To the oceans for a welcome change of venue

Snow: hissss!

Enough of this terrestrial world – including too much snow and ice and . . . winter! -- for awhile.  Let’s go to sea!

There’s news about jellyfish, sharks, rays and whales, horseshoe crabs and sea turtles.  It’s not all good news, to be sure, but for a while, we’ll escape our deepening snowscape.

Jellies have the moves

Jellyfish move like, well, jellyfish, loosely blobbing around – which could make you wonder how they get anywhere.  Now we know how one variety of jellyfish propel themselves: they create a temporary water wall to push off from, thereby getting ahead.

Jellyfish work with rotating vortices meeting from different directions to make water briefly stationary – a wall, in effect.    https://tinyurl.com/3z9ndyv3

 Sharks & rays in decline

             Mako shark                        Metcalfe-Getty

Sharks: long feared and even mythologized . . . but now facing possible extinction largely because of overfishing around the world.  So-called “incidental” catches also drive their numbers down.

Populations of both sharks and rays have declined 71% since 1970 (just 50 years ago!).  There are ways to avoid catching sharks and to release them safely, but the profit motive causes some people to ignore them.

To head off extinction of sharks and rays, governments are urged to set science-based limits on how many of them can be caught and kept. International cooperation would be necessary because both creatures range across the open ocean.     https://tinyurl.com/15yt9sxo

Secret lives of blue whales

Weighing up to 380,000 pounds and stretching some 100 feet in length, blue whales are the largest creatures ever to have lived on Earth.  They’re hardly inconspicuous  . . . and yet “a previously unknown population of the leviathans has long been lurking in the Indian Ocean.”

Which leads to an assumption about that ocean’s capacity!  It makes up nearly 20% of the global ocean and it’s the warmest and third largest of five world oceans, after the Pacific and Atlantic, and before the Southern and Arctic Oceans. 

                                      Blue whale                                              

This “covert cadre” of whales has its own signature sound distinct from any other whale song ever described.  Just think: with its language now recorded and analyzed, its existence and location are no longer in doubt.    https://tinyurl.com/8yyswbjb

Horseshoe crabs ‘for the birds’

Like so many other animals, horseshoe crabs “have long been harvested for human use,” despite their ancient pedigree and their importance to shore birds and fish.  It’s the way of the world, alas, and it’s the reason a fight for their survival is now underway. 

A recent Times of Trenton story reviewed horseshoe crabs’ value to people.  It started with their use as fertilizer and livestock feed before they were used as “prized bait for eel and whelk fisheries”. . . .  From  prehistoric survivor to such a fate: what a comedown.  

Horseshoe crab

Then came their use – still current in the US – as drug testers.  Horseshoe crabs’  blue blood is part of a compound for testing the purity of drugs.  The good news: a synthetic replacement is catching on in Europe and may ultimately become the test of choice here too.

In the most natural application, horseshoe crab eggs deposited on Delaware Bay beaches feed and nourish fish and migrating birds.  The crabs have become major contributors to the Delaware Bay ecosystem.  https://tinyurl.com/osty82qo

Rescuing sea turtles

“An apocalypse of turtles on the beach” was how one man described the myriad sea turtles desperately needing help (a.k.a. warmth) off the coast of Texas, a state suffering its own crisis of extreme cold made worse by loss of power.  The few turtles first spotted, and rescued, quickly grew to thousands of them.   

      Green sea turtle          

In winter weather, the chilling shallow water zaps strength from the coldblooded green sea turtles, a threatened species.  Although rescuing cold-stunned turtles is a regular event, this year’s weather caused much greater hardship, the Washington Post reported.   

Numerous volunteers pitched in, at least one in a kayak and others who waded into the frigid water for turtles – many of whom are recovering at a nearby air base.  The Dodo reported on other turtle rescue efforts: https://www.thedodo.com/daily-dodo/people-are-filling-their-cars-with-sea-turtles-to-save-them-texas-freeze

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