Tag Archives: oceans
How to Find Out What Dolphins Eat
How do you find out what animals eat? Well, one way is to collect their poop. What goes in must come out, in one form or another. Before the rise of DNA techniques, the only way to analyze feces was … Continue reading
How Baby Rays Breathe
Manta rays, like the majority of sharks and rays, give birth to live young but don’t have a placenta. How do they do it? In a study I wrote about for ScienceNOW, the researchers worked out part of the puzzle: … Continue reading
whales get stressed
Feces are a surprisingly useful subject for research. Scientists can use them to get a window into an animal’s inner life. You might think poop is just mushed-up food, but no, there’s a lot of information in there. A sample … Continue reading
more on right whales
Like I said in yesterday’s story, North Atlantic right whales are already getting a lot of help to reduce their chances of getting killed by ships. At certain times of year, ships have to slow down when they’re going through … Continue reading
right whales are ship magnets
Right whales aren’t one of the better-known whales. They aren’t as charismatic as humpbacks or orcas, or as ginormous as blue whales. One story about where they got their name is that they were the “right whale” for whalers – … Continue reading
hyperbolic crochet coral reef update
Remember the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef? It’s an ongoing project – they’ll keep mounting exhibits of parts of it in different places. Right now there’s a show in Pasadena. But I heard good news recently about the Smithsonian Community Reef, … Continue reading
crochet coral reef: last chance!
If you’ve been meaning to see the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef at the Smithsonian, you only have a few more days; it closes this Sunday, April 24th. It’s surprising how much a bunch of knotted yarn can look like a … Continue reading
rolling down to old maui
Here’s that sea chanty, “Rolling Down to Old Maui,” sung by the great Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers: “We’re homeward bound from the Arctic ground, rolling down to old Maui.” The sailors have been catching whales in the Arctic, which … Continue reading
museum tourist: old lahaina courthouse
I have a thing about whales. They’re so big, and interesting, and mysterious. For a long time, the only things we knew about them were what we could see them doing at the surface of their world. And they do … Continue reading
museum tourist: coral reef, again
I couldn’t resist going back to the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef this weekend. And my mom said she hadn’t realized from my previous pictures quite how big it is. So here’s another picture, with a gaggle of Japanese teenagers for … Continue reading