Sylvia Earle: the planet is 'in serious trouble'

From HuffingtonPost

Sylvia Earle has spent decades studying the vast life in our planet's oceans and advocating for its protection.
She is Chair of the Deep Search Foundation and is an Explorer-In-Residence at the National Geographic Society, has set a record for solo diving, and has even blogged for HuffPost.

In this video from CNN, Earle recounts highlights from her history in oceanography.
She talks about the 1969 program that was simultaneously working to put women under the sea while also putting men on the moon.

In 1979, she worked on a book for National Geographic, using a new diving suit that she likens to a "walking refrigerator," letting her individually explore the ocean floor.
She tells CNN, "It was just an extravaganza of life, and I had a chance to just walk among these creatures for the first time, and bring back the news of what was there."

Earle stresses the importance of protecting our oceans, saying that we need to "try to inspire an awareness of what the problems are, and to inspire those who have the capacity to solve problems to do just that."
She tells CNN that these next ten years may be the most important out of the next 10,000 "to secure for us an enduring future on this little blue planet that is already in serious trouble."

Links :

• TreeHugger : Sylvia Earle on the Gulf Disaster and Saving the Seas (podcast)
• The Guardian : Sylvia Earle: Swimming with sharks and oil
  
• National Geographic : Sylvia Earle to U.S. Congress: Cheap oil is costing the Earth
  

Travel to the East by sailing West from Europe

Overlay of the real “new world” and what Columbian era transatlantic explorers expected to see on their way to Cipangu, which is what the Portuguese were calling Japan at the time

From StrangeMaps

The Florentine mathematician, astronomer and cosmographer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397-1482) is probably best remembered for his proposal in 1474 to the Portuguese court of a scheme to sail west as a shortcut to reach the fabled Spice Islands in the east.
Toscanelli never made it across the ocean, but his proposal did inspire Columbus, who took Toscanelli’s map with him on his first transatlantic voyage in 1492.
The Genoese navigator was not only inspired, but also misguided by Toscanelli’s underestimation of the Earth’s circumference, leading him to think he had reached Cipangu (Japan) instead of a whole new, unknown continent lying in between Europe and Asia.

The eastern part of Toscanellli’s map, showing the extreme west of Europe and northwest of Africa, is quite accurate, even if the size of the land masses is exaggerated (in relation to the ghostly projection of the Americas); Portuguese mariners had travelled quite far south along the coast of Africa, and knew about the Azores (rediscovered in 1427).
The Canary Islands were conquered by the Castilians from 1402 onwards.
Nevertheless, many of the islands pictured here in the western Atlantic Ocean are quite clearly some of the many phantom islands that for a long time were recorded on maps, but were never more than legends.
One such example is Hy-Brasil, probably one of the islands pictured closest to Ireland.

Another phantom island, mentioned on this map, is Antillia, also known as the Island of Seven Cities or St Brendan’s Island, and often used as a synonym for the Isles of the Blessed or the Fortunate Islands.
The muddled legends of Antillia have been around since at least Plutarch’s time (ca. 74 AD).
Its name might be a corruption of Atlantis; or a derivation of anterioris insula, Latin for an island located ‘before’ Cipangu; or a transformation of Jazeerat at-Tennyn, Arabic for ‘Island of the Dragon’.
Toscanelli on his map uses Antillia as the main marker for measuring distance between Portugal and Cipangu.

The reference to Sete Ciudades (‘Seven Cities’) is reminiscent of an Iberian legend of seven bishops fleeing the Arab conquest of the peninsula and founding a city each on the island, which became a sort of Utopian commonwealth.
Some claim the legend of Antillia represents an earlier discovery of the islands that eventually became known as… the Antilles.
Improving nautical knowledge eventually led Antillia to disappear from maps, but the legends surrounding it continued to inspire explorers for a long time – e.g. the ‘Seven Cities’, that were sought in the Southwest of the US or even posited on Cape Breton Island in Canada.

Cippangu (also written as Cipangu, Zipangu or Jipangu) is the name by which Japan had been known in Europe since Marco Polo brought home the name of the island.
The name derives from an early Chinese word for Japan, Ribenguo, meaning ‘country of sun origin’.
Polo’s description of Cippangu as being extremely rich in silver and gold triggered the imagination of Europeans for many years to come.

Cathay as a European name for China also derives from Marco Polo, who used it for northern China (southern China being ‘Manji’ in his accounts).
Cathay probably comes from Khitan, a tribe in northern China.
Only in the 19th century was the usage in English of Cathay eclipsed by the word ‘China’. Russian still uses the word – there’s still an area of Moscow called Kitaigorod, ‘Chinatown’.

White whale Migaloo spotted off Cairns

Awesome sight: The Cairns Post photographer Marc McCormack captures Migaloo in waters off Green Island, near Cairns, on Saturday.

From The Cairns Post

RARE, professionally-shot footage of Migaloo at play in Cairns waters will be a boon for the local tourism industry and help protect the famous white whale, a tour operator says.

Migaloo was spotted on Saturday about 2km from Green Island slowly travelling south.
(Position in the Marine GeoGarage)
The famous whale enjoyed clear skies and low winds and dived repeatedly into the blue depths before surfacing every 10 to 15 minutes.

GBR Helicopter Group director Deborah Ross said the footage taken by cinematographer David Farmer and pilot Chris Rose, of Chris Rose Flying Films, would be given to the BBC, which is producing a documentary on Migaloo.
"We’ve made it a professional goal to make sure we get Migaloo recorded so we can help protect him because he is so precious," she said.

"This is the first time Migaloo has been filmed anywhere professionally in the world.
"It’s about Migaloo and it’s all about the fact we were able to get the footage in Cairns on the Great Barrier Reef."

Ms Ross, who has worked in the tourism industry for 28 years, said the day was a career milestone for her. "I cried. I was so happy," she said.

"He was at play in the tropical waters. He was just rolling around having a lovely time."

About 70 Reef Magic Cruises passengers were treated to the rare sight.
Reef Magic Cruises owner Tim North said its whale watching vessel spent about five hours with Migaloo on Saturday.

"It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when you’re with him," he said.
Reef Magic worker Jenna Marino was thrilled to see her first whale.
"He was pure snow white," she said.
"People were amazed. They thought they were the luckiest people alive."

Migaloo was first sighted in 1991 and has been seen almost every year since then as the big white whale traveled along the Australian coast during the whale migration season.

Unlike Moby Dick, Migaloo is no killer whale.
One time she was reported to have caused destruction was when Migaloo surfaced just in front of a trimaran near Townsville in Queensland in 2003.
The boat was lifted and broke its centre keel. The concern was that Migaloo had been injured.

Dr Paul Forestell of the Pacific Whale Foundation contacted local Aborigines in 1992, the year after the first sighting of the white humpback, and was told albinos were considered to be special beings, "perhaps signs or tokens from the spirit world."
The name "Migaloo" was suggested which means "white fellah" in the local Aboriginal language.

The Pacific Whale Foundation says Migaloo is part of a population of humpback whales feeding in Antarctica in the southern summer and autumn and migrating along the east coast of Australia in the winter and spring (June to October) to the warmer waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

It's been a case of "spot Migaloo" every year in Australia since the white whale was first sighted in 1991.
Because of the whale's color (or lack of it), Migaloo is easily sighted and tracked by researchers without the use of radio tags.

Marine Brazil, iPhone/iPad universal application

Marine Brazil, universal iPhone/iPad application for seamless viewing 242 raster charts from DHN (Directoria de Hidrografia e Navegação, o Serviço Hidroceanográfico Brasileiro)

Tanks dumped in Gulf of Thailand to create artificial reefs

A fleet of disused tanks and trucks have been dumped into the sea off the coast of Thailand in a bid to form an artificial coral reef

From TheTelegraph

The unusual move is designed to boost the ecosystem in the Gulf of Thailand.
The rusting collection of trucks and 25 disused Army tanks are intended to form an artificial underwater structure to provide shelter for marine life and boost local fish stocks.

The vehicles were lowered into the sea off the Narathiwat coast by crane .
A wide-ranging marine conservation policy is being enacted in Thailand to preserve fish stocks and keep the seafood industry afloat.
The fertile waters of the Gulf of Thailand are crucial to the nation’s fishermen, but overfishing has left the ecosystem depleted in recent years.
The shallow arm of the South China sea harbours many natural coral reefs and is a popular scuba diving destination.
The Government announced a three-month ban on fishing in parts of the Gulf of Thailand last year in an attempt to improve breeding and replenish fish stocks.

By the way, a New Jersey program using subway cars to build artificial reefs has now been discontinued when it was discovered that the cars weren't holding up as expected.
The operation was originally suspended because the stainless steel cars were disintegrating after only seven months in the ocean.

Links :

• YouTube : Pensacola, FL home to the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, the world's largest artificial reef
• NYTimes : Growing pains for a deep-sea home built of subway cars
• Guidelines for Marine Artificial Reef Materials (January 2004)