Category: Science
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The Vanishing Canyons of My Youth
It was the Grand Canyon of my youth: deep, dark, and scary as hell. It took me and my 10-year old friends years to conquer our fear of the wilderness in our backyard. They set me on a path in life that serves me to this day. They were the canyons of my youth but…
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Abalone: the Chase, the Lore, the Future
Abalone are definitely one of the most exquisite things to eat from the sea. Their sublime flavor is both buttery and slightly salty and tastes like a cross between a scallop and calamari. But a big part of abalone is the culture of chasing, catching and eating wild abalone.
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Ocean Movies you Love to Hate: Endless Descent (aka The Rift) (1989)
Most science fiction movies are based loosely on science. Usually, this means they make a few technical or impossible leaps to move the plot forward but generally adhere to the basic laws of science. But in most cases, filmmakers are forgiven for their science-defying sins as long as the story makes up for it. In…
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Legend of the Killer Abalone
There is a legend, spawned deep in the mysterious kelp forests of southern California, of the killer abalone. On extremely rare occasions, conditions align with a violation of the abalone code that triggers the rare spawn of the trio of terror in the abalone universe: the red, the black, and their offspring, the pink abalone.…
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Deadly Jetties: Surfer’s Dreams, Captain’s Nightmares
Whenever humans seek to control the environment the smackdown can be severe and unpredictable. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the sea. Here, the ocean delights in teaching us the folly of our plans, sometimes with fatal consequences. Jetties are prime examples.
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Reflections on Blogging for Science and Surfing
Blogging had made me a better writer, created new opportunities and expanded my creative directions. Above all, it’s fun and I enjoy it.
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Ocean Movies you Love to Hate: Tentacles (1977)
Suction cups of death threaten the tourists of a seaside resort in this cheap Italian knock-off Jaws. Fortunately, the hapless swimmers and boaters are saved by a plucky marine biologist who trains two killer whales to devour the eight-armed menace.
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Crush Depth: Adventures with Scientific Submersibles
“What’s your depth?” echoed down from the surface radio, unanswered for the third time in a row and sounding increasingly desperate. It was 2002 and I was riding inside the scientific submersible Delta, heading towards the seafloor off Anacapa island in an area known simply as the “footprint,” a deep-water fish, coral and sponge hot spot…
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Find the Kraken! The Search for Giant Squid
The idea of the Kraken appears in Melville’s Moby Dick in 1851; played a major role in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870; and appeared as the Watcher in the Water in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, lurking in a lake beneath the western walls of Moria. The truth is…
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Peril on the Sea: Nautical Nightmares
As a marine biologist and surfer I have spent a lot of time on and in the ocean. And while surveying the shore, riding waves, scuba diving, or being underwater in a submersible, I have developed a great respect for the sea. She is all-powerful, magnificent, unpredictable, inspiring, and terrifying all at once. And there…
