http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Seville wrote:
<<Alvin is a chipmunk. His enthusiasm is boundless and his despair bottomless. The character, who always seems to make up hare-brained schemes to get what his goal at the time is. However, Alvin seems to refer to his often illogical or crazy plans as "challenging the ordinary".>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin wrote:
<<Alvin, first of its class of Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV), was built to dive to 2440 meters (8000 ft). On 17 March 1966, Alvin was used to locate a submerged 1.45-megaton hydrogen bomb lost in a United States Air Force midair accident over Palomares, Spain. The bomb, found resting nearly 910 meters (3000 ft) deep, was raised intact on 7 April. On July 6th, 1967, the Alvin was attacked by a swordfish during dive 202. The swordfish became trapped in the Alvin's skin, and the Alvin was forced to make an emergency surface. The attack took place at 2,000 feet below the surface. The fish was recovered at the surface and cooked for dinner.
The Alvin, aboard the NOAA tender ship Lulu, was lost as it was being transported in October 1968. The Lulu, a vessel created from a pair of decommissioned US Navy pontoon boats with a support structure added on, was lowering Alvin over the side when two steel cables snapped, while Alvin had three crewmembers aboard and the hatch open. Situated between the pontoons with no deck underneath, the Alvin hit the water and rapidly started to sink. The three crewmembers managed to escape, but Alvin flooded and sank in 1500 meters (5000 ft) of water.
Severe weather prevented the recovery of Alvin throughout late 1968, but it was photographed on the bottom in June 1969 by a sled towed by USS Mizar. Alvin was found to be upright and appeared intact except for damage to the stern. It was decided to attempt recovery; although no object of Alvin's size had ever been recovered from a depth of 5,000 feet, recovery was "deemed to be within the state of the art". In August 1969, the Aluminaut, another DSV built by Reynolds Metals Aluminum Company, descended to Alvin but had trouble attaching the required lines, and side effects from Hurricane Camille were producing worsening weather, causing the team to return to Woods Hole to regroup. The second attempt started on August 27, and Aluminaut was able to secure a line and safety slings on the Alvin, and wrapped a prefabricated nylon net around its hull, allowing it to be hauled up by the Mizar. Alvin was towed, submerged at 40 feet, at a speed of 2 knots, back to Woods Hole.
Alvin was so intact that lunches left on board were soggy but edible. This incident led to a more comprehensive understanding that near-freezing temperatures and the lack of decaying bacteria at increased depths prevented biological decay. Researchers found a cheese-sandwich which exhibited no viable signs of decomposition, and was in fact eaten.
In 1973, Alvin's pressure hull was replaced by a newer titanium pressure hull. The new hull extended the submersible's maximum depth to about 4500 meters (15,000 ft).>>
Re: Ichthyology at its finest
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2010 6:31 am
by Beyond
I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something fishy about all this!
Ten new possible species could change everything about the way we think about deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean.
Most of the creatures are so strange, it is hard to know which direction they swim or where their mouths are.
The images were captured by researchers from the University of Aberdeen during more than 300 hours of diving with a remotely operated vehicle between 2,300 feet and 12,000 feet deep along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the largest mountain range on Earth, which runs down the center of the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and Africa on the east and the Americas on the west.
Three of the species, which look like colorful wavy worms, belong to a group of creatures called Enteropneust, which is believed to be the evolutionary link between backbone and invertebrate animals. Previously only a few specimens of the group, from the Pacific Ocean, were known to science.
“They have no eyes, no obvious sense organs or brain but there is a head end, tail end and the primitive body plan of backboned animals is established,” said Monty Priede, one of the lead researchers on the project, part of the Census of Marine Life.
One of the most surprising observations by the researchers was how different the species are on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, just tens of miles apart. “[The two sides of the ridge are] mirror images of each other,” Priede said. “but that is where the similarity ended.”
“It seemed like we were in a scene from Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Priede said. “This expedition has revolutionized our thinking about deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean. It shows that we cannot just study what lives around the edges of the ocean and ignore the vast array of animals living on the slopes and valleys in the middle of the ocean.”
Captions courtesy University of Aberdeen Image Credit: David Shale
Holothurian; Peniagone diaphana: Feeds on the sea floor, but is capable of swimming and is found on hills and valleys of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
[NS]Sea cucumbers are normally found crawling slowly over the seabed, but researchers found them living on the steep slopes, small ledges and rock faces of the Mid-Atlantic ridge.
This one is called Peniagone diaphana and is able to swim, which presumably explains how it made it up onto the underwater highlands.
Enteropneust worm from the North Atlantic Ocean; northern pink variety: Feeds on sea-floor sediment leaving behind characteristic spiral traces.
[NS] This is an enteropneust, otherwise known as an acorn worm. Called the northern pink, it feeds on sediment from the sea floor 2700 metres down.
Acorn worms are one of the so-called missing links in evolutionary history. Although they are worms with no backbone, they have a few features that mark them as cousins of the chordates: animals that do have backbones.
Monty Priede of the University of Aberdeen, UK, one of the lead researchers, said: "There is a head end, tail end and the primitive body plan of backboned animals is established."
Bathypelagic ctenophore: Found close to the sea floor on the Mid-Atlantic ridge.
[NS] This is not a jellyfish but a comb jelly, part of a quite separate group of animals called ctenophores.
This species was found living close to the sea floor on the Mid-Atlantic ridge.
Little is known about its lifestyle, but most ctenophores are voracious predators. They are generally hermaphrodites, able to produce both eggs and sperm.
An expedition led by the Census of Marine Life dived down to the Mid-Atlantic ridge, the vast undersea mountain range running down the centre of the ocean. They found a host of new species, and discovered that many supposedly rare species were living in great number.s
The images are the same as some of images in the Wired article above; there is, however, some expanded text which I have included above (preceded by [NS]). See more images at the CoML Image Gallery.
NatGeo: Spectacular Deep-Sea Species Found off Canada
Still at sea, a team of Canadian and Spanish researchers is using a remotely operated vehicle called ROPOS for dives off Newfoundland with a maximum depth of about 9,800 feet (3,000 meters).
The 20-day expedition aims to uncover relationships between cold-water coral and other bottom-dwelling creatures in a pristine yet "alien" environment, according to the researchers' blog.
"It's been really spectacular," Ellen Kenchington, research scientist with the Fisheries Department of Canada—one of the organizations involved in the project—told Canada's CTV News website.
"It's really changing our perception of the diversity that's out there. ... We're seeing new species in deeper waters."
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
An unidentified purple octopus (pictured) is one of 11 potentially new species found this month during a deep-sea expedition off Canada's Atlantic coast, scientists say.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
An unidentified sea pen (pictured) belonging to the order Pennatulacea has been discovered during the July 2010 expedition on the Atlantic coast off Newfoundland.
Actually soft corals, sea pens are so named because their rows of polyps resemble old-fashioned quill pens, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
ROPOS, the expedition's remotely operated vehicle, had a high-definition digital camera, which captured several images of rare species, such as this flower-like solitary cup coral. These cup corals are also common off North America's Pacific Coast, according to Louisiana State University.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
A possibly new species of vase sponge was one of the bottom dwellers discovered during the expedition. The simplest multicellular animals, sponges have no organs but possess many "pores," which lead to canals and chambers, according to Bellarmine University.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
Bright pink anemones "decorate" polyps of coral in the Paramuricea species in a picture taken during the July 2010 expedition off Newfoundland.
Sea anemones are coral relatives that usually attach to rock or coral. The animals have stinging tentacles that can paralyze and entangle small prey, according to the U.S. National Museum of Natural History.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
This unrecognizable sponge species (pictured) is among the "major biological highlights" found on volcanic mounds off Newfoundland on July 20, according to the project blog.
"What an unexpected dive!" project scientists wrote after seeing this sponge, black corals, and other oddities.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
This recently identified species of bivalve mollusk was also discovered in the July survey of the Newfoundland depths. Bivalves—known for their "hinged," two-sided shells—can burrow into sediment or live on the ocean floor, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Some species even snap their shells open and shut to swim.
Photograph courtesy Bedford Institute of Oceanography
This "spectacularly dense" bed of large white sponges of the family Geodiidae was captured during the Newfoundland project's last dive, according to the expedition blog.
The final dive, which covered a 4,000-foot-deep (1,200-meter-deep) span of water, revealed a vast array of habitats, from cliffside terraces full of sponges and corals to sandy bottoms nearly devoid of life.
Re: Ichthyology at its finest
Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 3:25 pm
by geckzilla
Oh, that purple octopus is adorable.
Re: Ichthyology at its finest
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:16 pm
by Guest
The photos are actually courtesy of the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility - ROPOS.
