A gallery of wallpaper-sized images of beaches and seascapes for your enjoyment.
Archive for the 'Ocean' Category Page 2 of 5
Cage diving with Great White Sharks, Guadalupe
Large school of Hammerheads, Oceanic White Tip, Red Sea
Beautiful film of divers, up close to a large school of Hammerheads and an Oceanic White Tip at 40m in the Red Sea.
Underwater love, Aquarium, Red Sea
Aquarium dive site, Red Sea.
Lots more at http://www.diveaday.tv/
This bad boy is 3583 x 2390 pixels, so it make a nice desktop wallpaper if you have a wide-screen computer display. Some browsers will not render the big pic; right click and “Save As…”
Beautiful underwater photography by Kawika Chetron.
On Saturday, March 17, 2007 Kawika launched his boat in Eureka, California. When he did not return that evening, the Coast Guard launched a search, finding his boat Sunday morning. Kawika’s camera was on board; Kawika and his dive gear were not. The Coast Guard continued the search until Monday evening. He has not been found.
Link -via the Neatorama
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska’s northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.
Alaska’s walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.
Walrus feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform over water beyond their 630-foot diving range or gathering spots on shore, thousands of walrus picked Alaska’s rocky beaches.
“It looks to me like animals are shifting their distribution to find prey,” said Tim Ragen, executive director of the federal Marine Mammal Commission. “The big question is whether they will be able to find sufficient prey in areas where they are looking.”
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, September sea ice was 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000. Sea ice cover is in a downward spiral and may have passed the point of no return, with a possible ice-free Arctic Ocean by summer 2030, senior scientist Mark Serreze said.
Is it a tsunami? No. It’s a tidal bore.
In fact the tidal bore phenomenon occurs in 30 places worldwide.
Famous ones include the Hangchow (or Hangzhou) bore on the Qiantang river, the Amazon bore called pororoca, the Hoogly (or Hooghly) bore on the Ganges, or the bore at Batang Lupar (great pics). Smaller tidal bores occur on the Severn river near Gloucester, England, or on the Garonne and Dordogne rivers, France.
Tidal bore (English) = Mascaret (French) = Pororoca (Portuguese, Brazil).
The Pororoca is born of the conflict between the great Amazon River and the unalterable surge of the Atlantic Ocean itself. Waves up to 4 meters high travel as much as 13 kilometers inland upstream. In the local tongue the name means “great destructive noise”.
Nature at it’s best!
The wave has become popular with surfers from all around the world.
Articles:
- Great Enormous Noise - Surfing Brazil’s Pororoca by WetDawg
- Picuruta Salazar surfs mile-long wave in the Pororoca by Surfersvillage
(with great pics) - Kayakers surfed the Pororoca for the first time in history: Interview with Corran Addison about the Pororoca trip in Brazil
In this 26-minute-long film, a group of professional surfers
take their boards for a ride on the Pororoca:
More pororoca surfing clips can be found here. Enjoy!
[original article at Ursi’s Blog]
Mike Parsons surfing on a HUGE wave, setting the world record for the tallest ocean surface wave ever surfed successfully.
In an earlier post, we reported that a rare Chinese river dolphin was feared extinct.
This might not be true.
Tribe Denounces Whale Shooting
NEAH BAY, Wash. (AP) — The Makah Tribal Council on Sunday denounced the killing of a California gray whale that was harpooned and shot several times off Washington’s coast, calling it “a blatant violation of our law” and promising to prosecute those responsible.
But one of the men suspected in the killing told a newspaper Sunday that he was “feeling kind of proud” and whaling is “in the blood.”
Link to full story
Cat faeces ‘may be killing whales’
Pet owners who flush cat faeces down the lavatory may be responsible for the deaths of whales, dolphins and porpoises around Britain’s coast, according to academics and public health experts.
They have found evidence of a common parasite in dead marine mammals and say family cats could be be the unwitting source. Cats are essential to the life cycle of toxoplasma gondii, which can infect most mammals and birds but only as part of the food chain.
The possible link to dolphin deaths has been raised by staff from Swansea and Glamorgan universities and the National Public Health Service for Wales in a letter to the Veterinary Record. They say that in California concern that cat faeces have contributed to sea otter deaths has led to disposal warnings on bags of cat litter. But little is known about infection in marine species around Britain.
Blood samples from dead stranded cetaceans revealed infection in one in 70 harbour porpoises, in six of 21 common dolphins and in the only hump-backed whale tested. Nearly one in eight Swansea University and health service employees admitted flushing cat faeces away.
Cynthia Vanderlip, manager of the State of Hawaii’s Kure Atoll Wildlife Sanctuary, cut open the dead body of a fledgling Laysan albatross (nicknamed “Shed Bird”) to find more than half a pound of plastic in its stomach.
Concentrated on the right are all the items retrieved from inside the bird: Plastic lighters, bottle caps, and other plastics that are carelessly tossed often wind up floating on the ocean surface, where they are occasionally consumed by foraging seabirds and other marine creatures.
- Link to full story on Tree Hugger
- The North Pacific Gyre (a.k.a. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch) [wiki]
- Interview on FurledSails.com with oceanographer Dr. Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who studies ocean currents using scientific instruments and flotsam lost from container ships.
[via BoingBoing]
Dark Roasted Blend as a terrific two-part article with pics galore of ships battling stormy seas. Very scary!
Links open in separate windows
One of many waterspout pics to be found on Flickr.
Searavens (and guest) charter a Catalina 320 for an overnight cruise from Santa Cruz to Monterey. Flat seas, but 20 - 25 kt winds in middle of the bay…
Annika on helm
Your Correspondent
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Picture a beautiful beach spanning miles of coastline, gently lapped by aqua-colored water — and sprinkled with glass.
Ouch? Think again. It feels just like sand, but with granules that sparkle in the sunlight.
Faced with the constant erosion of Florida’s beaches, Broward County officials are exploring using recycled glass — crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand — to help fill gaps.
It’s only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass.
“Basically, what we’re doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state,” said Phil Bresee, Broward’s recycling manager.
[full story YahooNews/AP]
And you thought getting sand up your swimsuit was bad…
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