The illustrated migration route shown in this video really drives home just how amazing the trek from breeding grounds to feeding grounds really is for the Gray Whales. Just knowing there is a creature on this earth with that much stamina and drive makes me feel privileged to share the earth with the Gray Whale.
The mother Gray whales stay behind with their young in the protected bays in Baja until they are both ready to make the trip north to feed on the fatty amphipods in the Bering Sea.
These days, upon arrival at the Bering Sea these poor mothers are finding there is a dwindling food supply for both themselves and their young. Any mother would feel the heartbreak and the alarm finding a situation like this. The Gray Whales cannot be too different from us.
Now why in the world is there no way to repopulate the Gray Whales feeding grounds with more amphipods? This earth is spotted with huge manmade lakes that have been ’stocked’ with fish of all varieties for the sport fishermen. But, apparently there is no way to toss some food the Gray Whales way. Is there no way to help?
When will the world start coming up with immediate stopgap solutions? There are those that will say, “Temporary help is like putting a bandage on a gaping wound”. Well okay then, shall we do nothing at all but debate ad nauseam the cause of Global Warming?
If you see me by the side of the road with a gaping wound, please put a bandage on me until I can be fixed properly. It’s the humane way to act.
Quite honestly if ice-cold deep seawater is being pumped into pipes under soil, for heaven sakes, so that people in the tropics can ‘enjoy the wonders of spinach’, then why can’t some of this water be used to cultivate amphipods? Oh the reason is as plain as the nose on my face! There would be no profit in doing that.
What kind of applications are there for deep seawater? It would seem there is nothing this water can’t enhance, change into or be used ‘for’.
So how deep is ‘deep seawater’ and what could it be used for? Deep sea water is located at a depth of generally lower than 200 meters. It takes about 2,000 years for this water to circle the globe.
Once it was discovered that, for example, the Japanese would pay up to $33.50 for a single bottle of desalinated deep seawater all kinds of people started jumping on the deep seawater pipeline.
The NELHA upwells a mind boggling 88,000 metric tones of the stuff per day. Japan has started several deep seawater projects as well as Norway.
Once the attributes of this water were discovered, the race was on to develop new ways to exploit its properties. Can we develop new industires based around this here to fore unexploited resource?
Ice-cold deep seawater was found to be advantageous in the aquaculture of cold-water species unable to be farmed in tropical seawater climates. Other aquaculture benefits are deep seawater increases the ability to grow cold water organisms, disease control and it contains few viruses and pathogenic bacteria.
Other applications could be used in the food industry, in medical treatment facilities, and even cooling water for power stations.
The demand for this water is growing as private companies are inventing new uses for it. Commercial fisheries often don’t take their catch directly to market, holding it until prices go up. The need to keep fish alive and in sanitary conditions is another use for deep seawater.
The ease at which water temperatures can be controlled by mixing surface water with the cold deep seawater is another benefit being touted. How can further changing the surface temperatures of the sea be a good thing?
This up-welled water is even being run through pipes underground to cool the temeratures of soil. Cold weather crops such as spinach can be grown in parts of the world where it was never intended to be grown by nature.
This up-welled deep seawater accounts right now for only .05% of all water in the ocean, but it supports nearly 50% of all sea products being manufactured.
The prospect of pulling this water up and sending it all over the earth to cool homes, soil and even power plants sounds like a tricky idea to me. Growing fish and crops in places they were never intended to be grown sounds like a bad idea to me.
Yes, we need to find new ways of sustaining life on the planet, but what will be the unintended consequences of using these methods?
Only time will tell if man will become his own bycatch.
In the big picture geothermal vents are a fairly recent discovery. Or, are they?
The first of these vents being discovered in the modern days of 1977, new vents are still being found. As the technology advances for deeper and deeper exploration, our ability to find more of these vents increases.
Volcanic conduits heat these geothermal vents. In April a new undersea mineral chimney was discovered off the coast of Costa Rica 8,500 feet below the surface of the water.
This chimney called a “black smoker” was found to be emitting hot iron-darkened water. Scientists from Duke, the University of New Hampshire, and So. Carolina and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts named their discovery the Medusa Hydrothermal Vent Field.
A unique form of jellyfish order, stauromedusae, was found to be living in the mini eco-system produced by the hot waters of these vents. These jellyfish may even be a newly discover species. Their pink color is one unseen before.
The stauromedusae orders of jellyfish generally live further away from the heated vents in cooler water. These vents and now the discovery of life being able to sustain itself in the hotter waters close to the vents are giving scientists a new opportunity to study how living organisms adapt to extreme environmental conditions as well as insights into the origin of the earth’s crust and its evolution.
In addition to the jellyfish there are also heat-tolerant tubeworms living on Medusa’s chimneys.
I’m always amazed when I read stories about things being discovered like this newly named Medusa field and how these things somehow always seem to work back to our earth’s ancient history.
The original Medusa was carrying the child of Poseidon, god of the seas. She offended Athena who turned Medusa’s beautiful hair in the snakes, or was her hair actually turned into tubeworms of the sea?
Her face was then made so hideous that all who looked upon her were turned to stone. Was that stone actually lava flow from beneath the sea?
Poseidon was an angry and hot-tempered type and he carried the trident, with which he could split boulders and cause earthquakes. Modern science now knows this is how these geothermal vents are created, as well as the ocean shelves of the earth’s deep seas.
It’s a wonder to me how ‘myth’ is often times so close to ‘reality’. I stand in constant wonder and awe of the possibilities of our perhaps forgotten past. Were the ancient Greeks and Romans able to explore the depths of the sea? Perhaps the seas were not nearly so deep in our earths ancient past.
Who knows? But, these are interesting things to ponder.
