Bluegrass Blue Crab

Chemistry of the Great Big Blue: Sewage

September 28, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab 3 Comments

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kure beach — "Warning! Stormwater discharge area may be contaminated by discharge from pipe. Swimming is not recommended within 200 feet of this sign during active discharge"

You live on a rural island. You poop. You flush. Does your island have a sewage treatment plant? Is your plant large enough to deal with the influx of tourists that increases the population of your island by an order of magnitude in the summer? Ever stop to look at the metal pipes on your island’s beach to see what was coming out? More than likely, there’s an ocean outfall involved in your island’s wastewater treatment plan. It may only be for overflow, but it’s an option.

What does “ocean outfall” really mean? Well, often it means raw sewage is dumped into the coastal environment that we all love to swim in.

Vignette from the Anthropology of Knowledge: Cree Hunting

September 24, 2010September 24, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Science

Scientific knowledge comes in many forms, some not explicitly science. Social scientists call this “ways of knowing” – you can think of it as a framework on which you hang the specifics as you learn them. The framework is set up early in life and historically, scientific knowledge was held within a religious ‘way of … Read More “Vignette from the Anthropology of Knowledge: Cree Hunting” »

Chemistry of the Great Big Blue: Sedimentation

September 21, 2010September 21, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Science

MISR_Mid_Atlantic — Sedimentation in the Chesapeake - look at the brown toward the headwaters. Found at nasa.gov

Rocks erode, travel down rivers and eventually in the form of small particles, settle in river deltas and estuaries. Even smaller pieces can be carried hundreds of miles into the ocean. It’s all part of the natural process of sedimentation, but like many other natural cycles, this one has been hijacked by human activities. Development, agriculture, channelization of streams, damming and many other practices change the natural course of sediment in the coastal oceans more than the ecosystem can handle.

These changes can either be a drastic increase in sediment runoff from upstream sources or a complete deprivation of naturally occurring deltas. In addition, many pollutants cling to these sediment particles so that changing the location of the sediment also shifts the location of pollution.

Real Monsters – Viperfish

September 11, 2010September 10, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

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The deep-sea, by virtue of no light, cold temperatures, and high pressures, leaves an environment ripe for evolving some pretty strange critters. One of my personal favorites, mostly because of the crazy teeth it boasts, is the viperfish. To me, the viperfish looks like a dessicated version of some sort of alien. In reality, it’s … Read More “Real Monsters – Viperfish” »

The Ocean Is Infinite

September 10, 2010September 7, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

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People used to think that the sea’s bounty was infinite. Looking across the vast ocean, it was hard for any single fisherman to believe they could be contributing to the loss of species.

Hugo Grotius, commonly referred to as the founder of natural resources law, described the inexhaustible nature of the ocean:

“The sea is common to all, because it is so limitless that it cannot become a possession of any one, and because it is adapted for the use of all, whether we consider it from the point of view of navigation or of fisheries” (Grotius 1916)

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Ocean of Pseudoscience Shorty – Iron Fertilization: The Cure for Global Warming

September 10, 2010September 2, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab 1 Comment

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If the marine productivity is iron limited, then adding iron should increase phytoplankton growth. This growth will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to fuel photosynthesis and on a global scale, has the potential to mitigate global warming by absorbing the extra carbon dioxide emitted by human activities. But is it really that … Read More “Ocean of Pseudoscience Shorty – Iron Fertilization: The Cure for Global Warming” »

Ocean of Pseudoscience Shorty – The Montauk Monster

September 9, 2010February 2, 2012 Bluegrass Blue Crab 4 Comments

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The headlines read: “Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk” So what exactly was this crazy dead thing? Some call it a marketing scheme and no one can deny that it brought attention to the town of Montauk. Others say it might have been a prank by a local filmmaker to bring attention to his movie. … Read More “Ocean of Pseudoscience Shorty – The Montauk Monster” »

Our favorite sea monsters – Scylla and Charybdis (#2)

September 9, 2010September 2, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Popular Culture

Scylla and Charybdis team up to make passing through the Straight of Messina impossible – to be a safe distance from one meant being too close to the other. They were one of Odysseus’ many challenges during his epic journey. Scylla is a six-headed monster storied to have become that way after poisoning by the jealous wife of Poseidon who captured sailors off their boats and ate them. Charybdis is best described as a whirlpool bringing ships to the bottom of the sea. She was the daughter of Poseidon and converted by Zeus.

Ocean of Pseudoscience Shorty – Pickles for Seasickness

September 8, 2010September 8, 2010 Bluegrass Blue Crab

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My grandfather, who was on board Marine ships from 1928 through the Korean War, used to suggest eating pickles for seasickness. During my recent cruise in the Sargasso Sea, I finally had a chance to test his theory and it worked. Was it just a placebo effect, was it the vitamin C, or something else … Read More “Ocean of Pseudoscience Shorty – Pickles for Seasickness” »

Maximum (un)Sustainable Yield

September 8, 2010December 20, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab 10 Comments

Science

In 1954 and 1957 Gordon and Schaefer respectively described the idea of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) – that is, the amount of fish that could be taken by commercial fishing operations to maximize reproduction by the system year after year. Since then, it has been heralded as the mathematical panacea to fisheries management.

Gordon and Schaefer also described the maximum economic yield which threw price relations into the mix. It describes the point at which the fishers will make the most money, accounting for revenue and their expenses. Note in the graph below the fold that the maximum economic yield (MEY) is below the MSY in terms of effort. Gordon and Schaefer imagined a private manager or government overseer that could calculate the MEY and regulate fisher behavior in order to meet it. The idea was meant to be win-win for the fishers and the fish.