LAKE SUPERIOR IS THE RESTING PLACE OF OVER 350 SHIPS

MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY - LAKE SUPERIOR SHIP WRECKS 

Excerpt: Of the estimated 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes region, only about 350 of them are located in Lake Superior. Of those, about 50 wrecks are presumed to be within Minnesota waters. Most of Minnesota's shipwreck history can be found in Lake Superior. Many wrecks have been located, but at least half lay undiscovered.

In an effort to aid in the safe navigation of the often-treacherous waters, the U.S. Lighthouse Service erected lighthouses in key locations throughout the Great Lakes region. Split Rock Lighthouse was built in response to the great winter gale of November 1905 that claimed 36 lives and disabled or destroyed 29 ships.

Siren here!  The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in 1975 - recent history - may be the most famous.  Read this site and learn about some of the ships that sank during the Industrial Revolution.  Many sunken ships have never been located!

HOLD FAST ART INSTALLATION : BIRCH AQUARIUM - UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGO - SCRIPPS INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY

AQUARIUM UCSD - SCRIPPS 

EXCERPT:  On February 8, 2024, Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is opening Hold Fast, an immersive art installation that explores our local kelp forests and climate change through the lens of three local artists and scientists who are using their unique skills and talents to take climate action. 

Guests will weave through a labyrinth of cyanotype-printed giant kelp by photo-based artist and marine scientist Oriana Poindexter, dive into the details of local species via gyotaku prints by artist Dwight Hwang and witness up-to-the-minute kelp forest mapping by Scripps Oceanography PhD student Mohammad Sedarat. 

“Warming waters and giant kelp don’t mix. We have to be realistic about the outsized impact that climate change has on our local Giant Kelp forests,” said Megan Dickerson, Birch Aquarium’s Director of Exhibits and co-curator of the installation. “But at the same time, local people are doing beautiful things. This Hold Fast installation posits that the actions of local artists and scientists can give us hope that together, as a community, we can make collective change as we also acknowledge climate trauma.”

YOU MAY NEED TO TRAVEL TO JAPAN TO SEE THE BEST AQUARIUM IN THE WORLD

On the top of lists is the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.

Their tanks are large enough to house a Whale Shark and the have a Coral breeding program.

The web site is in Japanese and in English:  CHURAUMIT - OKINAWA AQUARIUM

QUEEN CONCH IS FOOD and COLLECTED BUT ENGANDERED

 

Excerpts pages 269-270 :  No human reimagining of a shell comes close to the Queen Conches' own transformative life cycle.  The animals ride the currents as larvae, hide in seagrasses when they are little conches, hang out in grainy sand and rubble in middle age, and hope and leap to deep-sand channels when they reach old age.,  They are not all queens.  They are female or male and must join up to mate, unlike the bivalves that send their eggs and sperm into the sea to meet the currents.

In the springtime, mature conchs gather in large herds and graze on algae, plowing the nourishment into eggs and sperm.  The herds are crucial to their survival, scientists say it takes at least ninety Queen Conchs in a hectare to successfully reproduce.  Each female will develop a million eggs.  A male scoots over to stretch its long, spade=tipped penis underneath her shell.  Within a day after her eggs are fertilized, the mother makes a little trench in the sand and poles up a half a million or so in a gelatinous strand, that, if extended, would stretch longer than a basketball court. She uses her all -purpose foot to camouflage the strand with sand as she goes, coating and heaping until it could pass for a hung of white coral.  She lays about nine of these egg masses each season, bringing nearly 5 million larval concha a year into the world.  Fewer than 1 percent - 50,000 or so - may survive to become adult queens.

THREE TYPES OF OYSTERS

 

HUGE MONSTER WAVES and BARRELS PHOTOGRAPH CONTEST WINNERS

DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA: MONSTER WAVES GNARLY BARREL  by Andrew Prentice

There are some glorious photos to see at this link.  At the site of them I got chills.  I think you'll be impressed too!

COULD THIS GRANNY WHALE BE BORN THE YEAR THE TITANIC SANK?

SCIENCE RECORDER : KILLER WHALE TITANIC

Most killer whales die at 60 to 80 years of age.  GRANNY may be 103!

"And she’s quite mobile for her advanced years. This week, she turned up this in the Strait of Georgia, a waterway that cuts between Vancouver and British Columbia. She would have to have travelled 800 miles to reach this point from southern California, where she was originally spotted.

Granny runs in a 25-whale group that researchers call the “J-Pod,” or the “Southern Resident Killer Whales.” And longevity runs strong in this group. Two other members, females dubbed “Ocean Sun” and “Lummi,” died at ages 85 and 98, respectively. Granny is the oldest in this group, however. More than that, in fact: She is, as of now, the oldest known killer whale on the planet."