Earlier this month there was an area off the Oregon coast where the seafloor was littered with piles of dead sea life (typically slow-moving sea life, like crabs, worms, jellyfish - but no dead fish were found). This is the fifth year in a row that this has happened in the area, so scientists have [...]
Archive for August, 2006
Upwelling can cause “dead zones” in the ocean
Published by August 31st, 2006 in Science & Technology and The Ocean. 0 Comments$25K fellowship to travel the world studying the intersection of surf culture and environmental stewardship
Published by August 25th, 2006 in Culture, Entertainment & Media, The Ocean and Travel. 0 CommentsIf I could go back and do college all over again, I’d give some serious thought to doing it like Alexandra Cheney. Wheaton College granted her a $25K fellowship to travel to some of the world’s finest surf destinations (Polynesia, Australia, Japan, Costa Rica, Brazil and South Africa). Her mission is to study the intersection [...]
Our buddy, Ed, has been on a boat in the Mentawai Islands for the past 10 days, undoubtedly surrounded by incredible waves. Ed demonstrates his broceanography skills par excellence with this little shot of perfection that he chased down somewhere off the beaten path.
Here’s a link to a larger version of the pic.
Surfboard with built-in tablet pc
Published by August 21st, 2006 in Entertainment & Media, Gear and Science & Technology. 0 CommentsAlthough this story is a bit dated, I feel it deserves a mention. It’s a surfboard with a built-in wirelss tablet pc, so surfers can surf (the internet) while they’re out in the water.
From the looks of it, the whole thing was more of a gimick to demonstrate wireless technology. Two years have passed since [...]
There’s no telling how accurate their numbers are, but the IWGA estimates the global population of recreational surfers to be around 20 million people. There are roughly 2.5 million surfers in the United States alone, the majority being on the Pacific coast.
Link
Time-lapse video of tide & currents at Black’s
Published by August 15th, 2006 in The Ocean and Waves. 2 CommentsHere’s a cool video that shows tidal movement at Black’s beach over time.
http://cil-www.coas.oregonstate.edu/ncex/blacky.c1.small.mov
Podcasts of cool instrumental surf music
Published by August 14th, 2006 in Culture and Entertainment & Media. 0 Comments Double Crown records has some podcasts of cool traditional surf guitar instrumentals (Dick Dale style music).
Check ‘em out http://www.dblcrown.com/podcasts.html
You should be able to stream the podcasts in your browser. I’ve listened to most of them. So far I think show #13 is my favorite.
We went to the premier of Secret Machine at La Paloma Theater in Encinitas. The movie is pretty well put together.
I don’t see what Sonny Miller was on about Globe actually having a secret machine that makes surf movies. All of those shenanigans that were reported in the media may have been a ruse [...]
Underwater gliders monitor ocean conditions
Published by August 11th, 2006 in Science & Technology and The Ocean. 0 CommentsUnderwater gliders are helping oceanographers remotely collect real-time information about water currents, pollution and ocean organisms. They’re currently patroling the waters off the coast of California.
Here’s a link to the project portal and a regularly updated video depicting the gliders movements.
Link
Nearshore Canyon Experiment @ Black’s
Published by August 9th, 2006 in Science & Technology, The Ocean and Waves. 0 CommentsHere are a couple of links to an interesting study of the deep canyons that make the waves at Black’s so special.
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=591
http://science.whoi.edu/users/elgar/NCEX/ncex.html
More on the WaveHub project
Published by August 5th, 2006 in Environmentalism & Politics and Science & Technology. 0 CommentsSome folks from A1surf report that ona recent trip to the north coast of Cornwall (England), they asked local surf shop owners and surfers what they thought of the impending Wave Hub project.
They were surprised to discover that most people didn’t know anything about the project or it’s potential to degrade the quality of [...]
Up to 10 million different microbes live in the ocean
Published by August 3rd, 2006 in Science & Technology, The Ocean and Wildlife. 0 CommentsUntil now scientists had identified and named about 5,000 different marine microbes, but a recent survey suggests that there could be over 100 times that amount living in our oceans. Using a DNA probe marine biologists found 20,000 microbes living in a single liter of seawater.
"A swimmer taking just a swallow of seawater may be [...]
A pillow that tells you how good the waves are
Published by August 2nd, 2006 in Gear and Science & Technology. 0 CommentsThe Aussies have done it again. This time with a pillow that eliminates the need to get out of bed to check the surf. It communicates wirelessly with special surf-monitoring software that you install on your computer. The pillow vibrates according to the size of the waves, i.e. bigger waves make the pillow vibrate more [...]
Making Better Surf and Cleaner Power
Published by August 1st, 2006 in Science & Technology and The Ocean. 0 CommentsScientists in Australia are taking a novel approach to generating power from wave energy. From the looks of it, this generator would not steal as much of the waves’ power, so surfers would not suffer from smaller waves.
I wonder if the English have looked into using this technology for their proposed wave energy project.
Check it [...]
