Lara Kesselring - Dolphin Trainer

Dolphin Rescues

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Bottlenose dolphins are threatened by monofilament or braided fishing lines in the water, and by crab trap float lines. In 2011, operating at the request of Federal authorities, staff from the SDRP led or participated in 3 rescue attempts involving entangled dolphins. Most often, a dolphin requiring a rescue is entangled, and its swimming movements are restricted.

Often, lines cut deeply into the animals creating visible wounds that may become infected.Synthetic fishing lines, especially some of the newer stronger designs are surprisingly sharp and dangerous when they come into contact with a dolphin’s soft skin. An article summarizing dolphin rescue attempts from 2006-2011 is included in the recently published Nicks_n_Notches newsletter (pdf).

While the need for a rescue attempt is often caused by fishing lines or rope, which is cutting through the skin, but in the case of Scrappy, it was a Speedo swim suit that caused life-threatening wounds. The goal of a rescue is to free the dolphin from the threat, and each case is different. Occasionally, as in the case of FB28, the line can be cut with a long handled tool from a boat, without requiring capture.

If capture is needed, however, the ideal solution is to briefly capture the dolphin, free it from the threatening condition(s), and release it after examination by a marine mammal veterinarian. If necessary, the rescue team must be prepared to transport the dolphin to Mote Marine Laboratory’s Dolphin Hospital for rehabilitation, and hopefully eventual release.

As you might imagine, putting a dolphin rescue together is quite a task. Multiple boats, a dolphin catcher (using a 500 meter long net), and 25 or more staff and experienced volunteers must be gathered on short notice.
Sometimes the rescue crews will spend fruitless days on the water searching for the threatened dolphin, while very occasionally everything comes together and a successful rescue can be accomplished in a matter of hours.

Some dolphins, such as FB28, Scrappy, and Nellie are sighted for years after the rescue, but as detailed in the link above, the outcome is not always so positive.
Partial funding for past rescue operations has been provided by support from NOAA, but these funds are no longer available. Funding for future rescues will have to be obtained through individual donations.

Source: Sarasota Dolphin Research Program

Leatherback turtle sanctuary set up on West Coast

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Federal regulators designated nearly 42,000 square miles of ocean along the West Coast as critical habitat for the Pacific leatherback turtle Friday, far less than originally proposed but still the largest protected area ever established in American waters.

The protected area is the first permanent safe haven in the waters of the continental United States for endangered leatherbacks, which swim 6,000 miles every year to eat jellyfish outside the Golden Gate.
The designation, by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, was a bittersweet victory for environmentalists, who have been fighting to protect the marine reptiles from extinction.

The 41,914 square miles that the NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service protected along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington did not include the migration routes the turtles take to get to the feeding grounds. That means 28,686 square miles of habitat originally proposed for the designation was left unprotected.
"It's a big step in the right direction, but we want protections for migratory pathways," said Ben Enticknap, the Pacific project manager for Oceana, an international nonprofit dedicated to protecting the world's oceans. "I guess we've got a lot more work to do to get there."

How protection works

The regulations will restrict projects that harm the turtles or the gelatinous delicacies they devour. The government will be required to review and, if necessary, regulate agricultural waste, pollution, oil spills, power plants, oil drilling, storm-water runoff and liquid natural gas projects along the California coast between Santa Barbara and Mendocino counties and off the Oregon and Washington coasts.
Aquaculture, tidal, wave turbine, desalination projects and nuclear power plants will have to consider impacts on jellyfish and sea turtles. For instance, the repermitting of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, in San Luis Obispo, will probably come under scrutiny.

The regulations are a response to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in 2009 by the nonprofit environmental groups Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and Oceana. The groups had been trying since 2007 to establish critical habitat for leatherbacks under the Endangered Species Act. They accused the government of failing to protect the reptiles from gill-net and longline fishing, oil drilling and a variety of other activities, including wave-energy projects.

California habitat

The new ruling covers 16,910 square miles along California's coast from Point Arena (Mendocino County) to Point Arguello (Santa Barbara County) to a depth of 9,000 feet. The remaining turtle habitat stretches from Cape Flattery, Wash., to Cape Blanco, Ore. seaward to a depth of a little more than 6,500 feet.
The only other critical habitat established for leatherbacks in U.S. waters is in a small area along the western end of St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands. There is also some critical habitat in Puerto Rico for green sea turtles and hawksbill sea turtles, but nothing as large as the new designation.

Turtle advocates are worried that the decision to leave out migratory routes will leave the giant sea creatures vulnerable to long lines and drift nets dragged by oceangoing vessels, which often mistakenly hook and entangle marine mammals and turtles.
Both longline and gill-net fishing are banned along the West Coast during leatherback migration, but Teri Shore, the program director for the Turtle Island Restoration Network, said the fisheries service is considering plans to expand gill-net fishing for swordfish.

More threats

"Threats to these turtles are increasing, not diminishing," said Shore, whose organization also goes by its Web name, SeaTurtles.org. "We don't want to see the leatherback turtles go the way of the grizzly bear and disappear."
Leatherbacks, known scientifically as Dermochelys coriacea, are the largest sea turtles in the world, sometimes measuring 9 feet long and weighing as much as three refrigerators, or more than 1,200 pounds. Their life span is not fully known, but biologists believe they live at least 40 years and possibly as long as 100 years.
The worldwide population has declined by 95 percent since the 1980s because of commercial fishing, egg poaching, destruction of nesting habitat, degradation of foraging habitat and changing ocean conditions. Listed as endangered since 1970 under the Endangered Species Act, there are believed to be only 2,000 to 5,700 nesting females left in the world.

Pacific leatherbacks leave their nesting grounds in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea and swim across the Pacific Ocean to forage along the West Coast in the summer and fall. It is the longest known migration of any marine reptile.

Golden Gate jellyfish

They are often seen feeding on jellyfish in the shipping lanes outside the Golden Gate, in Monterey Bay and Bodega Bay. Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, said Friday that he will introduce legislation designating the leatherback as California's official marine reptile in an attempt to call attention to its plight.
The newly protected zones will extend 200 miles out to sea, but they won't protect the slow-moving creatures from floating plastic bags, which look like jellyfish. A recent study found plastic in the intestinal tracts of 37 percent of 370 leatherbacks that had been found dead.

Healing the Gulf

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:00:00 +0000

From: Ocean Conservancy

Bethany Kraft: Restoring an ecosystem and a way of life in the Gulf of Mexico

If you wander away from the funky New Orleans vibe and make your way to the more secluded areas along the Gulf coast, you may happen upon a lone figure tromping childlike through the muddy marsh. You may see her watching hopefully to catch a glimpse of crabs and other critters skittering in the shallow water. You may see her deeply inhaling the thick salty air. You may see her stand – face to the wind – and smile, feeling grateful and energized. This is how Bethany Kraft unwinds. And it’s just one of the many reasons why she cares so much about protecting the Gulf of Mexico. As Deputy Director for Ocean Conservancy’s Gulf of Mexico Program, Bethany spends her days fighting to protect one of the country’s greatest national treasures – from marine life to coastal habitat and communities that have called the Gulf of Mexico home for generations.

A lifetime on the Gulf

As a child growing up outside of San Antonio, Texas, Bethany spent most family vacations hiking and camping throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Her father, a diehard fisherman, helped instill a love of the outdoors in his children, but it wasn’t until Bethany went to college that she began to think about nature as more than just pretty places to visit. A course in natural resource economics helped her understand just how much people depend on natural resources for food, water, fuel, livelihoods and much more. “Nowhere is that connection more clear than in the Gulf of Mexico,” Bethany says. “The health of our economy is tied to the health of our natural resources – and that has an impact not only in the Gulf region, but for the entire United States.” She’s quick to point out a fact that few people may be aware of – if you take the gross domestic product of the five states that border the Gulf of Mexico, together they would be the seventh largest economy in the world. So, we all have an interest in making sure that the Gulf region continues to thrive.

Deepwater Horizon and a string of challenges for the Gulf

Unfortunately, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster on April 20, 2010 was a significant setback for the Gulf of Mexico economy, wildlife and communities. But it did serve as a wake up call for the nation to start better conserving the valuable resources the Gulf provides.
In fact, the oil spill is only one strand in a string of challenges that the Gulf has been facing. For decades the Gulf has suffered:

the loss and degradation of wetlands and barrier islands,
economic, social and environmental impacts from "dead zones" in the Northern Gulf,
overfishing and lost fishing productivity, and
challenges brought on by the development pressures as well as natural disasters

“The oil spill emphasized the importance of protecting the resources we still have,” Bethany says. “The stronger we can make our coast and the more resilient we can make our communities, the more buffers we have to conserve and maintain our natural resources in the Gulf.”

Ocean Conservancy has been working on fisheries and sustainable fishing in the Gulf of Mexico for more than two decades. “After the oil disaster, it was clear that we were facing a critical juncture in the Gulf’s future," she says, “so Ocean Conservancy made an even deeper investment.”

Restoring the Gulf on multiple fronts

For Ocean Conservancy, successful restoration in the Gulf means:

Protection of our cultural and natural heritage,
increased economic opportunities,
enhanced recreational opportunities,
slowing the rate of land loss, and
sustaining the entire ecosystem.

There are two main processes unfolding to support that restoration. The first is the National Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) restoration planning process, which directly addresses damages that resulted from the BP oil spill. This process will bring the Gulf back to where it was before the oil disaster occurred. The second, parallel process, is passing the RESTORE Act, which could bring billions of dollars of Clean Water Act fine money to the Gulf region to address system-wide degradation. “It’s not enough to restore us back to April 19th,” says Bethany. “We need to address the long-term causes of degradation that have made us more susceptible to disasters over the years, and this money will allow us to do that, so we’re working hard to get that legislation passed.” After so many hours spent sloshing through the marshy waters, with only the birds and fish for company, Bethany feels a deep connection to this place where the land and water come together. Now it’s time for the rest of us to come together as well.

"In the United States, we have a history of taking the impossible and making it happen," she says. "We need to adopt the attitude that we are smart enough and thoughtful enough to find solutions to heal and restore the Gulf of Mexico. I honestly believe we can do it. We need money to do it – and we need the collective political will of the public and our leaders, based on the recognition that the Gulf of Mexico is a really a national treasure worth protecting. If we can get those two elements working we can accomplish anything."

Dolphins Pepe and Lucea reenact JAWS!

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:37:00 +0000

Luna the Dolphin Makes a Splash

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:34:00 +0000

Surfing with Pepe the Dolphin

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:33:00 +0000

Ziggy the Dolphin does a high jump

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:31:00 +0000

Play Ball!

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:28:00 +0000

In this video, I am training Nemo to catch and toss a ball. Notice on the left, further away, my colleague Ricardo is training Ziggy to do the same thing. Our goal is to eventually train Ziggy and Nemo to "play ball" by tossing the ball between each other and two trainers, and even a guest.

Training Nemo - UPDATED

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:37:00 +0000

Nemo is a very high energy dolphin, so we decided to train him to do a double-front flip rather than a single. To start training him to do this behavior, we focused on motivating Nemo following a target: a long pole with a little buoy on the end that Nemo follows, in this case, with his mouth or "rostrum." Our first step was to train Nemo to complete one rotation (flip) under the water’s surface. Then, after he understood what we wanted him to do, we added the second rotation. The next part of the process was to motivate Nemo to take the flip out of the water and follow the target pole. After Nemo learned to flip out of the water, we used the "bridge" (a whistle) and "primary reinforcement" (fish) to perfect Nemo’s double flip. One day, Nemo over rotated by an additional half-flip, and we decided to adopt this change in the criteria for the behavior: we decided to use the bridge and primary reinforcement to complete the third rotation. Now Nemo has the most amazing triple front flip. It’s WICKED!.

Blue Whales: Larger than Life

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Imagine a creature so tiny it can freely climb through your arteries. Now imagine how that creature would feel standing beside you—a living, breathing human over 2500 times its own weight. You don’t have to guest star on an episode of The Magic School Bus to experience this feeling for yourself—just dive into the ocean and find the nearest blue whale.

Larger than Life

And back to those arteries—a person could, theoretically, crawl through a blue whale’s aorta. Its heart only beats once every ten seconds, and when it does, it’s strong enough to detect from two miles away. But that’s nothing compared to its famous song, which can travel over 700 miles through the ocean.

Our Ocean's Gentle Giants

Despite their size, blue whales are graceful, gentle creatures that spend their time filter feeding through the water. Blue whales feed by diving up to 700 feet below the surface, gulping water and krill into its expandable throat pouch. They use their massive tongue to force the water out through filtering plates called the baleen before polishing off the remaining mouthful of krill.
Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to find one of these gentle giants today. Before the invention of the harpoon gun, whalers rarely wasted their time pursuing such a formidable opponent. But once technology caught up to the whaling community’s ambitions, populations began dropping dramatically and today blue whales are listed as endangered.

The Future of Blue Whales

While most countries now observe the ban on hunting blue whales, they still face threats like ship strikes, increased human noise interfering with their own sonar-like navigation, ocean trash, and habitat degradation. We must work now to preserve these incredible creatures before their powerful heartbeat stops forever.
Source: Ocean Conservancy

First Super Predator Was a Hawk-Eyed Shrimp

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:27:00 +0000

The world’s first apex predator, a beast called Anomalocaris, was no shrimp. Well, it sort of was, but not to the tiny critters that inhabited the planet’s oceans 500 million years ago. Giant eyes with thousands of lenses and extraordinary vision made the marine monster all the more formidable, according to a new study.

Some 500 million years ago, a giant shrimp-like creature prowled the earth’s oceans, then home to every living animal on the planet. Thought to have been the world’s first apex predator, at 3 feet long Anomalocaris dwarfed its contemporaries—the tiny trilobites, jellyfish and early vertebrates of the Cambrian Era. As if its razor-edged teeth and powerful claws weren’t fearsome enough, scientists have now discovered that the marine monster boasted some of the sharpest—and, in proportion to its size, largest—eyes in history.

Scientists already suspected that Anomalocaris, just like today’s flies and horseshoe crabs, possessed compound eyes, which feature multiple lenses and excel at detecting movement. In the December 8 issue of Nature, an international team reports that Anomalocaris fossils found in South Australia confirm the theory and suggest that the Cambrian predator had highly acute vision—and might have seen even better than most living compound eyed-creatures. Each eye measured up to 3 centimeters in length and contained more than 16,000 lenses, according to the researchers, led by experts from the South Australian Museum, the University of Adelaide and other institutions.

Source: History.com

Hurricane Preparedness Training - Updated

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:47:00 +0000

When there is a hurricane, debris and large waves in the lagoon are a threat to dolphin safety. We train the dolphins to come out of the lagoon voluntarily so they are relaxed when we need to move them. We also want the staff to be well-trained in the evacuation procedures so that when it is time to deal with the emergency, they know exactly what to do. In this video, we are training the dolphins to come out of the water onto a platform. This will allow us to take them, one-by-one, on stretchers to the above-ground, indoor pool. The pool is located in a building which is designed to withstand hurricanes up to Class 5, and removal to the building during big storms ensures the animals' safety until the storm passes. We do routine dress-rehearsals for evacuations to ensure that the dolphins know what is happening and can participate without stress.

Sperm Whales Caught Napping

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:37:00 +0000

Luna's Dance

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:11:00 +0000

Luna's Ball Dance

Elvis is one of the senior trainers here at Dolphin Cove. When we attended the International Marine Animal Trainers Association conference this year, their opening video included a ball-dance behavior. Luna has recently demonstrated a great interest in playing with balls, so Elvis decided to train Luna to do the same behavior. Luna loved learning the ball dance, and as you can see in the video, she really enjoys doing it!

Boaters save a humpback whale

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:33:00 +0000

Incredible video about rescuing a young whale completely tangled in a fishing net.

Happy to be free the whale puts on a spectacular show as thanks for its freedom.

Winter's wildlife 'visitors' to California's Central Coast

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:39:00 +0000

Source: SFGate.com

Gray Whale

Appearing acts: Some 22,000 gray whales – virtually the world's entire population – will migrate within two miles of the Monterey coastline as they head to their winter breeding waters in Baja California, then pass by again in spring as the whales return to their summer smorgasbord in the Bering Sea.
Monterey Bay Whale Watch, which offers gray whale-watching cruises from mid-December through mid-April, notes that the whales' preference for shallow water brings them closer to the shore in Monterey than other sites along the coast. Their regular breathing pattern – blowing three to five times in brief intervals (15-30 seconds) before raising a fluke and submerging for three to five minutes, according to the American Cetacean Society (ACS) – is also helpful for spotting the at sea. And their enormous size doesn't hurt, either: Adult males can be 46 feet in length – females a bit longer – while both weigh between 30 and 40 tons.

Fun facts: Although most mating and calving takes place in the lagoons of Baja California, the ACS says both have been observed during migration. Size matters: Gray whales become sexually mature between ages 5 and 11, or when they've grown 36 to 39 feet. The ACS also describes their courting and mating behavior as "complex," noting it frequently involves "three or more whales of mixed sexes."
Sadly for the gray whales, their migration also causes a spike in sightings of killer whales, which hang out year round in the deeper waters of the bay, but love to munch on a gray whale when they get the chance.

Monarch Butterfly

Appearing acts: Pacific Grove is justly famous as the winter home for approximately 25,000 of the winged creatures who start arriving in October from as far north as Canada. But other Monterey County locations also attract sizable populations, including Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, Big Sur's Palo Colorado Canyon and Andrew Molera State Park and Sycamore Canyon at Pfeiffer Beach, according to the Ventana Wildlife Society. Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz and the North Beach Campground in Pismo Beach also host the fluttering migrants, who head north and east in March, as spring arrives.

Fun facts: The monarch migration is unusual in that none will have visited their southern oasis before; the butterfly's life span is so short, as many as five generations will have been born on the way to the northern habitat.
Just in time for Valentine's Day, monarch butterflies' thoughts turn to mating, as February's warmer temperatures and longer daylight "trigger the development of their sexual organs," according to the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary, which offers docent tours October through February. "They can then be seen performing spiral mating flights, after which the coupled pair will rest overnight. The male passes a nutrient-rich sperm packet to the female during mating. This extra energy will allow the female to travel far in search of milkweed on which to lay her eggs."

Elephant Seal

Appearing acts: Año Nuevo State Park in southern San Mateo County, is the largest northern elephant seal colony on the mainland, with several thousand pups born during the winter breeding season every year. Reservations are snapped up quickly for the three-mile guided walks conducted Dec. 15-March 31 – the only way to get close to the enormous pinnipeds during that time.
But Piedras Blancas in southern Big Sur, four miles north of San Simeon and Hearst Castle, offers easy free and easy viewing of several hundred elephant seals, spread out over two beaches, one with boardwalk access close to the parking lot with interpretive signs. No reservations or tours are necessary, though binoculars may come in handy. Sightseeing bonus: The parking lot off Highway 1 just over a mile south of the Piedras Blancas Light Station, which in winter offers lighthouse tours Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Antarctica's Biggest Mysteries: Secrets of a Frozen World

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:13:00 +0000

Antarctica's Alexander Island mountain range, snapped during a NASA research flight in October 2011. Credit: Michael Studinger, NASA.

Source: Our Amazing Planet

One hundred years ago this week, on a fine summer afternoon, Norwegian Roald Amundsen and four travel-weary companions plunged a bright flag atop a spindly pole into the Antarctic ice, marking their claim as the first humans to set foot at the bottom of the world. The South Pole was theirs.

"That moment will certainly be remembered by all of us who stood there," the Norwegian explorer wrote in his account of the arduous trek. On Dec. 14, 1911, two months after they set out from the continent's coast, the men had reached their goal — a frozen plain of endless white in the middle of the highest, windiest, coldest, driest and loneliest continent on Earth.

A century after Amundsen planted the flag — beating out Englishman Robert Falcon Scott's doomed expedition by a full month — an explosion of technological progress has transformed the scope of human knowledge of Antarctica.

CREDIT: NOAA/Department of Commerce, Steve Nicklas, NOS, NGS.

Amundsen and crew take an observation at the pole in an image from the Norwegian explorer's "The South Pole," an account of his historic trek.

Watchful satellites sail overhead; probing radar and lasers have allowed scientists to peer beneath the thick ice. And yet, in spite of the reach of these new tools, the continent still holds its secrets close. Many mysteries remain, and they are far more intricate and nuanced than the uncharted wilderness Amundsen and Scott confronted.

What is emerging from the research is that Antarctica is a far more dynamic place than anyone could have imagined a century ago — and that what happens there can have dramatic consequences for millions of people around the world.Now, instead of mapping new geographical discoveries, scientists are seeking to map the inner workings of the strange forces at play in Antarctica, from the biological mechanisms that allow tiny creatures to seemingly awake from the dead, to the little-understood forces that are gnawing away at the continent's ice — with increasing vigor.

Ice queen

Antarctica is home to about 70 percent of the planet's fresh water, and 90 percent of the planet's freshwater ice. Two massive ice sheets, nearly 3 miles (4 kilometers) thick in some places, cover about 99 percent of the continental landmass. Including its islands and attached floating plains of ice, Antarctica is roughly 5.4 million square miles (14 million square km), about one-and-a-half times the size of the United States.
Not surprisingly, most Antarctic research is focused on the ice — what is happening under it, in it, and to it.

CREDIT: Michael Studinger.

Airborne imaging technology allowed scientists to see the rugged topography of the Gamburtsev Mountains, hidden entirely beneath the ice sheet.

And it was beneath the ice that scientists made one of Antarctica's most screenplay-worthy discoveries: a sweeping kingdom of rocky slopes and liquid lakes, secreted under the ice for millennia.

During a 1958 mapping expedition, a Soviet team was trekking from the coast across the interior of the eastern half of the continent, and detonating explosives every hundred miles to measure the thickness of the ice.

In the middle of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the team was traveling across ice 2 miles (3 km) thick, when something strange started to happen, according to Robin Bell, a geophysicist and professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

What's under there?

"They suddenly found this very thin ice in the middle of the ice sheet, and they said, 'Hey, there are mountains here,'" Bell told OurAmazingPlanet.
Big mountains. The team had stumbled upon what were later dubbed the Gamburtsev Mountains, a range of steep peaks that rise to 9,000 feet (3,000 meters) and stretch 750 miles (1,200 km) across the interior of the continent.

"It's really hard to imagine that there are mountains under there. It doesn't matter which way you spin — it's pretty flat," said Bell, who has studied the area for years. Yet, she added, the truly mysterious part of the hidden mountains is not that they exist, but how they still exist. The inexorable march of geological time erodes mountains away (if we came back in 100 million years, the Alps would be gone, Bell said) and the Gamburtsevs, at the ripe old age of 900 million to a billion years old, should have been worn down eons ago.

However, recent research indicates the mountains are a kind of geological do-over.
"They were born a long time ago, but somewhere between 100 (million) and 200 million years ago, they had a renaissance," Bell said.

It happened during a rifting event, Bell said, when tectonic forces were wresting apart continental masses during the breakup of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent. At the time, the eroded mountains' heavy roots apparently underwent a density change — as though a bar of solid chocolate suddenly morphed into the fluffy stuff inside a Three Musketeers bar — which buoyed the mountain range back up, "like a life preserver," Bell said.

Exactly how that change in the Gamburtsevs' root happened is a mystery.
"That's the biggest thing that has us scratching our heads," Bell said. "We don't know if the rifting added a little heat, added a little water — we know the rifting happened, and [the mountain range] popped up, but we're still working on the question of how you make that phase change," she said.

A map of Antarctica. CREDIT: NASA.

Land o' lakes

In among the Gamburtsev Mountains lies another enigmatic feature of the Antarctic: Lake Vostok — a pristine freshwater lake buried beneath 2.5 miles (3.7 km) of solid ice. About the size of Lake Ontario, it is the largest of the more than 200 liquid lakes strewn around the continent under the ice.

The lakes are largely created when heat from the Earth's core melts the bottom of the ice sheet; the thick blanket of ice on top acts as insulation. Some of the lakes have been isolated for hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and scientists are racing to collect water samples; the sequestered lakes could be bastions of biological discovery, full of never-before-seen microbial life.

So far, nobody has managed to directly sample an Antarctic lake, but at least three projects — a Russian team, a British team and an American team — are tackling the problem. The Russians, at Lake Vostok, and the British, at Lake Ellsworth, may have samples by 2012.

And although lake water has so far eluded capture, scientists do have samples of the ice sheet itself, which, it turns out, sparks biological mysteries of its own.

Who's in there?

"I think this entire ice sheet is alive. That has yet to be proven," said John Priscu, a professor at Montana State University, who has been doing field work in Antarctica for 27 years.

What is proven, Priscu said, is that bacteria are in the ice. Not many, by microbial standards — 300 cells in 1 milliliter of ice vs. 100,000 cells in seawater — but they're there, in tiny veins of liquid water that crisscross the solid ice and serve as "little houses," Priscu said, which also contain nutrients that could feed a hungry microbe.
"The question is, are they living there? Is it a functional ecosystem?" he said. In the lab, ancient bacteria from ice samples 420,000 years old, retrieved from more than 2 miles (3 km) inside the ice sheet, have quickly shown signs of life. "We melt the water, and they grow," Priscu told OurAmazingPlanet.

However, it's not clear if the ice is simply acting as a preservative, and keeping the same microbes intact until they're given a warm meal, or if an active microbial community is plodding along inside the ice sheet.
"Either they're in a suspended state of animation during that half-a-million year trip, or they're living very slowly. We don't know that. We just don't know," Priscu said.

CREDIT: British Antarctic Survey.

A self-made antifreeze keeps this Antarctic icefish alive.

Who's out there?

Another spot of biological intrigue is the ocean that surrounds Antarctica. "If you picked up a handful of Antarctic animals, you wouldn't mistake them for creatures from anywhere else on the planet," said David Barnes, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey.
Barnes, speaking from a research vessel just off the Antarctic Peninsula, said one of the biggest mysteries is, "why do we see the types of animals we see?"
Leggy sea spiders the size of dinner plates rule Antarctic waters, yet other creatures common to the rest of the Earth's oceans, such as slugs, are strangely absent. Some creatures grow to enormous size, while others are unusually small.
"Many things make sense. Fish evolving antifreezes, that's a sensible thing to do," Barnes said. "But why we get the strange groups of animals, and why we get some animals doing so well and others doing so badly — that's part of the great charm of this place. It's so different. And understanding why this is and how it works is a great challenge."

"There are a lot of mysteries. The more things you find out about Antarctica, the more questions it raises than answers," said Huw Griffiths, a marine biologist with the British Antarctic Survey.

Griffiths said that one area of great interest is the virtually unexplored ocean beneath the ice shelves that ring the continent. The outlets of glaciers, ice shelves are many hundreds of feet thick, and they are colossal. The largest, the Ross Ice Shelf, is 197,000 square miles (510,680 square km), or 3.7 percent of the total area of Antarctica.

"Basically we know very little to nothing about what lives underneath them, and the only places we have a glimpse of this is at a couple of the smaller ice shelves that have collapsed," Griffiths told OurAmazingPlanet.

A British-made oceangoing robot, dubbed AutoSub, made some of the first-ever observations beneath an ice shelf in 2009, during several dives in western Antarctica. Although the robot didn't offer a glimpse of anything living there — it's not equipped with cameras or a sampling arm — it did provide invaluable data for scientists studying the swift-moving Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, which might be thought of as ground zero for the biggest Antarctic mystery of all, in the minds of many scientists: What is happening to the ice?

Icy disappearing act

Time and again, researchers return to this question. The ice that is of most concern is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is undergoing unprecedented changes, and is likely the biggest potential player in future global sea level rise.
Research over the last 25 years has revealed that the ice sheet rests on gooey sediments that can allow glaciers to slide more easily than if they were flowing over a hard, rocky bed. Also, large portions of the bottom of the ice shelf are below sea level — these two factors make the ice shelf particularly vulnerable, according to Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist and NASA scientist emeritus.

The Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, where Bindschadler will be doing field work. A giant rift, part of a natural calving process, has recently formed on the ice shelf.CREDIT: Michael Studinger, NASA.

All of this has come as something of a surprise to the scientific community. As recently as the 1980s, ice sheets weren't even taken into account when researchers modeled how climate change might affect sea level, Bindschadler said.
"People thought, 'Ice sheets, oh, they don't matter — it takes millennia,'" Bindschadler said.

The data tell a far different story: "The observations in the last 10 years are, whoa, ice sheets change far more dramatically, both in terms of magnitude of change and timescale, than we experts ever thought possible," Bindschadler said. "We were talking about big changes on the order of a century, and we are observing big changes on the order of a decade."

Now that scientists know swift changes are occurring, they're trying to figure out how it's happening — and all the evidence has revealed that the ocean is the culprit.
"I think the most critical interaction is this ocean-ice interaction," Bindschadler told OurAmazingPlanet. "Certainly that is the one that is setting off all the alarms if you look at recent changes in ice sheets. That's the big sledgehammer that's hitting the ice sheets right now, and the details of what is going on are hidden."
That's because it appears that most of the action is happening beneath the ice shelves — those giant plains of floating ice that cling to the continent's edges. Satellites and other observational tools can't get a detailed look at what's happening under them.
"We've known for some time that relatively warm water is getting underneath some of these ice shelves. What we don't know yet is exactly where, how often and how variable its access is," said Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"What controls that access and how it's changing with time is another issue," Jacobs told OurAmazingPlanet.

Researchers do know that ice shelves act as giant door stops for glaciers. When ice shelves get thinner or collapse all together, glaciers speed up and dump more water into the ocean, raising sea levels. [Album: Antarctica, Iceberg Maker]
Now, Bindschadler and other researchers are heading out to fetch some of the first temperature data from under the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, the outlet of one of the largest and fastest moving glaciers in Antarctica, in hopes of understanding what is happening beneath it.
"The more measurements we get, the more questions we have," Bindschadler said. "I think the overall mystery is the specific nature of these interactions that we have discovered."

The overarching goal for Bindschadler and many other Antarctic researchers is to hand off enough data to modelers so they can figure out how the Antarctic ice is going to change in the coming decades, and how those changes will affect the rest of the world.

If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted entirely, it would raise global average sea levels by 16 feet (5 meters), according to some estimates. Although that is unlikely to happen for many thousands of years, the ice sheet has increasingly lost mass over the last two decades, and the glaciers that serve as its outlet to the sea are accelerating. Even comparatively small changes in the world's three ice sheets (the Greenland, the East Antarctic and the West Antarctic) would have dramatic effects. A 1 percent volume change in all of them would raise sea levels by about 26 inches (65 centimeters), Bindschadler said.
To get the data that modelers need still requires sleeping out in tiny tents on windswept plains of ice, and working long hours in the perpetual daylight of the Antarctic summer.
"We're still explorers," Priscu said. "The early explorers like Scott and Shackleton had to explore the limits of human existence, but we're now exploring the limits of life in general. We have major global hypotheses — we've been able to accomplish a lot in 100 years — but we still have a long way to go, and we still have a lot of questions to answer."

Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet and on Facebook.

Ocean Voyagers 3D Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:46:00 +0000

"The heart of this film is really a relationship between our mother humpback and her calf," notes the director Feo Pitcairn, "we had unlimited access to these animals, filming them day after day, we have developed a real bond of trust. This allowed us to obtain rare and intimate images, like the calf and the mother's care rests on the sandy bottom of the ocean We're very excited to premiere the film in 3D at the Centre for Independent Theatre -. seeing this material for big screen in 3D is the closest thing to experience first hand what we experienced during filming underwater."

Antarctic Killer Whales May Seek Spa-Like Relief in the Tropics

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:35:00 +0000

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — NOAA researchers offer a novel explanation for why a type of Antarctic killer whale performs a rapid migration to warmer tropical waters. Scientists believe that warmer waters help the whales regenerate skin faster, after spending months coated with algae in colder waters.

"The whales are traveling so quickly, and in such a consistent track, that it is unlikely they are foraging for food or giving birth," said John Durban, lead author from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. "We believe these movements are likely undertaken to help the whales regenerate skin tissue in a warmer environment with less heat loss."

As evidence, the researchers point to the yellowish coating on Antarctic killer whales caused by a thick accumulation of diatoms or algae on the outer skin of the animals. The coloring is noticeably absent when they return from warmer waters indicating the upper epidermis of the skin has been shed.

One tagged Antarctic killer whale monitored by satellite traveled over 5,000 miles to visit the warm waters off southern Brazil before returning immediately to Antarctica just 42 days later. This was the first long distance migration ever reported for killer whales.

The coloring is noticeably absent when they return from warmer waters indicating the upper layer of skin has been shed. The scientists tagged 12 Type B killer whales (seal-feeding specialists) near the Antarctic Peninsula and tracked 5 that revealed consistent movement to sub-tropical waters. The whales tended to slow in the warmest waters although there was no obvious interruption in swim speed or direction to indicate calving or prolonged feeding.

"They went to the edge of the tropics at high speed, turned around and came straight back to Antarctica, at the onset of winter," said Robert Pitman, co-author of the study. "The standard feeding or breeding migration does not seem to apply here."
Researchers believe there are at least three different types of killer whales in Antarctica and have labeled them Types A, B and C.

Source: NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service.

Dolphin calf rescued and released

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:25:00 +0000

From: Sarasota Dolphin Research Program

SDRP Director Randy Wells provides an interesting glimpse into the difficulty of mounting a highly successful dolphin rescue (below). Usually dolphin rescues are not nearly this easy.

The life of a bottlenose dolphin calf was threatened by entangling fishing line. It was captured, freed of the line, and released 17 minutes later.
The calf had been observed on and off for more than 3 months with the line wrapped through its mouth and around its body. It was near St. Petersburg, FL Line tangling dolphin calf

Fishing line surrounded the calf’s body; a large wad of tangled line tethered to the calf's left side. Drawing by Ann Weaver.
(about a 90 minute drive north of the SDRP lab).
When the line didn’t come free on its own, it threatened the health of the calf, so NOAA officials requested that Randy lead a rescue effort in early November.
The subsequent rescue was publicized in widely – Randy even heard about it from a friend in Mozambique.

Coordinating the rescue was complicated because multiple agencies and organizations participated, a large crew was needed of experienced dolphin handlers who could be ready on 24 hour notice to travel to the boat launch site, good weather was important, and the dolphins needed to be sighted nearby on the previous day.
Oh, and there was no formal funding for the rescue effort, so it was a team of the willing and available.

The team consisted of participants from: the SDRP/CZS, NOAA/NMFS, FWC MMPL, Florida University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, Mote Marine Laboratory, Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute’s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab, Busch Gardens, SeaWorld, Clearwater Marine Aquarium, and the Florida Aquarium, as well as Dr. Ann Weaver, the researcher who originally documented the entanglement and monitored the calf, and Larry Fulford, a commercial fisherman with more than 27 years of experience with dolphin capture-release efforts.

When the rescue was over, the calf and mom were behaving normally. The wounds from the monofilament fishing line were deep, but the veterinarians were guardedly optimistic that the wounds would heal and the calf would survive.
Dr. Weaver will be on the watch to monitor the mom and calf as time goes on.

Read more here

Dolphin Videos!

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:44:00 +0000

Please visit and subscribe to my youtube channel to watch my dolphin training videos.

Jellyfish Lake In Palau Swarms With Complex Historical Wonders

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:13:00 +0000

Source: Huffington Post

Who knew the gelatinous bags of goo known as jellyfish could have such a complex history?

The video below shows millions of golden jellyfish thriving in the evolutionary wonderment that is Jellyfish Lake.
The lake is one of many in Palau, an island nation located about 500 miles east of the Philippines.

Pamela S. Turner writes in a National Wildlife Federation (NWF) article that five lakes each contain a jellyfish "varying from its neighbors and their common ancestor in a dramatic example of the origin of species ... If Darwin had stepped ashore in Palau instead of the Galapagos, the icon of evolution might be not Darwin's finches, but Darwin's jellyfishes."

An estimated 12,000 years ago, sea levels rose following the end of the last ice age, and jellyfish became trapped in the lake. For the jellies in Jellyfish Lake, Turner writes that they quickly diverged from the spotted jellyfish, their common ancestor.
Rumor has it that the jellyfish adapted to their new conditions by losing their sting due to a lack of predators. But Laura Martin of the Coral Reef Research Foundation clarifies to NWF that although their sting is barely felt by humans, "The lake jellyfish do have stingers, and they do use them to prey on zooplankton." The jellyfish survive in large part on algae-like organisms which live in their tissues.

How does this isolated species pass the time? Quite actively, it turns out.
According to National Geographic, the golden jellyfish engage in a daily migration which follows the arc of the sun.

Around 6 a.m., the jellies swim toward the light shining from the eastern sky -- they stop short of reaching the eastern shore, where the anemones, their main predator awaits. The Coral Reef Research Foundation in Palau notes, "These anemones are likely responsible for the evolution of the remarkable, daily migration of the golden jellies."

Instead of venturing on, the jellies know to stop at the shadows cast by the trees along the shoreline. Midday the jellies rest, and then they reverse direction, heading west as the sun sinks below the horizon.

Soaking up the rays is crucial for survival. National Geographic explains, "Solar rays nourish essential, algae-like organisms called zooxanthellae, which live symbiotically in the jellies' tissues and provide their hosts with energy as a byproduct of their photosynthesis."

Not only do the jellyfish benefit from the migration, but the lake itself relies on the jellies to mix up the nutrients and small organisms in the water, taking on the role of the sea. At night, PBS writes that the jellyfish swim to a lower depth, where the algae population is sustained by the nitrogen-rich water.

Unfortunately, Jellyfish Lake is as sensitive to humans and outside influences as other delicate marine regions. Turner reports that back in 1999, the local jellyfish perished, possibly due to overheating by El Nino and La Nina. Then in 2003, an invasive anemone was found in the lake, reports the Coral Reef Research Foundation. The new anemone is now quickly spreading, throwing the lake's future ecology into unpredictable disarray. The Foundation writes, "Mangrove root and shallow water communities that were once dominated by algae or diverse assemblages of invertebrates are now dominated by invasive anemones."

At a World Conservation Union meeting in 2007, researchers said it was nearly certain the anemone was introduced by tourists. Former Palau President Tommy E. Remengesau said, "Invasive species, marine or terrestrial, represent one of, if not the most, dangerous threat to our islands."

JELLYFISH LAKE from Sarosh Jacob on Vimeo.
Learn about how you can help protect the oceans by visiting the Ocean Conservancy's website.

Snatch!

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Thieving Octopus steals diver's camera and makes a quick getaway.

More Whale Encounters

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Whale Encounter

noreply@blogger.com (swimswithdolphins) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:23:00 +0000

Great video about an amazing photograph.