Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf region, but following its impact scientists who study the deep sea world have returned and found some very interesting creatures including some deep-dwelling shellfish that produce their own light and some animals with surprising ability to see ultraviolet light.
They also came across (in fact, their camera was attacked!) by a previously unknown type of squid that reaches six feet long. The camera was placed at about 1,800 feet, a depth where the hurricane would have no impact, but the researchers obviously had to bail on their studies while the wind and waves were high. I was interested to learn at the bottom of the piece that fully 800 percent of the creatures at that depth produce some sort of light.
I mentioned this over at Gadling, but it is very much a Divester kind of thing so I'll post it here too.
Fabien Cousteau, who we spoke to a while back for a podcast will have his documentary "Mind of a Demon" broadcast on CBS later thiis month. Fabien is the grandson of the French-accented ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, and a big-time explorer and adventurer in his own right. As you may have heard in the podcast, Fabien designed and built a shark-shaped submarine, inside of which he filmed the behavior of sharks in Mexico. And the program he produced will broadcast on CBS on Wednesday, June 28th at 8pm. The program is called Mind of a Demon, and I've seen a bunch of the footage. Let me say this: watch the program. You will very much enjoy it.
Our friend Eric Cheng has posted a series of killer videos of sharks
from a recent expedition. Really cool. We're talking lots of different types of sharks here. Tiger sharks, bull sharks,
great hammerheads, caribbean reef sharks, black-tip reef sharks, and nurse sharks, and they come right up to the camera
as if to say "hello!"
The video quality on these things is fabulous. Really worth a look if you
can spare a moment. Cheng continues to do really excellent work both with the
camera and on the Web. Why is it I always feel kinda bummed when checking his stuff out? Probably because I'm sitting
here at a desk, and he's out there shooting sharks.
Here's one right out of science fiction. Or
actually, it reminds me of that movie from a few years ago called Deep Blue Sea. Do you remember that one? It was
pretty lame, but I liked the premise. Scientists had genetically modified sharks to make them smarter...I think to find
a cure for Alzheimer’s or something...anyway, once the sharks become clever, they decide it's a whole lot of fun
to kill humans. Like I said, nice premise. Simple. Easy to digest. Scary.
Well, now here comes something
similar right out of the pages of New Scientist magazine. Turns out,
according to this piece in Salon, that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the secretive skunk
works of the Pentagon, is trying to figure out a way to put neural implants into the brains of sharks in the hope that
they might control the animals and get them to do their bidding. These sharks, one would guess, might even be mounted
with fricken lasers on their heads to allow them to follow and shoot down ships, subs and terrorist scuba divers...or
just those who make us angry.
How close have they come so far? Well, implants in a dogfish allowed them to
steer the animal in captivity via electrodes keyed to "phantom odors." That's kind of like getting a fat guy
to walk through a house by making him think there are hamburgers cooking in the next room.
The Salon piece goes into the effort in
greater depth, but I couldn't resist posting about it, because it just sounds too crazy, too fascinating.
Awhile back, I posted about the remarkable article on
diver Dave Shaw's misadventures diving to the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world. He dove deeper than almost
anyone had ever gone, and creepliy discovered the body of a diver who had disappeared ten years earlier. The article from Outside Magazine is one of the
best things I've read in a long time, a story sure to make the annals of diving literature. The story was obviously
thought to be good by others, as it was selected as one of the top sports stories of the year.
Over at Gadling, we've done some podcasts with adventurers like John Chatterton and Fabien Cousteau, but also
with big names in the travel biz like Don George. Well, now we're taking another tack and posting a podcast with a new,
young author named Joshua Davis. Davis is the author of the book The
Underdog: How I Survived the World's Most Outlandish Competitions, and is also a writer at Wired Magazine. The
book is wonderful. In it, Davis talks about placing fourth in the international arm wrestling championships, despite
having never arm wrestled in his life, at least not professionally. Davis moves on to Sumo wresting and takes on men
three times his size...again, one wouldn't say successfully, unless just living through the experience can be called a
success, which I suppose it can.
Well, I don't want to give away any more of the story. Let Josh tell it
himself. As you can hear from the podcast, he's a very cool, very friendly guy, and you'll find his perspective on life
refreshing.
I hesitated to give this post the name I gave it for
fear that it might get caught up in some digital dragnet orchestrated by the Federal Government...but what the heck. We
just have to face the facts: birds do it, bees do it and, well, sharks do it. There's little we can do about that,
except point a camera at them. In this unusual video from
National Geographic, we see mating sharks, as well as provocative pulsating gills. Ooh ahhh.
I do not recall the last time I read about a dive spot where, in discussing the number of whale sharks to
be seen, are said to be in "the hundreds". But the Washington Post's Andrea
Sachs, in answer to a query from a curious reader, says as much about a place near Perth, Australia called Ningaloo Reef Marine Park. I've
got a couple of buddies who headed out just this week for Australia, and the sad fact is, I was invited to go. But due
to the chains attached to my legs and connected to my desk here in New York City, I could not go. How much did I want
to heave off these oppressive shackles? Man, if you only knew. Sigh.
No matter. Let me get back to the reef
in question. The 160-mile-long Ningaloo is Australia's longest fringing coral reef, and they are very
conservation-minded about it, setting all sorts of limits on human-animal interaction. The result of this (rather
unusual) discipline is that you must hire an accredited tour operator to go. These operators know exactly where the
whale sharks hangout, but they are also there to educate and make sure that you don't do something stupid like spear
one of them.
Anyway, it's a quick read, but it got my adventuresome blood flowing.
And here I thought Australian were a steady,
courageous bunch. Well, maybe they're just a bit more squeamish than we thought when it comes to sharks. Who wouldn't
be really? In the news today is word that the
10k Cole Classic swimming race which takes place off Sydney's Manly Beach was abandoned about halfway through when a
ten foot shark was spotted roaming the waters, presumably in search of yummy swimmers.
When the shark was
seen they ordered more than 20 swimmers out of the water. What comes to mind is the scene from jaws with bathers
screaming and splashing and raising general mayhem. Again, this is all perhaps understandable since a woman was attacked and killed back on
January10th, the 10th person to be killed by a shark in Australian waters since 2000.
One of the sites I've always been a fan of...and this
goes back to the first time I picked up David Macaulay's epic The Way Things work, which was in an ancient
form of carbon-based construction known as a "book"...is How Things Work. And it is such a fine surprise to
see that the good folks at HTW begin doing video.
In this rather simple, but nonetheless
interesting piece on Google Video, they attempt to explain how Scuba works. Now they certainly don't get very detailed.
Really all they explain is the regulator, which is probably the most complex piece of equipment a basic open water
diver will use. I'd like to see one done for dive computers and so on, but this is a very well-done basic primer.
Our newest blogger over at gadling, Neil Woodburn, who's
been talking about the Cook Islands a lot these days, gives the low-down on how to go
clam snorkeling in the Cooks. We're not talking little bivalves here, but the big monster clams that always seem to be
closing around someone's leg in movies. Even though Neil ends up ill after the adventure, having wrapped his lips
around a snorkel used by some germy tourist, he, shall we say, dug the experience.
Hey, give a look over at Google video at this series on the
diving conditions in Thailand after the tsunami. As you probably know, Google video has seriously ramped up its
offerings and are allowing people to buy old TV shows in addition to the thousands of good (and crappy) videos they can
already see for free. I expect to see a full-on diving channel at Google video sometime in the near future. And you know
what? I'd probably subscribe if such a thing existed. I wonder if the ScubaCore folks ought to think about doing this?
Hmmmm.
Anyway, the video
here, shot by Nick Hope offers just that: hope. Hope that the tsunami didn't actually wreck and ruin the underwater
ecosystem of the region. Hope that the diving will remain some of the best in the world. As you can see in the video,
things seem to do doing quite well. Fish are abundant, the water is clear. All seems well with the world.
I just posted over at Gadling about a cool event this weekend if you happen to be NYC bound...or stuck here.
The Explorer's Club Documentary Festival takes place at the
Explorer's Club HQ at 46 East 70th Street. Last year's festival was superb,
and I urge you to check it out this year if you're able.
One film of interest to diving fans is
called SHARK MOUNTAIN by Michele and Howard Hall.
the film takes the filmmakers to a place called Cocos Island, area off the coast of Costa Rica, where there is an
extraordinary abundance of sharks. The film showed on Nature, but I'm sure that seeing it in the presence of the
filmmakers would add a cool dimension to watching the film. Not only that, but the Explorer's Club itself is really
cool, with lots of artifacts all over the place from historic adventures, and they let you do a little exploring
yourself while you're there. Check it out if you can.
Sorry to sound so dogmatic here, but can we all please stop
eating shark fin soup, bear gall bladders, bald eagle eggs and all manner of things that some have come to believe cure
ailments or enhance virility. This is not something that is on my mind all the time, but when a paperlike the Times takes the issue on
in such a fine article, you have to pay attention.
Yes, the Times Juan Forero examines the dramatic decline
in sharks across all the world's oceans, and there in the photo is a sad pile of dead sharks, harvested like corn for
their fins. Whatever happened to the Navajo ethic of eating the whole buffalo (OK, Comanche). But seriously, this is
serious. There is big money in shark fins, which sell particularly well in China, which is undergoing an economic boom,
making it easier for people to buy shark fin soup, and leading to the killing of more and more sharks. Get this...I mean
amazing, really....in Hong Kong, Beijing, Taiwan, Singapore and other corners of Asian affluence, "a heaping bowl
of shark fin soup, said to offer medicinal or aphrodisiac qualities", will cost you up to $200. How can you stop
that? Tragic.
OK, this has been a story for a while now, but it turns
out they may that they found Blackbeard's ship. Yes, this would be a big deal. Pirates are just so in these days. So
what's it all about? Well, seems
that a group of Archaeologists have been diving around the coast of North Carolina at a spot that for a while now
they've said could be the spot where Blackbeard's ship went down. The project, called the Queen Anne's Revenge Project
recently discovered a coat button and various other items that appear to be part of a set of shackles...as in shackle
your ankles and throw you overboard, you scurvy-ridden landlubber. But, and here's a big but, the artifacts are buried
in "separate concretions of sand and shell" raised from a shipwreck on the ocean floor. I hate it when that
happens. Concretions can be tough. If they manifest themselves, see your doctor.
They are not 100 percent
sure, but they are going to chisel away the hardened
Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf region, but following its impact scientists who study the deep sea world have returned and found some very interesting creatures including some deep-dwelling shellfish that produce their own light and some animals with surprising ability to see ultraviolet light. 
I mentioned this over at Gadling, but it is very much a Divester kind of thing so I'll post it here too. 
Our friend Eric Cheng has posted 
Here's 
Awhile back, 
I hesitated to give this post the name I gave it for
fear that it might get caught up in some digital dragnet orchestrated by the Federal Government...but what the heck. We
just have to face the facts: birds do it, bees do it and, well, sharks do it. There's little we can do about that,
except point a camera at them. In 
One of the sites I've always been a fan of...and this
goes back to the first time I picked up David Macaulay's epic 
Our newest blogger over at gadling, Neil Woodburn, who's
been talking about the Cook Islands a lot these days, 
Hey, give a look over at 
I just posted over at 
Sorry to sound so dogmatic here, but can we all please stop
eating shark fin soup, bear gall bladders, bald eagle eggs and all manner of things that some have come to believe cure
ailments or enhance virility. This is not something that is on my mind all the time, but when a paper
OK, this has been a story for a while now, but it turns
out they may that they found Blackbeard's ship. Yes, this would be a big deal. Pirates are just so in these days. So
what's it all about? Well, 
