Hatfield Marine Science Center:

Marine Life of the Maritime Provinces, Canada

After months of work and waiting, here is at long last the full MARS commission. MARS (Marine Animal Response Society) is active in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and is called upon whenever a marine creature is found dead or in distress. These illustrations will be used to educate their volunteers and assist in making species identifications during strandings or at sea.

With 42 separate illustrations, this is my largest project to date - quite a load of work! But it was an absolute pleasure to do. I got to paint animals I have never painted before, as well as revisit some old friends. The diversity of species found in this one area is impressive and made for varied painting.

I’m pretty pleased seeing them all together like this, and I hope you’ll enjoy them too! 

What’s a whale fall?

Whale falls can be found throughout the ocean. This one was spotted in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of Southern California!

GIF transcript beneath the cut.

Keep reading

Recently, NASA Goddard released a visualization of aerosols in the Atlantic region. The simulation uses real data from satellite imagery taken between August and October 2017 to seed a simulation of atmospheric physics. The color scales in the visualization show concentrations of three major aerosol particles: smoke (gray), sea salt (blue), and dust (brown). One of the interesting outcomes of the simulation is a visualization of the fall Atlantic hurricane season. The high winds from hurricanes help pick up sea salt from the ocean surface and throw it high in the atmosphere, making the hurricanes visible here. Fires in the western United States provide most of the smoke aerosols, whereas dust comes mostly from the Sahara. Tiny aerosol particles serve as a major nucleation source for water droplets, affecting both cloud formation and rainfall. With simulations like these, scientists hope to better understand how aerosols move in the atmosphere and how they affect our weather. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Research Center, source; submitted by Paul vdB)

Preparing to return home

Mixed Feelings  

Looking forward

Experiences

I can’t believe that in less than two days, my semester abroad will be over and I’ll be headed back to the United States. At this point, there are things that I miss about the U.S. and I am looking forward to go back, but on the other hand, there are also things that I do not miss. Likewise, there are lots of things that I will miss about Costa Rica (food, host family, etc..) but there are also other things that I am ready to leave behind.  

I’m in the middle of my finals week and past the worst part. I’ve been ready to be done with classes for a while, especially after seeing friends from home finishing the semester a month ago. I am also ready to start my REU (like an internship for science students) that I have been figuring out the logistics of since mid-March. However, this means that I will be home for less than 24 hours before I leave (I live in South Central Pennsylvania and my REU is in Rhode Island), which means that I have barely any time to spend with my family and pets.  

I’ve had so many experiences abroad that I don’t even know where to begin to articulate them to family and friends. And you can only understand some of them if you were here to experience them for yourself. Throughout, I’ve gotten more comfortable with public transportation, which barely exists at home, and is one thing that I will miss but will be difficult to convey to my family since if we want to go somewhere at home, we just drive there ourselves. While it’s more convenient, it is also so nice to know that if you do a bit a research, you can get to just about anywhere in Costa Rica by bus. I’m also much more comfortable with Spanish after spending a little more than four months here.

In sum, I will miss Costa Rica and hope that I can come back in the not so distant future. I will miss my host family and friends.

Top: The Central Bank of Costa Rica in the capital, San José.

Middle: Fountain in San José.

Bottom: Statue of a worker in San José.

“I make sure that when I am boating that nothing goes into the water, I try to recycle everything I can, and I don’t eat seafood unless it is invasive lionfish. I also participate in as many coastal cleanups to help to remove all of the garbage along our shorelines and I try to encourage others to do the same. We have a long ways to go in ocean conservation, but national marine sanctuaries, along with national parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges, afford us the best opportunity to help leverage limited resources to address coastal and marine conservation." 

– Mark Chiappone, research associate at Nova Southeastern University and assistant professor at Miami Dade College 

What inspires you about the ocean? 

(Photo: Scrawled filefish in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Credit: Daryl Duda)

Very cool. My lab group also works with Emiliania huxleyi and EhVs.

Behold the blue glaucus (Glaucus atlanticus), a tiny sea slug that packs a powerful punch! Growing only about 1.2 in (3 cm) long, it’s also known as the blue dragon, and it specializes in eating venomous siphonophores—like the Portuguese man o' war. It then repurposes the toxic chemicals from its prey as a defense for itself. The blue glaucus’ sting has been known to induce nausea, vomiting, and agonizing pain. Their venom can remain active even after death!

Photo: drmattnimbs, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

major traffic incident