saltandfat:

Interesting writeup in the New York Times about “aquaponics”, a gardening technique that combines hydroponic gardening and fish cultivation. Wastewater from the fish fertilize the plants, which are grown in water tanks, not dirt. I love the idea.

Pretty cool write up on using aquariums to farm different vegetables. Pretty cool if you ask me, plus you get an extra pond with fish to mess around with! Who doesn’t want that?

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t know much about this, but my professor from my world environmental policy class sent this article out today:

UN climate chief quits, leaves talks hanging

I don’t think that this is a good thing, unless we can get someone else who fosters talks about environmental change just as well as he did, which is unlikely. Who knows though? I mean, maybe we will, which would be awesome!

theanniehour:

Swimming with Jellyfish - Read the awesome article here!  It’s very interesting.

This is a fantastic example of adaptation. Who would have thought that there would be a huge amount of brackish living jellyfish who have nearly nullified their ability to sting. I would be interested to see the evolutionary tree leading to these species.

“The data, published in Biology Letters, showed that during certain dives, after the seals swam to a depth of about 500 feet, they leveled off, turned over on their backs and coasted slowly down, rolling and yawing slightly as they descended. This slow phase lasted on average about 10 minutes.

Dr. Mitani said the seals occasionally even struck bottom without any apparent reaction — an indication that they might have been sleeping.”

I think that this article is really cool. I think its great that they are in such a deep resting state that they actually hit bottom and don’t wake up. It’s also really interesting to me that the data is actually in 3 dimensions. It’s a fascinating to me that we have the technology to do that.

It also reminds me of just how little we know about our oceans when we don’t even know how these huge ocean-faring animals sleep. We have so much more to know.

This week’s Podcast from the New York Times can be found on this page. Listen to it if you love me like science.

: )

I find this article really fascinating. The fact that the ocean isn’t constantly sucking the water out of the bay was new information to me. I had always thought that once you get a bit off shore, you’re pretty much done if your floating and you’ll be out to sea in no time.

Turns out that’s not true. Who knew?

Thoughts?

Having worked on this really obnoxious case study for nearly 2 months now, a major theme emerged in all the things that I had been reading: California’s Intertidal is not monitored closely enough for policy to actually be enacted.

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