Schools of robotic fish could produce a 3D pollution map of seas, lakes and rivers and help to quickly detect environmntal emergencies. These RoboFish are the result of a £2.5million EU-funded project to find new ways of monitoring water waste realized by researchers at the University of Essex in Colchester.
Each fish will be about 150cm long, 15cm high and 12cm wide and will be a very advanced piece of technology: not only they can swim by theirselves without the need of any remote control (unlike previous version) they can communicate each other and with the researchers with Wi-Fi technology. The most amazing feature however is certainly their pollution sensors that can electronically 'sniff' harmful chemicals in the water. Therefore they could be nicknamed not only RoboFish but also RoboBloodhound...
Schools of five fish, worth some $29,000 each, are being released into the Bay of Biscay at Gijon in northern Spain as part of a three-year joint project between BMT Group and researchers at Essex University in England. In the future they could also be released in a variety of water bodies such as the metropolitan stretch of rivers like the Thames in London to supervise the quality of the waters.
Daredevil Kajaker Pedro Olivia has set a new world record in waterfall descent with a whooping plunge of 127 feet (38,7m) off the Salto Belo falls in central Brazil.
He fell head first, because he began to over rotate into a head down position, for 2.95 seconds before hitting the churning waters below at 70mph.
He resurfaced behind the falls a scenario that could have been a kayaker’s nightmare. Nevertheless after some painful minutes he managed to emerge from the cavern behind the falls with a great relief for the safety team.
However if 38m with a Kajak are not enough for you there's a man who kumped 107 meters with his skis. Unintentionally! You can read about him here
Another stranding of whales has occured today at Hamelin Bay, near Margaret River, 323km south of Perth, Australia. This year the number of strandings (especially in Australia and Tasmania) has been incredibly high and more than 500 whales and dolphins have already died. I even published a special post in order to delve deeper into the matter.
This time 80 long finned pilot whales (aka 'false killer whales') and a bunch of bottlenose dolphins beacheded themselves. The rescuers are fighting against time to save the few that are still alive. Sadly more than 50 are already dead
Can you see the baby clinging to mother's chest under her left arm?
The pictures of this sequence from WWF are not high quality but they depict an amazing and intense moment that happened a few days ago in the Malaysian island of Borneo. This is a story about the courage of a desperate mother and also about the help some good men gave to an endangered animal (at last!).
The photographs taken by local officials of the WWF caught the moment when a terrified Orang-Utan mother caught a rope thrown to her by humans and swam across a flooded river to bring her baby to safety.
The mother grabbing the rope
The mother and her baby were stranded in a tree when a river flooded on the north east tip of the island and got trapped there for several days. Finally the villagers decided to ask for help and The Sabah Wildlife Department, which is linked to WWF, sent a team to the area. They set up a rope bridge so they could get close to the hungry mother and baby but once they were there it seemed there was no way to take them back to safety. Orang-Utans are terrified by water, even when it rains they scamper for shelter. As a last impossible try, they threw the mother a rope to cling on to so she could swim to the nearest river bank and unbelievably she reached out and grabbed it and in an unbelievable scene she climbed down the tree, with the baby on her back, and slipped into the water, clinging to the rope, and ensuring the baby's head was above the water, she dog-paddled towards the river bank and scrambled up taking her baby finally to safety. The officials gave her some food and then the mother and the baby disappeared into the jungle.
She finally took the plunge and dog-paddled through the water to safety
Martin George/QVMAG
Jellyfish expert Lisa Gershwin caught this still unnamed species pictured here above some days ago while swimming near a jetty off the Australian island of Tasmania with a "phototank"—a small aquarium that makes it easy to photograph sea life.
To be precise this is not a proper jellyfish (a Cnidaria), but it belongs to the poorly known phylum Ctenophora. Although not closely related to cnidarian jellyfish, ctenophores are also free-swimming planktonic carnivores, are also generally transparent or translucent, and occur in shallow to deep portions of all the world's oceans. Ctenophores move using eight rows of fused cilia that beat in metachronal waves that diffract light, so that they sparkle with all of the colors of the rainbow. So the wonderful colours you see are not directly emitted by the animal as in many other deep abyss species but rather it's reflected light.
Another aspect of this Rainbow Jellyfish that I find amazing is its incredible fragility:
"It shatters as soon as it touches a net" said Lisa Gershwin
Further info at National Geographic
In the following videos you can see some other Ctenophores and their incredible rainbow glowing:
Reuters
Some sad images of a dead whale hoisted today onto a dock in Zhoushan, China. The whale, which measured 12 m (39 feet) in length and weighed more than 10,000 kg, was found dead on yesterday but the reasons of its death are still under investigation.
This has been an "annus horribilis" as regards whale strandings, as you can see in this SeaWayBLOG Special
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A submarine volcanic eruption occurred today in the Tonga Islands of the South Pacific.
The Tonga Islands occur along the Ring of Fire, a ring of heightened seismic activity in the Pacific Basin. In particular this volcano is located in an area where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered.
The powerful eruption have caused an amazing spectacle for the witnesses, shooting clouds of smoke, steam and ash thousands of meters into the sky above the South Pacific ocean spectacular columns spewed out of the sea about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu.
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The column of smoke and ash as seen from the main island of Tongatapu, 10 kilometers south:
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Getty
A map of the area:
and satellitar NASA images, the eruption is clearly visible, and even the pumice raft:
NASA
even at a lower enlargement:
NASA
Advertising Agency: Ponto de Criação / fluor, São Paulo, Brazil
Creative Director / Copywriter: Guto Araki
Art Director: Reinaldo Pina
Illustrator: Tribbo Post
Photographer: Ricardo Carvalho
Audio: Comando-S
Aired: January 2009
Given human inclination not to feel involved by problems until problems enter directly into their own possessione, I think this ad it's very clever.
AP
This nice baby hippo is Farasi, it was born in November in the swiss zoo of Basel, and has quickly become a celebrity in Switzerland insomuch as he was voted "Swiss of the Year" for 2008 (beating out tennis star Roger Federer)
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Although, even if he has become one of the main attractions of the zoo his future suddenly seemed quite hazy when zoo spokeswoman was quoted saying there was a lack of space at the zoo and that the institution policy is to euthanize surplus animals or put them into predators' cages as food!
AP
Quite obviously this statement has quickly raise in the public opinion a feeling of dismay and indignation (A Facebook group called Save Farasi quickly numbered 15,000 people). What seems quite ridicoulous is that under Swiss animal-rights provisions, guinea pigs must be kept in pairs to prevent loneliness and unwanted goldfish must be rendered unconscious before being flushed down the toilet!
Nevertheless there is no protection under Swiss law for four-month-old Farasi facing a likely death sentence and he will be euthanized if he can't find a home at another zoo before he grows old enough to be a threat to his father (due to the particular behaviour of his species that in a herd only tolerate one adult male at a time).
Also the transfert to another zoo seems to be difficult because almost every zoo has already a male adult hippo.
AP
Fortunately today good news have finally arrived and the lions and tigers at the Basel Zoo probably won't get to sink their teeth into baby hippopotamus flesh. Officials at the zoo seems to have slightly changed idea and said: "There are rare cases in which we have to kill an animal. But it's unlikely to become an option for Farasi and will only be used after all else has failed."
AP
UPDATE: Farasi will be received by Rome Biopark! Yu-hu! No tiger-food this time!
Before Farasi we've already had two wondeful story about baby hippos on this blog, Owen and Monifa, don't miss them:
The wonderful story of Owen and Mzee
