What’s a Mola? Behind the strange fish picture

A close-up of an Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola). Did you know that mola are the heaviest of all the bony fish, with the largest specimens reaching 14 feet (4.2 meters) vertically and 10 feet (3.1 meters) horizontally and weighing nearly 5,000 pounds (2,268 kilograms)?

From NationalGeographic

The remarkable ability of Internet users to make a post go viral has produced a new treat: an enchanting picture of a Mola mola, or ocean sunfish, undulating just below the surface of the ocean. The image, snapped by photographer Daniel Botelho in 2010, is now making waves around Facebook.

The attention might be focused on the one image for the moment, but sunfish are worth learning about in their own right. National Geographic spoke to Dr. Tierney Thys, who in addition to being named a National Geographic Explorer, is both founder and director of the Ocean Sunfish Tagging and Research Program.

 Marine biologist Tierney Thys asks us to step into the water to visit the world of the Mola mola, or giant ocean sunfish.

Basking, eating jellyfish and getting massages, this behemoth offers clues to life in the open sea.

NG: Let’s start with the basics—what exactly is a sunfish?

TT: It’s the world’s heaviest bony fish.
It’s in the same order as puffer fish and porcupine fish, but it’s one of the most evolutionarily derived fishes in the sea.
So, it has a cranium more like what ours looks like, along with fewer vertebrae; its spinal column is actually shorter than its brain.
And they’re one of the most fecund vertebrates in the world; a 4-ft female was recorded as having an estimated 300 million eggs.

Are they endangered?

It’s unknown because they’re not commercially targeted.
And as adults they don’t school; younger ones will, but as adults they become loners.
So we don’t really know the status of their population.

We’ve been tagging them all over the world.
They’re very vulnerable to fishermen’s nets, they get caught in huge numbers [because] they spend a lot of time lying around on top of the ocean.
Some of our data is on whether that’s having an impact on their population.

There are inklings that it is.

Where do they live?

That’s something we’re working on right now, understanding the global population.
They have a huge range.
They live in all tropical and temperate oceans, up farther north than the Arctic Circle, and all the way down by Cape Town in South Africa.

Sunfish look flatter and more compact than other fish. Why is that?

The only way to understand [the sunfish] is to study its ancestry.
Their design has evolved to be more like an armored tank with a stiff body as opposed to a streamlined torpedo body like other fish.
They just look like big puffer fish on steroids.
They use mostly their fins for propulsion as opposed to wagging their body.

Sunfish can grow to be more than 10 feet long. Are they aggressive?

They’re not dangerous to people.
They will bite if you’re harassing them, but they’re actually very gentle in nature, very passive.
They look lazy, but they’re really industrious.
They dive up and down as much as 40 times a day.
We recorded them off the Galapagos Islands diving as deep as 1,100 meters [3,600 feet].

So they don’t munch on people?

They’re actually the world’s largest jelly-eater.
And people love the sunfish, it’s a lot of people’s favorite fish.
There’s poetry, folklore—you can even adopt them.

Historic shipwreck to be freeze-dried & rebuilt

 Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle was the first European to travel the Mississippi River south to the Gulf, claiming all the land along the Mississippi and its tributaries for France in 1682.

In 1685, he sailed from France with more than 300 colonists aboard four ships, La Belle among them, to establish a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi.

From TheMaritimeExecutive

Over 300 years ago, the ship of a French explorer sank in the Gulf of Mexico, ultimately destroying France’s hopes of inhabiting what is now Texas.
Texas A&M University researchers are now in the same uncharted waters as they are attempting to rebuild La Salle the explorer’s ship by using an enormous freeze-dryer.
This is the first project of its size.

The ship, La Belle, will be placed in a continuous 60 degrees-below-zero climate; this should successfully remove all the moisture from the European oak and pine timbers and planks.
The freeze-dryer is located at the old Bryan Air Force base, near College Station, and is 40 feet long and 8 feet wide — the biggest machine of its kind in North America devoted to archaeology.
After this step is complete, the almost 55-foot vessel can be rebuilt.

The supply ship was built in 1684 and sank two years later in a storm on Matagorda Bay, about midway between Galveston and Corpus Christi, reports the Washington Post.
Researchers and others involved in the project believe that this is an imperative piece of Texas and American history, as well as a great piece for the study of ship architecture.
It has been determined that the frames on La Belle were marked specifically by the French craftsmen so the wood comprising the hull could follow the complex curve of the ship, exhibiting lessons of The Enlightenment.

 Maps of the time show he believed the river was closer to Mexico, and his expedition missed the Mississippi by hundreds of miles. (source : LOC)

After moving inland, the explorer never made it out of Texas; he was murdered by his own men.

Marine archaeologists from the Texas Historical Commission discovered the wreck in 1995 under 12 feet of water, ending a decade-long search.
A dam was then built around the site as the recovery process was launched.
As divers explored the well-preserved La Belle in the Gulf of Mexico, they uncovered items that included swords, cannons, goods for trade, and even a skeleton.
After being transferred to Texas A&M, the wood has been since kept in a chemical solution to keep it firm.
The freeze-dry process was decided on after oil and chemical prices increased; it is more economical and would cut the preservation timeframe.
So, the hull was disassembled and the wood was categorized and digitally scanned so that they could make molds of its original shape, the Washington Post describes.

The La Belle rebuilding will begin in late 2013 at the Bullock Museum, where it will remain as the centerpiece.

Jason Lewis : the story of the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth

Adventurer Jason Lewis  became the first person to circumnavigate the globe using only human power this year when he completed his Expedition 360 after 13 years of travelling.

He explains some of the considerations behind crossing the Atlantic by human power with his his pedal powered boat Moshka, in particular the winds and currents, the same used by early explorers such as Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus.

From ExplorersWeb

In 1519 Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan set out on an ocean voyage with 5 ships and a crew of 270 men. 2 years later, Magellan was killed by Philippine tribes.
In fact, only 18 seamen led by Juan Sebastián Elcano would make it back, becoming the first to complete a true circumnavigation of the earth with the ship Victoria in 1522.

 Jason Lewis human powered route imposed on a regular map and a mirror map to show that the antipodes have been reached.

It would take another 500 years before a human-powered world circumnavigation was repeated.
On October 6, 2007, US resident, British Jason Lewis crossed the Greenwich Meridian Line for a second time since July 12, 1994.
He had traveled around the entire planet - without wind or motor assistance, at times pedaling a one-of-a-kind boat 'Moksha' (liberation in Sanskrit) across the world's oceans.

 Jason Lewis (centre) arrives at Greenwich, October 2007

Magellan's trip extended over 3 years. Jason's took 13, in parts because to fund his adventure, he took odd jobs such as cattle driving in Colorado or working in a funeral parlor in Australia.
But he always returned to the exact point where he had left off, and continued his way around the world on his own steam.

Jason Lewis’ achievement resulted in the publication of the print and electronic copies of Dark Waters, the first in The Expedition trilogy chronicling the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth.

From the publisher:

1: DARK WATERS

He survived a terrifying crocodile attack off Australia's Queensland coast, blood poisoning in the middle of the Pacific, malaria in Indonesia and China, and acute mountain sickness in the Himalayas. He was hit by a car and left for dead with two broken legs in Colorado, and incarcerated for espionage on the Sudan-Egypt border.

The first in a thrilling adventure trilogy, Dark Waters charts one of the longest, most grueling, yet uplifting and at times irreverently funny journeys in history, circling the world using just the power of the human body, hailed by the London Sunday Times as "The last great first for circumnavigation."

But it was more than just a physical challenge.
Prompted by what scientists have dubbed the "perfect storm" as the global population soars to 8.3 billion by 2030, adventurer Jason Lewis used The Expedition to reach out to thousands of schoolchildren, calling attention to our interconnectedness and shared responsibility of an inhabitable Earth for future generations.

Links :

• BBC :  Briton completes 13-year odyssey

Image of the week : Creta

high-resolution (acquired July 22, 2011)

From NASA

In classical Greek mythology, the island of Crete was home to King Minos and the terrible Minotaur, a beast that was half man and half bull.
The known historical record of Crete is no less impressive.
The island was the center of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization that flourished from approximately 2700–1420 BC.
There is archeological, geological, and cultural evidence to suggest that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption of Santorini volcano around 1620 BC was a major cause of the decline—if not complete destruction—of the Minoan civilization.

Today, Crete is the largest and most heavily populated island of Greece (or the Hellenic Republic). The island stretches approximately 260 kilometers (161 miles) from west to east, and it is roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) across at its widest point.
The rugged terrain of Crete includes mountains, plateaus, and several deep gorges.
The largest city on the island, Heraklion, sits on the northern coastline.

Several smaller islands ring Crete.
Two of the largest of these, Dia and Gavdos, are sparsely populated year-round, although Gavdos hosts numerous summer visitors.
The western and central parts of Crete appear surrounded by quicksilver in this astronaut photograph taken from the International Space Station.
This phenomenon is known as sunglint, caused by light reflecting off of the sea surface directly toward the observer.
The point of maximum reflectance is visible as a bright white region to the northwest of the island.
Surface currents causing variations in the degree of reflectance are visible near the southwestern shoreline of Crete and the smaller island of Gavdos (image lower left).

Shark spy camera

Filmmaker Jeff Kurr On Shark Week's New Noninvasive Device

From HuffingtonPost

Shark Week 2012 has been full of great footage, including shots of leaping great whites and amazing underwater scenes.

But one particularly impressive piece of equipment, featured in "Air Jaws Apocalypse," may be the future of shark observation.

The Shark Spy camera fulfills a simple objective: get eyes in the water without actually getting in the water.

As Shark Week filmmaker Jeff Kurr explained to The Huffington Post, this benefits sharks and shark observers alike.

"Boats, divers, bait and chum can alter a sharks' natural behavior," Kurr wrote in an email to HuffPost.

"To truly understand and learn about these animals we certainly want to see what they're doing naturally, without those outside influences... there's a lot more to sharks than just feeding time."

In addition to protecting sharks from the stress of invasive research projects, the Shark Spy's remote viewing capability also removes divers from the dangers -- and limitations -- of working in shark-infested waters.

"Shark Spy lets us go deeper into the world of the great white shark without risk of bodily harm to us," Kurr wrote.

"It also allows us to spend a great deal of time with these animals without the restriction of limited [diving time] you have to deal with on SCUBA. "

The new technology has already helped unravel a mystery.

On "Air Jaws Apocalypse," Shark Spy allowed the crew to see why the great whites were visiting an inshore reef that was too dangerous for diving.

Through use of the camera, the team discovered that the great whites were preying on other sharks.

"In the past, to learn about a great whites' diet, you had to cut the shark open and kill it to see what it'd been eating.

Obviously, we don't want to have to kill these animals to learn about them. Especially considering their highly vulnerable status," Kurr said.

Environmentalists are currently working to add great white sharks off the California coast to the endangered species list, Reuters reports.

Studies suggest there are fewer than 350 of the sharks in the area.

Groups say the sharks are "threatened by chemical contaminants" and sometimes get caught in "fishing nets," according to KTVU.