“The moment the lid was off, we reached for each other. She had already oozed from the far corner of her lair, where she had been hiding, to the top of the tank to investigate her visitor. Her eight arms boiled up, twisting, slippery, to meet mine. I plunged both my arms elbow deep into the fifty-seven-degree water. Athena’s melon-sized head bobbed to the surface. Her left eye (octopuses have one dominant eye like humans have a dominant hand) swiveled in its socket to meet mine. “She’s looking at you,” Dowd said.”

/via the 8-legged Justin Blanton.

Neat app from Microsoft. Photosynth.

A sailing school vessel thirty miles off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

That being said… I do think you’re a little crazy. Nerves of steel.

(Watch in HD by clicking on HD on the player.)

We all had a great time and ended up coming home with about 40lbs. of cod fish filet each (there were 6 of us). I’m sure I can speak for the entire group and recommend Ann Rowe Charters (our photo is on their site too) to anyone that wants to have a great day at sea.

(Taken with a SeaLife SL320/SL32.)

(Taken with a SeaLife SL320/SL32.)

/via John Gruber (who called it “Spooky”.)

Lady Chancery trolls by our “secret” cove where Andrew and I did some snorkeling. Today we had planned to head out either Sand Dollar Island or Shackleford Banks to do some snorkeling, shell finding, or seeing if we could locate some wild horses.

Instead we ended up snorkeling off of Radio Island. When we arrived to Beaufort, North Carolina to hit a ferry ride to one of the islands, Captain Don let us know that the tide was in and that visibility would be extremely low. He did mention that there would be 3ft. black tip sharks – and that made Andrew and I want to go more – but he said we wouldn’t be able to see them in the water.

You see, North Carolina just recently got an incredible amount of rain due to Tropical Storm Kyle. All of that rain washes out the marshes and stirs up silt from the rivers that feed into the ocean. All of this extra sediment and junk floating in the water made it pretty murky.

Captain Don then told us of a free, safe spot to do a little snorkeling. It was off of Radio Island, beyond a Yacht Club. So that is where we went and ended up saving $60 and having a pretty good time to boot.

We managed to sneak a peak of quite a few fishes, crabs, and snails in their multi-colored shells. A great time. Looking forward to trying to find more of these little-known areas on the Crystal Coast.

Weather has been good so far. Nearly empty beach. Perfect.

A sea lion?

Yesterday I saw my friend Daniel Nicolas twitter; “there was a seal at the beach! yes i got pictures”.  I knew once he published the photos I was going to link to them.

But then I got to thinking – did he really mean seal or did he mean sea lion?

Once he had the photos up I began doing a little digging to jog my memory about the differences between a seal and a sea lion, both of which are Pinnipeds, or “fin-footed mammals”.  It is a pretty simple classification really.  If you have a fin as a foot, you give birth to live young, feed your young with milk, are warm blooded, and have hair on your body – you’re a Pinniped.  However, the main difference between a sea lion and a seal is that sea lions have ears and can walk on all fours.

But, you might be saying, but so can fur seals.  This is where things start to get a little muddy.  The number of species of seal are actually quite numerous.  California sea lions, for example, are the most common species used in circuses and the like, but there are suborders of both seal and sea lion ranging in the hundreds.  Australian, Japanese, Galapagos, and Stellar are just a few suborders of sea lion.  New Zealand, Antarctic, Subantarctic, Northern Fur, and Cape Fur are just a few suborders of seals.

So what did Danny shoot?  I’m sticking with sea lion – partially because of my close examination of the photos, and partially because I know that Danny is from somewhere near San Diego.

What do you think it is?

Source: Flickr: Photo uploads from May 20, 2008 by djloche.

 

A “Sea Pig”.

Who hasn’t always wanted to be a marine biologist? Earth’s oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers are by far the largest untapped and ill-explored territory – which is what makes discoveries like the ones mention by this National Geographic article possible.

“This sea cucumber—held by Sadie Mills of New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research—is known as a sea pig.” … “Sea cucumbers are part of a group of marine animals that inhabit the seafloor, including sea squirts, sea stars (starfish), sea slugs, corals, clams, sponges, and urchins.”

The team from NIWA of NZ (no idea if that is the correct acronym) collected around “30,000 animals, during a marine census of southern Antarctica in early 2008″, many of them considered brand new undiscovered species.

Source: National Geographic News Photo Gallery: Giant, Unknown Animals Found off Antarctica
Via: Boing Boing

Date taken: September 26, 2007 | Set it and forget it.