The blue holes of the Bahamas yield a scientific trove that may even shed light on life beyond Earth.
If only they weren’t so dangerous to explore.
Photograph by Wes C. Skiles
Photographer Wes Skiles began to learn his craft in the most demanding environment on Earth: underwater caves.
As a teenager, camera in hand, he explored Florida's underwater labyrinths to capture images of this unphotographed realm.
He developed and refined the technique he became most known for: using multiple slaved strobes to dramatically illuminate and photograph this never-before-seen environment.
Later, as explorations led Skiles to remote locations around the world, he would strive to employ the latest technology, enhancing his ability to explore the environment and return with stunning images.
He's participated in caving and cave-diving expeditions in Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Australia.
As an expedition cameraman, Skiles specializes in capturing images of people and wildlife on the edge of extreme frontiers.
His visual imagery provides the viewer with an intimate understanding and unique perspective of his subjects.
Skiles works on assignment as a freelance photographer for National Geographic magazine.
His work has also been featured in Outside and numerous diving publications.
Skiles is equally skilled in the art of telling stories though moving pictures.
He has produced, directed, and filmed over a hundred television films, many of which have won international awards and acclaim.
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From NYTimes
Scientists who study the Arctic's icy cap now have a new weapon at their disposal -- nuclear-powered Navy submarines.
Civilian researchers have signed an agreement with the Navy to revive a dormant program that uses the vessels to collect information on parts of the Arctic's ice and ocean that normally lie beyond scientists' reach.
Called SCICEX -- short for "Science Ice Exercise" -- the program began in 1993 when the USS Pargo carried five civilian scientists to the Arctic on a test cruise.
But after six years and five additional dedicated science cruises to the far north, project SCICEX sputtered.
"When the Cold War ended, the Department of Defense really turned its attention to lower latitudes," said Jackie Richter-Menge, a sea ice expert at the Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. "There wasn't really the support to continue that level of support to the scientific community."
Instead of providing submarines for planned science missions to the Arctic, the Navy conducted four "scientific accommodation missions" between 2000 and 2005 -- collecting information during brief pauses in classified submarine exercises.
For the last five years, the submarines -- part of a force stretched thin by conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq -- have not gathered any data. At the same time, the Arctic has seen dramatic warming that led to a historic low in summer sea ice in 2007, when its areal cover dropped roughly 40 percent below the 30-year average. Scientists have also documented shortening of the region's snow season, rising land surface temperatures and warmer permafrost, and changes in the population and habitat of polar bears, walruses, seabirds and other Arctic wildlife.
A deeper look at a transforming region
Now, with the Arctic's transformation in mind, scientists and the Navy are collaborating to restart the SCICEX program -- with constraints.
Richter-Menge heads a scientific advisory committee that just released a detailed wish list for Arctic data, ranging from measurements of "ice draft" -- how much of the region's sea ice cover lies submerged below the ocean's surface -- to measurements of ocean chemistry, maps of the ocean floor and information on marine microbes.
The idea is to provide a prioritized list for the Navy, which will collect data as time allows on otherwise classified submarine missions. Security concerns prevent advance planning of science activities aboard the subs.
"The goal was to carve out some small amount of time on those planned missions," Richter-Menge said. "There was a general understanding, both from the military standpoint and the scientific standpoint, that you still have to understand the environment."
Reviving the SCICEX effort fits in the with Navy's renewed interest in the Arctic. The region's continuing thaw has positioned the region as a potential future hotbed of tourism, shipping, energy and mineral exploration -- and an emerging military frontier.
With scientists predicting Arctic summers could be ice-free by the 2030s, the ensuing resource grab could increase the potential for competition and conflict between nations, the Navy's Task Force Climate Change warned in its Arctic strategy, released last fall.
'Ground truth' for the satellites
"We really want to understand when changes will be significant enough to provide for increasing access to shipping, resource exploitation and future increased engagement in that region," said Capt. Tim Gallaudet, the task force's deputy director.
In the Arctic, "the players are a little more dynamic now," he saaid. "We're seeing non-Arctic players now. China has an ice-strengthened research vessel."
For scientists, the advantage of SCICEX lies in harnessing submarines that can travel at high speed and operate even in areas that are covered by ice -- missions that would otherwise require use of icebreaking ships, which are in short supply.
And though satellites can cover more ground and easily document multiple snapshots in time, Richter-Menge said the submarine data would be invaluable to help "ground-truth" measurements collected high in the sky.
"The submarine has the advantage of looking up at the ice from underneath," she said, "When they take an ice draft measurement, they're measuring nine-tenths of the ice cover, and they're more accurate."
Exploring the missing nine-tenths
With satellite measurements, scientists must apply a mathematical formula to convert the portion of sea ice that sits above the water line -- roughly one-tenth of total ice volume -- to determine how much ice bobs in the Arctic Ocean.
The submarines can also collect data on ocean chemistry that satellites cannot.
"What it does is gives us a great validation point for [computer] models that are being built to make sea ice forecasts," Richter-Menge said. "Those models, our ability to do that, are important for a variety of reasons: global climate change, the role that sea ice plays in the climate, the whole issue of operations with ships traversing the Arctic, be that for tourists or trade or anything like that."
The renewed SCICEX program will operate under a memorandum of understanding inked in 2000 between the National Science Foundation and parts of the Navy.
The new science plan calls for collection of baseline data on the Arctic's ice canopy and seafloor and the physical, chemical and biological properties of Arctic seawater.
Navy technicians will gather the data using instruments already installed on the submarines during direct transits across the Arctic Basin, from the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa. The submarines will also have an opportunity to collect data during biennial exercises in the southern Beaufort Sea, called ICEX, for which the Navy establishes an ice camp.
Santa Clarita, California (courtesy of Airborne1)
From MercuryNews
Their tools are laser beams, airplanes and computer software — instead of compasses, wooden ships and parchment.
But more than 400 years after explorers like Sir Francis Drake and Sebastian Vizcaino made some of the first maps of California's spectacular coastline, state and federal scientists are embarking on a new project to construct the most detailed map of the California coast ever assembled.
The $3.3 million effort will begin with researchers in an airplane flying back and forth along the coast shooting thousands of laser pulses per second at the rocks, beaches and cliffs along the 1,200-mile shoreline from Mexico to Oregon, generating ultra-detailed 3-D images of the contours of the land in huge computer files.
"We need a better sense of what's out there. We need a modern map. And with a modern map we'll have the knowledge to make better decisions," said Doug George, a project manager with the Ocean Protection Council, a state agency in Oakland that approved $2.75 million toward the project last month.
The images will be so sharp the map should be able to discern individual boulders and telephone poles, George said. The data will provide a baseline to measure everything from the impact of rising oceans over the coming decades, to beach erosion, to flooding risks from large winter storms.
The mapping work, supervised by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will start next month and is expected to conclude by December, with the images posted to the Internet by next summer.
Starting point needed
Over the decades, there have been many detailed photo sets and maps produced of sections of the coast. But there isn't a single, high-resolution topographical map of the complete California shoreline generated at the same time using uniform standards.
"The baseline is a critical piece. You can't monitor anything if you don't have a good starting point — and we don't have a good starting point," said Sam Johnson, a research geologist working on the project with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz.
Apart from studying erosion and sea level rise, the images also will be used by agencies such as the California Coastal Commission, state parks, or cities to plan wetland restoration, floodplain management, storm water management, better public access to beaches and coastal development.
Every few years, heavy storms cause cliffs to erode in places like Pacifia, Capitola and Goleta. Beaches in San Diego and Orange County wash away. Better information could help prioritize projects in those places, supporters of the map effort say.
"California's coast has gone through some dramatic changes over the last 150 years. Beaches erode and grow, bluffs collapse," said Johnson. "Every place is different. You might lose 20 meters of beach over 50 years, or it might happen all at once."
The high-tech tools used in the mapping may have generated your last speeding ticket.
Known as Light Detecting and Ranging, or LiDAR, the technology is similar to what police use to nab speeders. Researchers shoot harmless pulses of light from the aircraft, and images are generated by computing the amount of time it takes a pulse to leave the plane, travel to the ground and return to sensors.
Each data point has a longitude, latitude and elevation. And where many satellite maps might have one data point every 100 feet, LiDAR images can provide one data point every 3 feet or less.
Ocean floor to land
In addition to the coast, the project will also take images of San Francisco Bay.
"This is absolutely cool. I have a picture on my wall of a 1770s map of San Francisco Bay. It looks like the results of a lower digestive tract x-ray," said Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a state agency that regulates development around the bay.
"But from the perspective they had, without aerial photography, it was very reasonable. You look at that next to a USGS map, and you see how much more precise and realistic it is. This is taking it to the next generation."
The ocean already has risen 8 inches over the past 100 years, as measured by tidal gauges at Fort Point in San Francisco. Computer models run by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the U.S. Geological Survey and other research centers predict at the current rate of global warming, sea level could rise another 55 inches — or nearly five feet — by the end of this century as ice sheets continue to melt and the warmer ocean water expands.
The infrared laser beams don't penetrate water well. So researchers hope to combine all the images from land, which will extend inland from the water to about 30 feet in elevation, with other sets of sonar images of the ocean floor that USGS, NOAA and Cal State Monterey Bay have been collecting from boats since 2005.
"Our goal is to have a seamless map of the land and sea," said George. "That's the holy grail everyone is looking for to help with research on sea level rise, tsunamis, all kinds of work."
Findings could be used to figure out where to build sea walls, or expand wetlands to reduce flooding, or where to move existing development.
"The next step we want to do is an assessment of vulnerability of various resources to sea level rise — airport runways, Silicon Valley, the Embarcadero in San Francisco, Treasure Island," said Travis. "And you can't do that unless you know the exact height of everything."
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From Wired
After years of surprising scientists with their cleverness and smarts, some octopuses appear to also use tools.
Veined octopuses observed off the coast of Indonesia carried coconut shell halves under their bodies, and assembled them as necessary into shelters — something that wasn’t supposed to be possible in their corner of the animal kingdom.
“To date, invertebrates have generally been regarded as lacking the cognitive abilities to engage in such sophisticated behaviors,” wrote Museum Victoria biologists who described the octopuses in a paper published Monday in Current Biology. “The discovery of this octopus tiptoeing across the sea floor with its prized coconut shells suggests that even marine invertebrates engage in behaviors that we once thought the preserve of humans.”
In captivity, some species of octopuses have solved mazes, remembered cues and passed other cognitive tests typically associated with advanced vertebrates. More anecdotally, they’re known for popping aquarium hoods, raiding other tanks and demonstrating what might be called mischief.
All this has come as a bit of a surprise to scientists. After all, octopuses are descended from mollusks. They’re more closely related to clams than to people. They’re not supposed to be smart. But it’s hard to argue with the evidence, and in recent years, researchers have grappled with the possibility that octopuses can even use tools.
That debate has focused on octopuses seen barricading their den openings with stones. In the end, that behavior wasn’t accepted as genuine tool use, because it seemed more instinctive than calculated. (Another contested invertebrate behavior is the use of shells as homes by hermit crabs. According to the conventional wisdom, tools require direct manipulation, so the shells are no more tools than are human houses.)
Such definitions are inevitably ambiguous. But there’s no ambiguity in the veined octopuses found flushing mud from buried coconut shells, stacking them for transport — an awkward process that required the octopuses to walk on tiptoe with the upturned shells clutched beneath them — and finally turning them into hard-shelled tents.
“The fact that the shell is carried for future use rather than as part of a specific task differentiates this behavior from other examples of object manipulation by octopuses,” wrote the researchers.
With their tents, the veined octopus has joined chimpanzees, monkeys, dolphins and crows in the ever-expanding menagerie of non-human tool users. But as significant as the finding may be, the moment of discovery wasn’t exactly solemn.
“I could tell that the octopus, busy manipulating coconut shells, was up to something, but I never expected it would pick up the stacked shells and run away. It was an extremely comical sight,” said Julia Finn, a Museum Victoria biologist, in a press release. “I have never laughed so hard underwater.”
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- YouTube : Skilled octopus opens bottles
The ocean as your wine cellar : sunken treasure never tasted so good
Divers have found bottles of champagne some 230 years old on the bottom of the Baltic which a wine expert described Saturday as tasting "fabulous".
Thought to be premium brand Veuve Clicquot, the 30 bottles discovered perfectly preserved at a depth of 55 metres (180 feet) could have been in a consignment sent by France's King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court.
If confirmed, it would be by far the oldest champagne still drinkable in the world, thanks to the ideal conditions of cold and darkness.
"We have contacted (makers) Moet & Chandon and they are 98 percent certain it is Veuve Clicquot," Christian Ekstroem, the head of the diving team, told AFP.
"There is an anchor on the cork and they told me they are the only ones to have used this sign," he said, adding that a sample of the champagne has been sent to Moet & Chandon for their analysis.
The group of seven Swedish divers made their find on July 6 off the Finnish Aaland island, mid-way between Sweden and Finland, near the remains of a sailing vessel.
"Visibility was very bad, hardly a metre," Ekstroem said. "We couldn't find the name of the ship, or the bell, so I brought a bottle up to try to date it."
The handmade bottle bore no label, while the cork was marked Juclar, from its origin in Andorra.
According to records, Veuve Clicquot was first produced in 1772, but the first bottles were laid down for 10 years.
"So it can't be before 1782, and it can't be after 1788-89, when the French Revolution disrupted production," Ekstroem said.
Aaland wine expert Ella Gruessner Cromwell-Morgan, whom Ekstroem asked to taste the find, said it had not lost its fizz and was "absolutely fabulous".
"I still have a glass in my fridge and keep going back every five minutes to take a breath of it. I have to pinch myself to believe it's real," she said.
Cromwell-Morgan described the champagne as dark golden in colour with a very intense aroma.
"There's a lot of tobacco, but also grape and white fruits, oak and mead," she said of the wine's "nose".
As for the taste, "it's really surprising, very sweet but still with some acidity," the expert added, explaining that champagne of that period was much less dry than today and the fermentation process less controllable.
"One strong supposition is that it's part of a consignment sent by King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court," Cromwell-Morgan said. "The makers have a record of a delivery which never reached its destination."
That would make it the oldest drinkable champagne known, easily beating the 1825 Perrier-Jouet tasted by experts in London last year.
Cromwell-Morgan estimated the opening price at auction of each bottle at around half a million Swedish kronor (53,000 euros, 69,000 dollars).
"But if it's really Louis XVI's wine, it could fetch several million," she added.
The remaining bottles, which could number more than the 30 uncovered by the divers, will remain on the seabed for the time being. Their exact location is being kept secret.
Meanwhile local authorities on Aaland will meet Monday to decide who legally owns the contents of the wreck. The archipelago at the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia belongs to Finland, though it enjoys autonomy from Helsinki and its inhabitants speak Swedish.
Louis Roederer, one of France’s oldest and last independent family-owned champagne makers is the first bubbly producer to test underwater aging of their product. In 2008, they have placed several dozen bottles underwater, about 50 feet deep, in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. They are experimenting to see if the increased pressure, cold seawater at a constant temperature of 10 degrees Celsius, filtered sunlight and gently rocking currents will improve the taste of the champagne over that of cellar-stored bottles. (TheGuardian)
A Chilean still wine producer, Vina Casanueva already produce the Cava Submarinas wines which have been aged at the bottom of the ocean.
The blue holes of the Bahamas yield a scientific trove that may even shed light on life beyond Earth.
