Posts Tagged why i don’t go in the water
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.
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: even more nasty things ‘neath the sea
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Rant/Rave, Science Fandom, Science/Geek on Monday, October 4, 2010
Still, I’m creeped out.
This critter, below, for example is a squidworm. The forward tentacles are there, I’m sure, to rape your mind.
Apparently, squidward squidworm was identified during a 2007 expedition to the Celebes Sea, near Borneo.
From the expedition’s chief scientist, Larry Madin:
When we got down nearer the bottom with the ROV, we encountered the most unusual and unfamiliar animal of all. When we first spotted it, people watching the video called out “squid,” “no, shrimp,” “maybe a fish,” “I think it’s a worm.” It did turn out to be a worm, but like nothing we had ever seen before. A worm almost 10 centimeters long, swimming with a row of paddles formed from stiff bristles, and with 10 long, writhing tentacles coming out of its head. No wonder we thought it could be a squid! We did end up calling it the “squidworm.” We think it may be an undescribed species, but none of us are experts on polychaete worms, so we’ll have to wait until a real specialist can tell us more about it.
Why I don’t go in the water: Sea Pigs
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science/Geek on Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Ick.
Don’t Go In the Water: Soul-crushing horror edition
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Science/Geek on Friday, September 3, 2010
Either way, it is quite conceivable that you’d go mad looking at it. (Some Japanese Dude via Japanator via I09)
It is, of course, Gadzookie’s cock some kind of anemone, all gnarled up after being pulled out of the water. The locals call it a “dickswim”…’nuff said.
By the way, you can read “The Whisperer in Darkness” here.
Oh, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (ye who made that excellent Call of Cthulhu silent film) are adapting this one too.
(link in case embed doesn’t work…)
Like Call of Cthulhu, it seems to shows its amateur roots, but I don’t expect to mind much. Whereas CoC went with a classic silent film look, here they’re trying for a little noir. Nifty. Lovecraft has been tough to adapt, at least for Hollywood. These low-budget efforts know their audience. I hope they do “Shadow Over Innsmouth” next.
Why I don’t go in the water, especially during the Late Miocene
Posted by Grg in Don't Go In the Water, Grg's Reference, Science/Geek on Monday, May 17, 2010
The baby teeth are still nothing to sneeze at
But this isn’t that story. No, this is a story about how these gigantic predatory, be-toothed demon creatures loved their babies.
Yes, gentle reader, scientists publishing in the Public Library of Science describe the discovery of Megalodon nurseries (awww!) where hatchling sharks were protected by their enormous mothers until they themselves were big enough to swallow an entire Grateful Dead cover band in one go (including their van, most likely). How sweet.
(via Everyone PLoS ONE’s community blog)