Diatribune - marine life - Comments

Thanks for sharing your

alexwierbinski — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:00:08 -0700

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience, let alone your love for the sea and the things in it. I will look forward to your postings.

I am tracking nature on the other side of the equation, the human affect.

Enviornment pages: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,

Sculling in fish is similar

Mark H — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 05:45:56 -0700

Sculling in fish is similar to rowing. Think of the dorsal and ventral fins as vertical oars.

The iodine discovery took years to figure out, but once a necropsy of a dying fish reported an enlarged goiter, then iodine was the likely suspect.

This is an especially good

Jacob Freeze — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:49:57 -0700

This is an especially good entry in a series that I always enjoy! It left me with all sorts of questions, which is a sure sign of the very best science writing.

How did you discover that Puffers use up iodine so fast? Is this tied in with other strange features of their metabolism?

Why is their swimming motion called "sculling?" It doesn't sound much like the motion of those skinny little boats I used to see whizzing up and down the Charles River!

Am I going to have nightmares about a little herd of Zombie Pigs waiting for a passing "bokor" to revive them in Captain Cook's steerage? I hope not!

Thanks again for this well-written and well-researched series.

Man.... A squid that big

xxdr_zombiexx — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:09:32 -0700

Man....

A squid that big should be D-licious! Too bad it was frozen when you got it!

Clean it all up - remove the teeth from the tentacles and chop everything into bite-sized pieces, bread with your favorite fried chicken breading and cook quickly.

Serve with mayonnaise. Sounds perfectly awful but it's so bad for you you KNOW it has to taste good.

And especially Humboldt squid... famous for being primo squid.
;)

I'm horrible ...

A Siegel — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 23:14:33 -0600

every time I see this list, I gleefully cheer that lobster is in the 'best' category. What an excuse to blow away the cholesterol limits ... :-)

i can't say enough...

fake consultant — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:55:44 -0600

...nice things about what you write; and reading about the crab's blue blod reminds me of the copper-based green blood of the lobsters i used to have to kill at the restaurant where i worked years and years ago.

which leads to my suggestion: i would love to see a "marine blood" diary one day.

of course, if you've already done it...well, to quote emily latella: "never mind".

It's all about a dollar for today & a prayer for tomorrow...

keechi — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:51:53 -0600

I think they now call it, "The Bush Doctrine."

A bit off topic, but... They say we still have some ancient pristine (virgin) forests in the world - are there any virgin, pristine portions of ocean anymore - is it even possible - does the ocean have any natural pollution filtering capability, and are there studies over how air pollutants affect even the most secluded of our ocean's best hidden sanctuaries? (*ideas for future articles)

actually

Mark H — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:20:30 -0600

that's pretty spot-on observation. Like quahogers, in my area at least most lobster boats are owned by the person doing the fishing.

without knowing anything...

fake consultant — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 01:21:22 -0600

...about lobster versus other fisheries, i wonder if the issue related is to the size of investment required?

to put it another way, if, for example, lobstering is a small boat, owner-operator business, and tuna is a large boat, corporate business, it might explain the differences in cooperation, or the ability of the federal government to impose a solution.

This series

kerry — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:02:39 -0600

This series has always been one of my favorites. He does make everything interesting. I was horrible in all science classes in school particularly biology so this is a new world for me and it is a nice change from all the straight political stuff.

Fish Scales? You never know ...

Teach313 — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:15:39 -0600

what's going to be interesting. I'm not a scientist and my science background is fair at best, but you made fish scales interesting to me.
Enthusiasm can be infectious.

you ask...

fake consultant — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:07:39 -0600

..."Seriously, could this fish be any cooler?"

yes it could.

if it had a frickin' laser on it's head.

is it just me...

fake consultant — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:16:25 -0600

...or does this resemble the republican party moving to an anti-war position?

Mail a polar bear to Bush!

francophilia — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:42:34 -0600

http://pamela.poole.free.fr/frogblog/?p=221

interesting

sandy on signal — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:10:27 -0600

I did not know anything about the octopus or the eye. Our son is 9 and had a craniectomy for chiari malformation. A chiari malformation, in his case, is a birth defect where the lower brain( cerebellum) herniates into the base of the skull. This causes pressure in the skull and cerebral spinal fluid(CSF) can fluxuate. If CSF overflows in the brain it is known as hydrocephalus; if it backs up in the spinal cord, it is known as syringomyelia. Our son had a backup of CFS in the spinal cord from the top C2 to the chest region T8. He is also autistic and non-verbal. Because of his condition, the optic nerve is in play and he needs to be evaluated because many patients, like our boy, have double vision or odd vision problems.

We visited a neuro-opthamologist at Vanderbilt, our son was not co-operative with anyone, but still he was able to tell us from the wee bit of imaging and sight that our son's vision was alright for now. I was amazed at how he could know about eye sight from a non-verbal, autistic boy to tell us this. What is more amazing to me is we are now able to know about the octupus's vision. Unbelievable, but very glad.