A deep-sea fish with a transparent head and tubular eyes

MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler used video taken by unmanned, undersea robots called remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to study barreleye fish in the deep waters just offshore of Central California.

At depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet) below the surface, the ROV cameras typically showed these fish hanging motionless in the water, their eyes glowing a vivid green in the ROV's bright lights.

The ROV video also revealed a previously undescribed feature of these fish--its eyes are surrounded by a transparent, fluid-filled shield that covers the top of the fish's head.

Links :

• DiscoveryNetworks video
  

Robotic boat transatlantic Challenge

Pinta the robotic boat could take three months to sail the Atlantic

From BBCNews

An unmanned robotic yacht has been launched off the Irish coast as part of a transatlantic challenge, although it is not expected to complete it.

Pinta is 3m long and was built by scientists at Aberystwyth University, who have carried out sea trials and taken part in competitions since 2006.
But this is the first time their boat has attempted the Microtransat Challenge ocean crossing.

Aberystwyth is the only team competing in this year's challenge.
It was conceived by academics in Aberystwyth and Toulouse, France.

Teams from around the world, who have taken part in previous years, have used on-board sensors and GPS technology to help their boats sail themselves from courses set by computer.

Dr Mark Neal, one of the founders of the challenge from Aberystwyth University, said the aim was to build robots that could survive in hostile environments for long periods.

But he said he did not expect his boat, Pinta, to succeed.
He added: "We're the only team taking part this year."
A team from Brest in France (Breizh Spirit from ENSIETA) pulled out at the last minute partly because of the weather conditions.

"I don't think Pinta will succeed because there are some horrible weather conditions out there. There are 35 to 40 knot winds and the remnants of a hurricane.

"It will probably capsize. It is waterproof, but it won't survive the continual flipping over.
"At this point it could well turn out to be the world's first robotic sailing boat shipwreck."

If Pinta were to survive the next few days of storms and manage to claw her way off the Irish coast then her final destination is the Caribbean and the crossing should take at least three months. (see tracking)

Dr Neal, who has been helped by Phd student Colin Sauze, said Pinta was crafted from a child's dinghy and "second-hand and cheap parts".

Complete with small solar panels, the boat can be programmed to sail the course of a race but must be propelled by just the wind.

Links :

• ENSICA, Nantes France
  
• YouTube : Dolphin Gaspar (Jean Floc'h) playing with FEUP autonomous sailtboat (FASt)
  

iPhone in a Bottle : throw it out to sea to explore oceans

This is the utopian but poetic project from iWeb a small company from Cyprus which wants to study oceans and explore the depths with iPhone placed in a bottle and throwed out to sea...

They want to put an iPhone in a bottle and throw it out to sea. It will take photos and upload them on iphoneinabottle.com for everyone to see!


All our supporters will have the chance to put their name inside the "bottle" and become part of this unique event.

They were inspired last year to do this after a student sent a camera to space using a weather balloon. They want to follow the same concept but with a twist.
The difference is that they will send two iPhone 4's, but not to space.
They will send them out to sea!

The iPhone will be in a custom made "bottle". They will throw it in the sea and wait for it to reach shore in another country. But they will not just sit and wait. They will design a system with which we can monitor the position of the "bottle" using GPS trackers. They will also program the iPhones to take random photos during its journey, and whenever there is GPRS or 3G reception it will upload the photos to the project's website.

They will place 2 iPhones in the bottle.
One will be "Sea View" and will face forward, capturing images of the sea and hopefully some ships and land ahead.
The other will be "Fish View" and it will be facing downwards, hopefully capturing images of some fish which come to eat off the bottle.

Everything will be powered by solar chargers so as to keep the system working (indefinitely I hope). They will track the position live using a GPS tracker which has worldwide signal, and the journey will be plotted on a map and shown on the website in realtime.

They will also build an iPhone application which anyone can download for free and watch the "bottle's" journey.

So make good things happen : visit Ulule online crowd-funding campaign

How turning off the tracking feature on the iPhone/iPad application?

Do you know if there is a way to reset the red tracking line?

Actually the app starts tracking when the GPS signal is received.
There is not any feature to remove the red tracking line (in our TODO list)
The only way is to quit and relaunch the application.

How to force an app to close :

• double click the Home button, multitasking bar opens (displaying recently used apps)
• swipe left or right and locate the app you want use (for example Marine US)
• tap and hold icon in multitasking bar for a second or two until it starts to jiggle : you'll see a little minus badge in top left corner.
• now, you just click that "minus" and app is "really closed"
• double-click the Home button and try opening the app again

As a tiny island nation makes a big sacrifice, will the rest of the world follow suit?

Film about the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, Republic of Kiribati.
A New England Aquarium World of Water film

From Mongabay

Kiribati, a small nation consisting of 33 Pacific island atolls, is forecast to be among the first countries swamped by rising sea levels.
Nevertheless, the country recently made an astounding commitment: it closed over 150,000 square miles of its territory to fishing, an activity that accounts for nearly half the government's tax revenue.

What moved the tiny country to take this monumental action?
President Anote Tong, says Kiribati ("Kir-ee-bas") is sending a message to the world: "We need to make sacrifices to provide a future for our children and grandchildren."

President Tong isn't mincing his words. Kiribati looks to make the ultimate sacrifice by mid-century, when much of the country is projected to be largely uninhabitable.
Rising seas will contaminate freshwater supplies, ruin agriculture lands, and erode beaches and villages, forcing its people to flee.
Kiribati has done nothing to earn this fate—its greenhouse gas emissions are negligible and its population barely tops 100,000.
Yet it is already looking at buying land in other countries for eventual resettlement of a substantial proportion of its population.

Kiribati is among the world's poorest countries.
It has few natural resources other than fish and copra, the dried meat of coconut.
It does however have of some of the world's most pristine coral reefs and healthiest fish stocks, which have now become the basis of its contribution to the well-being of the planet: the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), which at 408,250 square kilometers is the largest marine World Heritage site (see PIPA seamounts fly-through in Google Earth)

PIPA is part of President Tong's bigger, more ambitious initiative, the Pacific Oceanscape—38.5 million square kilometers (24 million square miles) of ocean, an area larger than the land territories of the United States, Canada and Mexico combined.
Over the past two years, President Tong has brought together 16 Pacific Ocean nations to develop the initiative, which seeks to maintain ocean health by improving management of fisheries, protecting and conserving biodiversity, furthering scientific understanding of the marine ecosystem, and reducing the negative impacts of human activities.

President Tong's efforts in the face of incredible adversity has earned him considerable respect in the conservation world.
Dr. Greg Stone, Chief Ocean Scientist and Senior Vice President for Marine Conservation at Conservation International, likens him to the "Teddy Roosevelt of Oceans" in that President Tong is doing for oceans what the 26th president did for land conservation in the United States around the turn of the 20th century.

"What we are seeing here is the dawning of a new era for marine management," he said.
President Tong brought his message to San Francisco last week for the California and the World Ocean 2010 conference.
Presenting along side U.S. Representative Sam Farr (Dem-CA), NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, philanthropist David Rockefeller Jr., oceanographer Sylvia Earle, and hundreds of marine scientists and conservationists, President Tong urged the world to take action to protect oceans and avoid climate change.

"There is obviously a need to consolidate all of the efforts in ocean governance in the Pacific and indeed in the world if we are to successfully manage and conserve these resources for present and future generations," he said.

Following his keynote address at the conference, President Tong discussed climate change and marine conservation with Mongabay.com's Rhett Butler (see the article of Mongabay, a short excerpt of the interview with President Tong).

Links :

• Ecocentric : Oceans, protecting the Pacific
• YouTube : The rising tide, Kiribati