Researchers discover a seafloor oasis made of hundreds of glass sponges.
Howe Sound, British Columbia—Through the submersible's acrylic
viewport, a large patch of glass sponges looms up from the seafloor of Howe Sound (map),
a network of fjords located on Vancouver's doorstep. The sponges glow
creamy white and orange under the sub's high-intensity lamps and extend
across a 40-foot-high (12.2-meter-high) mound.
This week, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
(CPAWS) and Nuytco Research mounted the first submarine expedition to
the glass sponge reefs found in Georgia Strait off of Vancouver.
The
expedition aims to check on the status of these sponge reefs, which
currently have no protection from damage by fishing activities, and to
raise awareness of their existence.
The Howe Sound reef—which Aquarius will
explore over the course of six dives—was first discovered in 2008,
making it the most recently discovered sponge reef in southern British
Columbia.
Glass sponges are found across the globe. But only along
British Columbia's continental shelf do they grow over the skeletons of
their dead ancestors to form massive deepwater reefs. This buildup is
thanks to high levels of dissolved silica, which the sponges use to
build their glass skeletons, and strong currents of cold water laden
with nutrients.
"The sponge communities provide refuge for
juvenile fish and they have a large filtering capacity, so they provide
an important ecological function," says Bruce Reid, regional manager of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Vancouver.
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto.
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably
scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken
place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s
“Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear
tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear
tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100%
clear).
Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they
detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and
bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003,
says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of
nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real
action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.
Global mining giant Xstrata sent contractors with truckloads of grout
to repair gaping cracks and chasms it created on a hilly ridge in an
Australian conservation area while mining for coal. You’re probably wondering to yourself, “How could this possibly go wrong?” When the contractors got there, they made a blunder that would be hilarious were it not so devastating.
As grout was being poured into a crack at the top of the cliff, it
was gushing out of another crack at the bottom. An estimated 200 tons of
grout — enough to fill 12 cement trucks — flowed into a creek. There it
hardened, turning what had been a tranquil waterway in the Sugarloaf
State Conservation Area into a 370-yard concrete pathway. From the Newcastle Herald:
To make its descent [the grout] had swamped smaller trees, flooding around rocks and logs along its path.
Cascading down the hill like a miniature glacier, the set overflow
looks pretty similar to a thick coating of marzipan on the forest floor.
It’s impossible to know how many plants, holes, gaps and even animals may lay beneath the stony substance. … In places, it’s barely the width of a narrow garden path. At others, it could pass for a single-car garage slab that nobody bothered to level.
Being a coal company, Switzerland-based Xstrata decided to keep its
little accident a secret from the public. Nearly three months later,
after the debacle was exposed by the Herald,
the state government ordered a cleanup. But how do you remove hundreds
of yards of grout from a creek? The company has until September to come
up with a plan, but it won’t be easy. “I have no idea how it can be cleaned up,” said an unnamed worker
involved in the restoration effort. “The problem is just too massive.”
