RARE SIGHTING OF GIANT PHANTOM JELLY FISH OFF THE COAST OF ARGENTINA

OOOH this BBC website has video of the swimming phantom!

BBC NEWS : RARE SIGNTING PHANTOM JELLY OFF ARGENTINA

Excerpt:

A rare phantom jellyfish has been spotted by scientists exploring the deep sea near Argentina.

Stygiomedusa gigantea, more commonly known as the giant phantom jellyfish, was filmed 250 metres below the surface in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Scientists from the Schmidt Ocean Institute documented the creature, which can grow up to 1m (3.3ft) in diameter, with their arms reaching up to 10m (33ft) long.

Their four arms, which look like long pink ribbons, are not stinging tentacles. Instead the jellyfish use them to catch their prey of fish and plankton, according to the institute.

The team also discovered 28 potential new species including corals, sea urchins, and sea anemones.

PACIFIC MARINE MAMMAL CENTER - LAGUNA BEACH : REHABS VISITOR AREA : SEA LIONS HAVE HIGH RATE OF CANCER : NEXT WAVE EXPANSION

You may not be able to visit as a tourist, but you CAN donate, volunteer, or be a help to the cause.

PACIFIC MARINE MAMMAL CENTER : NEXT WAVE CAMPAIGN

Excerpt: We’re excited to invite you to join us as we usher in a new era for our organization - The Next Wave expansion.

The Next Wave Campaign will include:

A water reclamation system that will save our community 15,000 gallons of water every day

Increasing the standards of animal care

Improving our research capacity

Providing more students with access to our educational programming

Laying the groundwork for powerful advocacy that will help us as we Build a Better Ocean - one with fewer plastics and less chemical pollution.

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We care for the most common pinnipeds to southern California which are:

California Sea Lions

Northern Elephant Seals

Northern Fur Seals

Pacific Harbor Seals

BLUE WHALES GONE SILENT?! CLIMATE CHANGE? ALL ENERGY USED TO FIND ENOUGH FOOD - KRILL

THE WEEK : BLUE WHALES NOT SINGING -CLIMATE CHANGE

Excerpt: The study tracked over six years of acoustic monitoring in the central California Current Ecosystem. During those years, blue whale sounds decreased by approximately 40%.

"We don't hear them singing," John Ryan, a biological oceanographer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the lead author of the study, said to National Geographic. They are "spending all their energy searching." There's "just not enough time left over" for singing, and that "tells us those years are incredibly stressful." It's like "trying to sing while you are starving,"

"When we have these really hot years and marine heat waves, it's more than just temperature," Kelly Benoit-Bird, a marine biologist at Monterey Bay Aquarium and co-author of the study, said to National Geographic. "The whole system changes, and we don't get the krill." So the animals that "rely only on krill are kind of out of luck." High ocean temperatures lead to algal blooms that can kill krill. And blue whales are "forced to forage over a much larger geographic area when krill populations become depleted," said Newsweek.

Marine heat waves are only going to get worse due to fossil fuel usage. Oceans act as the world's largest carbon sink, meaning they "already absorb more than 90% of the excess heat from climate change," said The Independent. There are "whole ecosystem consequences of these marine heat waves," said Benoit-Bird. If whales "can't find food and they can traverse the entire West Coast of North America, that's a really large-scale consequence."

BLUE WHALES ARE THE LARGEST ANIMALS ON OUR PLANET!

LEAF SHAPED FANGS?! PACIFIC DISCOVERY LINKS UNPRECEDENTED FIND! GINKO BEAKED WHALES

Unprecedented!   OOOOH this is great!

UNION RAYO: GOODBYE TO DECADES OF ASSUMPTIONS : GINKO BEAKED WHALES

Excerpt: For the first time in history, a team of scientists managed to see, record and document the elusive ginkgo-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon ginkgodens) swimming in open sea, off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. And the best part is that with this encounter they also solved a mystery that had been puzzling experts for more than a decade, a mysterious acoustic signal, the famous BW43, that no one had managed to attribute to a specific species.

.... For the first time, a species known only from stranded remains was alive, recorded, confirmed!!! Now scientists can track this species without seeing it, just by listening to its signals in the ocean.

Battles, wounds and sharks

The ginkgo-toothed beaked whale has a distinctive feature and it is that the males develop two flat leaf-shaped teeth near the tip of the snout. They do not use them to eat, but to fight with other males for the females.

The photos show long scars, cuts, white lines, many battles on their backs. In addition, many had circular bite marks made by sharks called “cookie cutters”.

THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH ? WHERE IS IT? WHAT IS IT? (THE SIZE OF TEXAS!)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EDU : GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawai'i and California.

These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawai'i. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another....

Keep reading! Go to that link above! 

OUCH THOSE SUCKERS HURT! SIX YEAR OLD AND OCTOPUS IN SAN ANTONIO HAVE A CONFLICT

NBC NEWS : BOY INJURED WHEN OCTOPUS HOLDS ON Go to the link to see the photos!

Yep... he got sucker bruises... But what happened that the octopus decided to grab on?

Excerpt: Meg Mindlin, an octopus biologist, said octopuses "sense and explore their environment" using their arms, and rely on taste sensors in their suction cups to understand what is going on in their world.

ROBERT E. FULLER COMBINES ACTIVISM WITH ART : HUMPBACK WHALES IN ALASKAN WATERS

A few months ago I started watching Robert. E. Fullers YouTube channel.  What an amazing person! This short video on humpback whales is just one of his very many.  If you follow his channel you'll learn how to help birds survive by building safe nesting spots for them, and so much more.  Robert is also fine artist who sells his work.

WHEN THE OCEAN SENDS A CRY FOR HELP : SAN PEDRO'S MARINE MAMMAL CARE CENTER THE FOCUS OF THIS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORY

Random Length News : When the Ocean Sends a Cry for Help

Excerpt: An unusually early and toxic algae bloom has caused a massive domoic acid poisoning event affecting pinnipeds, dolphins and seabirds all along the Southern California coast. While there have been other serious outbreaks in the 24 years since DA was first identified on the West Coast — the summer of 2023 was also harrowing — the early arrival and the morbid intensity of this event are straining local resources. Ash and runoff from the fires may be exacerbating the natural phenomenon, leading to heartbreaking scenes of dolphins stranding on public beaches, gasping for breath.

CAL STATE LONG BEACH SHARK LAB : WHITE SHARKS LURK IN THE MUCK

A species older than the dinosaurs.

CSU LONG BEACH SHARK LAB

Sharks are not interested in humans as food...

JAPANESE SARDINES IN CALIFORNIA? NOAA FISHERIES REPORTS : LINK TO PODCAST

FISHERIES NOAA : PODCAST JAPANESE SARDINES IN CALIFORNIA

Excerpt: In 2022, Dr. Gary Longo detected Japanese sardines swimming in the eastern Pacific, off the coast of California. This was the first time they’d ever been seen here—their normal range is in the western Pacific from Korea to Russia, thousands and thousands of miles away. It was a shocking discovery. Sardines are incredibly important to the California current ecosystem and are a key forage fish across the globe.

On this episode of Dive In with NOAA Fisheries, we scratch at this mystery of Japanese sardine appearing in U.S. waters. How did they get here? What does it mean for the native Pacific sardine? Are they staying? (Spoiler alert: so far, yes.)

We hear from Dr. Longo, a research scientist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center and one of the authors of a new study documenting this discovery. The authors suggest marine heatwaves that warmed the North Pacific over the last decade might have opened a corridor of favorable habitat, which the Japanese sardines followed across the ocean.

PREHISTORIC OCEAN FLOOR - 250 MILLION YEARS OLD - BELOW TODAY'S OCEAN FLOOR

 SCITECH DAILY : DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT SEA FLOOR 

Excerpt: Scientists from the University of Maryland have identified remnants of a prehistoric seafloor that plunged into the Earth’s depths during the age of dinosaurs, calling into question prevailing views on the Earth’s interior structure. Found at the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic boundary on the floor of the southeastern Pacific Ocean, this previously unexplored segment of seafloor reveals new aspects of our planet’s inner processes and its transformative history over millions of years. The team’s findings were published on September 27, 2024, in the journal Science Advances.

WHEN ONE HAS BEEN LONG AT SEA .... QUOTED FROM JOHN STEINBECK

"WHEN ONE HAS LONG BEEN AT SEA, THE SMELL OF LAND REACHES FAR OUT TO GREET ONE.  AND THE SAME IS TRUE WHEN ONE HAS BEEN LONG INLAND."

from Travels With Charley: In Search Of America, a book about his 1960 road trip with his dog.

PBS BRINGS US "THE MYSTERIES OF THE EARTH'S LARGEST OCEAN - THE PACIFIC : GATEWAY TO THE FULL SERIES

PBS Passport: https://to.pbs.org/2rxTvJS | #BigPacificPBS

Settle in and watch an episode at a time or the whole series! 

LOST WORLD UNDER THE PACIFIC?

THE DEBRIEF : LOST WORLD UNDER THE PACIFIC? 

Excerpt: An international team of geophysicists using a new imaging technique that measures the speed of seismic waves caused by earthquakes to locate the juncture of tectonic plates in the Earth’s mantle say they have discovered the remnants of what appears to be a “lost world” beneath the Pacific Ocean.

... According to the published study, the team was particularly intrigued by one zone discovered beneath the western Pacific Ocean. That’s because there should be no material from subducted plates there “because it is impossible that there were subduction zones nearby in the recent geological history.”

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You'll want to read this article to learn exactly what they mean when they say "lost worlds" and how the new technology has made a difference in understanding what's beneath the earth's surface!

CALIFORNIA FIRES : SMOKE HUNDREDS OF MILES OUT OVER THE PACIFIC : IMPACT ON WHALES AND OTHER SEA CREATURES

Yes the smoke and debris in the air eventually settle down onto the earth and into the ocean waters. Here's am article on the impact from the PACIFIC WHALE FOUNDATION: PACIFIC WHALE FOUNDATION : WILDFIRE IMPACTS ON OCEAN AND SEA CREATURES

Excerpt:  OCEAN - A large influx of ash and debris, including metals and chemicals, enters waterways, especially following precipitation.  This massive sediment load smothers the coastal ecosystem, covering coral reefs, resulting in significant habitat loss and, eventually, fish and invertebrate mortality.  The resulting water cloudiness reduces light penetration necessary for plants to conduct photosynthesis.  The influx of run-off, which includes nutrients, and sedimentation can induce harmful algae blooms that deplete oxygen levels and cause fish and other animal die-offs.  Subsequently, ash and debris loads are spread wide by tides, currents, and winds, magnifying their effects though nearshore environments.

DEAD MORAY EEL WASHES UP ON BEACH IN LAGUNA NIGUEL (IS THIS A DELICIOUS FICTION?)

SAN FRANCISCO GATE : NIGHTMARISH MARINE CREATURE WASHES ASHORE 

The Muraena helena, also known as the Mediterranean eel, was once harvested in seaside ponds, and multiple universities describe how they were even doted on and dressed up like beautiful women: While over 6,000 of them were reportedly supplied to Julius Caesar for lavish banquets, Antonia, the niece of Augustus, allegedly kept one as a pet and adorned it with earrings. f

Do you think this is true?  Check the article to see what it says!

NEVER BEFORE SEEN DEEP SEA WORM FOUND - SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE (It Looks Like Eyelashes)

 DAILY MAIL : NEW SEA CREATURE DISCOVERED Go to this site to watch the video as the same expedition off the coast of Chili has video'd many other unusual and interesting deep sea creatures!

SANCTUARY OCEAN COUNT HAWAII'S HUMBACK WHALES

 The 2025 Ocean Counts are scheduled for the following Saturday’s:

January 25

February 22

March 29

SIGN UP STARTS JANUARY 6TH.

Ocean Count ORG

CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLAND and MARINE PROTECTED AREAS EXPANSION PROPOSED

SBCK OUR WORK ADVOCACY click for the details and how you might get involved!

The Santa Barbara Channel is protected by a network of 19 MPAs, five along the coast and 14 surrounding the Channel Islands. Each MPA was designated to set aside a particularly special area of the marine environment to create a robust network of protection covering over 350 square miles.

There is now a drive to expand these areas: KEYT NEWS SANTA BARBARA 

Excerpt:  Last year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) publicly released the first 10 year comprehensive review of the MPA Network, and how to prioritize management of the area. It included 28 adaptive management recommendations and potential changes spanning 2023 to 2033.

... the proposal could impact commercial and sport fishing off Anacapa Island, Santa Cruz Island and, Santa Rosa Island by expanding current restrictions.

OARFISH : DO THEY REALLY APPEAR BEFORE A NATURAL DISASTER?

THE GUARDIAN : OARFISH - SAN DIEGO   "Group finds elusive deep sea fish that has washed up in California only twenty times since 1901."

Excerpt: Oarfish have long, ribbon-shaped bodies, and can grow longer than 20 feet (6 meters).  They typically live in an area of the deep sea called the mesopelagic zone, where light cannot reach, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA has described the fish as "strange and mysterious" creatures that scientists know little about.

Oarfish are sometimes called doomsday fish due to their mythical reputation as predictors of natural disasters and earth quakes.

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Siren here!  We have earthquakes each and every day all around the earth... We know this because of the technology that can sense them.  Most are adjustments to the earth's crust that are of little consequence to humans.  But what usually happens when a deep sea fish dies?  How is it that this fish made it to the surface of the ocean intact?