Underwater Hunter – Beast Mode

This video from the Human Planet series gives a whole new meaning to fishing, spear fishing, heck even hunting. This guy dives to 30 feet of water, on a single breath, and walks along the reef in search of his prey. It’s an absolutely mystifying feat.

Lost Containers Find New Life

I’ll bet you didn’t know that 10,000 shipping containers are lost every year. That’s more than one an hour and an estimated 6 million lost worldwide! But what happens to this containers? Turns out not many people even bother looking, but the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBARI) sent a robotic sub to investigate a shipping container it lost over 7 years ago. Turns out they found it, and they also found something spectacular.

The shipping container has become a sort of reef half buried in the ocean floor and hosting a variety of aquatic life. MBARI plans to continue investigating other drowned containers, using the $3.25 million dollars it won in a suit against the cargo ship that lost the container originally, and hopes to learn more about the possible ecological danger of the lost containers.

Singularity Hub via BBC

Video after the break!

Continue reading “Lost Containers Find New Life”…

Spooky Spookfish Has Mirror Eyes

The aptly named “spookfish” is pretty darn spooky! The species has been known for 120 years, but no live specimen has ever been captured. That is until last year when this little guy was caught off Tonga, and island south east of Fiji, by German scientists. The two black spots you see are actually a pair fo mirrors that focus the light below into it’s and is the first species known to have such biology. The spookfish uses these mirrors to see below itself, mostly for the flashes of bioluminescent species and possible predators.

“In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes – how to make an image – using a mirror,”

BBC News

I’m Old Gregg

Its rare that I’m introduced to a new TV show that really makes me laugh. Its even more rare to be introduced to an old show that really makes me laugh. Enter The Mighty Boosh, a show that originally aired from 2004-2007 on BBC Three. I watched it for the first time last night and was in hysterics. Its really unlike any other show I’ve seen, although it does feel a little bit like the Flight of the Concords at times. Here just a little taste of the sheer insanity of the show.

Potentially not safe for work!

BBC’s Life

“From the award-winning BBC Natural History Unit, makers of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, this is the original UK broadcast version of Life, with narration by renowned naturalist David Attenborough and music by Oscar® and Emmy® winning composer George Fenton In Planet Earth, we brought you the world as you’ve never seen it before. Now, get closer with Life. Four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days, across every continent and in every habitat, with breathtaking new high definition filming techniques developed since Planet Earth, Life presents 130 incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world, 54 of which have never been filmed before. Packed with excitement, revelation and entertainment, this remarkable 10-part blockbuster captures unprecedented, astonishingly beautiful sequences and demonstrates the spectacular and extraordinary tactics animals and plants have developed to survive and thrive.”

I cant wait for this release, slated for June 1st on a Blu-Ray 4 disc set. David Attenborough is the narrator for the UK release, and in a mind boggling decision from the BBC, Oprah for the American release. Now, I have no issue with Oprah, but Attenborough is the best of the best – I for one will be willing to pay the extra cash to get a hold of the the UK release.

Oarfish Filmed in Natural Habitat

This is the first video evidence I have ever seen of a live Oarfish swimming in its natural habitat. They truly are remarkable creatures and one can certainly imagine that these are one of the possible explanations for sea serpent stories. One of the strange things is that the fish’s body does not move in a serpentine motion, but instead the very thing and elongated dorsal fin dances back and forth in a fluid wave propelling the fish forward.

Using a remotely operated vehicle, they caught a rare glimpse of the huge oarfish, perhaps the first sighting of the fish in its natural setting.

The oarfish, which can reach 17m long, has previously only been seen on a few occasions dying at the sea surface, or dead washed ashore.

Their strange appearance may have provided the basis for the sea serpent myths told by early ocean travellers.
Not only are they elongated, they also have a prominent dorsal fin which gives it an unusual “serpent” appearance.
Recalling the event Professor Benfield explained how at first, they thought the fish was simply a drilling pipe called a riser being lowered into the water.

“We saw this bright vertical shiny thing, I said ‘are they lowering more riser?’ as it looked like they were lowering a huge pipe.”

“We zoomed in a little bit and we said ‘that’s not a riser that’s a fish!’”

On another ROV survey in the Gulf of Mexico, the team came across the deep sea manefish (Paracaristius sp.).

This observation enabled the scientists to get a rare insight into the behaviour of the fish in its natural environment.

That gave them a further understanding of how it lives and what it looks like.
“When you see manefish collected in trawls they are incredibly beat up, they don’t look like much of a fish at all,” said Professor Benfield.

“So to actually see this fish in its natural habitat with its fins beautifully splayed out almost as a parachute, we get an idea that it’s a really good swimmer.”

Manefish are thought to steal food from or feed on a jellyfish-like animal called a siphonophore.
This may explain why the fish needs to swim so accurately.

“This fish has very precise control over its orientation and position, so if you are in very close proximity to an animal with tentacles that could potentially damage you, you want to able to really precisely control your locomotion.”

via BBC News