Time at Sea

Hi I am back, in a darker mood, after having circled this buoy for quite some time waiting for the weather front to change. In the meanwhile, Rafe was in charge of this site and he is rather, well, I hate to say it, silly. I was able to send him a message about the sonnet, because I feel that my time is limited and I have to get on with the work that I was tasked to do by my salp nation, which is to ask, why is it so warm? and, Make it stop, please.

"On a more positive note, it has been discovered that krill have a life span of several years as opposed to one, like the salp."
- Ecology of the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, C. Mattison.

Sonnet for the End of the World

He is out of heart with his Time.
If any man would know the very cause
Which makes me to forget my speech in rhyme,
All the sweet songs I sang in other time,—
I'll tell it in a sonnet's simple clause.
I hourly have beheld how good withdraws
To nothing, and how evil mounts the while:
Until my heart is gnaw'd as with a file,
Nor aught of this world's worth is what it was.
At last there is no other remedy
But to behold the universal end;
And so upon this hope my thoughts are urged:
To whom, since truth is sunk and dead at sea,
There has no other part or prayer remain'd,
Except of seeing the world's self submerged.
- Guerzo di Montecanti, c. 1220, trans. D.G. Rossetti, 1848.

My Home Town

Rafe a.k.a. "Nacho"

Here is a self-portrait by Rafe, a giant called "a dog" from Mexico. He is my pal. I was looking around when I first came in, a little dazzled by the sunlight and wind, two things I did not really know about, and this Warm Thing Licked me. Licked. Me. What is that? Anyway once the shouting was over (which is very stressful for me, because I believe in ahimsa, or non-violence in thought, word and deed), and I was able to roll my eye around there to get a look at him (so HUGE! So Hairy! SUCH bad breath!) this is what he told me he was, and his name was Rafe, but the Two-Legs he lives with call him "Nacho." He tried to take a picture of himself with the cell phone but it did not work very well, and then he dropped it, and went away to look at a crab, and the sea took the cell phone away. It probably committed suicide on account of the bad breath. Well, sorry, that's mean. Oh well. Anyway, Rafe helps me make posts when Lincoln and Kimberly are down in the restaurant, whatever that means. He never takes the time to explain these things to me. Oh! Got to go! The tide waits for no salp!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chihuahua_(dog)

70 m Down

Help, these little salps are caught on a camera line! Halp! Halp!

Ocean Counts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061211092709.htm

Nice photo of a baby squid. Why are babies always so cute? Also, statistics galore. As William James said, it's always good to have MORE.

Fast Sinking Carbon Bombs

I am at sea now, so I send this, heard through an ocean-going science expedition's hull:

Giant Balls of 'Snot' Explain Ocean Mystery
By Bjorn CareyLiveScience Staffposted: 10 June 200506:22 am ET

Scientists have discovered giant sinking mucus "houses" that double the amount of food on the sea floor.The mucus houses, or "sinkers," are produced by tadpole-like animals not much bigger than your index finger. As sinkers drop to the sea floor, small sea critters and other food particles get stuck to the mucus and end up on the bottom of the ocean.

For years scientists have observed loads of life at the bottom of the ocean. But they weren’t able to find enough food – carbon – to support all that life. Sinkers, previously overlooked, may help fill that gap."We have 10 years of data on sinkers, and using average figures from those years, we can account for twice as much carbon than sediment traps can measure below 1,000 meters," Rob Sherlock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute told LiveScience.
The animals responsible for making sinkers are called giant larvaceans. They spin a mucus web, about a yard in diameter. They sit in the middle of the house and use it to filter food that is small enough for them to eat. "Larger particles get stuck to the outside of these filters, and after some amount of time the filters get plugged and the animal moves out," Sherlock said. "The house deflates and begins to sink, picking up more particles. It’s a fast-sinking carbon bomb."


"A sinker is basically snot," Sherlock said. "It’s very fragile. We have very skilled ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) pilots and special containers to collect these things. We were only able to adequately collect one out of four." They’re so fragile that sometimes just touching one causes it to rapidly break apart. "We just don’t have a tank that’s been designed well enough to observe the process," Sherlock said. "We do know that they build very rapidly for a short while, and they probably go through about one house a day.

Velella Velella: The Stinking Phoenicians

http://flickr.com/photos/51035571242@N01/551144

See it's about these guys, who came in with me. I was among them on the beach - in a blue line - and the seagulls were eating them like candy. I asked them, "who are you?" and they answered in one voice, "PHOENICIANS PHOENICIANS PHOENICIANS PHOENICIANS" well you get my drift. They told me that LAST year there were many more of them and they made a stinking wall three metres deep and 25 cm thick along the high tide line that lasted for weeks, "STINKING STINKING STINKING STINKING STINKING" they said, it was. They can really travel, with that wing thingy on top, although how they navigatge I'll never know. Phoenicians never tell, anyway. This photograph is from last year, just North of here, where I do not plan to go. So these guys have been my companions, and pretty good cover, too, for a small, transparent creature like me, if the sea gulls don't mistakenly eat me as they mow down the Phoenicians. But they are beautiful - see this photo by Phil of one sailing like a Phoenician at:
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/

phil_myers/ADW_misc_inverts/jelly7470.jpg/view.html

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Where I Came In

This is where I came in, I think. And come in again, when I can. On the tide, when it's right. This is where I met Rafe. There are many ravens and seagulls here, too. Also, the Phoenicians. Lots of Phoenicians. Stinking Phoenicians. More on them later.

Salps Together

Salps are sometimes alone. See a picture of a "solitary" salp here: www.divediscover.whoi.edu/expedition10/hottopics/salps-en1.html. (There is also a nice but kind of scarey movie of salps at night in the Video section of that site.) Salps also like to hang out in a group, like in a salp chain like the one in this little movie. The salps are the pink-and-clear guys, the other guy is the solid, dark guy in fins. He is "dave." Salps do not like to give their names, usually, although you can call me Jackie.

You can watch the salps and dave in the movie at http://www.baue.org/videos/dave_salp.html.

Sometimes, we like to have a salp cloud. Clouds are good. Don't know why, don't have a brain. At least, not always, only sometimes. That's why it's so hard to fit the url on the post page. But here is a picture of a salp cloud, anyway. http://www.underwater-photos.com/pw042.html

And then there is the time we like to have guests come and stay for awhile, although this can give you a headache. Look for the photo of a salp with an anthropod (a Phronema) living in it on this nice website with photos of critters like me. I don't know why they have to stay so long, but it's a salp's life anyway. Thanks for the family portrait, Russ. http://www.coml.org/medres/highlights2006/images_hopcroft.htm

Photo of Me in a Jar

It's hard to be in a jar, especially when one doesn't really know if one wants to have an eye, or two, and then there is that tentacle thingy I was working on - not sure where I was going with that, and then, I am transparent and naked, I guess, and cool, when this big pink thing in the air is so . . . warm. I wish they would just put me back, anyway. www.departments.oxy.edu/tops/marinebio/organisms/PH44-45salp.htm

The Salp

The salp is a marine creature.