Writing
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National Geographic Society Newsroom
Brink of Extinction: A Technological Approach to Saving the Last Vaquita Porpoises
San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico — In the silty blue waters of the northern Sea of Cortez, off the coast of the small fishing town of San Felipe, lives the smallest and rarest marine mammal in the world. Vaquita marina, whose name loosely translates to “little cow of the sea,” is a member of the porpoise family and holds the unfortunate title of the world’s most endangered cetacean. Fewer than 100 of this captivating creature remain, with recent population estimates placing that number at closer to 50 individuals.
The vaquita’s plight is not isolated. Its fate is closely tied to that of the totoaba, another critically endangered species in the Gulf of California…
Read full story at the National Geographic Society Newsroom.
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Schmidt Ocean Institute
Sounding the Depths: Seafloor Mapping across the South Pacific
The ocean floor – though it covers the majority of our planet – is still more mysterious to us than our closest astronomical neighbors. While satellites orbiting Earth can give us high-resolution images of every point on land, and space probes and telescopes give us detailed photos of the surfaces of other planets, our knowledge of the ocean’s depths is obscured by the ocean itself–water absorbs the light and other electromagnetic waves we need to observe the seafloor, rendering the technologies we use to study the surfaces of faraway planets ineffective…
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Science Outside
Soldering ‘Round the World: Engineering and Virtual Reality in the Arctic
It’s 30° Fahrenheit outside, the wind blasting icy spray on deck off the water ahead, and my flip flop-clad feet are quickly going numb. I stand at the bow of a ship sailing through the Kangerlussuaq Fjord in Greenland. Always a Californian, I am too captivated by the scenery passing in front of me to go inside and find some sensible Arctic footwear. Although it’s midnight, the sun is still well above the horizon, casting golden rays of light at the mountains ahead…
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Schmidt Ocean Institute
High-Tech Sensors Prepared to Study Sea Surface Microlayer in Fiji
While mapping the gaps in existing high-resolution bathymetry around the Phoenix Islands Protected Area is the primary scientific objective on this transit from Hawaii to Fiji, R/V Falkor remains abuzz with other scientific activity. In preparation for Falkor’s next cruise in Fiji, Carson Witte, a PhD student in Ocean and Climate Physics at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has been installing a large variety of sensors around the ship which will facilitate the study of the sea surface microlayer, which is the boundary between the atmosphere and the ocean formed by the top 40-100 microns of the sea surface…