from their ability to mimic bridge signals in an aquarium setting, to shifting their contact calls out of the “noisy” band range of sound dominated by ship’s noise pollution, to the ability of low frequency transmissions to travel hundreds of miles.

It’s always difficult to discuss sound production in animals with my students because humans are much more of a visual species than we are acoustic – its painfully hard for us to make intelligent sense of our world without our eyes and its rather hard to view sound.  This talk gave me at least a dozen new ideas for describing and displaying Tyack’s juicy tidbits on whale bioacoustics.  If you have a spare twenty minutes, don’t miss this one.

Long ago I posted on mercury contamination in beluga whales.  New research shows us the problem with toxic chemical accumulation in our apex ocean predators extends to sperm whales with habitat ranges far larger than the Arctic Ocean belugas call home.  Over a thousand whales were sampled over a five year period, revealing levels of contamination for several heavy metals – many released during manufacturing – of serious concern. As with belugas, researchers expressed concern for future generations of whales since mothers can pass contaminants to their calves during nursing as their fat-rich milk could be loaded with fat-soluble toxics.