"Hello there!, I'll be your tour guide on a boating adventure, a day of exploration, in the summertime.
This is a harbour seal, I think. I refer to them as the Cute seals, the Grey Seal is much larger & also called a horsehead seal, because, THEY UGLY! 😂
You don't have to be in a boat to see these. I can walk to most shorelines and see them.
One of the biggest habits that humanity has to kick is that of seeing a human-free space and assuming it’s worthless/empty unless we fill it up with something. It’s happening with plans for the ocean, deforestation for “development”, talk of delivery drones filling the future sky, cube sats that will hide the stars. This “space” is the planetary engine, and it’s incredibly valuable NOW. doing all sorts of things that keep us alive & enrich our lives. We should protect it. #ocean#climate#Earth
It still blows my mind that the last “Bovril Boats” didn’t stop operating in the Thames until 1998. 1998 ! Their job was to take Lordon’s sewage down the Thames from Beckton and to dump it into the North Sea (but oh, on the ebb tide, so that was ok). Dumping anything in the ocean is an admission that our systems on land have failed, but in this case it was failure by design. We cannot continue to treat the ocean like this. #ocean#sewage
We generally think that over-fishing is about fish that humans eat. But around a third of all wild-caught fish are turned into fishmeal, because fishmeal is around 65% protein and therefore in demand for for feeding farmed fish and pigs. It's an almost invisible trade with huge consequences. But it's not an efficient way to make more protein. We need to re-think these links and ask whether it's really worth the damage to the ocean & communities.#ocean#fish#fishmeal
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale 🎶 , a tale of a fateful trip, 🎶
that started from this #Halifax port,
aboard this tiny ship (canoe, actually).
So we're back, let me tell you how our day went?
There's only one high tide today, and it was sunny and fairly warm, so we took the canoe out fishing.
Here's what it looked like when we left 🎵 for a three hour tour. ⛵
I used to name them, Starting in 2008, with Gail and Gordon, I'm not sure if the original pair is still alive, and they have been prolific and several large flocks of 20-30 #Geese each, from the original parents.
Except this one. She's lost her mate, even the three goslings she raised, have moved on. And she sits alone. On a rock, behind my truck, or hiding in the weeds. How long do they mourn, I wonder. Has she become sick? Outcast? Lonely #Goose#Nature#Birds#Ocean
Speechless. TIL: There are loads of unexploded munitions on the seabeds around Europe (not the batshit bit) and people want to remove them before installing wind turbines and cables (also not the batshit bit). So they do it by just blowing them up.
Now if I wanted to dispose of stuff like that on land, that’s standard practice - I did it during my PhD when a charge failed to go off as expected. But to do it underwater, where sound is critical to so much marine life? ARGHHHHH. #ocean#noise
I'm in Appledore in Devon, to give a talk later about Blue Machine and I've just discovered that they have a KNITTED OCEAN outside their church. And this is the Best Thing Ever.
On a modern yacht in the middle of the ocean with a broken rudder, send out a call for help, then out of the misty past THIS, the Götheborg out of Sweden, comes to rescues you ... Wow!
[The arrival of the Götheborg on the scene was rapid and surprising, as we did not expect to see a merchant ship from the East India Company of the XVIII century. This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it?]
Physical copies have arrived! Blue Machine is out on June 1st in the UK and October 3rd in the US (with a different cover design). https://linktr.ee/bluemachinebook
The story of the ocean - the water itself, not the dolphins, fish and plastic in it - is the biggest story on Earth. If you’ve ever posed the Monty Python style question “but WOT has the ocean ever done for us?”, here’s your answer. #ocean#BlueMachine
It's publication day for The Blue Machine in the US and Canada. Same book, with a different subtitle and miles in some places instead of km (but still mostly SI units, yay!).
If you're an ocean scientist and your family don't understand what you do and why, this might help.
"I love Helen Czerski’s writing, and this is her richest work yet—as clear as springwater, yet as filled with fascinating things as the ocean itself."- Sarah Bakewell
I don’t know anything much about this missing submersible, but from the outside it certainly looks as though it was missing a lot of very basic safety features: multiple acoustic beacons unconnected to the main power supply, an automatic satellite beacon that pings when it surfaces, surface lights, spare communication methods, the ability to open it from the inside… no wonder it wasn’t certified. #ocean#sub They appear to have been convinced it couldn’t fail. Just like the Titanic engineers.
Today is the 93rd anniversary of the 1st test of the Bathysphere (May 27th 1930), the first capsule to take humans down into the ocean depths. It was William Beebe’s idea & Otis Barton did the engineering. They were the first people to see deep ocean creatures in their natural habitat, setting a record dive depth of 670 metres in 1932. Beebe described it as “dangling in a hollow pea on a swaying cobweb, a quarter of a mile below the deck of a ship rolling in mid-ocean”. #Ocean#Exploration
This just went straight into my top ten favourite boat names.
I’m in Guernsey (for the first time) to speak at their literary festival tomorrow on Blue Machine, so if you know anyone on the island, do encourage them to come along. #books#Guernsey#ocean#boats
Like a pork rind cowboy ... da da dum 🎶 ... riding out on a bus with a box full of Orieos 🎵
I'll let you guess what tune goes with the preceding jingle.
I can remember my mother working as an usher in a movie theater. I suppose that would have been in the late 50s ... Okland, California, I think. In those days ushers wore uniforms and carried flashlights. She took us with her to work a couple times, at least long enough to watch a movie. I don't recall what movie, but I do remember the Three Stooges. I'm not sure if that was the main feature or one of the shorts they showed before the main feature.
"I mean, the whole idea of movies was it was special to go to see - you went to a movie theater to see something that was magical and amazing, in a very special location. - Bob Balaban
When I was a teenager, I could pull a transmission and replace a clutch and at the drop of a hat. Now, not so much ... not that I would want to do that anymore. Just a few years ago, I had a taillight go out on my car and I couldn't figure out how to get to the taillight, so I ended up taking it to the dealer. Not only did automotive technology advance without me, but my desire to do such things waned out of existence.
I've had my current car for eight years and keep telling myself I need a new car for travel. But my car still runs pretty well, and I don't drive it much anyway, so it's really hard to get new car fever. Besides, I hate the process of buying a new car it's a pain in an area at the lower half of my torso. It's something on my things to do tomorrow list.
“Our cars are turning into smartphones with wheels.” - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Yarr harr, fiddle-dee-rule.