Location and the Atlantic cod

From VectorOne

Few fish are as well-known and rich in his­tory as the cod. For cen­turies the species has played a unique role in trade through­out the world. Places like Penob­scot Bay, La Rochelle, Southamp­ton, New­found­land, Dutch West Indies, Ice­land and Nor­way have all been affected by the cod fishery.

The Basque region were unique among cod fish­ery, report­edly fish­ing the Atlantic far and wide, avoid­ing British ships cen­turies ago as the Basques main­tained secrecy about the rich loca­tions where abun­dant fish could be found. These peo­ple, along with the Por­tugese, have even been reported to have dis­cov­ered regions of east­ern Canada, long before Jacques Cartier of France dis­cov­ered the region — along with John Cabot.

New Englander’s owe much of their flour­ish­ing trade in ear­lier times to the cod fish­ery, where the lengths of these fish were equal to the size of man at one time. Spawn­ing nearly 10 mil­lion eggs per fish in some cases, salt-laden cod ships filled the ports of Ply­mouth and Southamp­ton, later to be traded through­out the Mediter­ranean. Indeed, those places on a UK map today bear­ing an end­ing ‘wich’ — lit­er­ally mean­ing place of salt, were known for their salted cod. Though north­ern­ers and those of Scot­land may have pre­ferred had­dock in its place when it come to ‘fish and chips’ — similar to the Nova Scotians.

The French and the British wagered cod trade and barter along the east coast of North Amer­ica, finally result­ing in the French being left with the islands of San Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, that remains to this day. And no less than George Wash­ing­ton him­self included cod as part of his elec­tion cam­paign funding.

Found through the Atlantic Ocean, fish­er­men from Ice­land ven­tured to Green­land in search of cod, mak­ing maps of the fjords there — Gud­bran­dur Thor­laks­son mak­ing maps in 1606. A vast North Euro­pean net­work once formed, called the Hanseatic League, who con­trolled the salt fish trade — later los­ing strength due to the vast rich­ness of the North Amer­i­can fish trade.

The ocean tem­per­a­tures at which the species eggs hatch impacts sur­vival rates and the loca­tions of spawn­ing fish. Today, spec­u­la­tion con­tin­ues on their declin­ing pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing ocean tem­per­a­tures, over-fishing and ecosys­tem changes.

The story of the cod pro­vides valu­able insight into how impor­tant food is to trade and the move­ment of peo­ple and their sur­vival. After all, even the Pil­grims arrived in North Amer­ica inca­pable of fish­ing and know­ing lit­tle about farm pro­duc­tion. Worse, they did not like native foods. Ulti­mately, they returned to Eng­land to learn cod fish­ing before once again sail­ing to North Amer­ica to begin liv­ing more per­ma­nently — and successfully.

Links :

• Cod — a biography of the fish that changed the world
  

Need a mood lift? Grab your surfboard

From LiveScience

Catching a wave can do more than give you a paddling workout.
It also boosts mood, according to a new study.

The results show going surfing for 30 minutes is associated with an increase in positive, upbeat feelings and a decrease in negative feelings as well as fatigue.

While the study was conducted on a general surfing population, the findings were true regardless of how frequently people surfed, how old they were and what their skill level was.

The results might not come as a surprise to those who surf.

"If you ask any surfer, he or she guaranteed will tell you, 'Oh man I feel a lot better after I get out,'" said study researcher Ryan Pittsinger, a doctoral student at the University of Iowa and a surfer himself.

Previous research has shown physical activity, such as running and cycling, can have a positive effect on mood, in some cases reducing depression and anxiety.
However, most studies involve college-age participants and none had focused on surfing to see if the same held true.

"This study really puts surfing on the map as far as a sport that has beneficial psychological effects," said Pittsinger, who conducted the work while at California State University in Long Beach, Calif.

The study was presented Thursday in a poster session at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

Study surfers

Pittsinger and his colleagues recruited 107 participants — identified by the fact that they were carrying a surfboard — from the shores of Manhattan Beach, Calif. Ages ranged from 18 to 58, and 85 percent were male.

They completed a questionnaire asking them to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, how strongly they were feeling a particular emotion, represented by words such as "angry," "miserable," "upbeat," and "enthusiastic." After surfing for half an hour, participants again completed the survey.

Surfing not only put subjects in a better mood, it also increased their feelings of tranquility or calmness.
"Because you are out there alone, it's just you, it's really an activity where it allows you to clear your head," Pittsinger told LiveScience.

Ocean therapy

Pittsinger has found surfing to be a way to relieve stress in his own life.
"It's something that has really been an outlet for me, when I'm having a tough time, or if there's something on my mind, I can jump in the water and feel a little bit cleansed."

Pittsinger is currently conducting a study at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Calif., to see if surfing can be used as a therapeutic tool for wounded U.S. Marines diagnosed with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The program, known as "ocean therapy," teaches participants how to surf and to apply skills acquired from surfing and group discussion sessions, including trust, devotion and confidence, to their everyday lives, Pittsinger said.
While the data has yet to be analyzed, anecdotal reports have been very positive, Pittsinger said.
The ocean therapy program is carried out by the Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation.

Study measures Atlantic plastic accumulation

The mid-cruise update from the Plastics at SEA Expedition
describes a record number of plastic pieces observed by SEA in more than 25 years
of sampling plastic marine debris in the Atlantic Ocean.

From BBC

A study has measured the amount of plastic debris found in a region of the Atlantic Ocean over a 22-year period.

US researchers, writing in Science, suggest the volume of plastic appeared to have peaked in recent years.
One reason could be tighter marine pollution rules that prevent vessels dumping their waste at sea.

The team said monitoring the free-floating plastic also provided an insight into the behaviour of ocean surface currents.
They found plastic, most pieces measuring no more than a few millimetres, in more than 60% of 6,136 samples collected by dragging fine-meshed nets along the ocean's surface.

The researchers - from the US-based Sea Education Association (Sea), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Hawaii - described plastic as a "major contaminant".

"Plastic marine pollution is a significant environmental concern, yet a quantitative description of the scope of this problem is the open ocean is lacking," they wrote.
"Their chemically engineered durability and slow rate of biodegradation allow these synthetic polymers to withstand the ocean environment for years to decades or longer."

The impacts caused by the debris include:

• sea animals becoming entangled
• seabirds and other marine creatures eating the plastic
• the debris being used as a "life raft" by some species to reach areas outside their normal distribution range

"While high concentrations of floating plastic debris have been found in the Pacific Ocean, only limited data exist to quantify and explain the geographical range," they said.
"In the Atlantic Ocean, the subject has been all but ignored."

The team analysed data from ship surveys collected over 22 years between 1986 and 2008, which involved in excess of 6,000 net tows that gathered more than 64,000 pieces of plastic.
The largest number of plastic pieces in the data set was collected in 1997, in which 1,069 pieces were recovered by researchers in a single 30-minute tow. This equated to 580,000 pieces per square kilometre.

The team observed that the highest concentrations of floating plastic were "clearly associated" with a convergence of surface ocean currents and prevailing winds.
"This convergence zone... extends across most of the sub-tropical North Atlantic basin," they reported.

"This correspondence not only explains the plastic distribution, but also illustrates how floating debris acts as a tracer of large-scale mean surface currents."

The study analysed data from more than 6,000 samples collected at sea
Using a series of tracers, the team was able to estimate that it took fewer than 60 days for plastic to be carried to the "collection centre" from coastal waters on the eastern shores of the US.

As for the source of the plastic, the team said that there was no study that quantified the volume of plastic entering the ocean.

However, they suggested that the increase recorded over the study period was likely to have come from land-based sources.
They said the global production of plastic materials had increased five-fold between 1976 and 2008, and the amount thrown away in the US has risen four-fold during the past two decades.

Meanwhile, the volume being dumped by vessels had fallen as a result of rules introduced in 1988 that prohibited the dumping of plastic at sea.

But the team said that the projected increase in plastic from land sources was not reflected in the data gathered by the ship surveys.
"It is unlikely that ocean circulation could account for an export of plastic from the region large enough to offset the presumed increase in input," they suggested.

They offered a number of possible reasons for the discrepancy, including the plastic being broken down into pieces that were too small to be captured by the surveys' tow nets, the debris sinking beneath the surface, or the material being ingested by animals.

In order to curb the long-term environmental impact of free-floating plastic in the world's oceans, the team said their study offered evidence that any effort that prevented discarded plastic from land sources from entering the water in the first place could be "measurably effective".

Links :

• TheIndependant : Now Atlantic is found to have huge 'garbage patch'
• NationalGeographic : Ocean Garbage Patch not growing—Where's "missing" plastic?
• Wired : Massive North Atlantic garbage patch mapped
• The most dangerous species in the Mediterranean
  

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’.