Zifs win the deep diving record

Those goose-beaked whales, Ziphius cavirostris (we call them the Zifs), have done it again. 

We knew they were pretty good at deep diving and, well, they’ve just broken the mammalian record – the less-hairy-marine-mammal record that is – for the deepest longest dive ever! 

They clocked up an almost two and a half hour dive at a depth of nearly three kilometres. That’s pretty deep, like 2992 metres. And for those of you who haven’t switched over to the metric system yet, it’s nearly two miles. Incredible! 

They’ve gazumped the elephant seals who held the previous record for deep diving at just under two and a half kilometres (2388 metres) for two hours. 

I wonder whether Mrs Mer and I will evolve and be able to hold our breath for that long... 

Check it out at PLOS

Seasonal seaweed muesli

Here’s our favourite recipe for coastal seaweed muesli. It’s packed full of fibre, iron and all those good colours you need for a healthy being and topped with fresh fish and natural caviar. Try it for breakfast and let us know what you think!

1 cup red algal seaweed

½ cup brown algal seaweed

1 cup green algal seaweed

½ cup brackish water

A sprinkle of shells or sand

A pinch or two of ground siltstone

2 tablespoons sea coconut (coco de mer – Mrs Mer’s speciality)

Sea salt 

Seasonal fruits of the sea

To prepare place red, brown and green seaweed in a large bowl with water, shells, siltstone, coco de mer and mix well. Cover and place in fridge for an hour or sew.

With clean hands, divide and shape mixture into several balls and coat with sea salt. Plate each ball with seasonal fruits of the sea – prawns, white bait, caviar, etc.

Enjoy !

Packing for the Pilbara

Mrs Mer and I are contemplating a move to the coastal fringe of the Pilbara, up over there in North Western Australia.

There’s 300 kilometres of coast and the Ningaloo Marine Park in the Pilbara. It’s World Heritage listed – that means it’s a place on Earth considered of outstanding universal value to those sharing this planet and is to be protected into the future and beyond.

We plan to conduct our own marine health check, hang out with some turtles, dugong, and sample some of the detritus in the north west. Who knows what might turn up in the ocean from the exploitation of the abundant natural resources in that area – liquid petroleum hydrocarbons perhaps?

We might even get some work with CSIRO. They’re about to embark on their five year $12 million Pilbara Marine Conservation Partnership where they will survey the coastline, the marine parks and the areas under development for ports, oil and gas extraction and processing.

That’s it you see, alongside (and perhaps within) the World Heritage listed Ningaloo Marine Park is a big bit of infrastructure that helps Australia process its domestic and exported oil, gas and iron.

I wonder, can we knit up a balance between the conservation of marine biodiversity and the management of commercial interests?

Eat more algae

Who would have thought that coral have haemoglobin in them – you know that protein that carries oxygen around in our blood?

Apparently it’s the resident microalgae that have haemoglobin genes.

Coral and microalgae have a mutually beneficial or symbiotic relationship, like Mrs Polly Mer and I do with the lovely seaweed growing on the floor of our coastal home.

The seaweed provides us with a lovely carpet and we provide it with nutritious detritus and care.

The microalgae in coral are protected and fed and they, in turn, produce oxygen, remove waste and feed the coral.

When corals are stressed, like when the temperature goes up or oily bilge waste pollutes the water, the algae try really hard to mop up toxic gases with their haemoglobin - but if this doesn’t work they abandon the coral.

This means the corals are deprived of their main source of food and they whiten or bleach – getting ready to die if things don’t improve.

I guess that’s why Miss Coral Bleaching looks so anemic all the time. I must tell her to get some algae into her.

The microalgae are pretty sensitive and fast workers, they start making haemoglobin pretty quickly when they realise the coral is stressing out. Now that we know this we might be able to get the algae to give us a readout on how stressed a coral is in time to reduce their stress levels and help them get on with building reefs.

May your week be stressless 

Mrs Polly Ester 

Polyps, polymers and participation

Mrs Polly Mer and I are pretty excited to hear that Margaret Wertheim is presenting the 2013 Templeton Lecture at Sydney University on Monday the 18^th of March.

The title of Margaret’s talk, ‘We are all polyps now: a meditation on art, science and collectivity in the age of global warming’, gives you an idea of the breadth of her work as a science writer and exhibition curator.

One piece of work Margaret is perhaps most well known for is the Crochet Coral Reef project. This involves getting people involved in crocheting pieces that mimic coral as a way of addressing global warming – a hands-on informal fashion of collective engagement. We love to practice this ourselves in our underwater home.

As we amphibious water-loving ones well know, coral reefs are fragile ecosystems. Small increases in sea temperature, murky run-off from the land, violent storms or cyclones and the flippers of snorkeling humans reaching for a foot-hold can cause irreparable damage to the coral polyps that make up the reefs.

Like a single nerve cell in the amphibian brain, each coral polyp is insignificant on its own. Yet when networked these minute creatures collectively produce structures like the Great Barrier Reef – like networked nerve cells creating consciousness in a brain. 

Margaret, and her twin sister Christine, founded the Institute For

Figuring, a 'Los Angeles-based organisation devoted to public engagement with the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics’ – check it out www.theiff.org

Yours collectively

Mrs Polly Ester

Biodiverse knitting

Biodiversity is one of the things we are passionate about here in the KnitPiC network. It's no secret that there is an extinction crisis going on here on the planet. This is because habitats are being lost at a rate of knots. And human activities have a lot to do with this.

We have been knitting furiously in an attempt to understand what these extinctions mean. If three-quarters of all species thought to live on Earth do so in rainforests, and rainforests are being cut down at the substantial rate of about half a percent per year, what happens to this percentage when there’s a catastrophic fire or a meteorite explosion in the forest?

In our knitting and sewing, our darning and crochet, we are working on a pattern for the ecosystems. We rely on them as much as other creatures on the planet and we want to keep them strong. 

Yours in song

Mrs Polly Ester

Bundanon residency

Mrs Polly Mer and I are having a great time here at Bundanon on our second residency. We are very grateful to the Bundanon Trust for their generous support. 
We're looking forward to entertaining some guests for lunch today having spent the week working away on KnitPiC business. Mrs Mer has made some delicious gazpacho and I plan to make a chic pea and broccoli salad to save with toasties. I'd better go and help in the kitchen.
all the best
Mrs Ester