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Tag: Erika Bergman

The fate of the deep sea is being decided behind closed doors, plastic in the deepest trench, memories of whales, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: March 4, 2019

Posted on March 4, 2019March 4, 2019 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Last week was a huge week for deep-sea mining and there’s still more coming. Catch up on the latest!
    • Species threatened by deep-sea mining.
    • The future of deep seabed mining.
    • Deep seabed mining: key questions.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Legendary submarine pilot Erika Bergman, a couple dudes, and a group of scientists make exciting discovery inside Great Blue Hole and What Erika Bergman, Richard Branson, Fabien Cousteau, and Aquatica Submarines Found In Belize’s Great Blue Hole.
The voyage meant scientists could construct a 3D map of the hole. Picture: Thomas Bodhi Wade/Aquatica Submarines

Read More “The fate of the deep sea is being decided behind closed doors, plastic in the deepest trench, memories of whales, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: March 4, 2019” »

Logs from a majestic pit of acid: Diving Belize’s Blue Hole with Erika Bergman.

Posted on February 5, 2019February 21, 2019 By Erika Bergman
Logs from a majestic pit of acid: Diving Belize’s Blue Hole with Erika Bergman.
Uncategorized

In November of 2018 Aquatica Submarines shipped a three person submarine, Stingray 500, across frosty North America on the back of a truck then over the rolling winter seas of the Gulf of Mexico to Belize aboard the R/V Brooks McCall. Our destination was a site located 7 miles into Lighthouse Reef – a perfect sinkhole in the ocean known as the Great Blue Hole. We traveled to this UNESCO World Heritage site to explore and document a geologic phenomenon in support of conservation science and to conduct outreach. Our mission was two fold, map the Great Blue Hole using high resolution sonar and take people worldwide on this journey with us on broadcast TV. Everything we collected, from CTD data and dissolved oxygen content, to video footage and experiential data, gives us the fodder we need to tell a story about an unusual place on our planet most people have never seen, until now.

Photo courtesy Aquatica Submarines.

Geology from not-a-geologist

Over the past 14,000 years the polar ice caps, formed during the last glacial maximum, have thawed and raised sea level in steps. These defrosting events are captured in a stone record of an oceanic sinkhole in Belize. The aptly named Great Blue Hole is a collapsed cave, filled with stalactite caverns, and built up from layers of fine limestone and rougher calcium carbonate walls. The stepped rise of sea level can be seen in the form of terraces carved deeply by erosion into the otherwise vertical rock walls. Straight vertical stretches of wall are free of erosion because sea level rose rapidly during a few brief decades between each step. As each melting event took place sea level rose dramatically, as much as 100 feet in 100 years, followed by centuries of stability. Preserved from the disturbance of time, and isolated in the darkness, the hole holds clues to a very natural part of our planet’s life cycle. It’s these terraces and stalactites we set out to map.

Photo courtesy Aquatica Submarines.

Read More “Logs from a majestic pit of acid: Diving Belize’s Blue Hole with Erika Bergman.” »

Mud volcanoes, starfish wasting, the stinkiest fruit, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: February 4, 2019.

Posted on February 4, 2019February 4, 2019 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Scientists demand military sonar ban to end mass whale strandings.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Mud volcanoes, the baby cousins for hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve. There she blows! Mud volcanoes in the Mediterranean.
Underwater mud volcanoes in the Flower Garden National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. Escaping gas can be seen rising from the mud volcano. PC: Sea Research Foundation (SRF) and the Ocean Exploration Trust (OET).
  • Starfish wasting disease continues to plague the Pacific: A Starfish-Killing Disease Is Remaking the Oceans.
Two photos of the same rock, 20 days apart (Neil McDaniel)

Read More “Mud volcanoes, starfish wasting, the stinkiest fruit, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: February 4, 2019.” »

Chesapeake Requiem, the Black Friday for Climate Change, whale earwax, killing the GRE, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 26, 2018

Posted on November 26, 2018 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

  • Friend of the blog and submarine legend Erika Bergman is leading an expedition to Belize’s Blue Hole! Follow along as she maps this unique ocean feature: Belize Blue Hole 2018. Some dudes are tagging along, too.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • The Fourth National Climate Assessment is out and it is grim.

Climate change affects the natural, built, and social systems we rely on individually and through their connections to one another. These interconnected systems are increasingly vulnerable to cascading impacts that are often difficult to predict, threatening essential services within and beyond the Nation’s borders.

  • Meanwhile: The Trump Administration’s Attempt to Bury a New Climate Report on Black Friday Totally Backfired.
  • Government Climate Report Lays Out How Screwed We Are If We Don’t Act Now.

The Gam (conversations from the ocean-podcasting world)

  • Speak Up for the Blue on art and the ocean.

Read More “Chesapeake Requiem, the Black Friday for Climate Change, whale earwax, killing the GRE, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 26, 2018” »

Octopus Genes, Decolonization, and a mega-dose of Citizen Science! Monday Morning Salvage: April 10, 2017

Posted on April 10, 2017April 10, 2017 By Andrew Thaler
Weekly Salvage

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

  • Octopuses are weird. Really, really weird. Ed Yong covers yet another weird octopus thing in the Atlantic: Octopuses Do Something Really Strange to Their Genes. And check out the original paper, below.

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

  • This interview with Shay Akil McLean is one of the best introductions to the concept of decolonizing science: Hood Biologist Explains How to Decolonize All The Science. See also: We Need Decolonial Scientists.
  • Free Radicals is one of the best new(ish) science blogs on the net: Zapatistas Reimagine Science as Tool of Resistance.
  • Incidentally, the March for Science does not have a diversity problem.

Instead, I believe that this march needs to be completely apolitical and nonpartisan. I think that we should protest the current administration, which wants to repeal laws guaranteeing clean air and water, claim that climate change is a hoax, and remove scientists’ access to quality healthcare, but in a way that doesn’t alienate members of the current administration. We should demand change, but vaguely, and from no one in particular.

Source.

  • If you love geophysical fluid dynamics, then you will love these foamy streaks in a lagoon. Deep Sea News, natch.
  • With the legendary Erika Bergman at the helm, the Aquatica Submarine crew put eyes on a new glass sponge bioherm off the coast of Vancouver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6stLjJ5lAo

  • Another article about the GOSH meeting where I rep-ed OpenROV and Oceanography for Everyone: Santiago de Chile, capital of the Global network for Open Science Hardware.
  • As a card-carrying population geneticist, I second this piece: Getting your genetic disease risks from 23andme is probably a terrible idea.

Read More “Octopus Genes, Decolonization, and a mega-dose of Citizen Science! Monday Morning Salvage: April 10, 2017” »

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