In My Defense

Posted on 2012/01/22 by Sam

As those of you who check this site more than three times a year may have noticed, posting has been…er…slow this fall. But there was a reason:

Temporal variability and bio-physical coupling in the pelagic fauna of Monterey Bay

The talk is open to the public for anyone in Seattle who is interested.

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How to Catch the Biggest Fish

Posted on 2011/09/02 by Sam


Pouring December rain, the crummy’s windows all steamed up,
Our tree-planting crew was talking salmon fishing during lunch
When Piss-Fir Willie matter-of-factly announced,
“Due to my natural modesty I didn’t mention it to you boys,
But I caught me a 30-pound chinook on Thanksgiving morn
Hit a big silver spinner in the Ten-Ten Hole.”
J-Root Johnny immediately hooted, “Hey, dude,
Throw that fucking minnow back!
I nailed one in the gorge last week
That went 38—” But before we could ask him on what
(A pitchfork was rumored his favorite lure)
Pete Tucker honked, “Put it in Glad Bag, Johnny,
And set it out on the curb. I landed one
From that little pool behind the Ulrick Ranch
That weighed out a hair over 42
On the Hiouchi Hamlet scales.”
At which Willie threw up his hands and wailed,
“Shitfire! On this damn crew
The first liar don’t have a chance.”

—Jim Dodge

***

The American Fisheries Society annual meeting starts in Seattle in a couple of days. I will be in attendance, and am bracing myself for an onslaught of these stories. I worry that “I once saw an echo with a target strength of almost -12 dB re. 1 μPa at 1 m!” is not actually that impressive to most people. I suppose I will just have to fall back on my natural modesty.

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Where do hummingbirds go during a hurricane?

Posted on 2011/08/28 by Sam

Irene is dying out over northern New England. Most of the worst-case scenarios seem not to have occurred, though there has been a great deal of damage and flooding regardless. The hurricane in New England made me think of the book Time of Wonder, by Robert McCloskey, about summer life on a small island in Penobscot Bay. Just before the end, a hurricane blows through, sending the family indoors for a night of board games, storytelling, and hymn-singing by the light of a kerosene lantern. The book closes with these lines, as they pack up to leave at the end of the summer:

It is time to reset the clock from the rise and fall of the tide, to the come and go of the school bus. Pack your bag and put in a few treasures…A little bit sad about the place you are leaving, a little bit glad about the place you are going. It is a time of quiet wonder – for wondering, for instance: Where do hummingbirds go in a hurricane?

I can’t say that question has ever kept me up at night, but I have wondered about it from time to time. Well, it seems that the question now has an answer. See the photo below, taken by Chuck at his parents’ house in Greenville, NC, during the storm:

Just chillin' at the feeder during the hurricane. No biggie.

Apparently, hummingbirds go wherever the hell they want during a Hurricane.

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Ice and Fire

Posted on 2011/08/18 by Sam

This video is pretty unreal.

Winter in Hell from Enrique Pacheco on Vimeo.

Shot by Enrique Pacheco, and brought to my attention by Julia Whitty. Iceland is one of the strangest and most awesome places I’ve been, and getting to travel there this spring for a conference was an amazing privilege. This video almost makes me wish I had been there during the Eyafjallajökull eruption last year. From the photographer’s description on Vimeo:

This is a 8 minutes short film, not a quick youtube video, please be patient or watch it later.

I shot this film over the course of a year. It then took me few months to edit and color grade it.
…
Winter 2010, the stunning landscape of Iceland succumbs to the Arctic cold. Beaches and lakes get frozen, but something unexpected is going to happen… the earth shakes, warms up, and suddenly a big crack opens up at the top of the glacier Eyjafjallajokull. Lava, smoke, ash and fire come up from the depth of the earth, melting everything in its path.

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What Science is Really Like

Posted on 2011/08/09 by Sam

Posting has been a bit slow of late–I’ve been in the bunker, working on my thesis. This rage comic came across my radar last week, and it might be the truest thing I’ve ever seen written about the scientific “method.”

The original is from here. Maybe now you understand why posting has been slow. At least I’m almost at the last line by now…

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La Beluga Mariachi

Posted on 2011/08/08 by Sam

Mariachi Connecticut serenades a beluga whale at the Mystic Aquarium. This video has over 1.2 million views, but it needs more. Watch it, fools.

H/T to my friend Arielle for sending this.

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Standing on Shoulders You Didn’t Know Were There

Posted on 2011/07/18 by Sam

If you’re a scientist, almost all of your professional reading comes in the form of scientific papers. These days, that usually usually means between 10 and 20 pages of fairly dense information packed into a PDF. This format is great for organizability and portability, but it does lack a certain je ne sais quois. It also lacks a lot of the older papers—ones you see cited over and over again, but have never actually read, and ones you’ve never heard of that embarrass you with their relevance. Here you thought you were so clever, and all of the sudden you realize some dude was writing about your brilliant idea in the mid-fifties.
Continue reading →

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The Most Repulsive Barnacle in the World

Posted on 2011/07/11 by Sam

ResearchBlogging.orgThere is some truly nasty stuff out there in the ocean. All kinds of parasites. Male anglerfish. Penis fencing and traumatic insemination. Lampreys. Even those studying the “cute” marine mammals aren’t safe. Ever hear of blowhole sex? How about murderous, necrophiliac otters? It comes with the territory, and after a while you get used to these things. But then, once in a while, you’ll be flipping through your old invertebrate zoology textbook and come across a picture like this:

A crab, seen from below, infested with a rhizocephalan. The crab's right side is drawn transparent to show the branching body of the parasite. Image from 'Invertebrates,' by Brusca and Brusca.

And you will spend the next half hour with your mouth open, descending through increasing degrees of stupefied horror, as you learn exactly what you are looking at. Congratulations. You just discovered the rhizocephala: the parasitic “root headed” barnacles.

Continue reading →

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Independence Day on Lake Union

Posted on 2011/07/05 by Sam

I spent a good portion of today on the shores of Lake Union, which is located right in the middle of the city of Seattle. This afternoon was the Wooden Boat Festival at the Center for Wooden Boats. There were several docks full of awesome old boats: tugs, schooners, a hundred-year-old steam-powered ferry, skiffs, dugout canoes, sailboats, cabin cruisers, Chris Crafts, a gillnetter, a bright-finished Venetian runabout, Beetle Cats, skin kayaks, plywood kayaks, daysailers, and three slim R-class racing sloops. I spent a few hours walking around, going aboard the different vessels, and daydreaming about owning them all.

This evening, I went with a couple of friends to watch the fireworks display over the lake from a small park by the lakeshore. The entire lake was crowded with boats, most of which had been anchored there for the better part of the day to get a prime spot for watching the show. The explosions themselves were fantastic, but almost as cool was the sight we saw afterwards: hundreds of boats, all filing out of Lake Union into Portage Bay, on their way through the Montlake Cut to docks and marinas in Lake Washington. It looked almost like some crazy firefly migration, and the video I took of it almost kind of does it justice…

Anyway, as the straggling boats from Lake Union continue to stream by the end of the dock, and various independent-minded Seattleites continue to set off various kinds of ordnance…happy birthday, America, and happy 4th to everyone in it.

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Oppie, In His Own Words

Posted on 2011/06/28 by Sam

In the time since the last post I wrote about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Bomb, I’ve finished “American Prometheus.” Highly, highly recommended. I also came across a video (from 1965) of Oppie repeating the famous quote I used for my earlier title. If you weren’t haunted before…

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