Monday, July 15, 2013

Crocodile tears


Credit to Rad for the inspiration, one of the few environmental pollution papers I remember from chem. oce.

Google chow: The real reason behind crocodile tears, tiny penises

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Nudi got branch

I like big branch and I cannot lie
 You other brothers can't deny
When a nudi walks in with a itty bitt waist
And a branchial plume in your face

 You get sprung

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Hot tubbin' herps - what's it got to do with biodiversity?

There's a well known allegory that states that if a frog is dropped in boiling water, jumps out immediately and avoids a brothy grave; yet a frog placed in cold water that is heated slowly enough you'll have some tender (tasty?) froggy sous vide.

Recent research suggests that if the temperature of that pot (or the world as a whole, you guys following me?) increases slowly enough the increasing temperature could actually lead to increased biodiversity. Little froggy might evolve a physiology better adapted to warmer temperatures.

Maybe frogs would evolve something similar to sweat glands or dragon wings (because that would be sweet... and there would be increased surface area for heat radiation, of course).

Somewhat related: did you all hear about the frog with the transparent belly?

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Some lesser known plankter species.

Everyone's heard of coccolithophores, pteropods and euphausids. Old news. Here are some lesser known species floating around in our oceans.

Nurdles for turtles

Japanese dock washes ashore in Oregon

29K rubber duckies' oceanographic odyssey

Funny story behind the pelagic spaghetti worm:

During my semester in Bermuda, my class went on a blue-water dive armed with BCD pockets full of Ziplocks to collect plankton as they drifted by. One of the divers in my class collected this very strange worm.  Upon closer inspection, the worm turned out to be a planktonic piece of spaghetti.  The rolling swells of the deep water had apparently caused one of the students on the boat to lose his lunch.