A pond of Origami Koi

As you may have read in the second part of this special post about Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding whose goal is to create a representation of something (often an animal) using geometric folds and crease patterns without the use of gluing or cutting the paper, and using only one piece of paper, one of the favourite subjects of the Origamist ate the Koi. Well you may now ask what is a Koi...
Well, while Koi in japanese simply means "Carp" in the rest of the world this word identify those ornamental carps you've probably already seen in a pond. This fishes are just domesticated varieties of the common carp Cyprinus carpio selected by humans for their beautiful spots of colors. The correct Japanese way to call them is nishikigoi (錦鯉) (literally "brocaded carp") and, being Japanese people really precise guys, they've given a specific name to each possible color variety as you can see in the following table (click on it to enlarge it):



Going back to the Origami art, there are many ways to create a Koi Origami, my favourite one is the One Dollar Koi you've seen in the previous post, in general it's not an easy subject however if you wan to try the following video is a step by step tutorial!

The first steps seems so easy but then almost at the end it becomes a mess... but this is very common with Origami (at least for me!)



This is the third part of a triple post about Origami. If you've enjoyed it you might enjoy the other two as well:

• 12 amazing origami of aquatic animals
• 10 origami of aquatic animals folded with 1 dollar bills

I bet you've never realized how many things you can do with one dollar bill! .... if you are a origamist of course.
Inside the big world of Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding whose goal is to create a representation of an object using geometric folds and crease patterns without the use of gluing or cutting the paper, and using only one piece of paper, there is a sort of niche for those who specialized in folding one dollar bills!

The amazing Origami you can see in this post have been realized by *orudorumagi11 a skilled origamist who has realized lots of incredible creations with 1 or 2 dollars bills. I'm going to show you his amazing aquatic animals. Visit his DeviantArt gallery to see other dollar origami like his amazing series of starships from Star Wars and Star Trek.

THE KOI

realized by *orudorumagi11
The Koi, the famous japanese ornamental carp is ome ot th favourite subjects of the origamists. Take a look to how the author took advantage of the draw on the bill to perfectly simulate the eyes of the Koi... so smart... isn't it?

THE HAMMERHEAD SHARK

realized by *orudorumagi11

THE SHARK

realized by *orudorumagi11

THE MARLIN

realized by *orudorumagi11

THE CRAB

realized by *orudorumagi11
This Crab is not just a perfect origami but also a perfect example of how tiny they can be.

THE DOLPHIN

realized by *orudorumagi11

THE HUMPBACK WHALE

realized by *orudorumagi11

THE PENGUIN

realized by *orudorumagi11
Another example of clever use of bill ornaments to simulate an eye

THE TURTLE

realized by *orudorumagi11

THE TOILET BOWL

realized by *orudorumagi11

Ok this last one is not an aquatic animal but it's still water related... and shows how creative and imaginative can be the origamists in their endless search for new subjects..

This is the second part of a triple post about Origami. If you've enjoyed it you might enjoy the other two as well:

• 12 amazing origami of aquatic animals
• The making of an origami Koi

Everybody knows it. Origami is the Japanese art of folding squares of paper into representational shapes ( from Japanese ori fold + kami paper). It's one of those things I really will never be able to approach... because it needs something I totally lack: patience, order and extreme manual ability. However I find it really charming and I want to show you some of the best Origami I've seen. Being a SeaWayBLOG post I've limited this list to aquatic animals but this is more than enough to see beautiful examples of this Japanese art.

THE CRANE

Crane by Roman Diaz and Daniel Naranjo and folded by kekremsi

The first Origami of this list is the Crane by Roman Diaz. Roman is probably my favourite origamist, his creations always share an inexplicable touch of "magic", a sort of elegance that make them seem dreamlike creatures sorted out of a fairytale... Isn't this Crane incredibly refined and delicate?
Roman Diaz has a very nice blog, Dosis Diaria de Origami (Origami daily doses in espanol), unfortunately the doses are published more on a monthly bases rather than on a daily bases but it's definetely worth your visit.

THE HIPPOCAMPUS

Hippocampus by Ramon Diaz

This "Hippocampus" is another creation of Roman Diaz. As you can see it's more a mythological rendition than a tightly biological one. This one and many other Diaz's origami are explained in his book Origami for Interpreters.

THE FLAMINGO

Flamingo by Philip West

This wonderful Flamingo has been folded by Philp West, a very good origamist who have a huge Flickr Gallery of his creations

THE BEAVER

Beaver by Brian Chan

Look at Brian Chan's beaver, the texture of the tail is amazing.. isn't it?
Chan is a mechanical engineer with a great passion for origami ( the Hermit Crabs are from him too)

THE LOBSTER

Lobster by Sipho

THE OCTOPUS

Octopus by Sipho

THE PUFFER FISH

Puffer Fish by Sipho
The Lobster, The Octopus and The Puffer Fish are Sipho's creations, the PufferFish is particularly curious because it can be inflated or deflated just like a true Fugu!
Sipho himself eplain it here:


THE SPERM WHALE

Sperm Whale (Moby Dick) by Roman Diaz

A simple but effective white sperm whale designed by Roman Diaz and folded by Philip West

THE HERMIT CRAB
The following are different version of Hermit Crab realized by Brian Chan for the Origami USA Convention 2008.
In this page you can see some picture by Andrew Cribb of Brian Chan's Hermit Crabs and other creations. Take a look to the amazing "Attack of the Kraken".. an entire movie action scene in an origami!





Hermit Crabs by Brian Chan


THE CRABS


Crab by Brian Chan

Brian Chan has created also the common crabs and the results are always excellent.
To understand the care for details a master origamist can achieve take a look at the following crab. As you may notice a good origami should appear perfect in all his parts, even the less visible like the abdominal side of the crab. Truly amazing.



Crab by Brian Chan

For the aforementioned reason the best origamist often are also quite cultured iabout animal anatomy in order to correctly create even the tiniest details. Look at the following Fiddler Crab and how Chan has achieved to realized its asymmetrical claws which in nature are used for courtship displays.


Crab by Brian Chan

Here you can find these and many other Chan's origami. Take a look, you'll be amazed.

THE FLYING CARP


The Flying Carp by Brian Chan

I cannot stop admiring the beauty of the scales of this Flying Carp, an animal from Chinese Mythology that, according tothe legend, generated the Dragon.

THE SWAN

The Swan

Finally The Swan which is a classic Origami for experts. Its elegance is unrivaled.
In the following picture you can admire better the hundreds of folds its realization requires.



I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction to the wonders of the Origami art, realized through the display of examples with aquatic animals.

My little journey in the world of Origami dosn't end here. If you've enjoyed it, there are two other posts that you might enjoy as well:

• 10 origami of aquatic animals folded with 1 dollar bills
• The making of an origami Koi

After the story of the two fishermen lost floating in an icebox there is another report about flotsam in the news today.
What you see in the picture above (they resemble toothpicks, but they are beams of wood, each one five meters long) is part of the 1500 metric tonnes of untreated timber which Russian vessel Sinegorsk lost into the English Channel. The sawn timber was being carried by a Russian ship to Egypt when it started listing as gales reached Force 10 in the English Channel. The Sinegorsk was 14 miles off the East Sussex coast when they spilled into the sea. At first, experts believed the wood would wash up between Brighton and Newhaven – but it is now headed for Kent. A coastguard spokesman said: “It’s looking to go round Dungeness. It may… go on up through the Dover Strait.”

Two fishermen who were lost, floating in a red-sided icebox of the type used by commercial fishing boats to store their catch, in shark-infested waters for 25 days have been rescued. An Australian Coastwatch plane was flying across the Torres Strait, between Australia and Indonesia, on Saturday when the crew spotted the stranded fishermen desperately waving their shirts.
The men, both from Burma and in their 20s, were on a 12-metre Thai wooden fishing boat with 18 others when it sank in stormy seas off Australia's north coast two days before Christmas. They survived by drinking rain water that gathered at the bottom of the box and by eating pieces of fish that were also in the container.
The two fishermen were winched on to a rescue helicopter and taken to hospital on Thursday Island, off Australia's north coast. "They were desperately keen to get on. When they got up they drank two litres of water each within seconds," the helicopter pilot, Terry Gadenne, told Australian television. Now Australian immigration officials say it is possible two castaway fishermen could seek asylum rather than returning to Myanmar: "Obviously if they did raise claims of protection of course they would be considered" a spokesman for Australia's immigration department said. "Or if they wanted to return home we'd try to facilitate that as well".

For more info take a look at the following newscast video:

The Bear Glacier on the Kenai Peninsula along the Gulf of Alaska seen by the IKONOS satellite took this on August 8, 2005. This image shows the ablation zone where the glacier is primarily losing ice. Upslope from the lake, the foot of the glacier is riddled with crevasses - cracks in the ice caused by the glacier's movement over a rough surface. Down the middle of the glacier run dark gray stripes. As a glacier moves, it picks up dirt and debris from the rocks it passes. When two glaciers merge, as they have here, the dirt and debris they carry form parallel stripes, or medial moraines, on the ice surface. (IKONOS satellite image courtesy GeoEye)

In a post called The Earth (and water) from above I published a collection of wonderful aerial images of our planet where water is interesting in some way. This time I do the same but moving our point of view some kilometers higher: NASA satellites. The source of this image is Earth Observatory a Wonderful NASA website dedicated to satellitar images. Visiting it daily to see their Picture of the day is a good habit!


Two cyclones are seen, after forming in tandem in November 2006. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA's Terra satellite took this picture of the two cyclones south of Iceland on November 20 (South is up in image). (NASA/Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory)


Even the most snow-covered place on Earth has patches of snow-free ground. In Antarctica, a series of parallel valleys lie between the Ross Sea and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Known as the Dry Valleys, they are swept free of snow by nearly relentless katabatic winds - cold, dry air that rolls downhill toward the sea from the high altitudes of the ice sheet. The Dry Valleys harbor a collection of glaciers and ice-covered lakes. This false-color image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite on November 29, 2000. (NASA/Jesse Allen, NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS,U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)


During the last ice age, Canada's Akimiski Island was buried under several thousand meters of ice, but since its retreat, the island has rebounded (risen in elevation) and new beach areas have emerged, streams and lakes have formed, and trees and other vegetation have colonized the new territory. This image of Akimiski Island was captured by the Landsat 7 satellite on August 9, 2000. (NASA/Jesse Allen, Landsat,University of Maryland's Global Land Cover Facility)


Steep Antarctic mountains channel the flowing ice sheet into a fast-moving river of ice named Byrd Glacier located near McMurdo Station, the principal U.S. Antarctic Research Base. The glacier plunges through a deep, 15-mile-wide valley in the Transatlantic Mountains to create a 100-mile-long, rock-floored ice stream. This image, captured by the Landsat 7 satellite on December 24, 1999, shows part of the Byrd Glacier flowing through the Transatlantic Mountains. (Jesse Allen, Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica,LIMA)


In mid-December 2005, the diminutive Amsterdam Island made waves - not in the Indian Ocean where it resides, but in the clouds overhead. The MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured this image on December 19, 2005. The island itself is almost too small see in this image, but it serves as the starting point for the clouds that flow toward the northeast in a giant V shape. (NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC)


This highly detailed image from the Taiwanese Formosat-2 satellite shows the different sizes, shapes, and textures of ice fragments from an ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula on March 8, 2008. Several large icebergs float amid a mosaic of smaller pieces of ice. The level of detail in the image is so great that it can seem as though you are standing over a scale model made out of papier-mâché and foam blocks. The detail can make the bergs seem deceptively small. In reality, some of the large bergs are several hundred meters (yards) long. (Formosat image © 2008 Dr. Cheng-Chien Liu, National Cheng-Kung University and Dr. An-Ming Wu, National Space Organization, Taiwan)


Tropical Cyclone Billy, seen off the coast of Western Australia on December 25, 2008 by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. (NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center)


This image shows a colorful bloom of phytoplankton throughout the Black Sea on June 4, 2008, along the southern coast near the Turkish cities of Sinop and Samsun. The natural-color image was captured by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. (NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team)


The setting sun glints off the Amazon River and numerous lakes in its floodplain in this astronaut photograph from August 19, 2008. About 150 kilometers of the Amazon is shown here, about 1,000 kilometers inland from the Atlantic Ocean. This image was acquired on August 19, 2008 by the by the Expedition 17 crew of the International Space Station. (NASA/JSC)


Dust plumes blew off the coast of Saudi Arabia and over the Red Sea in mid-January 2009. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on January 15, 2009. The largest plume blows off the Saudi Arabian coast north of Jiddah (or Jeddah), forming a counter-clockwise arc that barely misses the Sudanese coast. Along the northwestern margin of this plume, tendrils of dust form lines roughly perpendicular to the plume’s arc. These tendrils may arise from different air currents at different altitudes. Another relatively large plume blows over the Red Sea to the north, forming wavy lines that dissipate midway over the Sea.The dust plumes arise from fine sediments along Saudi Arabia’s west coast, and many source points appear in this image. Although these dust plumes are from Saudi Arabia, dust can blow over the Red Sea from either direction. Dust plumes from Sudan also occur regularly in this region. Inland from the coast, the land surfaces of both Saudi Arabia and Sudan appear rugged and rocky, darker in color from the fine sediments that can easily give rise to dust plumes.

Octopuses are amazing animal.. We've already seen their incredible capacity of changing colour and thexture of their skin achieving marvellous camouflage in this post:
Octopus, master of disguise.
Today I would like to show you another video where we can appreciate its amazing ability to squeeze through tiny crevices, cracks and holes.

Some days ago in a post entitled The most embarassing moment in the history of mankind I published pictures describing a situation so ridiculous to be hard to believe. Now I think the guy pictured below could perfectly fit in the second place: