- Election of ISA Secretary-General mired by accusations of bribery and corruption
- International Seabed Authority gears up for a leadership challenge at the July meeting.
- No, the ship didn’t steer towards the pylon: A brief fact check on the MV Dali collision with Baltimore’s Key Bridge
- New Deep-sea Mining Bill Introduced in Congress
- NOAA confirms North Atlantic Right Whale killed by commercial lobster gear
- Norway moves one step closer to deep-sea mining
In 1971, a group of people known as the Tasaday were discovered on a remote island of the Phillipines known as Mindanao. They wore leafy loincloths and subsisted off what the forest could provide, possessing no knowledge of tobacco, corn, rice, or domesticated animals. They spoke a new dialect of Malay-Philipino language that included no word for outsiders, war, weapon, or enemy, giving them the title ‘The Gentle Tasaday’. The family unit was nuclear and the community has no formal organization or government outside of some loose food-sharing networks.
Today, Tasaday life is way different and matches more modern tribal life in the Phillipines, as documented on their website. The question is, however, whether this modernization was normal development post-contact or whether there was a hoax involved.
Georg Wilhelm Steller was a highly influential 18th century German naturalist who explored the coasts of Russia and Alaska. During his career, he described many species, including the northern fur seal, sea otter, Steller’s sea lion, Steller’s eider, spectacled cormorant, and the now extinct giant Steller’s sea cow. In addition to his many observed findings, he also described a fat, hairy creature with a dog-like head that he termed Simia marina, the sea ape.
Read More “Our favorite sea monsters – Steller’s Sea Ape (#7)” »
Charlie dons his beret and Julbo mountain goggles as he gets ready to bust some ocean myths
Chapter 6 of the classic Moby Dick by Herman Melville, summarized in verse. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments. The Street Walking the streets of New Bedford, Ishmael stumbles among the vast sea of seamen, harpooners traveling across the world to hunt the giant, … Read More “Finding Melville’s Whale: Chapter 6 – The Street” »
Pseudoscience. The world is full of it. From acupuncture to cryptozoology to ghosts and homeopathy, sometimes it’s harmless and sometimes it’s not. The major trend that runs through all pseudoscience is that the anecdote trumps data. So what if the data indicate that Bigfoot ain’t real, I saw one! It must be true! The ocean … Read More “It’s an Ocean of Pseudoscience Week!” »
Chapter 5 of the classic Moby Dick by Herman Melville, summarized in verse. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments. Breakfast In good spirits Ishmael seeks his breakfast. The bar room filled with whalers, tired from their night ashore, cheerful and bountiful. Shore-leave echoes in … Read More “Finding Melville’s Whale: Chapter 5 – Breakfast” »
Hmm, I wonder why Charlie is reading that book…
Now he’s cracking into my undergrad logic textbooks. Charlie must be planning something big if he’s warming up his critical thinking lobe.
One of the first things I did when I woke up this morning was to check CNN’s website to make sure that the Outer Banks were still there. I was pleased to discover that everyone is ok, but something else on the homepage surprised me. CNN has been experimenting with ways to make their site … Read More “CNN.com FAIL: How many readers?” »