Oceanography
A Wealth of New Species
An alien world lies just beyond the seashore. Only in the last century or so have technologies like SCUBA and submersibles allowed us to explore the oceans far below the surface. Until then, exploring underwater sea life was like trying to study a forest by dipping a bucket from a helicopter. The C...
July 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Oceans of Plastic
One of my best memories from college is the time I spent on a SEA Semester, sailing around the Caribbean and conducting research from on board a magnificent 134-foot brigantine, the SSV Corwith Cramer (even though I was seasick much of the time and sleep deprived all of the time—there are good reas...
July 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Dolphins Are Efficient Eaters
If you had to catch all of your food, would you go after anything and everything that came across your path? Or would you wait for the bigger payoff? Squirrels and bunnies or deer and bear?Dolphins go for the marine version of option B, preferring to eat only high-energy fish, according to a new st...
June 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Five Myths of the Gulf Oil Spill
With oil spilling from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for nearly two months now, it's not shocking that there's plenty of misinformation and wrongful assumptions passing over airwaves and in conversations with friends and colleagues. Here are five myths I've heard lately:Oil spills are rare: There...
June 17, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Should Oiled Birds Be Cleaned?
Dead birds smothered in icky, gooey brown oil are the iconic images of most any oil spill, including the ongoing one in the Gulf. Even a small amount of oil can kill a bird. Oil sticks to feathers, destroying their waterproofing ability and exposing the bird to extremes of temperature. And ingested...
June 11, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
How Sharks Sniff Out a Meal
A shark's sharp teeth aren't the only reason we find them so scary---their ability to smell blood in the water, even from a long distance, is also a big factor. We know they'll find us. But how do they know what direction to swim in order to find a wounded fish (or person)? Conventional wisdom says...
June 10, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Crazy Crab Migrations
I've been slowly watching the 11 episodes of the BBC/Discovery series Life over the last few weeks, and I've been amazed by much of it. While many of the segments focus on small groups of animals, and sometimes just one---like the bouncing pebble toad---huge migrations and gatherings of creatures a...
June 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Ocean Currents are Highways for Crocodiles
Ocean currents have carried a huge variety of things around the world, from trash to shipwrecked Japanese sailors. And crocodiles, according to a new study in the Journal of Animal Ecology.The estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) lives in rivers, estuaries and mangrove swamps throughout much of...
June 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hurricane Grazes the Arabian Peninsula
These are storms that go by many names. Scientists call them "tropical cyclones," but they are also known as "typhoons," "severe cyclonic storms" and, of course, "hurricanes." The storm in the image above is Tropical Cyclone Phet, which earlier this week grazed the coast of Oman as it headed toward...
June 04, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Coral Atolls Rise With the Seas
The plight of Pacific Islanders has been the center of the debate over the human toll of climate change. Last month, the Federated States of Micronesia filed an objection against one the dirtiest power plants in Europe, arguing that unchecked carbon emissions could eventually drown this nation of 6...
June 03, 2010 |
By Brendan Borrell
Seven Endangered Seabirds Around the World
In the June issue of Smithsonian, Michelle Nijhuis documents the efforts to restore Atlantic puffins to the Maine coast after their almost complete disappearance at the beginning of the 20th century. Puffins aren't a threatened or endangered species, but the techniques developed to restore them to ...
June 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Plenty of Warming in the Ocean's Upper Layer
"If you want to know if the globe has warmed, you want to look at the upper ocean," says John Lyman, a NOAA/University of Hawaii oceanographer. That's because the oceans have a very large heat capacity (about 1000 times that of the atmosphere) and take up about 80 to 90 percent of any excess heat f...
May 19, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Victims of the Oil Spill
Every day the news just seems to get worse. We went from estimates of no oil spilled after the drilling platform fire to 1,000 barrels a day to 5,000 barrels a day to "who knows?" guesses of up to 100,000 barrels a day. (If that turns out to be the true rate, Deepwater Horizon would have become th...
May 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Icebergs Contribute to Sea Level Rise
When you learned about Archimedes back in elementary school, your teacher probably told you that a floating object displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight. Although an ice cube pokes up out of the water, when it melts, the level of the water should stay the same. Extrapolate this conce...
April 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
UPDATED: The World's Worst Oil Spills
I've been thinking a lot lately about oil spills. At the beginning of the month, a Chinese freighter ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, grinding a couple miles coral into dust and leaking oil along the way. A couple of weeks ago came news of a new study showing that o...
April 27, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Smithsonian's Amazing Natural History Collections
Last week I got to look behind the scenes of the entomology collection at the National Museum of Natural History. I learned how the collection of insects and spiders, one of the world's largest, is used by Smithsonian and Department of Agriculture scientists to help port inspectors identify potenti...
April 12, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Have You Seen a Jellyfish Lately?
Marine biologists need your help. The next time you go to the beach, keep a lookout for the creatures that have washed up onto the sand. And if you find a jellyfish, squid or other kind of unusual marine life, including a red tide bloom, please, please report your sighting to Jellywatch.Jellywatch ...
March 25, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Photo Contest Finalist—A Chorus of Mackerel
Can fish sing? Yes, they can, though I'm not sure about mackerel like the ones above. And they probably don't sound like anything you'd put on your iPod. But that wasn't what Alex Tattersall of Charminster, England, was searching for when we went on a dive last September in the Red Sea off Egypt. H...
March 19, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Titanic vs. Lusitania: Who Survived and Why?
The tragic voyages provided several economists with an an opportunity to compare how people behave under extreme conditions
March 02, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Riled up About Geoengineering
One of the most contentious sessions at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting this past weekend in San Diego was on geoengineering, the study of ways to engineer the planet to manipulate climate. Intentional ways to do so, I should say—as many of the speakers pointed out, ...
February 23, 2010 |
By Laura Helmuth
