Google Earth lets you dive into the Gulf of Mexico and explore the Smithsonian's marine collections first-hand.
Publish by: Maggy Hunter Benson - May 4, 2011
When he was 10 years old, Stephen Cairns lived in Cuba where he kept a collection of butterflies and sea shells. When his family moved to Louisiana, he could bring only one of the collections with him. He chose the shells. He says that is when he knew he was going to be a marine biologist. Today, Dr. Cairns is a research zoologist and chair of the Invertebrate Zoology Department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Recently Dr. Cairns and other scientists teamed up with the Ocean Portal to showcase examples from the marine collections on the “Explore the...
Plastic trash floats in the waters off the Smithsonian's Carrie Bow Cay field station, in Belize.
CREDIT:
Laurie Penland
Publish by: LauriePenland - Apr 26, 2011
It blew in for two solid days: a flotilla of plastic forks, soda bottles, rubber gloves, and other refuse. I tried to pick everything up off the beach, but when I turned around, you couldn’t tell that I had cleaned at all. When we went out in the boats, we had to go slowly in order to dodge the debris. Eventually the tide came in and swooped it all away. I was at the Smithsonian Marine Research Station on Carrie Bow , a small island on the southern end of Belize. My colleagues and I discussed where the garbage could be coming from. This area is very remote and the trash was blowing in from...
Looking for more Earth Day ideas? Visit the EPA’s “Pick Five for the Environment” website.
Publish by: Maggy Hunter Benson - Apr 21, 2011
For more than 40 years, Earth Day has been a day to get your hands dirty—or wet! No act of green or blue is too small. Whether you choose to plant a tree or pledge to use less water, small collective acts add up. They also help raise awareness and inspire protection of the Earth and its ocean. It is no surprise that some of the students who gathered at the Smithsonian in February 2011 for the Third Student Summit on the Ocean and Coasts are planning actions for Earth Day, held annually every April 22. This week I caught up with a couple of the groups to find out how they’re marking the day...
Tags: Earth Day, Student Summit
These corals are still in recovery after a mass bleaching in Panama, in the summer of 2010. You can see some bleaching on the tops, but the sides are looking good.
CREDIT:
Amanda Feuerstein
Publish by: Nancy Knowlton - Apr 18, 2011
Last September, the Citizens of the Sea blog series brought you a story of doom and gloom from the reefs of Bocas del Toro, Panama. That is the time of year we typically study -- and celebrate -- the annual birth of baby corals in the area. We arrived to find very hot water (2010 turned out to be the hottest year on record), and in the shallows the reefs had turned a ghostly white. This was the most extreme coral bleaching we had ever seen since we started our studies there in 1998. We worried that many of the bleached corals would die. Unsure of what would happen, we returned last month to...
Tags: Coral bleaching, Corals
Boats trying to control the fire on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 21, 2010.
CREDIT:
U.S. Coast Guard
Publish by: Tina Tennessen - Apr 12, 2011
With the nuclear and humanitarian crisis in Japan, major political changes in North Africa and the Middle East, and heated budget battles here in the United States, you'd be forgiven for not remembering that nearly one year ago the Gulf of Mexico was dominating the news. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 people and opening up a well that pumped nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean. It was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. One year later, where do things stand? Join us next week as we seek answers from a panel of experts in a Live Webcast on...
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Your poem for the ocean is what we wish. Conjure your inner Dr. Seuss or Walt Whitman.
CREDIT:
Louiz Rocha
Publish by: Tina Tennessen - Apr 6, 2011
April is National Poetry Month here in the United States. We'd like you to help us celebrate by penning a poem in the comment field below or on our Facebook page . Not the next Walt Whitman? Fear not. The only rule is that you must invoke our favorite muse: the ocean. Whether you praise saltwater waves, ponder Arctic jelly fish , or pretend to be the baleen in a whale's mouth , WE WANT YOUR POEMS. Please take a few seconds, minutes, or hours and submit your odes to the big blue. We'll post some of our favorites (good and bad) on our blog at the end of the month. Want a bit more structure? Try...
Tags: Ocean art
The North Carolina Aquarium delegation visited Baldhead Island, a barrier island near Wilmington, N.C., to observe and learn about the effects sea-level rise firsthand for their Student Summit project.
Publish by: Maggy Hunter Benson - Apr 4, 2011
Over the past year I have been working for an organization called Coastal America helping to plan the Third National Student Summit on the Ocean and Coasts , a program that teams up high school students with educators to work on an ocean-related research project and “action plan” in their community. In February, the program brought 80 students and 40 educators from schools and aquariums across the United States and Mexico to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to present their plans for projects that involve the ocean and climate. The student presentations were webcast live...
Tags: Education, Student Summit
This Chesapeake Bay shoreline may look picturesque, but the plant that dominates it is an invasive strain of Phragmites australis. The plant has invaded wetlands along the East Coast.
CREDIT:
Melissa McCormick
Publish by: Tina Tennessen - Mar 31, 2011
This week at the Smithsonian Ocean Portal we embark on an experiment we're calling "Make Me Care." The concept is simple: we ask a renowned expert to tell us why we should care about his or her marine subject matter. We're giving them only about a minute on video to accomplish the task, so it's a difficult - and not very fair - challenge. Dennis Whigham is a senior botanist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, in Edgewater, Md. He's graciously agreed to be the first expert to participate. Whigham is a specialist in many subject areas, including mangroves , orchids, tidal...
Tags: Smithsonian scientists, Wetlands
Researchers study the behavior of killer whales and how they react to sonar.
CREDIT:
C. Kyburg; Obtained under NMFS permit #14534
Publish by: Brandon Southall - Jan 5, 2011
Many animals depend on their eyes to navigate, find food, locate mates, and for other important activities. But marine mammals often rely on sound—sometimes far more than sight—for such critical daily tasks. Increasingly though, boat traffic, energy extraction, and other noisy human activities echo through the marine realm sometimes disrupting these animals’ behavior. Six years ago, a group of marine scientists, acousticians (experts in sound), and U.S. government and Navy personnel met to discuss how one of these noisy activities—military sonar—affects marine mammals. It was clear that in...
Tags: Dolphins, Killer whales, Seals, Sonar, Whales
Home is where the hull is: Since the dawn of seafaring, humankind has had to deal with pesky creatures, such as barnacles, that “foul” ship hulls and boat propellers like this one.
CREDIT:
Flickr User Alison Domzalski (Creative Commons)
Publish by: Nancy Knowlton - Dec 22, 2010
Since the dawn of seafaring, humankind has had to deal with the pesky creatures that settle on ships—seaweeds, barnacles, and others that take advantage of the empty real estate provided by a clean hull. Fouled hulls make for slower speeds and for powerboats, higher fuel costs (drag is a drag). Boat owners have a handful of strategies to cope with this problem, such as pulling boats out of water when they are not in use, scraping hulls clean, and coating hulls with paints that repel these unwanted settlers. Not surprisingly, marine organisms have evolved some solutions of their own. Some...
Tags: Algae, Citizens of the Sea, Coasts, Parasitism
