Background:

The Finding Coral expedition set sail June 8th in search of deep sea corals on in Hecate Strait and the Queen Charlotte Basin. Two Deep Worker manned submarines will be piloted by our blue ribbon science team, traveling to depths up to 500 metres to document evidence of corals, associated species, and damage from human impacts.

The Finding Coral Expedition is the first of its kind in B.C.: an expedition specifically designed to study deep water corals and document threats to their well being.

Day 10 video:

Day 12 video:

The Finding Coral Website is Here

I just read this, and it made me want to see this:

and I’m asking you to look at this, but also this.

Or, putting it another way,

“Why does our energy system face security and environmental challenges?”

Please visit ScienceBlog’s new blog, The Energy Grid, which is one of those shorter term issue-driven blogs we do at Sb nwo and then.

This particular iteration is moderated by Jonas Meckling, from the Belfer Center, and hosted by James Hrynyshyn, who I got to know a bit at the conference last winter, and Coby Beck, both of Scienceblogs Dot Com, and a few other rather impressive looking people.

So, please go and help them save the world. Seriously. Let’s get a great discussion going here.

Costly Superfund dredging set for Hudson River

(AP) — People look funny at David Mathis when he takes a dip off his dock in the Hudson River. Health officials have long warned people not to eat fish caught from this slow-flowing stretch south of the Adirondacks and swimming here is unthinkable to many.

I worked for a year or so in an early 19th century “gas house” (where gas was made from coal) that was situated in a back yard of a home on the Hudson River. The elder gentleman who lived in that house, the father of the man who owned the land and rented us the gas house (which we used as a lab) fished for stripers off his porch every day, and often caught them. He ate all the stripers he caught.

These fish were living on the PCB sediments from the Waterford GE PCB plant (where I later worked on the RKO device which would be used to destroy the PCBs). Once I asked the man if he thought it was safe to eat the fish, and he yelled at me for a long time about how stupid the whole environmental movement was and how the hippies should just keep to themselves.

Within six months of that conversation he was dead of several forms of cancer that kinda all rushed in there at once.

Saying “I told you so” is not always fun.

I remember my first Earth Day, which was also The first Earth Day. There was a big lead up to it. Our teachers had us make poster size drawings appropriate for Earth Day. I have no recollection of what I did. But, I do remember putting an air quality measuring device in my back yard and turning it in at the firehouse and getting the building next door busted for burning bad heating oil. I was also armed that summer with a plastic card that I could use to measure smoke quality. I’d wear the card around my neck and go around the city, and whenever I saw a smoke stack belching smoke I’d hold the card up and estimate the percentage of particulate matter using the card. Then I’d get the address of the smoke stack and fill out a report and turn it in somewhere.

I think that was the same year that the Albany Billiard Ball Factory burned down and exploded multiple times, spewing more toxic crap into the air than the entire city had been spewing all year. Which tells us something: Don’t let your freakin’ factory blow up, man!

Anyway, as a kid, I was already into the environment owing to the influences of Rachel Carson and, more locally, Robert Rienow, but Earth Day certainly increased my interest and involvement. I started a club, called the Nature Conservation Club, or the NCC, and made all my friends and family join it. I even got Pete Segeer to join!!! And I wrote letters and continued turning in smoky factories and carrying out interventions (regarding littering behavior).

I think that is the main function of Earth Day: To be a focal point to garner effort and resources in the educational setting to bring kids on board with, well, saving the Earth. Earth day helped make conservation a basic issue simply by getting the kids involved so that as they grew up they thought differently about conservation than many of their parents had.

Earth Day: It worked!

(Check out Seed’s cool slide show)

Blogfish has an interesting writeup on what they call “New England’s War on Science” ( might think of it as “Coastal New England’s War on Science”)

Fishing interests in New England have convinced politicians to launch a new war on science and common sense. They want to keep catching fish faster than they can reproduce.

New England’s war on science might be dismissed as simple regional protectionism if it didn’t include Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Snowe, Collins, Reed, Whitehouse and Shaheen. That’s not just a few fishermen throwing elbows. Or is it?

Which is, of course, a mix of Democratic and Republican politicians.

This war has been going on since Sixteen Oh Something when Samuele de Champlain watched his men pulling pulling ‘countless cod sufficient such ye can walk across their backs to reech thine distant shore’ or words to that effect and his first mate and ship’s surgeon started arguing over whether cod reproduced naturally or were placed there by divine intervention as were humans.

OK, I’m joking about the exact details of Champlain’s observation, but it is true that back in the day you could not swing a dead catfish without hitting a shoal of cod on the New England coast, and today there are almost none. The sea has been scoured almost clean in this region. And, most disturbing, we have good Democrats with their own war on science.

Go to Blogfish’s links and poke around with the links.

The Reef Tank is an enterprise that supports and supplies salt water aquarists and supports the use of captive raised organisms and knowledge about ecosystems and conservation issues. From their site:

The Reef Tank is a unique bulletin board with a unique philosophy. Our mission is to provide a supportive, flame-free environment for beginning and experienced aquarists to share ideas, ask questions, and learn about the marine and reef keeping hobby. We also aim to educate ourselves and others about responsible animal husbandry, promoting captive-raised livestock and aquacultured corals when possible.

So, they have two missions: Helping people keep tanks in a responsible way and maintaining an on line community with no flaming. Relatively speaking, the first goal will probably be more easiliy met than the second!

The Reef Tank is here. You will find a number of interesting posts and reposts on the site in topics such as Ocean Acidification, Climate Change, Evolution, as well as interviews and biographical sketches of incredibly important bloggers and science communicators (example).

Go and visit but don’t eat the fish!

“Amazon Deforestation: Earth’s Heart and Lungs Dismembered”

Brazil has historically had the distinction of serving as the world’s leader of deforestation. … during the last three decades, an annual average of 6,500 square miles of the Brazilian Amazon — an area that is greater than the size of Connecticut — has been deforested.

Satellite data indicates that the rate of Amazonian deforestation is accelerating; in some areas, the rate increased by 50 percent since last year. And with over 20 million people and 70 million cattle now inhabiting the Amazon, about a 600 percent increase in the last 60 years, more trees are being razed to make room for cattle ranches

Hat Tip: Ana