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Warm Water and Poisoned Clams, What’s Happening off our Coast?
What do Great White shark sightings near Santa Cruz, a toxic algae bloom from Santa Barbara to Seattle and the collapse of the salmon fishery have in common? They might all trace to a persistent blob...
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Weird Weather: California’s Dry, Hot Year
We’ve just gone through the driest January in recorded history in San Francisco. That record is likely to stand, since we didn’t get a drop of rain last month and you can’t get any drier than that. Of...
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Going Deep in Belize: Aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautius
August 12, 2014 Turnieffe Reef, Belize The E/V Nautilus on the Meso-American Reef off Belize I’m sitting in the lounge of the Exploration Vessel Nautilus listening to the control room chatter and...
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Our carbon buoy gets a makeover
The NOAA CO2 buoy measures carbon content in the bay and atmosphere at Pier 15. July 25, 2014 Since the Exploratorium opened at its waterfront location more than a year ago, we’ve been engaged in a...
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The Ocean’s Carbon Problem: Investigations in San Francisco Bay
Right after we moved the Exploratorium to its new waterfront location, we got a gift from NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab in Seattle: a beautiful red-and-white ocean buoy. Normally, these buoys...
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Coming Into Port
Research Vessel Thomas G. Thompson at sea. Credit: UW The Tommy Thompson, as it’s affectionately known, is heading back to Newport, Oregon to get ready for the next and final leg of this summer’s...
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Under the Sea, Down in the Muck
credit: Mary Miller One of the ship activities I enjoy most is watching the ROV ROPOS descend through the water column so I can do some wildlife viewing along the way. Of course, you don’t need an ROV...
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One Small Quake for Axial, One Giant Leap for the Ocean Observatory
ROPOS control room where the ROV is piloted and controlled Here’s the current dive plan: Go to the sea floor, deploy and connect instruments, collect some data, return to ship. Sounds straightforward,...
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As the Spool Turns
9 PM Aboard the Thomas G. Thompson Today, it was all about the cables that deliver power and data to the ocean observatory’s secondary nodes at the Axial volcano. As anyone with an old house knows,...
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Waiting for the (not terribly) Big One
Aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson, 2 PM Axial Seamount node, courtesy of Univ. of Washington We’re spending a few days at the Axial Caldera, laying cable that will eventually connect instruments,...
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History on the High Sea
1 PM aboard the Thomas G Thompson ROPOS being lifted back onboard TGT History is being made on the Visions 13 expedition, but it sometimes comes in fits and starts. We’ve been holding here on the edge...
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Finding My Way on a Research Ship
Aboard the R/V Thompson, Newport Oregon Taken from the bow of TGT looking out the harbor mouth We’re about to head out to the jobsite of the world’s deepest construction site, about 300 miles off the...
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Clouds from Both Sides
Whenever possible, I try to book a window seat on plane flights and look at clouds. If I remember to take my camera out of the carry-on bag, I like to shoot pictures of the pretty or interesting clouds...
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Rainy Day… Again?!?
It’s June 1 and I got thoroughly soaked on my bike ride into work today. By now in the San Francisco bay area, we’re usually into a spring pattern of mild, sunny days that have school kids and working...
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Gulf Spill: Where did all the Oil Go?
Now that the Deep Horizon oil well has been capped and crude oil is no longer gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA and the ocean science community have been working to assess the damage. In...
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Making Art from Weather Data
On my way out of town, I flew from San Jose’s new terminal and got to check out eCloud. It’s a new, interactive art piece that uses weather data from all over the world to create a changing display...
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Fishing in Antarctica: A Tasty Plate of Krill Anyone?
A recent New York Times article poses the question: is any industrial fishing operation sustainable? What does that mean for those of us who enjoy eating fish and wanting to make environmental...
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Wind: Bike Commuter's Best Friend or Tourist's Worst Enemy?
When I saw NOAA’s San Francisco weather forecast this morning I smiled. Northwest winds in the afternoon, blowing straight off the Pacific ocean. That’s bad news for the tourists shivering in their...
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More plastic than plankton in the ocean?
View from the NOAA Pacific Grove lab Last week, while thunder and lightning storms crackled and boomed over the eastern regions of San Francisco Bay, a group of us from the Exploratorium escaped to...
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We're Going to Greenland
You may have noticed that I’ve been pretty light on my blog posts the last nine months or so. That’s because I’ve been consumed with our Web project, Ice Stories. Just about a year ago, we got funding...
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