Oceanography
Picture of the Week -- Coral Reefs and Climate Change
The ocean is getting warmer, higher and more acidic due to climate change. How well will coral reefs respond to such stresses?To find out, a team of researchers led by the University of Texas at Austin is looking to corals' genes. Sequencing a genome can take years, but a new method developed by th...
May 15, 2009 |
By admin
Crocheting a Coral Reef
I had no idea that crochet was best way to model hyperbolic geometry. To be honest, I hadn’t even heard about hyperbolic geometry until I watched the video below, a TEDtalk given this past February by science writer Margaret Wertheim. Her project—crocheting a coral reef—began in 2005 and was inspir...
May 13, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week—Shrimp at an Undersea Volcano
Last month, a group of oceanographers onboard the R/V Thompson visited the active underwater volcano NW Rota-1 near Guam. This volcano is special because it is the only submarine volcano that scientists have observed erupting (via the remotely operated vehicle Jason) and it is continuously active. ...
May 08, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Invasion of the Lionfish
Voracious, venomous lionfish are the first exotic species to invade coral reefs. Now divers, fishermen—and cooks—are fighting back
May 08, 2009 |
By Anika Gupta
Picture of the Week—Irish Moss
The National Science Foundation and the journal Science are now soliciting entries in their seventh International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (deadline for entries is September 15). There are five categories (photographs, illustrations, informational graphics, interactive medi...
May 01, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Avenging Narwhal Play Set
My colleague Abigail Tucker, who wrote a story on narwhal biologist Kristin Laidre, “In Search of the Mysterious Narwhal” for the May issue of Smithsonian, just got the most hilarious gift—The Avenging Narwhal Play Set.The set is complete with a plastic narwhal; four interchangeable tusks, each wit...
April 30, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Connected Even on a Ship in the Arctic
Not that long ago, going on a research cruise would have meant being out of contact with the world for weeks, maybe months, at a time. Today, though, satellite connections mean that you can easily keep up with the world—and the world can keep up with you—even on a remote ship in the Arctic.The iceb...
April 28, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week—Pygmy Seahorse
The pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti) evolved its knobby body and rosy color to blend in with gorgonians (sea fans) of the genus Muricella, where the seahorse makes its home among the coral reefs of the Western Pacific. These fish are so tiny (only two centimeters in height) and so well camou...
April 17, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Vote for NASA’s Greatest Achievement in Earth Observation
Astronauts might get the most public attention, but some of NASA’s most important achievements have come from the satellites that have orbited the earth over the past 50 years. Now, in preparation for Earth Day in two weeks, NASA is asking the public to vote for which earth observation achievement ...
April 15, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Environmental Film Festival Review: Who Killed Crassostrea Virginica?
A mass grave lies on the seafloor of the Chesapeake Bay. What was once a living reef of oysters is now hundreds of thousands of shelled caskets, battered by sediment and tides.It’s been nearly 30 years since the collapse of the Chesapeake Bay oyster fishery, once a main source of commerce for commu...
March 25, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Underwater Volcano Erupts Near Tonga
There are several reports today that an underwater volcano near Tonga has been erupting for days. The pictures, admittedly, are spectacular. But this isn’t rare.There are dozens of volcanoes around Tonga. The last one known to have erupted was Home Reef in August 2006. Only passengers on a yacht sa...
March 19, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Review: The State of the Planet's Oceans
On Friday I saw The State of the Planet's Oceans as part of the Environmental Film Festival. This one-hour film is the 11th part of the PBS series Journey to Planet Earth.It starts off in the Portuguese town of Aveiro, which for centuries thrived by sending its men to the waters off Newfoundland to...
March 16, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Too Many Choices at the Environmental Film Festival
The Environmental Film Festival kicks off tomorrow here in Washington, D.C., and I’ve been trying to figure out which movies I should take in. With 130 films being shown over the next week and a half, most of them free, I’m overwhelmed. I’ve narrowed my choices down to 14, but I need some help. Are...
March 10, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week—Giant Kelp
Back in the day, when I was studying ecology as an undergrad, I learned about the giant kelp forests off the coast of California because they are home to a keystone species, the ever adorable sea otter. The sea otters like to feast on sea urchins. But when there aren’t enough of the cute little mar...
February 20, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Welcome to the Obama Administration’s Scientist Appointees
Last month, then president-elect Obama devoted one of his weekly addresses to science:Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake ou...
January 20, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Three New Marine Monuments in the Pacific
Last year, as we prepared our feature story Victory at Sea, about the world’s largest marine protected area, we were a bit nervous about calling the Phoenix Islands Protected Area the world’s largest. We had heard that the Bush Administration was planning to create new marine monuments in the Pacif...
January 07, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week—Great Barrier Reef
When I visited friends in Australia earlier this year, I made visiting the Great Barrier Reef a priority. When asked why, I responded: “I want to see it before it’s gone.” People thought I was joking.I wasn’t.Pollution, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, coral bleaching. One prediciton f...
January 02, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Eight Great Science Stories From the Magazine in 2008
The week before the new year is a time for reflection, right? And so I though I would share my favorite stories from the magazine. Through Smithsonian, we visited some strange creatures -- cassowaries, hyenas -- and some familiar ones, like giraffes. We traveled to one of the most remote and beauti...
December 29, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Missing: Arctic Rubber Duckies
Missing: 90 yellow rubber duckies dropped into a moulin (a tubular hole) in a melting Greenland glacier approximately three months ago.Identifying features: They have “science experiment,” “reward” and the email address of project scientist Alberto Behar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory written ...
December 23, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week – Is that Lettuce?
No, this isn’t a piece of lettuce (but that was a nice guess from our food blogger, Amanda). This is a sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, and it looks like a leaf because it has acquired chloroplasts from its algal prey and stored them in its gut lining. If you or I ate those algae, the chloroplasts woul...
November 28, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
