It’s all over the interwebs, but if you haven’t seen the truly GIANT squid footage yet, it’s well worth looking at this report from ITN:
Tag Archives | marine biology
Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?
So there might just be something positive to say about jellyfish after all. Nathaniel reports for the New York Times:
After more than 4,000 years — almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor — man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”: “Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . .”
Sommer was conducting research on hydrozoans, small invertebrates that, depending on their stage in the life cycle, resemble either a jellyfish or a soft coral.
Mass Dolphin Deaths In Peru A Mystery
Earth’s most intelligent species is dying off in droves. Report from the International Business Times:
Around 877 carcasses of dolphins and porpoises were found on Peruvian beaches in two and half months. Peruvian officials and environmentalists are trying to unravel the mystery behind the phenomenon.
No concrete reasons have been figured out yet but authorities believe that it could possibly be a viral infection that may have killed the dolphins in huge numbers. Environmental groups in the country blame the sound waves generated from oil exploration work carried out by Houston-based BPZ Energy Company between February 8 and April 8 off Northern Peru.
Mass dolphin deaths have been reported globally in recent years, raising concerns about the survival of the species.
New Shark Species Found In Food Market
Photo: Laurent Bugnion (CC)
Biologists are finding new species constantly, but it took a hungry market and working fishermen to find this new shark species. The National Geographic reports:
It’s unlikely anyone’s ever complained, “Waiter, there’s a new species in my soup.” But the situation isn’t as rare as you might think.
A monkey, a lizard, and an “extinct” bird have all been discovered en route to the dinner plate, and now a new shark species joins their ranks, scientists report.
Fish taxonomists found the previously unknown shark at a market in Taiwan—no big surprise, according to study co-author William White.
“Most fish markets in the region will regularly contain sharks,” White, of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Hobart, Australia, said via email.
[Continues at National Geographic]… Read the rest
