Season's Greetings Everyone

'Sea Serpent'

SKY NEWS ------

Giant Oarfish 'Sea Serpent' Found Off California

The 5.5m carcass - which needed 16 people to bring it ashore - will be buried in sand before it is reconstructed for display.

10:53am UK, Wednesday 16 October 2013

Video: Snorkeller Finds Monster 'Serpent'

A marine biologist has made the discovery of a lifetime - the five-metre-long [18 ft. approx.] silvery carcass of the creature belived to be the origin of sea serpent legends.

Jasmine Santana of the Catalina Island Marine Institute (CIMI) was snorkelling with colleagues in Toyon Bay, southern California when she spotted something shimmering in the water.
She dragged the eel-like beast by the tail for more than 20m, others waded in to the sea and helped her bring it to shore.
After taking a closer look she discovered it was an oarfish, which can grow up to 15m.
"Jasmine Santana was shocked to see (a) half-dollar sized eye staring at her from the sandy bottom," the institute said in a statement.
"Her first reaction was to approach with caution, until she realised that it was dead."
Oarfish are deep-water pelagic fish and the longest bony fish in the world, according to CIMI.
Because oarfish dive more than 3,000 feet (914 metres) deep, sightings of the creatures are rare and they are largely unstudied.
"We've never seen a fish this big," said Mark Waddington, senior captain of the Tole Mour, CIMI's sail training ship.
"The last oarfish we saw was three feet long."
Tissue samples and video footage were sent to be studied by biologists at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
It will be buried in the sand until it decomposes and then its skeleton will be reconstructed for display.
The fish apparently died of natural causes.

An Oyster Festival and More

As you can see, an Oyster Festival can be the perfect platform for a variety of subjects involving the Indian River Lagoon Speakers Series including a presentation by Dr. Hargraves regarding 'Red Tides', utilizing about ten of our colorised images to illustrate his discussion at the Ft. Pierce Yacht Club waterfront.

Recent Activity

At the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, FL, a community open house was recently held which in part featured over a dozen colorized scanning electron micrographs originally taken by Dr. Paul Hargraves of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.  The open house was attended by nearly 600 persons, and the dialog and photos stimulated much interest about the microscopic life in Florida coastal waters.

© Dr. Paul E Hargraves

Dr. Hargraves is in the foreground describing various points to visitors at the open house.  Some of the colorized SEM images can be seen in the background.

New Cover

I am happy to announce that a new colorization that I recently completed has been selected as a cover for  Applied and Environmental Microbiology.  The image illustrates the subject of an accepted paper on the freshwater biofilm written by Sophia I. Passy, PhD and her co-writer, Chad A. Larson. "The rates of species accumulation and taxonomic diversification during phototrophic biofilm development are co-controlled by nutrient supply and current velocity."  

The scanning electron micrograph of the diatom Achnanthidium sp. from Blue Cypress Lake, FL, was provided by Dr. Paul Hargraves.

Different Perspective

diatom genus Skeletonema ~ 'Blue with Pink Ribbon' © PEH/FD

I recently was asked to colorize some new images for a scientist out west, and in the process, I recolored the original Skeltonema image into this new one.  I am surprised that I never thought of this colorization scheme, but am impressed with the detail that I was able to obtain with this new color pallet.