Manta Rays at Risk, Extinction is Forever

Manta rays, a species close to the heart of every diver and every individual who cares about the future of our ocean, are increasingly threatened with extinction. They have roamed the ocean for 150 million years and yet we are witnessing their ecocide before our eyes.

Demand for manta ray gill rakers – or the internal feathery structures that strain plankton – has risen drastically, driving untold numbers of deaths for the Asian medicine market. The gruesome and cruel destruction of these gentle creatures is needless, tragic and extremely alarming.

As the environmental voice of the global dive community, Project AWARE is working at every turn to ensure that mantas will not disappear on our watch. Help us ensure maximum protection for these animals before it’s too late. The time is now. Make an urgent donation today to support critical conservation efforts to protect mantas globally.

FACT: Manta ray catch has nearlyquadrupled in seven years according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

FACT: Project AWARE has a track record of success on this critical issue. In 2011, in coordination with our partners and with your support, we succeeded in safeguarding this wide-ranging, globally threatened species and its key habitats under the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). Project AWARE has the global reach and seasoned expertise needed to try to stop this slaughter - but we need your financial support.

FACT: Worldwide value of manta-based tourism and filming is estimated at $100 million USD per year. Manta rays top divers’ must-see list time and again. Divers around the world have of a truly special relationship with marine creatures and this means we must play a pivotal role in their protection.

Project AWARE is now targeting protection for mantas and their close relatives the devil rays under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) – the world’s largest, most effective wildlife conservation agreement. CITES protections offer the best hope for controlling the manta trade globally and ensuring species recovery.

The battle ahead is going to be difficult. But our opposition is underestimating us. Dive supporters span the globe as guardians of the sea from surface to depth. We will not let manta rays die silently and needlessly. Exercise this power, make waves and join together with us in protecting mantas and devil rays today.

Visit the Manta Rays at Risk section of our website for more information on the manta gill raker trade. Thank you for your urgent support!

For the Ocean,

Alex Earl
Executive Director, Project AWARE Foundation

Earthscraper takes Architecture Underground

From a architect's perspective, several problems impede the development of Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities with a population teeming around 21.2 million. A scarcity of new construction plots, height restrictions that limit new edifices to eight stories and laws that prohibit demolishing historic structures leaves little room for building up.

The solution: build down.

NEWS: Builing Green Houses From Garbage

Up to the task is BNKR Aquitectura and their ambitious 'Earthscraper' project. The Mexico City urban architecture and research firm has proposed building an inverted pyramid underneath the Plaza de la Constitución, the heart of the Mexico City's historic district, commonly known as The Zócalo.

DNEWS VIDEO: GREEN ENERGY

"The historic center of Mexico City is in desperate need for a pragmatic make-over," says BNKR's website.

Capped with a glass roof to filter natural light down to its lowest levels, the 2,542,650 square foot sub-structure would descend 65 stories below The Zócalo. Proposed for the first 10 stories is a museum filled with Aztec and Mayan artifacts, with the the next 10 stories offering retail and residential spaces. The remaining 35 stories are outlined for office space.

NEWS: Green Building Too Quiet For Comfort

"The Earthscraper is the skyscraper's antagonist in an historic urban landscape where the latter is condemned and the preservation of the built environment is the paramount ambition. It preserves the iconic presence of the city square and the existing hierarchy of the buildings that surround it," says BNKR.

BNKR Arquitectura's "Earthscaper" design was a 2010 finalist in the eVolo Magazine's Skyscraper Competition.

[Via GizMag]

Photo: BNKR Aquitectura

Ants can farm

We've already made it extensively clear that the world will not end in fire or ice, but covered in ants.
But besides their colonies -- which oh by the way are ridiculously extensive underground labyrinths...

... what's so special about these insects?
Well, humans, with our big, fancy brains, have been around for 250,000 years or so but it took us until very recently (15,000 or so years ago) to "invent" the idea of growing our own food rather than just finding berries and nuts out in the wild. And while people like to say that art, or fire, or "love" is man's greatest invention, the Statue of David can suck it, because agriculture is the most important thing man has done. Farming allowed man to stay in one place, inadvertently giving rise to towns, cities, states -- shaping civilization as we know it.

Somewhere along the line, we replaced crude huts with 3D pornography and Bugles.

But if we'd been watching ants, we'd have figured it out a lot sooner. Long before we were even chasing wooly mammoths with spears or riding around in our crude, foot-powered cars, ants had mastered the art of sustainable agriculture.

And the art of buttsex.

Leaf cutter ants will take cut up bits of plant into their ant-hills. Then, instead of just eating them, they'll lay the bits down and shit on them so that a certain fungus will grow. They then cultivate the fungus, feeding it new plant material when necessary. They even have developed techniques to protect their fungus from other, non-edible molds -- so not only are they farming, they've made themselves a safe and effective pesticide.
And they did all of this 50 million years before we came along..

In another 50 million years, they could have Pong.

Creepy Ways Animal Societies Are Organizing

You'd think "Chimpanzee Researcher" would be the most hilarious job in the world, what with the subjects always putting on people clothes and pretending to smoke pipes. But during a 10-year study of a community of chimps in Uganda, scientists found something terrifying.

More terrifying than the Congo chimp's alliance with the Clown People.

Every once in a while groups of strong chimp males would form up and head north, toward the border between their territory and the land of the neighboring tribe. They'd move through the jungle silently and in a single-file line, with practically no eating, socializing, or masturbating allowed. They'd stealthily scavenge for signs of individuals from the other tribe, such as feces, abandoned termite-fishing tools, etc. When they found a member of the northern tribe off on his own, then they'd gang up on his ass and murder him, goddamn Sam Fisher-style.
Then they did it again. And again. It wasn't just random animal-on-animal savagery; when the scientists studied the pattern of the attacks, they found the chimps were at war.

You expect this kind of bullshit from apes.

During the decade they watched the area, scientists saw 18 of these attacks, mostly all along the northern border, wiping out more than 13 rival chimps from a tribe of 100 (you don't get kill ratios like than in most human wars). And each time, they moved the border north. They were fighting over land, and doing it in a very organized way.

Source

This isn't some freak occurrence, either. In Tanzania, researchers witnessed a chilling civil war when one tribe of chimps got angry and split off from a larger tribe. Over the next five years, the group of heretics destroyed the original tribe with a series of covert attacks.
Previously it was thought that invasive human behavior was behind chimpanzee tribal violence, but now scientists are relieved to find out that chimps are just naturally prone to lethal, Splinter Cell-like military operations.

Ooh-ooh-ah-ah!

Christchurch big quake photos

Check them out here

http://www.crashbang.co.nz/quake040910/index.html

Blood Falls

This five-story, blood-red waterfall pours very slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. When geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, they thought the red color came from algae, but its true nature turned out to be much more spectacular.

Roughly two thousand years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a world with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of "primordial ooze." The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

The existence of the Blood Falls ecosystem shows that life is indeed possible in the most extreme of conditions. It does not at all show, however, if Life could perhaps exist on other planets with similar environments and similar bodies of frozen water - notably Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa. But regardless of extraterrestrial life, the earth's Blood Falls are a wonder to behold both visually, and scientifically.

Evil Devil Fish Bad for Japan

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Japan is bracing itself for bad times after scores of the usually rare, giant Oarfish have washed ashore and been caught in coastal fisherman’s nets.

The sightings started after the ‘quake in Chile and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan. The rash of tectonic shifting around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” is causing concern that Japan is next, and these gigantor fish aren’t helping.

The Oarfish is traditionally known as a messenger fish from the sea gods, and it’s tidings are usually grim. The fish can grow up to five metres in length and usually found at depths of 1, 000 ft. Long and slender with a dorsal fin that runs the length of it’s body, the fish resembles a kind of steam-rolled snake.

According to folklore, the fish will come ashore and beach itself to warn of an impending earthquake and there are scientific theories that bottom-dwelling fish may very well be susceptible to movements in seismic fault lines and act in uncharacteristic ways in advance of an earthquake – but experts here are placing more faith in their constant high-tech monitoring of the tectonic plates beneath the surface

Biblical scale locust

THESE are the plague locusts.
sent by Christle Sheppard

Man wrestling with a 12ft tiger shark !!

Plunging a knife in again and again, diver Craig Clasen grapples with a 12ft tiger shark to protect a friend.

For two hours he wrestled with the giant, spearing it seven times, even drowning the beast before eventually finishing it off with a knife.

Mr Clasen was hunting yellow fin tuna with fellow fisherman Cameron Kirkconnell, photographer D.J Struntz and film maker Ryan McInnis in the Gulf of Mexico when the encounter took place.

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Free diver Craig Clasen was forced to fight head-on with a 12-foot tiger shark when the predator turned on his friend during a spearfishing trip

The group were about to leave the deep waters south of the Mississippi River's mouth, when Mr McInnis found himself alone in the company of a tiger shark.

With no time to lose, Mr Clasen grabbed his speargun and swam to his stranded friend, who was being circled by the giant predator.

'I positioned myself between Ryan and the shark and I tried to watch it for a second, hoping it would pass us by,' explained 32-year-old Mr Clasen.

'I noticed that the shark was getting tighter and tighter and just kept trying to get a back angle on us and behaving in an aggressive manner.

'The shark made a roll and looked like it was going to charge us so I just went ahead and took the conservative route and put a shaft through its gills.

'Cameron and I have been around sharks for years and we all have a lot of experience with them but this encounter had a different feel to it.

'Down in my core I really felt the shark was there to feed. I didn't want it to come to that.'

Mr Clasen spent nearly two hours wrestling with the giant 12ft shark, spearing it seven times and even attempting to drown the beast before eventually finishing it off with a long blade knife.

The experienced spearfisherman spent nearly two hours wrestling with the shark, spearing it seven times

'Once I shot it in the gills I felt a moral obligation to finish the job,' says Mr Clasen.

'I didn't want it to go on any longer than it had to. I shot the fish like I would do any other fish and worked it up closer and did my best to kill it as humanely as possible.

'I speared it in the gills which I knew would kill it and from that I tried to put a shaft into its brain as quickly as possible.

'I shot it six times in the head with a spear and I wasn't having much luck - it was a slow drawn out process.

'Sharks are so resilient and so tough from millions of years of evolution they are just survivors.

'The best way and quickest way to finish the job and kill the shark and recover it was to get a rope around its tail, drag it from the back of the boat and attempt to drown it.

'In the end we had put a knife its skull once I got lose enough to it and use a long blade knife even after trying to drown it.'

Mr Clasen, who usually sees 50-100 sharks on such dives, said that such an attack was rare

Mr Clasen has been free diving and fishing since an early age. Hailing from Mississippi, he was brought up in a fishing family, and is an expert in all fishing disciplines. Despite his experience, Mr Clasen took no pleasure in disposing of the giant shark.

'This was one of the most remorseful moments I have ever had in all of my years in hunting, gathering and fishing,' explains Mr Clasen.

'Personally I never shoot anything or kill anything that I am not going to eat.

'We saved the tail and the head, cut a giant chunk out of it and ate a piece.

'I wasn't there to hunt the shark, it was a defensive move for me and I would do it again. Unfortunately it had to be done and its not something I was proud of. It was a situation that presented itself to us. This was one of those rare instances where we had to protect ourselves.

'I have so much respect for sharks in general. With the amount of time that we spend out there we are exposed to so many potential risks.'

The divers had been hunting with spear guns for yellow fin tuna when the tiger shark attacked

Spearfishing is a form of fishing that has been popular throughout the world for centuries. Considered to be the most selective way of fishing, the amount of fish taken by spearfishermen accounts for just 0.1 per cent of fishing globally.

Today spearfishermen use effective elastic- or pneumatic-powered spearguns and slings to strike the hunted fish using free-diving, snorkelling or scuba-diving techniques.

Regarded by many as two of the world's best free diving spearfishermen, Mr Clasen and Cameron Kirkconnell have come into contact with thousands of sharks.

Watching from the boat, Mr Kirkconnell is sure Mr Clasen the right decision. 'We had been in the water all day and had caught lots of tuna,' he explained.

'But every dive we do is a shark dive and at certain times of the year, especially in Louisiana, we expect to see between 50-100 sharks from 7-12 ft.

'This encounter was so rare though. This shark might have been part of a feeding frenzy and still fired up and thought this was an easy kill.

'Tiger sharks have no problem eating whole sea turtles, 150lb tuna and even dolphins. It wasn't a split second decision on a whim, Mr Clasen has had hundreds of hours of experience.

'There was no doubt that was what needed to be done.'

Why ?

03 Mar 2009
Nearly 200 whales and several dolphins beach themselves on King Island off southern Australia. - AFP

Rare squid 'with elbows' caught on camera

Rare squid 'with elbows' caught on camera

A rare species of squid that appears to have elbows has been filmed in unprecedented clarity by an underwater camera.

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 3:45PM GMT 28 Nov 2008



The squid was spotted a mile and a half below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico at an oil and gas drilling site off the coast of Houston, Texas.

The footage, recorded on a remote-controlled camera, shows the creature's long tentacles hanging at right angles from shoulder-like "arms" jutting out of its body.

The magnapinna's peculiar arrangement of limbs has baffled marine biologists since the deep-sea species was first identified in 1998.

One theory is that the elbows help prevent the squid's tentacles from becoming tangled, as it drags them along the seabed trawling for food. Others suggest that the squid waits for prey to collide with and get trapped among its sticky limbs.

The footage, which was filmed by a Shell Oil camera at their Perdido drilling site in November last year, has been circulating among oil industry employees via email for months. It came to public attention after being featured on the National Geographic website.

Magnapinna squid, which live in darkness 4,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, have only been caught on camera a handful of times, and never at a drilling site.

Although their tentacles are remarkable, the animals are much smaller than giant squids which have been recorded to reach up to 52 ft in length.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wil...on-camera.html

Tigers kill zoo worker in Singapore

By Khushwant Singh
		Mr Nordin Mondong, 32, from Sarawak, is believed to have fallen into the moat surrounding the White tiger enclosure at about 12.15pm and was immediately pounced on by the three big cats weighing over 100 kg each. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
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A MALAYSIAN cleaner was mauled to death by three tigers which pounced on him when he fell into the moat in the enclosure at the Singapore Zoo in Mandai on Thursday.

The man has been identified as Mr Nordin Montong, 32, from Sarawak. His family has been notified of his death, said the Singapore Zoo in a statement.

As a precautionary measure, the Zoo has temporarily closed the White Tiger exhibit.

The Zoo said the man, a contract worker, jumped into the moat at the tiger enclosure at 12.15pm and was pounced on by the three big cats weighing over 100 kg each.

Terrified visitors near the section watched the vicious attack in horror and screamed.

The commotion attracted the attention of a keeper who was nearby. Other keepers sprang to Mr Nordin's rescue by distracting the tigers.

The keepers managed to separate the Mr Nordin from the tiger.

"While waiting for the ambulance, our vets attended to him," said Ms Giswajit Guha, the Zoo's assistant director.

The ambulance arrived at 12.45pm but the mauled worker had died of injuries to his neck and body.

Mr Nordin started working at the Zoo in June.

It is believed he was not supposed to be in the Tiger enclosure and was assigned to clean the Chimpanzee section on Thursday.

He was seen behaving in an agitated manner before he fell into the moat.

"Our heartfelt condolences go to the worker's family and we will provide his family with whatever assistance they need during this period," said Ms Guha.

Police and the Zoo are investigating the incident.

Say goodbye to Maldives

Mohamed "Anni" Nasheed, a former political prisoner, was sworn in Tuesday after he unseated Asia's longest-serving leader in the country's first multi-party elections two weeks ago. He inherits an island nation with several problems.

Foremost among them: The very likely possibility that the Maldives will sink under water if the current pace of climate change keeps raising sea levels.

The Maldives is an archipelago of almost 1,200 coral islands located south-southwest of India. Most of the islands lie just 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) above sea level.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast a rise in sea levels of at least 7.1 inches (18 cm) by the end of the century.

The island was badly hit by the December 2004 tsunami, which killed an estimated 273,800 people and left thousands missing across Asia and Africa.

In the Maldives itself, at least 82 people were killed and 26 unaccounted for from a population just over 270,000, according to the Maldives Disaster Management Center. Sixty-nine islands were completely flooded and a further 30 islands half flooded.

The capital of Male was also flooded, although sea walls protected it from further devastation. The government has calculated that creating a similar barrier around the rest of the country would cost too much. Watch Maldives president vow to save the nation. »

World's largest natural mirror

Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles). It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, 3,650 meters high. When it is covered with water, the Salar de Uyuni reflects the sky.



The salt is over 10 meters thick in the center. In the dry season, the salt planes are a completely flat expanse of dry salt, but in the wet season, it is covered with a thin sheet of water which makes the most beautiful reflections.





Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt, of which less than 25,000 tons is extracted annually.




You can see every mountain and every cloud reflected in the salar and you can't tell how far away they are or where the sky starts and ends.




Due to its large size, smooth surface, high surface reflectivity when covered with shallow water, and minimal elevation deviation, Salar de Uyuni makes an ideal target for the testing and calibration of remote sensing instruments on orbiting satellites used to study the Earth.




In addition to providing an excellent target surface the skies above Salar de Uyuni are so clear, and the air so dry, that the surface works up to five times better for satellite calibration than using the surface of the ocean.




info from fogonazos.blogspot.com

Loo with a view: The world's toilets with the best vistas

We may not really care what our view is when we use the loo.

But maybe we should - for according to the World Toilet Organisation we spend three years of our lives on the throne.

And that fact was enough to set author Luke Barclay off on a mission to flush out the planet's best loos with a view.

Boston Bay High Camp, Washington state: Few loos with a view can beat this one near Johannesburg Mountain in the North Cascades national park


Canton de Chelly, Arizona: A wooden loo at the base of Spider Rock, an 800ft sandstone spire revered by Navajo Indians


The Valley of Longevity, Ecuador: A wooden long-drop that lives up to its description, high in the Andes


Cliff-Top Chateau, France: This 'oasis of pis' overlooks a picturesque bend in the Dordogne River

Among them are remote wilderness loos, such as the ones at Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia and the Boulder Pass Campsite in Montana, which overlooks the spectacular Agassiz Glacier.

Many are on sacred sites - including those in the Valley of Longevity in Ecuador, where locals are said to live to 135, and on Mount Sinai in Egypt, where God is said to have handed the Ten Commandments to Moses.


Changi Airport, Singapore: Plane spotters in the new terminal 3 can take a wee look at the giant Airbus A380


Tasman Glacier, New Zealand: An aerial shot shows just how close this loo is to the edge


Mount Sinai, Egypt: The best place to see sunrise on the mountain is said to be from this toilet, where the early-morning light floods through the bamboo walls


Boulder Pass Campsite, Montana: A wooden loo in Glacier National Park, with a stunning view of Agassiz Glacier


Guard Tower, Alcatraz: Warders at the infamous jail had an all-round view of San Francisco Bay while they took a comfort break

The loos on the lookout tower at Alcatraz clearly worked, as no escape attempts were successful in the prison's 29-year history.

But women using the aquarium toilet at Mumin Papa Cafe in Akashi, Japan, have complained of being watched by a male sea turtle.

However, the future for interesting toilets is bright, as the new men's loo in Terminal 3 of Singapore's Changi Airport proves.


Croagh Patrick, Ireland: This 2,501ft summit in Co Mayo, where St Patrick fasted


Peninsula Hotel, Kowloon, Hong Kong: An ultra-modern mirror and sink - and view - in the ladies' at the Felix Bar


Salir de Uyuni, Bolivia: A relief stop 12,000ft high in the Andes in the middle of the world's largest salt flats, which cover an area of 4,085 square miles


Mumin Papa Cafe, Japan: This ladies' loo in Akashi is built into an aquarium, so you can watch the fishes as you, erm, meditate. But beware of the inquisitive male sea turtle


Mount McKinley, Alaska: A real cool view all round near the 20,320ft summit of the highest mountain in North America


Mount Whitney, California: At an elevation of over 14,500ft, this metal loo was a high spot for climbers. Sadly, it no longer exists



Loo With A View, by Luke Barclay, is published by Virgin Books