According to recent experiments, sharks are more trainable than previously believed.  This means that my goal of having a swimming pool full of pet sharks is viable after all!  And fun for the kids!

As a child I always wondered why aquariums couldn't put on shark shows like they do with dolphins and seals.  Now, apparently, they can.  Dolphins can suck it.

All kidding aside, this will allow make situations like medical care and moving of captive sharks much easier, plus it has a lot of implications for scientific research.  A healthy shark in an aquarium is an ambassador for its species, and anything that allows such an animal to inspire someone to study or protect them is a good thing. 

I've done it.  I've dropped two bucks and rented Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  To give you an idea, here's the trailer (which frankly, you must have seen elsewhere on the internet by now).


The announcement of this movie actually set off an inordinate number of tongue-in-cheek responses from the internet marine bio-nerd community (something I myself never realized existed until I became an internet marine bio nerd).  So does it live up to the Snakes on a Plane-level internet hype that's built up around that hilarious trailer?

In a way, it does, provided you don't go in expected any sort of competence at all.  There are some movies that are just so campy and unprofessionally done that you wonder if the movie wants you to laugh at it or with it.  Some films, like Snakes or From Dusk 'Til Dawn are so unabashedly, self-consciously bad (for lack of a better term) that it's obvious that the filmmakers are standing next to you laughing at all the same jokes.  Some movies do this well, others are too self-referential and it just comes across as annoying.

Then there are other movies that seem to take themselves seriously.  These are the movies you're laughing at.  Sometimes you get the sense that the filmmakers are aware of the movie's limitations and are just trying to make the best of a bad situation (just about anything that plays on the Sci-Fi Channel during the day on weekends).  Sometimes the director just has their head so far up their ass that they just aren't aware of what kind of travesty they've put together (anything, anything at all by Uwe Boll).  

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus kind of splits the difference, but falls mostly in the former camp.  At certain points you get the feeling that the dialogue is so laughable and the monster attacks so cheesy that everyone involved is laughing along with you, Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas included.  Debbie Gibson seems to dive right in (puns always intended) to her role as a completely improbable good-at-all-disciplines oceanographer, and Lamas is actually an almost scene-stealing comedic presence as a racist, thoroughly unlikable "equal-opportunity prick" (exact line from the movie).  Add in the awkward budding romance between Gibson's character and her Japanese counterpart and plenty of montages involving scientists pouring different food coloring into test tubes and you've got a film that is well-aware of just how much cheese it wants to serve up.  But what is underlying all the knowing winks is a genuine love of monster movies and an excitement about just what will happen when the titular sea beasts finally go at it.

This is where the obvious budget constraints come in.  Most of the shark-on-octopus-on-various boats, planes, and landmarks action is fairly brief and some of it is made up of repeats of the same sequences.  That said, the final battle is satisfying in a B-movie sense, in that your inner 12-year-old will enjoy seeing these two marine titans clash (I know mine did). 

In conclusion, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a nice little B-movie that's well worth a rental, preferably with a decent-sized group of like-minded individuals and a generous amount of beer.  Regardless of where you stand on the never-ending struggle between elasmobranchs and cephalopods, you'll have a good time.

It's been a while since I've posted anything whatsoever about music, so how about a little Brand New?


The Hot GF and I saw this song live when they played at URI a couple months ago.  Hearing new music from a band as tight-lipped about recording as Brand New is always a good experience, especially when the songs are as good as this one. 

Brand New has had a unique evolution among "emo" bands.  They started out as a typical Long Island pop-screamo act that mainly stood out due to lyrics that were darker and wittier than others in the scene.  Their second album, Deja Entendu, saw them delving further into atmospherics and showing definite Smiths and Radiohead influences while still keeping the pop flowing enough to garner a couple hit singles.  Then came the third disc, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me (a title The Hot GF loves), which was all about atmospherics.  Gone were the three-minute rants about the girl that left Jesse Lacey for Taking Back Sunday's Adam Lazzara.  In their place were musings about God, love, death, and nihlism, all delivered convincingly enough for music journalists to stop referring to Brand New as an emo band and start referring to them as critically acclaimed indie rock.  If Deja Entendu was their The Bends, Devil and God was their O.K. Computer.

The thing that sets Brand New apart and keeps them in my mental "Top 10 bands" list is that they've grown and evolved with each successive album.  This has allowed them to age far more gracefully than any of the other bands that gained national attention during the early-mid 2000's emo surge.  Taking Back Sunday continue to mine the same semi-vapid material about relationships (admittedly they're really good at it; they're like the David Lee Roth of emo), Thursday gave up on the intricate twin-guitar/screaming attack that made them musically interesting, The Used brought the world My Chemical Romance and then tried to become My Chemical Romance, and Fall-Out Boy have settled into their particular brand of comforting mass-market pop.  Somehow, probably by virtue of becoming well-known but not being catapulted into super-stardom, Brand New have been allowed to develop organically, and as a result are now a band worthy of being named as a musical influence.  

As seen in the YouTube clip, Brand New are continuing to evolve in the Devil and God vein, with a little more emphasis on rocking.  The results should be spectacular.  

I caught this when it was linked off of Deep Sea News, and thought it was well worth sharing.  Artificial Owl, a website that documents abandoned man-made structures, has a list of the most spectacular shipwrecks they've covered this year.  Interesting stuff with some damn fine photography. 

I've always found something poetic about shipwrecks.  I think its that even after the vessel dies, it becomes home for hundreds (or thousands, if you're talking about macrofauna) of living things.  So in a way the ship keeps fulfilling a purpose and in most cases is actually far better for the ocean than it was when it was running.  These shallow-water wrecks (and one totally landlocked) give us a glimpse of this without even having to put on a wetsuit. 

I hope none of these wrecks ever get moved.

In honor of the shark-finning ban passing the House (call your Senators!), I've decided to resurrect Shark of the Week today.  Today we have an especially charismatic species; Carcharinus brevipinna, the Spinner Shark.



C. brevipinna is probably best known from the many photographs and videos of it leaping acrobatically near surfers.  This is generally thought to be a hunting behavior, with the shark darting upwards through schools of fish and breaking the surface with dramatic effect.  The spinner shark is at home in shallow coastal water, making it one of the sharks most likely to share the water with humans.  Fortunately for us, spinner sharks feed mostly on small schooling fish and only grow to 2-2.5 meters (about six feet).  This combined with their ability to put on a good show makes it a species most surfers and beachgoers regard with affection. 


The spinner is mainly an Atlantic species, common along the temperate and tropical coasts of North and South America and Africa, though it also appears in the Indian ocean and around Australia.  Though it looks similar to many other Carchariniform sharks, it is distinguishable due to its sharp snout, relatively short pectoral fins, black-tipped fins, and aerial acrobatics.  The species most likely to get confused with it is the blacktip shark Carcharinus limbatus, a shark that shares much of its range, though the blacktip has a more heavyset body and black tips on its pelvic fins (which are unmarked on the spinner shark).  Other species of note interacting with the spinner shark include the Carribean reef shark Carcharinus perezi, the sandbar shark Carcharinus plumbeus, the lemon shark Negaprion brevirostris, and the bonnethead Sphyrna tiburo, all mid-sized sharks that hunt in relatively shallow water.  The tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvieri may be a predator of the spinner shark, but it is more likely the great hammerhead Sphyrna mokorran, a shark that specializes in eating other elasmobranchs, that the spinner should avoid. 

Final thougt on this species: dolphins are posers. 

The situation at Quonset Point is looking better and better.  This was rumored a few years ago, but has finally been confirmed: North Kingstown, Rhode Island will be the home port of the Okeanos Explorer.  That the move also includes improvements to the pier infrastructure is an added bonus.  The presence of the ship nicely complements Bob Ballard's work on the Inner Space Center at URI and will go a long way towards establishing Rhode Island as a major hub of marine research, a goal that has been frustratingly just out of reach for too long. 

For those not in the know, the Okeanos Explorer is the first American vessel to be completely and utterly devoted to marine science.  The most exciting aspect of this vessel's mission is that its main goal is to make observations and generate hypotheses, as opposed to making short-term voyages to test them.  Think of it as the modern-day Challenger.  Exciting stuff.

Once again, this is exactly the kind of investment Rhode Island and the rest of the country need to make to take us into the 21st century. 

The anti-shark fin soup movement is actually starting to gain traction in Asia. 

This is fantastic news for all involved.  If a major consumer of shark fins like Singapore can breed this kind of movement, it bodes well for the health of Pacific shark species in the future.  Here's hoping it doesn't come too late.

In other news, I'll be making regular appearances elsewhere on the internet.  Of course the MySpace music page remains in use, and I am now a regular poster on Matt's Marine Music Medley.  Also, due to having to create a page in order to sign up for tumblr, I've created Lovecraft in Carolina, where I'll be putting up spiffy new music ideas and things of a more eldritch nature. 

Short post today, but I may resume regular features this week.

Some good news, today.

Quonset Point is finally getting some development that might actually do something help the Rhode Island economy.  The former Navy base will soon be home to a $7.5 million biodiesel storage and blending facility.  Currently there are three companies in the Ocean State producing the clean fuel, but they lack the storage capacity to keep up with the demand.  The aim of this facility is to give them that option and take biodiesel production up to an industrial level.  Granted, the article does state that it will only employ six full-time employees, but this is exactly the kind of infrastructure investment that will be needed if Rhode Island wants to get serious about being a leader in the new green economy. 

And it's a hell of a lot better than a Kohl's get pulls in maybe eight customers at peak hours. 

See what happens when you get rid of the morons (that would be you, Saul Kaplan)?  Keep up with the new ideas, Rhode Island.  You'll need to.

As even the most casual reader of this here Livejournal will tell you, I grew up in New England and have a particular fondness for it, and by fondness I mean I tend to show blatant favoritism towards the region (particularly the Great State of Rhode Island... minus its useless Governor).  That said, there are times when even that most enlightened of American regions can have its head so far up its ass that even I get fed up with it.

Even now, in the face of overwhelming evidence, New England's fisheries are defiantly, staunchly, blatantly ignorant.  And fiercely proud of it.

Having worked in fisheries management, I've seen firsthand how personally offended New England fishermen can get when someone attempts to regulate the fishery.  There is also a culture of "blame the agency" that is especially prevalent there as well; most commercial fishermen in New England like to think that NMFS should make all the decisions, so when something doesn't work (usually because of action by the fishermen themselves) it automatically becomes the fault of the regulators.

Some of this may be from a cultural and historical point of view.  The New England cod fishery was one of the original industries of the American colonies and a large part of the economic independence they developed from Mother Britain (which would later lead to actual independence).  However, the cod fishery failed due in no small part to the fact that both Canadian and American agencies believed in the inexhaustability of the ocean and actually told fishermen to keep fishing despite all evidence that a collapse was eminent.  At the time, fishermen were actually calling for regulation and protection of the stocks.  Now, the situation is reversed. 

The sad part is, nearly every other region has learned from the downfall of the New England fishery, complying with NMFS regulations for the benefit of the greater health of the fishery.  New England fishermen should be the first to accept regulations backed up by sound science because they are the fishery that initially created the need for such regulations.  Instead, they continue to fight tooth and nail against any regulation at all that prevents them from following the practices that wiped out their livelihood.  They would much rather just keep strip-mining George's Bank in the blissful fallacy that "the cod/flounder/hake/dogfish/herring will be back next year."

Now, I am not anti-fisherman.  I fully believe that fishing is an important part of both the culture and economy of New England.  And I've met several fishermen who know that drastic regulatory measures need to be taken to preserve the resource (and their jobs).  Also, some blame does go on NMFS for being unnecessarily soft on New England fishermen (hopefully Jane Lubchenco, known for being a hard-ass when it comes to standing up to fishing interests, will change this). 

The regulations that New England fishermen fear so much have far from wiped out commercial fishing in just about every other major fishing region in the US.  Alaska may have the single most-regulated fishery on the planet (certainly the country) and still manages to churn out enough salmon, pollock, and snow crab to be one of the main economic drivers of the state.  The time has come to wake up, New England.  Your fishery is acting like a small child with a cold who would rather suffer with the virus because the cough medicine "tastes icky."

As a side-note, anyone wondering where I picked up the little historical tidbits about the New England cod fishery should check out Mark Kurlansky's book Cod, which traces the cultural significance of the cod fishery and how it has, in fact, changed the world on several occasions.  It's a damn good read.

It's been a while, Livejournal. 

My lame-ass excuses?  Well, first my housemates and I got into dire enough straits that we had to make a choice between the internet/cable bill and the heating bill for February.  Then the horrific economy took me to its logical end and deposited me in North Carolina.  Fortunately, it gave me a solid internet connection.  Between that and being dragged out of retirement by a certain music-loving cephalopod enthusiast, I realized it's probably time to start posting regularly again. 

So your Canadian music-loving, shark-hugging, fiercely proud (though now temporarily transplanted) Rhode Islander is back.

Toady, a list of fun links.

-WhySharksMatter of Southern Fried Science apparently beat me to the Shark of the Week feature, and admittedly he's probably better at it than I am.  Don't you worry, I'll still keep posting mine, but make sure you check them out.  SFS is probably one of the best marine science blogs I've seen. 

-Charlie the Unicorn is back!  Make sure not to give the starfish your real phone number.

-Via both Matt's Marine Music Medley and Fuck Yeah Sharks: a four-song mini-playlist of shark music!

-Strangley enough, there is some damn fine shark research based out of ECU.  You probably missed it because you were distracted by their ridiculous football team.

-Matthew Good has a new album on the horizon. 

There you have it, an nice light and airy list o' links.  Keep checking back for more Shark of the Week, Music Education (soon, I promise), rants about politics, love for Rhode Island, and probably quite a bit about the fact that yes, the South is different from the North.