Swim (and fly) like a dolphin

Oh my, I want one of these really much!!

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New ocean game

It's called Coastal Fling, and it lets you fling things. That's always good.

What do you fling, where, and why? You get to fling people, animals, not sure what all, into a place you've never heard of called Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area (hint: it's in a place you have heard of, called Canada, see map at right). The purpose is to show you some of the places in PNCIMA. Learn about "PNCIMA" and have fun.

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Ocean fashion

Too good to be true, eye candy for the ocean lover who wouldn't be caught dead in drab.


Hat tip: Oyster's Garter

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Catching crabs from your living room

Living La Vida Deadly just got easier, thanks to The Deadliest Catch for Xbox 360. Now you can face life as a crab boat captain, with real world challenges like:

"Captain, you've got help me. I've got a girl in my bunk and my girlfriend just showed up. Can you keep her busy?"

Who knew that king crab chic would reach such heights?

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Selling biology, a new source of funding?

Wanna name a new ocean animal after your partner or your dog? It'll cost you upwards of $5,000 and the money will pay for science.

The venerable site of my ocean education, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is offering a new special. A super-fancy hydrothermal vent worm could carry your chosen name for $50,000 and you can have a nice orange speckled nudibranch for $15,000.

I suppose it had to come to this, since there's never enough money for research and rich people are always looking for new ways to conspicuously consume. I'm thinking the nudibranch is just perfect for Paris Hiltonii.

And looking back, this is hardly a new thing. Rich patrons have always been important for scientists and artists. Here's a new way to get back to the good ol' days of patronage. Of course, that carries with it the need to appeal to fickle personalities for support, instead of the more logical and bureaucratic funding agencies.

Maybe we'll get to corporate sponsorship, and we'll have the "Verizonia" or "BankAmericania" as new groups of animals, with interesting new TV commercials to follow. Hey wait...maybe this is a good way to get science back in the public eye, the gecko seems to be working for Geico. Maybe Verizon will feature a tube worm with a cell phone in their ads next year?

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Snail sex-too hot to handle

...but also strangely seductive. Here's an over-18 clip of snail sex, with an awesome soundtrack ("Sexy Boy"). The entry of the main character is not to be missed, also the early courtship scenes. It's not strictly oceans, but I'm sure underwater gastropods would be equally charismatic if captured on film like this.



Hat tip: The Other 95%

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Carnival of the blue 11

The best of ocean blogging gets a unique treatment this month at Zooillogix (Don't stick your fingers in the cage) . The incomparable, inimitable, and indomitable Brothers Bleiman put on a great show and take Carnival of the Blue to a new level. Not sure if it's higher or lower, maybe you should go decide for yourself.

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Octopus sex includes flirting and fighting

Human mating behavior is not so different from an Indonesian octopus. The prelude can include flirting and passionate hand-holding, but it can get rough when macho males jealously guard a female's home and strangle rivals.

The photo above right shows octopus sex, including the males specialized mating arm. The secrets of octopus mating have been hard to uncover, since octopi are so secretive. The current study came as scientific voyeurs hovered over the homes of shallow reef octopus and watched until they had seen enough. Special secrets include small "sneaker" males that mimic females and try to slip past other males to get to a willing female.

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Sea cucumber inspires new polymer

Nice trick to have skin that goes hard when danger threatens, and turns soft and flexible in safe conditions.

A sea cucumber can do it, and now scientists have borrowed the secret to make a polymer that is hard when dry and soft when wet.

The next hope is to do the same thing with electricity instead of water, for applications like a vest that goes bulletproof when needed. Or perhaps there might be some other applications, like replacing the blue pill.

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Ocean survivor game, can you drive the tuna to safety?

No, sadly, the tuna always ends up as sushi, at least with my clumsy hands. But the Ocean Survivor game from Pew is fun anyway for a fish geek. Try to dodge the nets and hooks, and jump your tuna OVER a fishing boat(!) Now that part's fun.

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Gut feelings can be subconscious "thinking"

I knew it. Intuition is more than just blind guesses. Gut feelings and intuition can be the result of fast thinking processes that happen on a subconscious level.

A new study shows the value of intuition or gut feelings. This type of feeling or thought can come from the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision – but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we’re aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong.

A fascinating example from the study:

a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why – and as a result avoided hitting a pile-up of cars on the track ahead, undoubtedly saving his life.

“The driver couldn’t explain why he felt he should stop, but the urge was much stronger than his desire to win the race,” explains Professor Hodgkinson. “The driver underwent forensic analysis by psychologists afterwards, where he was shown a video to mentally relive the event. In hindsight he realised that the crowd, which would have normally been cheering him on, wasn’t looking at him coming up to the bend but was looking the other way in a static, frozen way. That was the cue. He didn’t consciously process this, but he knew something was wrong and stopped in time.”

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this phenomenon in his fascinating book "Blink," which I recommend to fans of intuition or gut feelings.

Now why did my gut feelings tell me that Georgetown would win the NCAA basketball tournament this year? There goes my bracket.

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World's biggest crab cake

Have to feed a lot of people? How about serving a monster crab cake? A Delaware seafood processor cooked up the world's record 235 pound crab cake because, well, it had never been done and it was National Seafood Week.

The record crab cake took 152 pounds of crab meat, plus breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, onions, and pasteurized eggs.

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Battle for coral reefs

If you've ever wanted to get rowdy and simply slaughter the villains that harm coral reefs, here's your chance. There's a new game at Riverwired.com that lets you slaughter anything that might harm a coral reef.

You pick your fish weapon character, hit "start," and shoot all the debris that you can, before the evil fish hit you with exploding weapons.

"Our scene begins three years following the great Arctic devastation. With 80% of the planet now underwater, humanity's only hope is to help heal what is remaining. Clear the ocean of waste, and bring back the amazing coral reefs."

Hat tip: Water Words That Work

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Finally, proof of global warming

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Your private tropical island getaway...

...needs fresh water. What are you going to do? Try a windmall that makes fresh water from salt water.

This is a low-tech solution that doesn't require expensive batteries and operates using a simple, commercially available windmill with minor modifications. It can produce enough water for a village of around 500 people.

Sounds like something the Professor from Gilligan's Island made with palm trees, coconut shells, wire and tape.

But in this case it's real, developed by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands. It uses a high-pressure water pump to push water through a reverse osmosis membrane.

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runner's high proven, as if runners need proof

Here's a validation going out to all of you endurance athletes...

Runner's high proven by science.

Natural opiates were identified in the brains of runners after a 2 hour run, using a PET scan (positron emission tomography). In other words, runners really do get high.

Jonesing for a run? It's because you're a junkie and you need your fix. Thank goodness nobody has yet figured out a way to make it illegal. The story is in:

"The Runner's High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain" are published in the journal 'Cerebral Cortex'.

I don't know about you, but I read Cerebral Cortex every day.

Of course, any endurance athlete doesn't need this science to know the truth, we've all been there. Like the time I ran 5 1/2 hours in the hills east of Pebble Beach, or the SF marathon when I first ran under 3 hours. I'm not fast, but I've been a runner for a long time, and I grew up watching this guy on the right. Now he was an ATHLETE. RIP Steve Prefontaine, although peace is not the word that comes quickly to mind when thinking about Pre.

Now please excuse me while I step outside for a couple of hours

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when believing creates seeing

Context matters, as everyone knows. But now we find that context can "create" visual images in a person's brain. If you believe it, you can see it.

An experiment had people record whether they "saw" a gray rectangle that wasn't there. If gray rectangles were around the experimental area, observers "saw" a gray rectangle that wasn't there.

Belief is a powerful thing, and now we know it can create illusions. Of course, belief-driven delusions are even more common.

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Embrace your inner fish

Forget monkeys as an important ancestor, it's fish that you really have to thank.

Most of the important biological innovations that we humans enjoy and take for granted came from fish. Check out Natalie Angier's write up in the New York Times.

Fish evolved the first hinged and muscular jaws and teeth with nerves, the better to eat big, fast and wiggly prey. And fish evolved the first defense against such powerful jaws, the first skull to protect that all-important brain, built from thousands of tiny, overlapping teeth.

Then there's our beloved heads, with paired sense organs. Yep, invented by fish. And fish have incredibly complex social and behavior patterns, perhaps rivaling the complex rituals of Junior High cliques.

So next time you see a fish say thanks. And don't feel bad about eating the fish after you say thanks, the fish would understand.

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Barnacle sex tuned to wave conditions

Barnacle penises are the stuff of legends, and now there's a new chapter.

Barnacles live firmly anchored to ocean rocks, and they can't move around to mate. To solve this problem, barnacles have evolved the longest penis relative to body size of any animal on earth, up to 8 times longer than body size. New research now reveals the hows and whys of penis size and shape variation among barnacles.

Barnacles seem to be able to change the size and shape of their penises to match local wave conditions.

When wave action is light, a longer (thinner) penis can reach more mates, but at times of higher wave action, a shorter (stouter) penis is more manoeuvrable in flow and therefore can reach more mates.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

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Shark ball

Who knew that sharks could be so much fun? For you lovers of labrador retrievers, this video has to be seen to be believed. OK, it has to be seen to be enjoyed.

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