Fancy a Piece of Sea Pork?

Florida sea pork

Image by Andrea Westmoreland

Continuing on, however tenuously, with our "pork" theme from yesterday's church sign featuring the apparently quite delectable pastor Ressler of Saint Louis, I present you with "Sea Pork," the plague of South Carolina beaches. In fact, they invade beaches all up and down the eastern seaboard and into the Gulf, surprising hapless swimming children and wandering beachcombers by their self-defense technique of imitating a large pile of mucus or discarded squid intestines.

Tempting as that may sound, you probably should curb your desire to throw some fresh sea pork on the grill, although various fish, skates, and sharks favor them. Supposedly they got their name because people thought they looked like a piece of fatback, perhaps washed up from some sunken sea kitchen. I certainly never would have thought of that, but they say that the sea can play tricks on a man's mind...

The lovely blue sea squirt

Image by Nick Hobgood

Deliciously (?) enough, the little amorphous masses are also known as 'Sea Liver.'

In reality they aren't pig livers or hearty gobs of snot sneezed into the ocean by some salty sailor who's a bit under the weather. Instead they are members of the happy-go-lucky tunicate sub-phylum, which includes much prettier, but still not delicious, looking creatures, such as the Blue Sea Squirts. Many tunicates live together in colonies, and when sea pork floats onto your foot it's usually a dead colony that floated to the surface as corpses tend to do and was washed ashore by a storm.

Another reason not to toss it in your frying pan to have with your morning eggs that.

A better way to escape a riptide??

Milton & Michael: Two old hippies who might save your life

Photo by Ken Harrison

Earlier in the week I wrote about how to spot a riptide and the official government way to escape one. But thanks to an alert reader on Reddit (where the world comes to spew its wisdom) I now know that there is an alternative, countercultural method to free yourself from a riptide if one is trying to drag you to your doom.  And it's being spread far and wide by the 2 old surfer hippies pictured above.

Their message in a nutshell: Don't swim parallel to the beach, swim toward the waves.

For more details, click here.

How to identify a rip tide

Here's a handy photo to study so you can spot (and therefore run away from) a rip tide.

And here's how to get away.

Never Trust the People

The mighty Boaty McBoatface proudly plows the seas

Great Britain, one-time ruler of the waves, is renowned for her many-storied tradition of unmatched scientific and oceanographic exploration. Such ships as the Endeavour, the Beagle, and the Victory adorn the hallowed halls of British naval history.

Now, standing in this grand heritage, England is constructing another cutting edge, second-to-none vessel that will proudly sail as the most advanced research ship in all the world. The National Environment Research Council chose to give the great honor of naming this epic craft to the british people.

“We’re looking for an inspirational name," the Council proclaimed, "one that exemplifies the work it will do”

Never failing to rise to a challenge, especially when they are acting for Queen and country, the british people poured over the many, many names available. By a slow and exacting process they narrowed the options until finally, like a diamond shinning amid the muck, the indisputable and inevitable choice came clear:

And so britain's naval tradition will live on in her newest and mightiest member, the RRS Boaty McBoatface!

The Power of Scientists

L. eltoni

Photo by James Thomas, the discoverer

A scientist in Florida just named this newly discovered Indonesian shrimp L. eltoni. After Elton John. Because he can.

Another Benefit to Living in California

So, apparently, mermaids are real. At least in California.

                      

Duck and Cover

The Bio-Duck of song and story

Photo by 玄史生

Out here on the sea, a man sees many a strange sight and hears tales in the dead of night that makes his blood run cold. But most fearful of all are the tales of a creature so terrifying that the mighty Kraken cowers before it, aircraft carriers change course to avoid it, and Great White Whales skitter swiftly away. Some say it's a demon, some that it's a refugee from the Jurassic age, and others don't dare guess -- just sit in despair in the darkened corners of their sailing ship's hold and weep like a grizzled baby.

Aye, thar be a name for this nameless horror, a name even the boldest sea captains can barely whisper. Oceanographers quail in fear as they slowly write it on their white boards, the hair of rugged Maine lobstermen turns instantly white when it's spoken, and the crews of nuclear submarines simultaneously lose their lunches when they hear that dreaded name: THE BIO-DUCK!!!

The Bio-Duck's angry and unpredictable undersea quacking has bedeviled mariners for 50 years and more. But now, heedless of the danger, devil-may-care scientists have gathered their courage and invaded the Bio-Duck's dark lair. The tables have been turned on this foul beast at last, finally unmasking the ferocious Bio-Duck as...

...the lovable Minke whale!!

Bio-Duck Unmasked!

From Itsnature.org

Our Cruddy Oceans

One obstacle to finding the wreckage of MH370: all the other junk out there!