Incredible Underwater Crop Circles

Mysterious underwater circles created by 5-inch fish seeking love

Oct. 3, 2013 at 11:48 AM ET

Kawase et al

These “mystery circles” found off Japan are about 7 feet wide and are made by a 5-inch fish.

In 1995, divers noticed a beautiful, strange circular pattern on the seafloor off Japan, and soon after, more circles were discovered nearby. Some likened these formations to “underwater crop circles.” The geometric formations mysteriously came and went, and for more than a decade, nobody knew what made them.

Finally, the creator of these remarkable formations was found: a newly discovered species of pufferfish. Further study showed these small pufferfish make the ornate circles to attract mates. Males laboriously flap their fins as they swim along the seafloor, resulting in disrupted sediment and amazing circular patterns. Although the fish are only about 12 centimeters (5 inches) long, the formations they make measure about 2 meters (7 feet) in diameter.

When the circles are finished, females come to inspect them. If they like what they see, they reproduce with the males, said Hiroshi Kawase, the curator of the Coastal Branch of Natural History Museum and Institute in Chiba, Japan. But nobody knows exactly what the females are looking for in these circles or what traits they find desirable, Kawase told LiveScience. [See Video of Pufferfish Making Seafloor Circles]

K. Ito

A male pufferfish making a valley in the seafloor with his fins on April 23, 2012.

Unique circles
Pufferfish mating involves females laying eggs in the fine sediments in the center of the circles, and then the males fertilizing them externally. Then, the females vanish, and the males stay for another six days, perhaps to guard the eggs, the study noted.

Males of some species of cichlids (a type of fish) are known to construct crater-shaped mounds that females visit to have their eggs fertilized, Kawase said. For example, male featherfin cichlids in Africa’s Lake Tanganyika build small bowls out of the sand, and display them to females before mating there, said Alex Jordan, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin who wasn’t involved in this study.

But this new pufferfish’s geometric patterns have three features never seen before. First, they involve radially aligned ridges and valleys outside the nest site. Second, the male decorates these ridges with fragments of shells. Third, the male gathers fine sediments to give the resulting formation a distinctive look and coloring, Kawase said. [Photos: Pufferfish Make Seafloor Circles to Mate]

Strangely enough, the male “gathers” the fine sediments using the circular pattern itself, Kawase said. A fluid dynamics test using a half-size model of one of these circles found that the upstream portion of the circle funnels water and fine sediments toward the center. Then, the downstream peaks and valleys funnel the water outward. The speed of water was slowed by nearly 25 percent in the center, where the eggs are laid, the study noted.

Y. Okata

One of the circular formations in various stages of completion. “A” represents the early stage, B the middle stage and C the final stage. D shows the same circle one week after spawning.

Bowerbirds of the sea?
It takes about seven to nine days for the pufferfish to build the circles. The male pufferfish don’t maintain these formations, and underwater currents wash them away relatively quickly. Kawase said they likely give up their old formations because the circles exhaust the fine sediment in the area, and thus must be built anew in areas with fresh sediment.

When Jordan first heard about the circles, he guessed a much bigger fish would have made them. The fact that such a small animal makes such a large formation is “pretty cool, and suggests some underlying biological reason for the size, like poor visibility at depth, or distance between individuals that means males have to make large nests to be found by females,” he told LiveScience.

Research describing the pufferfish formations was published in July in the journal Scientific Reports. “It’s a nice clean study because it provides a definite answer to the question — something that is very rare in biology,” Jordan said.

The formations are very similar to so-called “bowers” — display sites built by various animals like bowerbirds in which to strut their stuff before mating. In this case, the formations may serve solely to gather fine sediments, which females could use to choose their mate, Jordan said.

But until this idea is tested, nobody will know. “The one caveat I have is that there is no evidence that females care about anything more than the fine sand, and even that’s a stretch,” Jordan said. “The beautiful lines and structure could serve only to channel those particles to the center, and have no aesthetic purpose.”

Although Jordan said he doesn’t think that’s the case, the idea that the fine sediments are important to females would be “biologically interesting, because it would suggest that function is more important than appearance,” he said.

Japan reiterates may consider discharging radiated Fukushima water into ocean

Revive

Is Anybody In Power Listening??

TOKYO, Sept 2 | Mon Sep 2, 2013 12:26am EDT

(Reuters) – Japan’s nuclear regulator reiterated on Monday that it may have to consider discharging into the ocean water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant that contains radiation below regulatory thresholds.

Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) Chairman Shunichi Tanaka told reporters there was no evidence of new water leaks at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, following the discovery of high radiation levels in recent days.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the Fukushima plant’s operator, is rushing to contain a radioactive water crisis from the steady accumulation of water used to cool melted fuel rods.

Need protection, hope, direction, safety and unfailing love? Take the opportunity while it knocks:

1) You’re a sinner (like every human) in need of salvation and forgiveness.

2) Be willing to turn from sin.

3) Believe Jesus Christ of Nazareth (NOT the…

View original post 87 more words

Shark Attack Victim Loses Valiant Fight

HONOLULU (AP) — A 20-year-old German woman who lost her right arm in a shark attack off of Hawaii last week is being remembered by her family as beautiful and strong after fighting to stay alive in a Maui hospital. …

Video: Scuba Divers Almost Swallowed by Whales

Shawn Stamback and three friends were scuba diving last weekend off the coast of California exploring a coral reef when they were nearly swallowed by a pair of nature’s biggest beasts, the humpback whale.

The massive whales lunged out of the water with their huge jaws open as they chased a school of fish right next to the swimmers.

“I still don’t know how they got that close to us without us knowing,” Stamback, 39, of San Louis Obispo, told ABCNews.com. “I was probably like six to eight feet away.”

“The first thing that went through my head was that I didn’t want to get swatted by the tail because you see two whales that are moving away from you and you know how long they are,” he said.

Stamback, the owner of Slodivers, a charter scuba diving company, and his three fellow divers were in between dives Saturday morning off Morro Bay in central California when Stamback and another diver decided to dive back in to snorkel.

After a few minutes in the water the two men saw a swarm of fish shoot up to the ocean’s surface. Not far behind them, looking for their next meal, were the two humpback whales.

“I made a bullet to the boat to try to get out of the water,” Stamback said. “I was pretty much in shock. You’re in survival mode.”

Both Stamback and his fellow diver made it back to the boat safely, where they were greeted by their two friends on board who had filmed the close encounter.

“Even the guys that weren’t in the water were pretty shook up about it,” Stamback said. “We laughed it off, but we were all shook up.”

“You’re going to have to do more to clean that wetsuit,” one of the men can be heard saying in the video, which has been viewed more than one million times on YouTube.

Stamback says he and his friends were just out to explore the coral reef in the area and had no intention of looking for whales. In fact, there were no whales anywhere to be seen in the water, a reminder, he says, to expect the unexpected when in nature.

“You don’t go looking for trouble like that,” Stamback said. “If you’re a scuba diver, everything you do is planned, but you’re out in the wild so you can only plan what you have control of.”

“When something like that happens, that’s you’re reminder that you’re out in the wild,” he said.

Get right with God, these are critical life and death times & circumstances that we are in. What does tomorrow hold for any one of us? Car accident? Sudden heart attack? A coworker gone postal?

For YOUR eternal salvation, this benefits me nothing but benefits you beyond mortal description. Pray this in faith, I can’t pray if for you:

Jesus, I am a sinner and I come to You as my Savior. I repent of my sins and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died to cleanse me of my sins, please cleanse me now. You died and rose again, be my personal Savior Who lives forever.

Amazing Capture on Film!

Must See Photo: Wild Dolphin Jump Spin Anomaly

Submitted by Scott McMan on June 17, 2013 – 8:48 AM

The animal kingdom never ceases to amaze me. From amazing maneuvers to unbelievable skills, we’ve seen many things in the wild that were thought to be virtually impossible.

I already knew that dolphins were very intelligent, so much so, that even military establishments have experimented with them in various capacities.

Now, a wild bottlenose dolphin has pushed the envelope of astonishing feats and it was done during a simple session of showing off for humans.

Here’s the splashy photo, along with some commentary on this event from GrindTV. Frankly, if not for the picture, I’d have never believed it.

Volunteer naturalist captures extraordinary image showing peculiar water formation around midsection of leaping mammal

Steve O’Toole was photographing playful dolphins Sunday afternoon off Dana Point, California, and did not realize until later that he had captured an extraordinary image.

It reveals a circular disc of water around the midsection of a leaping bottlenose dolphin, making it appear as though the mammal is hula-hooping.

O’Toole is a volunteer naturalist for Dana Wharf Whale Watch and a board member for the Orange County chapter of the American Cetacean Society. He said passengers aboard the Ocean Adventure encountered about 50 offshore bottlenose dolphins, which began jumping in the swift catamaran’s wake.

“This particular dolphin caught my attention because when leaping out of the water, it started twisting its body, whereas most dolphins only leap,” he said. “When the activity ended, I briefly looked at my camera’s screen to make sure the pics were there.

“I noticed something unusual with this particular picture and didn’t think much about it, knowing I’d take a closer look when downloading pics to my PC.”

The photo, which might be one of a kind, has been widely shared on Facebook and other websites.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, an ACS researcher, said she has photographed thousands of dolphins during a span of 30 years, and has never captured or seen a similar photo.

Was I right? Is that amazing or what? Even in captivity, this is something that’s never been achieved or even imagined possible.

Did I hear someone say close up? Well, here it is!

I could go into a whole production about dolphins, but I don’t want to take anything away from this astonishing trick. Could it be just an accident or does this dolphin know exactly what he’s doing? Maybe dolphins can do this kind of thing, no sweat! Of course, I’ve never heard of anyone witnessing such an event, let alone getting evidence.

This is something I’ll never forget…..

More for the Fishing Lovers! Video

Ethereal, 8-foot-long ‘sea serpent’ caught on video

By Deborah Netburn

June 10, 2013, 5:02 p.m.

Scientists have released video of an 8-foot-long, shimmering oarfish taken  about 200 feet below the ocean surface — and it is breathtaking.

Elusive and alien-looking, the oarfish has a thin, eel-like body with squiggly iridescent markings that glow blue in the video. It also has a long dorsal fin that stretches the length of nearly half its body, and large round eyes rimmed in silver.

That bright white blob you see in the fish’s spiny dorsal fins is a parasitic isopod — sort of like an ocean version of the roly poly bug — that has attached itself to the fish. It is a common parasite of marine fish, but it is the first time one has been seen on an oarfish, said Mark Benfield, a marine biologist at Louisiana State University.

Benfield is the lead author of a paper describing the oarfish video, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Fish Biology.

PHOTOS: Weird sea creatures

Despite its great size, the fish orients itself vertically, with its head toward the ocean surface, and its blunt tail hanging down. This allows the fish to scan the water above for the krill and other small crustaceans that it eats, and may help it appear smaller to predators who are lurking below, said Benfield.

“The striking thing is they swim by undulating their dorsal fin like a propeller, and they can change direction instantly,” Benfield said. “Most of the time they move slowly and stealthily, but when they want to, they can move fast.”

Benfield’s research usually leans toward small sea animals such as zooplankton and shrimp. But since 2006 he has been working with several oil companies stationed in the Gulf of Mexico who have agreed to give him time on their remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to scan the waters for marine life through a project called GulfSERPENT.

The ROVs, which are usually used to find new sources of oil, are not ideal for finding wildlife. They are noisy and large, about the size of small cars, and they shine bright lights and lasers at whatever they see. But Benfield said it is easier to get time on the hundreds of ROVs owned by oil companies stationed in the Gulf Coast than it is on the handful of ROVs around the world that are devoted to scientific research. Since he started working with the oil companies, he has collected about 40 hours of undersea footage from the Gulf Coast a week.

Since 2008, Benfield has captured video of the oarfish on four different occasions through the SERPENT project. The most recent video of the oarfish, shot in 2011, was collected when Benfield was working with the Natural Resource Damage Assessment group to determine the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“We were just finishing up scanning the water column about 200 feet below the surface when my technician yelled,” said Benfield. “I walked into the lab and saw this giant oarfish. I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and we followed that thing for 10 minutes.”

When you watch the video below, keep in mind that the oarfish is looking at a large, bright, noisy object in the water that is unlike anything that occurs in its natural environment.

“It starts by backing away from us tail-first, and then finally it got fed up and took off,” said Benfield.

The fish shimmers in and out of view for the first few minutes of the video below. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, I suggest starting at the five-minute mark to get a good look at it, and then fast-forwarding to the nine-minute mark where you can see it zip away like an underwater lightning streak.

 

Fishing Surprise, Video

Alaskan Killer Whale Gives Fishermen a Surprise

A group of men fishing off the coast of Alaska got a reminder that the state known as the Last Frontier really is a wild place.

After snagging a halibut on to their fishing line and starting to reel the fish in, an orca swam up from the deep and stole their catch.

Frank Sanders recorded the killer whale stealing the fish and posted this video online. It has since gone viral; as of this writing the June 8 post on has garnered more than 6,800 likes and 28,000 shares on The Alaska Life Facebook page alone.

The video opens with a shot of a fisherman holding his pole while the cameraman stands behind. As the hooked halibut is being recorded an ocra swims up from the depths and tried to get the fish.

“Leave it there! Leave it there,” one of the men says, instructing the fisherman to allow the orca to eat the catch.

As the blog Pete Thomas Outdoors reported, the wider context of the incident is unclear; it is unknown whether the shot was contrived with the halibut used as bait for the killer whale.

In any case, the video should serve as a reminder to man that nature has a way of biting back — as should the one below, which features a shark stealing a fish from an angler on a kayak off the coast of Hawaii.

California’s Disappearing Native Fish

California native fish could disappear with climate change

By Bettina Boxall

May 31, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

Climate change could be the final blow for many of California’s native fish species, pushing them to extinction with extended drought, warmer water temperatures and altered stream flow.

The authors of a new study published online in the journal PLOS ONE used 20 metrics — including species population trends, physiological tolerance to temperature increase and ability to disperse — to gauge the vulnerability of native fishes to climate change.

The results: 82% of 121 native species were deemed highly vulnerable.

“Almost all of those fishes are in decline already and climate change is going to accelerate the decline,” said Peter Moyle, a UC Davis professor of fish biology and lead author of the paper.

“Disappearing fish will include not only obscure species of minnows, suckers and pupfishes, but also coho salmon, most runs of steelhead trout and Chinook salmon, and Sacramento perch,” he said.

Generally speaking, Moyle said, native fish in California and the Southwest are more likely to suffer from the effects of a warming climate than natives in other parts of the country because they are already in competition with humans for water in an arid region.

Global warming will raise surface water temperatures and is expected to increase the severity of droughts, shrinking habitat and adding to environmental stressors. “Anything that reduces the amount of cool or cold water going down the river is going to be hard on native fish,” Moyle said.

But most of California’s nonnative fish — many of them introduced as game fish long ago — are adapted to lake environments and will do just fine. The researchers found that only 19% of 43 alien species were highly vulnerable to climate change.

That could mean a lot of carp, large mouth bass, fathead minnows and green sunfish replace the state’s unique fishes.

Moyle, an authority on California fish, added that conservation measures could lessen the effect on natives.

“One of the obvious things to do is to re-operate the reservoirs and get more fish-friendly flows below” them, he said. The establishment of cool-water refuges for native fish is needed, the authors wrote, “even in urban streams such as those in the San Francisco Bay region.”

Ocean Horror Show of Dead Birds

Ocean Horror Show: Dead Sea Birds With Bellies Full of Plastic Garbage

Photographer Chris Jordan’s film and shocking stills chronicle man’s deadly impact on wildlife in the Midway Atoll.

By Jon Bowermaster

August 29, 2013

Sustainability, mass consumption, and what he calls “our culture of waste” have long been the backbone of Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan’s work.

For the past four years his creative energy has been focused on a remote group of islands near Hawaii, 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. Yet there, on Midway Atoll, he has discovered a nightmare scenario that powerfully illustrates just how ruinous man’s impact on nature can be: hundreds, thousands of dead albatross chicks choked to death on man’s detritus, mostly shiny bits of plastic picked up from the nearby Pacific Ocean by their parents, and fed to them mistakenly as food.

The most prominent piece of waste? Disposable cigarette lighters, which float near the surface of the ocean. Glittering in the sun, they are seductive targets. When they are fed to infant birds and swallowed, none of the plastic disintegrates and instead eventually fills tiny stomachs.

MORE: Red, White, and Gross: America Before the EPA

Recently, Jordan has turned from photographing the dead birds, and the waste plastic that fills their stomachs and slowly kills them, to videoing. A successful Kickstarter effort ($122,000 from more than 16,000 donors) is funding the documentary film, which he anticipates will require two more visits so that he can capture the entire birth-life-and-death continuum in full.

“For me, kneeling over their carcasses is like looking into a macabre mirror,” he writes on his website. “These birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth. Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here.”

Jordan’s documentary—”Midway: Message From the Gyre”—is expected to be finished next year. Check out this powerful gallery of Jordan’s photos here.

Testing: One, Two, Three

DEEP BREATH, STEADY GIRL.

• The litany of side effects. And more side effects.
• Signature on waivers.
• Signature on disclaimers.
• Insurance pre-authorizations.
• Acknowledgment of treatment.
• Promissory note of payment.
• Advance directive, next of kin.

I CAN do this.

I can DO this.

I can do THIS.

For the doctor, it’s simply business as usual, routine. Does she see me?   What’s happening inside?   Right now?   The hell of emotions at war inside, can she see that I’m fighting back fear, tears, confusion, and desperation?

Oh, God, help me, please!

People can be in partying mode, business mode, work mode, survival mode. Does anyone know the tenuous and desperate mode that I’m experiencing right now? The doctor is scaring the daylights right out of me, do I really have to go through this drug therapy? I don’t want to lose my hair or to be sick!      Who would ?!

I’m disappointed on an entirely new scale. Warp five, Scotty!  I’m falling into a vortex, miserable and scared.  To the bone. Thinking back on that day that I walked into a bank robbery in progress, the gun suddenly touching my temple.  HA!  That was nothing in comparison to the fear in the pit of my stomach right now!

Colorado by Marybeth Haydon

Feeling isolated. Self imposed? Must be, because He is with me; my Lord and Savior, Jesus. In my books I describe the many times that God has saved my life, healed me of the cancers, the lymphedema, and has set me free to love and serve Him. He has been training me while I hiked in the wilderness. Now, I am experiencing a spiritual wilderness; its a steep, difficult climb.  I need more training.  Yet deep within me, I know that as I persevere, meet this new challenge with Him at my side, it’ll be ok.

I’m going through more testing. Clearly. And from previous experiences, I know that I will come through this victorious. But I’m not looking forward to this round of drug therapy.  I will miss being on trail.  Very much.  I hate being sick, I really do.  Three to six months is a very long time.

 Well, I can simply look forward to full recovery and look at my saved photos frequently. Time to meditate, get to know the Lord more.  Read His word.  Pray.  Help others, reach out.  Reach beyond my own small, selfish world and live out  my Christianity. I can and will not just endure, but overcome this time of testing.  I look forward to health and quality time with my family.  I’m looking forward to getting back on trail.  Mostly, I’m looking forward to what I will learn from this trial, this test, from this particular wilderness because He is faithful and will not forsake me.  That much I have definately learned along my rocky, steep and often against-heart Christian path.                           It’s You and me, Lord.  Take my hand, please, and walk with me.