I’ve known this video for a couple of years now, and there’s a decent chance you’re familiar with it; at least with the tour that culminated from it. That, however, was only the lead-in [...]]]> I actually get chills when watching the following video – it’s just too cool seeing this all come together:

I’ve known this video for a couple of years now, and there’s a decent chance you’re familiar with it; at least with the tour that culminated from it. That, however, was only the lead-in for this. Turn your volume down if you’re someplace public:

Seriously, hang onto that link – there’s nothing better to cheer you up when you’re down than baby animals. Yes, I’m referring to the kids with that ;-)

This was a promo to announce the Walking With Dinosaurs tour in Australia (unfortunately, shameful autoplay video at that link – never, ever do this.) When the tour came into this area of the US, there was no way in hell we were going to afford it at that time, which is a shame, because the effort put into it is astounding. It’s impossible to say whether the behaviors and movements displayed are accurate depictions of species from millions of years ago, but from our perspective with the species alive now, they certainly look realistic. In an age when no movie company seems capable of producing entertainment without hosing around the CGI, clumsily and shamelessly, seeing what can be done with live action is refreshing.

When I lived in Florida, I started “maintaining” a small saltwater aquarium to house photo subjects and interesting marine critters. Being close [...]]]>
I’ve related this in part elsewhere on the site, but I thought it deserved its own post, especially since it was one of the more memorable experiences from a few years ago.

When I lived in Florida, I started “maintaining” a small saltwater aquarium to house photo subjects and interesting marine critters. Being close to both the ocean and the Indian River Lagoon, a large isolated saltwater sound inside the barrier islands facing the Atlantic, I had lots of access to the aquatic residents. I could bicycle down to the lagoon to snorkel, and did this frequently. Mostly, what I saw were crabs, barnacles, and oysters, but I had encounters with dolphins, manatees, stingrays, and jellyfish too.

Now, I put “maintaining” this aquarium in quotes above because I did not manage this as most people manage saltwater aquariums with their exotic tropical fish. There was no careful measuring of pH levels, no purchases of salt and mineral mix, no consideration of compatible species, and no filtering. Instead, I obtained water directly from the lagoon a few times a week, simply aerated or circulated, and whatever I caught that I had an interest in had to fend for itself. I had a basic heater to maintain the water at roughly the same temperature as the sound, and not much else. I couldn’t filter, since many species that I caught were filter feeders themselves and relied on microorganisms in the water.

I had no underwater photography gear, so the tank allowed me to photograph various small catches under controlled conditions, where lighting and setting, as well as water clarity, were not up for grabs. While most critters stayed only a few days at best, several of my subjects became long-term residents, as keeping them required little more than fresh water and seaweeds, and they thrived surprisingly well. I’m pretty ambiguous about fish, but I like crustaceans, so I had several porcelain crabs, a handful of fascinating little grass shrimp, numerous small anemones, and a tiny flounder that I caught by chance, slightly larger than a quarter.

One catch stymied me, though. Basically, it was a 8 cm (3 in) “lobster” in deep green fading to blue-white on the underside, with one pincer being huge and misshapen, tumorous-looking. It bore some resemblance to a crayfish, but slimmer, and I was pretty sure there were no saltwater crayfish. Web searches turned up nothing – what do you search on, especially when, like me, you have no knowledge of marine biology? It was very shy and remained hidden, so I kept it for a few weeks as I worked out ways to photograph it in a decent setting.

Some nights, down at a dock collecting water and whatever nocturnal denizens I could spot, I heard a very sharp clack! nearby, like a small stone hitting a rock at high velocity. Absolutely no one was around, and the area I would hear it from, less than a few meters away, was often devoid of rocks above the surface. I found it hard to believe that anything beneath the surface would produce a sound in this pitch (usually water reduces the pitch,) so this remained a mystery. I was keeping a loose journal of observations at the time, and in that I speculated on things like archer fish, the species that hunts insects above the surface by spitting water droplets at them, but even then, this seemed implausible.

Sometimes, while snorkeling, I’d hear it too, and one day I got a series of them while trying to extricate a small crab from a crevice in a piling. Aha! But the pitch seemed a little off, and certainly not as loud.

Then, one night when I was almost asleep, the tank produced a sound like a marble hitting the side, and I immediately got up to see if one of the glass sides had fractured. But no cracks, leaks, or chips were visible in the slightest, and nothing that could fall over to strike the side. I had several crab species in the tank at this time, but able to produce so sharp a noise? Naaahhh…

You have, of course, already made the connection since I didn’t structure this tale as a murder mystery, but this was an ongoing curiosity to me for a while – until I stumbled across an illustration for a pistol shrimp, sometimes called snapping shrimp, while doing some online research. And suddenly realized just how cool one of my residents really was.

Pistol shrimp (Alpheus heterochaelis) have a unique way of obtaining food. That misshapen claw (chelae) houses a simple mechanism that allows the thumb (dactylus) to open and lock in place, cocked like a gun, to be released under great muscular force when a food source is nearby. The shape of the claw and the velocity of it slamming closed produces a shock wave that stuns nearby prey, whereupon the shrimp can amble over and eat it leisurely – and of course, the shock wave was what I was hearing. The sound has to be heard to be believed, since it’s surprisingly loud. Bear in mind that this method of hunting is not a contact system but works at short distances, most especially on prey that can be affected by pressure. I cannot attempt to explain this as “non-aggressive,” since this is predation and not scavenging or foraging, but the shy pistol shrimp doesn’t have to throw down with its prey in full-contact sport, but opens its can of WhupAss (well-shaken it would seem) from a safe distance, bringing a gun to what is almost always a knife fight throughout the environment.

Even more interesting, the force actually causes a cavitation bubble to appear (cool video,) momentarily creating a region of vacuum in the water within the immediate vicinity of The Claw, and this can at times even produce a tiny flash of light called sonoluminescence This is not visible to the naked eye so I never witnessed this myself, and in fact only got to see the behavior in action once. This occurred when I introduced a fist-sized thinstripe hermit crab (Clibanarius vittatus) into the tank for the afternoon, to obtain some images. While the crab sat, minding its own business atop a rock, the pistol shrimp obviously had some difficulties with its presence. I watched as, several times, the shrimp eased out from under a rock, slipped up to the hermit crab from behind, and placed The Claw right against one of the crab’s legs, firing off a shot at point-blank range before darting back under cover. The crab, perhaps with smug condescension, showed absolutely no reaction at all to this treatment. No, I didn’t get any pics of this happening, since my observation angle was poor and setting up the camera and lights likely would have halted the action.

A perfectly legitimate question is to ask how something like this could have evolved (yet it is illegitimate, when unable to fathom this, to assume it could not have.) But grasping appendages and claws to break apart food are common, so the significant difference here is the speed and shape of such producing a shock wave. Yet almost all chelae would, to some extent, and sounds can be used for communication and threat displays as well, so have multiple reasons to be refined by evolution. Anything that produces a sound (which is really just pressure waves in the medium, in this case water) that can affect something else at short distances can obtain prey without contact, and even a tiny distance is an advantage. It is also fairly likely that, long ago, the prey species were easier to stun too, and both the defensive pressure resistance of the prey, and the sonic ability of the pistol shrimp, increased in competition with each other over thousands of generations of each. I’m just sorry I can’t be around in a few thousand more generations to watch blaster shrimp nailing their food with sonoluminescent laser bolts…

If you were sharp-eyed above (or have seen the image in the photo gallery of the site,) you noticed the eggs carried in the pleopods (swimming appendages under the tail) of the pistol shrimp in my tank. Nothing ever came of this, possibly because there was no male handy to fertilize them. Below, a family portrait from the aquarium, showing a transparent grass shrimp (atop the rock and facing the camera), two tiny hermit crabs, and even the flounder, mostly buried in the crushed shell at bottom – directly under the larger hermit crab can be seen one of the googly eyes, and the darker region to the right of that is the top surface of the fish.

The Girlfriend and I spent some time with friends in the Savannah, Georgia area, and got around a bit to check [...]]]> I’m back from the trip, having extended the stay by a few days, and found that you all began tearing up the comments while I was away. I guess I expected no less.

The Girlfriend and I spent some time with friends in the Savannah, Georgia area, and got around a bit to check out some interesting items in the vicinity. The first thing we visited, and thus the first I’ll talk about, is the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island. Having worked with wildlife rehab and visited several centers devoted to such, I can easily say this was the most impressive, and well worth a visit if you’re within even a few hours of the area. If you’re into turtles or wildlife, involved with rehab in any way (even as a donor,) or simply want to see something different, this should be on your list.

Started just a few years back in 2006, the center is housed within the old power station buildings for the island, through the cooperation of the Jekyll Island Foundation, which maintains the historic portions of the island. The Foundation recognized the attraction of a decent public wildlife center, as well as the need to educate people on the species that routinely nest on the beaches. But there’s more to it than that, too, since the Georgia Sea Turtle Center is far in advance of any rehab or education center I’ve visited save for the NC Zoological Park, and it’s obvious a lot of emphasis has been placed on the outreach portions of their mission. I can’t stress enough how important this is; non-profit organizations run on public support, and the only way one can forge ahead with funding is by creating and maintaining a compelling public presence. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to that think that directing their funds towards development and education would take money from actual rehabilitation services, and this is complete nonsense, bordering on the ignorant. Development funds are an investment that, properly managed, pays back hugely, and this center is a prime example of how it works. This is evident even before you enter the building, from the parking lot with bus unloading areas to the “Walkway to Wonder” brick entrance, positively loaded with engraved messages from donors.

Inside, the education area has plenty of interactive and engaging exhibits, and as a model-builder, I can vouch for the effort that went into these. The entrance ticket serves as a prompt to have visitors check out stations around the hall, receiving an embossed seal from each that reveals another aspect of turtle life – it’s amazing how much attraction such a simple thing like a surprise seal provides, since there are multiple unrevealed embosser choices at each station. Big screen TVs roll video loops of excellent footage, including such things as testing of turtle excluders in commercial fishing nets (a real example of which stretches overhead in the vaulted ceilings of the old power station,) and the sand writhing as newborn turtles emerge from buried nests and make their frantic way to the ocean.

But to one side sits the observation window, where visitors can observe the rehabilitation technicians and veterinarians actually administering to patients in the adjoining medical room. Because turtle eyes are sensitive to bright light, there is no flash photography permitted, so be prepared and boost your ISO a bit to allow sharp images. The staff throughout the center are not only helpful, they’re directly engaging, offering advice and interesting tidbits as well as taking a distinct interest in the visitors. Even the rehab technicians will bring patients up the the glass for a brief good look before returning them to their housing. Little things like that do a lot for creating a positive experience, as opposed to the demeaning and snotty attitudes I’ve seen from some rehabilitators, who seem to feel the public is just there to make them suffer. No, seriously, this is a trait I’ve encountered frequently. The “public,” either through indifference or well-meaning ignorance, does indeed contribute to lots of wildlife issues, but for some reason many rehabbers seem to think this is intentional, and take it personally. If this is your attitude, let me help you out right now: get the hell out of the business. The “public” is what makes wildlife rehab actually work, and annoying them isn’t going to gain any funding. It’s nice to be at a place where they recognize this.

Attached to the main building sits the big enclosed pool area. Sea turtles, naturally, need large tanks of clean and maintained water to recover within, and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center provides a public hall down the center of their facility to let visitors see the patients. More clever touches were evident here: mirrors were set above some of the tanks, allowing a better view of the residents, and the education interns are fitted with microphones wired into a PA system (or if you’re British, a tannoy) that could be heard throughout the chamber. Each tank bore the resident’s name, and info stations on the rails provided the background of their injuries and treatments. Questions were welcome and encouraged, and the raised platform allowed a little better visibility of the patients. We were lucky enough to be there for the feeding time presentation, which a staffmember kindly alerted us to. The fee for all of this, by the way, is less than you’d spend for lunch.

Even the gift shop is impressive. Nicely laid out and with a wide variety of interesting items, from t-shirts and decals to fantastic artwork, it’s another aspect that shows what a bit of effort can do for a center. Proceeds, of course, go towards funding the center and its efforts, so even somewhat unreasonable prices are excusable, but actually the items were very competitively priced. Even here, the staff noticed visitors’ interests and volunteered pricing information or fetched an item to be examined. Sometimes little things like this go unnoticed, and I want to emphasize that it’s a nice touch, and I’m pleased with their attention to this.

Since we were visiting the area briefly, we didn’t get to see any of the educational programs, or take part in a turtle walk – the center does not stand alone. But we’ll definitely be returning, and in the meantime, I can only urge you to check it out, most especially if you’re involved with wildlife rehab in any way. Make sure you thank the staff you see there, too – non-profit organizations don’t exactly provide competitive salaries, and most people working there are volunteers. But it’s through their dedication and efforts that such centers exist, and a lot of turtles owe their health and well-being to this drive. And by all means, check out the website, which also reflects this effort.

A lot of the images I shot on this trip are actually on film, so more details about what we got up to will wait on the processing (I ship it out since the local labs have stopped handling slide film.) As a teaser, I can just say that it’s good to go back to the sub-tropics from time to time.

Well, okay, that’s being [...]]]> Fifty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, as well as the first to orbit the planet, beginning what is widely considered the Space Age of human development and accomplishments. For the first time, we left the planet and set foot among the stars.

Well, okay, that’s being a bit dramatic. We’d been leaving the planet for quite a while, just not very far. In fact, when you attempt to define things distinctly, it all becomes kind of muddled. The frontier of “space,” as opposed to simply “in the air,” isn’t able to be defined at all except arbitrarily – the air simply keeps getting thinner and thinner as you get further from the surface. No, dammit, not even that, but further from the Earth’s gravitational center, and to be honest, this is more like the Earth-Moon’s gravitational center, which isn’t the center of Earth at all. But anyway, “space” is not really a line you can cross, it’s just a convenient figure for some particular purpose, which may vary with the purpose. The International Space Station, orbiting higher than Gagarin’s maximum altitude of 327 km (203 mi,) needs periodic reboosts in altitude (orbital velocity – I’ll deal with that in a later post) because atmospheric drag causes it to lose altitude. So it’s not really entirely out of the atmosphere, and Gagarin certainly wasn’t. But the air was thin enough that it’s all a matter of semantics, really. Science is kind of muddy that way.

Gagarin’s flight holds entirely different perspectives depending on what nationality you are. The Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States carried a lot of different baggage – to the populace of either country, it was a matter of pride, accomplishment, and a bit of “in your face” competition to demonstrate which country was the bestest. To the military of either country, it was a tense battle between superpowers to see if either would gain a significant weapons and intelligence advantage by utilizing orbital and sub-orbital vehicles. To many of those outside of these two, it was a spectator sport of watching two countries pouring huge resources into dominance issues, some of which might overflow into drastic effects for any country near either of them, or indeed, for most of the globe. The Cold War was in full force, and no one really knew just how likely global thermonuclear war was, but it certainly didn’t help to watch the posturing of the US and USSR.

In the US, Gagarin’s flight (being a major accomplishment of the Soviet Union) was both a blow to morale, and a galvanizing issue: okay, you guys got first person in space (and, for that matter, first orbital satellite, too,) but we’re going to top that. It’s hard to say if landing someone on the moon topped that, really. It was certainly a bigger accomplishment, but we’d already lost the race for three other firsts (satellite, human in space, human orbiting the planet, which we didn’t even accomplish until our second manned spaceflight, with John Glenn – Alan Shepard only did a suborbital hop, less than Sputnik.)

What’s funny is, while I was growing up the US perspective was pushed fiercely, and the US accomplishments were focused upon. As a follower of the whole space program, I was disturbed to find out many years along that we were behind the Soviets for much of it. Not disturbed from the accomplishment or pride standpoint, but because the info was seriously downplayed in our media, even in the various books I grew up with. I knew Shepard and Glenn, Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins, but had never heard the name, “Gagarin.” Or how about “Tereshkova” – know that one? You should – Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, and while I’m slightly against even making distinctions of gender, the Soviets did it in 1963 – the US didn’t follow suit until almost exactly twenty years later with Sally Ride.

It’s all a remarkably interesting, and active, point in world history, and certainly worth knowing more about. Even without the various dubious “accomplishments,” the space programs contributed tremendous amounts to our development and technology, which is where the real accomplishments lie. Younger people (younger than I, anyway) perhaps take it for granted that we have satellite communications, GPS navigation, and photos of other planets and moons, but it wasn’t all that long ago that these were nothing more than science fiction – notice the older sci-fi movies that show a bare, unclouded Earth from space! It’s very damn cool, and whether you want to credit Gagarin as the leader or not, it’s all part of a vast culture of technology that is of great historical significance. Check it out!

You can get [...]]]> Did I excite the wrong kind of people with that title? Ah, well, too bad. Courtesy yet again of Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True comes this live hummingbird webcam, and she has zeh babbies right now! That makes a nice subject for me to kick off National Wildlife Week.

You can get more of the details at the host website right here, including clips and stills, and details about the birds, which are Allen’s hummingbirds (Selasphorus sasin).

Live TV : Ustream

Last summer I did a lot of photography of the ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) locally, both at my own basic feeder and at the nearby botanical garden, which produced the photo at right, probably the best shot all year, because it’s perfectly natural (I really don’t like feeder shots; they have less marketability.) If you’re going to tell me you can’t get shots like this, guess again. This one was taken with the camera handheld, a Canon Digital Rebel (300D) with a Canon 75-300 f4.5-5.6 Image-Stabilized lens, at a distance of about 5-6 meters. I had been seeing the hummers visiting in the past few trips, and waited until the day was right for light angle and brightness, to allow the fastest shutter speeds. The camera was set for TV mode (shutter priority, Canon still uses the outmoded abbreviations, but with your camera it may simply be “S” mode) and I chose 1/800 second shutter speed – in this mode, the camera then sets the appropriate aperture. I also selected ISO 400 to achieve a decent balance between light sensitivity and detail. Any higher and the image quality would have dropped too far for a decent enlargement. The lens was manually focused, believe it or not – hummers move too fast to trust the autofocus staying locked, and it doesn’t take but a fraction of a second to get the hummer away from the focus-sensitive area in the viewfinder and cause the lens to start racking back and forth along its full travel, making it impossible to find the bird again (because, of course, it’s moved on while this was happening.) This image is a tighter crop on the original, and I produced lots of images where focus wasn’t bang on, so this is where digital helps a lot – I can throw out dozens of images without grumbling about wasted slide film.

Naturally, I got much closer shots at the feeder, too. Hummingbirds get used to human presence very quickly, and you can usually take a seat quite close to the feeder and just be patient – they’ll get used to you. It helps to keep the camera raised close to your face, which may get tiring, but means you have only minimal movement to get the shot, which spooks them less. This particular frame was one of the few where my friend stayed put. I had many opportunities where the bird was perched on the feeder, but took off at the sound of the camera, and it’s truly astonishing just how fast they can move. When you trip the shutter on an SLR camera, a couple of things happen first. The reflex mirror, which lets you see the image in the viewfinder, flips out of the way (that’s why the viewfinder goes black) and the aperture closes down from maximum – these produce the first aspect of that double-click. Then the shutter opens, but in that fraction of a second, the birds were alerted by the noise and had almost always lifted off the perch, giving me a pose I hadn’t expected. This is potentially why they get used to people so fast: we’re far too slow and clumsy for them to care.

So get out there and at the very least, spot some wildlife behavior, observe something new that you never have before, and even get a few pics. I’ll keep posting some tips and observations as we go along.

Yes, okay, even though none of my readers ever clue me in to good subjects to feature, I’ll still let you have a closer look at my patient model. I’m that kind of guy…