Archive for category Don’t Go In the Water
Step 1: Toss Brian in. Step 2: Get the {bleep} out of there. Why I don’t go in the water…
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water on Monday, May 23, 2011
What wouldn’t be cool is to still be in said dinky boat when a 14-foot shark comes along and eats the first one, nearly swamping the S.S. Dinky in the process.
What is even less cool–like heat death of the universe cool–would be one of my companions actively chumming the water. Said companion would get a nudge shark-ward, giving me time to get the engine going.
Pardon the cussing. Its not my video, but it is my nightmare.
Why I don’t go into the water: Stealth Orcas
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science/Geek on Thursday, March 3, 2011
Killer whales Orcas are one of my daughter’s many, many favorite animals. In fact, I don’t use “killer whales” anymore thanks to her goading.
Still, let’s not fool ourselves, they are apex predators and you, all fat and stuffed into a wet suit, are pretty much just an oddly rubber-tasting seal moments away from a bloodly, wet devourment*.
The researchers thought the predators might switch to very high frequency whistles to co-ordinate the hunt.
But the orcas actually go completely silent and are somehow still able to form organised hunting groups.They used hydrophones – underwater microphones – to listen to and record orcas communicating with each other. The team could even hear crunching sounds when the animals were eating their prey.
Go ahead and listen at the article. Pretty awesome, actually.
File this under Things I Didn’t Know (and germane to the article’s point), but scientists believe that there may be two sub-species of orca. One “resident” species that primarily eat fish and a “transient” species that favor seal meat…mmmm…
Resident orcas hunt for salmon using echolocation. The orcas click, producing waves of sound that travel through the water and bounce off the fish, allowing the predator to sense its location.
“But all marine mammals have excellent underwater hearing,” explained Dr Deecke.
“If if a killer whale swam along clicking like mad, all the seals and porpoises would think – here comes a predators, let’s get away.”
But the transient orcas’ solution surprised the researchers.
“They go into stealth mode – completely silent,” said Dr Deecke. “This raises the question: how are they communicating?”
It seems that orcas can carry out complex, co-ordinated mammal-hunting trips without “talking to each other” at all.
That’s pretty sweet…but I’m still not going in the water with them
(Lastly, kudos for the BBC for linking to the source publication.)
*Turns out Devourment is a death metal band from Texas. No word on whether they sing about orcas.
Why I don’t go in the water: Crab Kong
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water on Friday, February 25, 2011
Disappointingly, the article press release doesn’t tell us what species of giant icky monster this, but the Japanese variety can weigh upward of 19kg, which would be truly worth of a kaiju-riffic name like Crabzilla or Crab Kong. I think it is also why Gamera isn’t as popular a kaiju as Godzilla. You can’t add -amera to something and conjure up something giant and menacing.
Regardless, it is reason enough not to go into the water.
Why I don’t go into the water: Jellyfish with both “medusa” and “gigantica” in their Latin names should be avoided on principle
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science Fandom, Science/Geek on Friday, December 10, 2010
But looking up info on oarfish, I came across Mark Benfield‘s work at Louisiana State University. He’s working with oil and gas industry ROVs — submersible robots — to study wildlife. Hey, its the least the industry could do. No, seriously, the very least.
Last spring, Benfield published the first account of Stygiomedusa gigantea, a giant jellyfish, in the Gulf of Mexico. They aren’t trawler-eating big, but they are still fairly huge. They are apparently fond of grabbing onto underwater structures — such as pipelines or oil rigs — to use as a base for feeding. See, the oil industry is providing a valuable service!
Discover Magazine interviewed Benfield last month. Cool, shudder-inducing vid:
Why I don’t go in the water: the Oarfish of the ocean depths
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science Fandom, Science/Geek on Friday, December 10, 2010
The awesomely named Serpent Project — a painfully labored acronym “Scientific and Environmental ROV Partnership using Existing iNdustrial Technology” lets scientists use ROVs run by oil and gas companies in the gulf. The fossil fuel industry in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t quite have the best spring and summer, evah!, so it is understandable that this didn’t get much press. Also, its about a long, disgusting fish monster.
Still, someone took Dr. Mark’s video and set it to Holst’s Neptune the Mystic, which is as appropriate as it is satisfying.
These guys can grow up to 56 feet long, which is frighteningly impressive.
Also, Dr. Mark also captured footage of a ginormous pulsating jellyfish that ought to put the fear of Cthulhu into you, if nothing else does. Next post.
Don’t go on the beach: Malibu Oarfish
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water on Friday, December 3, 2010
Kid, don't poke the oarfish.
Its the latest accessory for your Malibu Barbie, a dead 12-foot fish. Pretty fins though.
Still, much better than having one of these guys brush between your legs while you’re in the water.
On Australia
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Dumb thoughts, General stuff on Thursday, December 2, 2010
“Things in Australia that can kill you.”
In close second is “Things in Austalia that will kill you.”
Why I don’t go in the water: More on Squidworm
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science Fandom, Science/Geek on Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Who lives in your nightmares under the sea? SQUIDWORM WIGGLYPANTS!
Ugh. All wiggly and covered in its nasty little appendages. That’s not a proper worm, its the embodiment of an entry mid-way through the “S” section of the Lovecraftian bestiary. Of course, its only about 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) long, but it has, like, 10 of these little arms.
Squidworm was discovered 2,800 meters (about 9200 feet) beneath the Indian Ocean, thanks to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute for Finding Tiny Awful Things (EDIT: I mentioned this earlier), who found it using one of their handy submersibles. Which one? the MSNBC article I linked from doesn’t say. Bad MSNBC.
Moreover, the MSNBC folks categorize this as a missing link, which gets my hackles up some. Not only does “missing link” rank along with “holy grail” as my least favorite science cliche, it isn’t a missing link. Missing link implies transitional fossil. This is real, this is now. To what are we proposing squidworm as link between, Greg asks in a spit-flecked bit of poorly structured sentence? A worm and squid? Annelida and Mollusca? (Same thing, just getting fancy.) Can’t blame MSNBC too much, of course, as they were quoting a researcher who was looking for a way to say that these critters represent a branch of the evolutionary tree (ugh, talk about bad science cliche) where worms could move between the mud and the sea above — in that bit of the deep water known as the benthic (great word) zone.
Fortunately, you can read the scientific article in Biology Letters (if you happen to have access) which states that they used the awesomely-named Max Rover, Global Explorer, which sounds more like a PBS Kids series about a globe-trotting canine than a deep sea submersible. Max Rover isn’t part of Woods Hole, but apparently a system run by a company called Deep Sea Systems, presumably a WHOI-related contractor or something.
The Biology Letters article muses on how squidworm has managed to evade detection:
The relative inaccessibility of the deep sea has left most of its vast spaces unexplored, so discovery of new species is seldom surprising. The unusual morphology, large size, numerous observations (16 within seven dives), behaviour and phylogenetic position of T. samae are however a surprise. How could such an animal evade collection until now? We believe that the immense volume of deep, pelagic habitat, the difficulty of sampling deep demersal communities and T. samae’s ability to swim away from towed observational or sampling gear probably all contributed to its long seclusion.
The lead researcher on the project author on the study, Karen Osborn of UC, San Diego/Scripps Oceanographic Institute, previously published the discovery of a species of ocean worm that used bioluminescent bombs to evade predators. Squidworms, bomber worms…what hath Karen wrought open mankind with her insatiable thirst for the damnable horrors of annelida?
On yet another tangent, Karen’s lab website is found at spineless.ucsd.edu/ — Spineless! How freakin’ precious is that?
Update: I switched lead researcher to lead author, because I honestly don’t know if Karen was the lead on the overall project, but she was certainly the lead author on the paper.
Why I don’t go in the water: Death Tuna
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water on Monday, October 25, 2010
…scuba diver Ramir Te, who was on a diving expedition, was 80 feet below the surface when he was pulled down by a giant tuna fish at the waters off Kiamba afternoon of Sunday.
Oooh, sorry Charlie. Hope he didn’t get lead poisoning along with the bends. 
Its generally good thing that cows and tuna don’t chat. Better yet, maybe we ought to take the warning and just cut back on tuna consumption.
Why I don’t go in the water: Needlefish Attack!
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science/Geek on Tuesday, October 19, 2010
He probably uses this fish to kill other, bigger fish.
The fish’s long, pointed snout punctured Larson’s back and collapsed a lung, said Bobby Dube, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Larson, 46 of Cudjoe Key, was rescued at sea Sunday evening by two volunteer firefighters and a paramedic who rushed her to Dolphin Marina.
“She was scared. We were all scared,” said volunteer firefighter Kevin Freestone, who used two of his towboat company’s boats to respond. “She was in a very bad way. She was in a lot of pain and her breathing was weak.”
A waiting helicopter airlifted Larson nearly 100 miles to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. She was in serious but stable condition in the intensive care unit on Monday, a hospital spokesman said.
Oh, but this isn’t the first recorded attack by flying fishspears, why check out these assuredly true tales:
In 2000, a 17-year-old girl was snorkeling off Big Pine Key when she was struck by a jumping houndfish. Its bill broke off in her neck, just missing her carotid artery. She lived to tell about the tale after emergency surgery at Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon.
Another incident involving a houndfish and human occurred more than a decade ago in the Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles west of Key West.
A graduate student was diving at night for a project and the light of a glow stick tied to the top of his air tank apparently attracted the fish, which slammed into the side of his head. The graduate student lived.
A fisherman in Malaysia was not so lucky in 1999. He was killed when a houndfish stabbed him through the lung.
I like kayaking, despite my fear of that which nibbles beneath the sea. Next time, I think I’ll wear a flack jacket underneath the life vest. Still, I can’t wait until SyFy makes this into a movie, like Megapirahna, only no amount of bicycle kicking will save your ass: