Where I'm heading...

Might see some of these

I'm heading up north again in a few weeks – I won't believe I'm actually going until I get on the plane as delays are typical, even expected. Excess ice has already pushed our schedule back and it's impossible to predict what else might come up before I leave.

This year I'm conducting oceanographic sampling in Scott Inlet, a remote fjord on northern Baffin Island. Two moorings were installed on my behalf last summer (I couldn't go because I was 8 months pregnant at the time). If luck is with me, I'll get those moorings back, download the data, then put them back into the water for another year. Additionally, my plan is to take as many CTD casts as I can and help out with the other work that will be going on (fish tagging, acoustic moorings and maybe shark wrestling).

I fly into Clyde River, a small town I've never been to. All I know so far about the town is the only guest house is closed for renovations. After a night there, I'll be getting on a small research vessel. I've been on this ship before and learned that it gets quite bouncy in rough weather and I tend to get sea-sick (will pack gravel).

To get to Scott Inlet, we'll have to skirt the edge of Baffin Bay a place I've read a lot about. Baffin Bay is a large body of water bound by Greenland to the east, Baffin Island to the west, Ellesmere Island to the north and Davis Strait to the sound. Obviously, locals have known about this place for as long as they have lived there (since about 500 BC). Wikipedia says that John Davis was the first European there in 1585, but I wonder how far the Vikings got exploring the area as I recently saw a documentary about a potential norse trading post on southern Baffin Island (no idea if the show was presenting a fringe idea or not).

Even though Baffin Bay is choked with ice in winter, European whalers frequented the area early in the age where European powers sent sail boats exploring the Arctic. There's a large polyna (the North Water Polyna), much further north than I will go, that's highly productive and home to many marine mammals. Baffin Bay is one possible starting point for the North West Passage and many explorers passed through including Sir John Franklin. Interestingly, a B-52 crashed on the ice in 1968 with its nuclear payload.

A couple hundred km north of Clyde River is Scott Inlet, a narrow fjord filled with large islands which I know little about. This time of year the daily mean temperature is 0 degree Celsius, so it could be quite cold. I'll have to pull out my fuzzy gloves and wool long johns. I wonder if I'll see northern lights?

A take on how to think...

I've read every Sherlock Holmes story back when I was in high school. I read a lot then, as I still do now. Everyday on my way home from school on the city bus, I passed the library and its dedicated bus stop. Often, I would get off, lugging my backpack full of text books. I still have no idea what possessed me to lug all of them around all the time – no math or English or social studies emergencies ever came up (one always needs science text books). At the library, I always found a book or two or five to cram into my already straining backpack.

Recently, while browsing in the bookstore that is dangerously close to my house, I stumbled across Mastermind: how to think like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova. From the inside flap: “No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and home?” How could I resist?

Since I rarely read a single book at a time, I read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at the same time. Both were equally interesting however, Mastermind was a much easier read and included tips on how to improve ones thinking.

Konnikova breaks down the scientific method (for that is what Sherlock Holmes uses), discussing how each piece can be applied to our thought processes. All the while interweaving scenes from the stories that demonstrate the point she is making.

She discusses the idea that the structure of your mind can be viewed as a 'brain attic' that can be organized and easy to find things or left as a crammed space containing everything without order. We get to choose. She also includes a warning about filling your mind with too much junk – I'm assuming she means the headlines from the tabloids I can't help reading in the checkout line that just stick in my mind.

“We can, however, learn to master many aspects of our attic's structure, throwing out junk that got in by mistake, prioritizing those things that we want to and pushing back those that we don't, learning how to take the contours of our unique attic into account so that they don't unduly influence us as they otherwise might.”

Csikszentmihalyi's view on your mind's contents is slightly different. He points out, the structure provided by memorizing things that captivate your interest can make you life richer. Memorizing medieval British kings and queens (the real-life 'game of thrones') or Shakespearean sonnets or details of the periodic table (or anything else that catches your interest) helps with thinking by providing an internal structure. Memorizing this way helps improve memory and gives fodder to think about if you end up in a sensory deprivation tank – just incase that ever comes up.

On the how thinking works theme, I listened to a podcast about thinking and memory last night (from here). According to them, the key is to constantly expose yourself to new ideas and concepts. Quality counts – sitting on the sofa vegging out in front of crapy TV doesn't count. Reading counts, as well as other active ideas like taking a course or learning an instrument. The new information creates potential connections with what you already know potentially generating ideas.

In a recent interview with Joss Whedon (one of my favourite movie and TV writers), where he discussed what he does to remain productive, he gave a range of tips including how he uses his down time to expose himself to tones of new information such as books, theatre, etc. - a process he called 'fill the tanks'. Whedon suggests “step outside your viewing zone, your reading zone. It's all fodder but if you only take from one thing, then it'll show.”

On the flip side of 'filling your tanks' a recent blog post suggested that depriving oneself of new information gained through reading, which is generally how I get new info, could be a good way to kick-start your creativity. This is a technique out of one of Julia Cameron's books. I would find this a form of torture, but I'm curious if it would work. If one is always out obtaining information, would a forced week of nothing new forge new connections (i.e. creativity) between the old information?

At the same time I read all about Holmes, I devoured books about James Bond (by both Ian Flemming and John Gardner) along with everything then published by Ken Follett (The Key to Rebecca was my favourite). Since, I read all these books a long time ago and often concurrently, the lines between what happened in what story has been blurred. I do remember enjoying them all so perhaps it's time to start re-reading all these tales.

Image is from here. 

Monsters!

What lurks below

Possible reality for some of our mythical monsters? Sounds entertaining to me. Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan covers a pantheon of monsters, some I'd never heard of like a Rukh (an oversized bird), and those that fill my favourite movie genre (Zombies). Included are the overdone Vampire (I've never been a vampire fan) and Frankenstein's monster (the monster that keeps getting stuck with his creators name). Not quite as funny as Mary Roach, Kaplan's style still contained plenty of humour – how else could one approach this topic?

Some of his links seemed a bit tenuous, but entertaining non-the-less. For example, I didn't know toads were a component of Haitian potions to make zombies. Excretions from toads may have induced the berserker rages from Norse legend, leaving me picturing groups of Vikings standing around licking toads. We keep an assortment of toads in my home, making toad induced zombie-states and berserker-rages a second reason not to lick the toads*.

My favourite monsters turned out to be the sea-monsters. When I'm out at sea, I often wonder what lurks under the surface and I'm well aware the ocean is more powerful than any man made contraption that I might be standing in. To quote the book:

... on modern vessels there are often radios, life rafts that automatically pop open if the boats are struck by rogue waves, and emergency beacons that will alert rescue teams if the ship goes down, but even so, these essential bits of safety equipment do little to assuage a primal fear of vulnerability associated with the sea. For ancient mariners, the ocean was a powerful and dangerous force.

From the fear of the sea, ancient Greeks brought us Charybdis – a living whirlpool with a reputation of eating men alive and their ships too. She's a monster composed of water, without physical form, making her unique among the ancient monsters. I picture her as the maelstrom out of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, sucking whole ships in (except everyone would be wearing outfits out of the 1981 Clash of the Titans). Kaplan argues Charybdis' creation grew out of a fear of drowning and observations of tidal whirlpools – meaning that the ancient Greeks dabbled in oceanography, as any group that included mariners would. Perhaps Greek mariners observed the tidal whirlpools that form in the waters between Sicily and the boot of Italy.

Out of the Book of Job came the hulking Leviathan – a clearly male sea-monster. This monster has form unlike Charybdis, and he uses it for destruction. In the book, this monster's biblical description was dissected like a specimen in a lab. The monster's form could have originated from decaying carcases washed ashore, fossilized remains of sea going plesiosaurs, along with sailor's tales of huge creatures such as whales and sharks. Over time the Leviathan theme morphed into other sea-monsters such as Cetus (the sea-monster of Clash of the Titans), the Kraken, the giant squid of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and even the much more recent Jaws.

I realize this wasn't his point of the book, but I felt creatures solely from human imagination got left out. Can't we think of some pretty weird things from scratch? He also never mentioned half-animal half-human creatures other than the Minotaur – what about mermaids, centaurs, fauns, or Egyptian gods such as Anubis, Horus and Thorth? Why did we come up with so many half-and-half creatures? On that note, Kaplan did bring in some creatures of non-European origin, but his focus was mostly on the European ones.

*the first reason is because they wouldn't like it

Image is from here.

Sea Turtles in British Columbia

an old drawing of a Loggerhead Sea Turtle

In the waning tropical daylight, a uniformed park official sauntered over to me. “There are crocodiles in the water,” he told me. I was alone, studying the shallow, clear water of a slow-moving river near Tamarindo, Costa Rica which flowed between me and a nature reserve. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I changed my search from tropical fish to crocodiles. After examining every hiding spot in the water without seeing even a little crocodile, I concluded I was safe. The crocodile warning was likely to scare me out of wading across the river to avoid the reserve’s entrance fee.

The nature reserve protected a stretch of Pacific-facing sandy beach for leatherback turtles to come ashore and lay their eggs. I happened to be in the exact area when sea turtles were coming ashore. That night, I joined a chaperoned sea turtle viewing expedition. After a short sunset boat ride (it wasn’t set up to be a difficult expedition), I relaxed on the sand watching the interplay between the moonlight and surf while Reserve staff patrolled the beach for turtles. Three hours after our arrival, a leatherback was spotted hauling herself out of the surf. We left her alone to choose her nest site.

That was the my first sea turtle encounter. On a tropical beach, turtles weren’t a surprise we expect turtles to be nesting there. The second time I encountered sea turtles was to pick up a dead Olive Ridley sea turtle that had paid the price for staying north too long.

In November 2011, an Olive Ridley sea turtle washed ashore on Wickaninnish Beach in the Pacific Rim National Park (ref and ref). Unfortunately, when a beachcomber spotted the turtle, she was in critical condition with a cracked shell. The Parks Canada folks whisked her off to the Vancouver Aquarium for care, but sadly she didn’t survive. A necropsy was performed to determine cause of death, tissues were taken and gut contents analyzed. After data were collected, the turtle was passed from the aquarium to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Her final destination was to be the Royal British Columbia Museum — this turtle is the first record of her species in British Columbia. In death, this turtle is destined to have an afterlife as the northernmost Olive Ridley specimen in the northeast Pacific.

Generally, our local waters are too cold for sea turtles and few wander this far north. McAlpine et al. (2004) describe sea turtles on our coast as “rare vagrants and uncommon seasonal residents.” However, they may be influenced by our warm summer temperatures (Stinson, 1984). Once here, they are free of predators. We have no record of anything eating a stray sea turtle.

Three species of sea turtles have been spotted in our waters: Green, Olive Ridley and Leatherbacks. As of 2004 (McAlpine et al.), there were 11 published reports of green turtles dating back to 1955, 14 published sightings for leatherback turtles dating back to 1932 and none for the Olive Ridley sea turtle. In a recent tracking study of ten Olive Ridley sea turtles, it was discovered they spent 90% of their time in waters with a sea surface temperature of 27 degrees Celsius (Polovina et al., 2004) — good luck finding that on the BC coast. However, a suspicion lingered that Olive Ridley turtles must pass by our coast as they have been spotted off the Washington coast and as far north as Alaska. Loggerhead turtles may eventually be spotted here, as they also have been seen in Alaska (Hodge and Wing, 2000).

In the fall as weather gets cooler, turtles that remain in northern waters risk getting sluggish, their digestion system shuts down and any food in their gut ferments. The added stress of cold waters make turtles susceptible to disease, infections from injuries, and in some cases, the turtles drown.

Green turtle carcasses found here in late fall tend to be large juveniles and small adults (McAlpine et al., 2002). Were they too inexperienced to know it was time to head south? Once these green turtle carcasses divulged their secrets, they get sent to local institutions to further scientific research and education.

Despite being critically endangered, leatherbacks are the most commonly spotted spotted sea turtle in BC waters (Matsuda et al., 2006). Sightings occur all along the coast, suggesting these turtles take advantage of warm sea surface temperatures between late summer and early fall (Spaven et al., 2009). As of 2009, there were 126 unique leatherback sightings recorded for BC (Spaven et al., 2009). Generally, “little is known of the occurrence and distribution of leatherback sea turtles in the waters of BC” (Spaven et al., 2009).

If you want to see a leatherback turtle’s shell, the Royal British Columbia Museum has one on display in the marine room in the Natural History Gallery. Naming these turtles ‘leatherbacks’ is appropriate as their distinct shell is covered in skin, reminiscent of a dried leather coat.

In February, 2012, I accompanied Gavin Hanke, the vertebrates curator at the Royal British Columbia Museum, on a trip to Nanimo’s Pacific Biological Station to pick up the Olive Ridley turtle that had been found on Wickanninsh Beach and transport it to the museum. At the Pacific Biological Station, the turtle was stored in a large walk-in freezer along with marine animals collected for scientific research. Even in the sub-zero air, the freezer stunk of stale fish. The aroma stuck to my clothes and stayed with me the rest of the day.

A large green garbage can barely contained the Olive Ridley turtle; its nose reached right up to the lid. The animal’s plastron and internal organs had been removed during the necropsy, so only the turtle’s head, limbs and carapace remained. Hollowed out, the turtle still seemed huge.

Eventually the turtle will be preserved and added to the museum’s collection. Behind the closed doors (to contain the smell) of the museum’s wet lab, the turtle will be soaked in formaldehyde; a process called ‘fixing’ that is akin to pickling. The formaldehyde links proteins within the turtle’s cells, to lock the animal in a ‘life-like’ look. The best way to determine if the fixing process is complete is to poke the specimen with your finger. If it feels rubbery it is done. For a turtle this size, the fixing process takes a few weeks.

Once the carcass is fixed, it is soaked in water to remove excess formaldehyde. Finally, the turtle will be stored in a vat (because it is too big for a bottle) of ethanol. Alcohol is easier to work with than formaldehyde. Over the long term, ethanol keeps bacteria and fungi at bay. Future researches will not be able to perform any DNA analysis since the formaldehyde was used to fix the turtle.

Thinking back to Costa Rica, once she had excavated a pit in the sand, we approached with only the dimmest lights to watch the leatherback turtle lay her eggs. The guides assured us that we weren’t bothering her, which I didn’t believe as they needed our entrance fee to fund the nature reserve. Even in the dim light, the turtle’s eggs were brilliant white and there were lots of them. Each one was a perfect sphere. I was curious what they felt like — a curiosity that remained unsatisfied.

When she was finished, the leatherback used her back legs to slowly sweep sand over her eggs. She never looked at what she was doing, but still buried the eggs perfectly. Once done, she hauled herself with her massive flippers/front legs back to the ocean leaving a trench in the sand behind her. We quietly backed away as her form became a dark mass surrounded by sparkly surf.

Further on, a newly hatched leatherback was making its way toward the water across our path. I picked it up. It was floppy and wiggly like newborns often are, and its front legs dwarfed the rest of its body. The size difference between this tiny turtle that fit into my hand and its gargantuan mother was stunning. Since a lot of us were on the beach that night, I took the turtle to the water rather than let it run the risk of being stepped on by another tourist. It fought the gentle surf, then it slipped under the surface and vanished from sight. Would it some day tour past the BC coast? Would it beat the odds and return to the beach to lay its own batch of eggs?

In the darkness, I also headed to sea. A boat took me back to the outskirts of Tamarindo, and my hotel. This time, I didn’t stop to check the water for crocodiles.


references

Polovina, J.J., G.H. Balazs, E.A. Howell, D.M. Parker, M.P. Seki and P.H. Dutton. 2004. Forage and migration habitat of loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) sea turtles in the central North Pacific Ocean. Fisheries Oceanography, 13:1, 36-51.

McAlpine, D.F., S.A. Orchard, and K.A. Sendall. 2002. Recent Occurrences of the Green Turtle from British Columbia Waters. Northwest Science, 76, No 2, 185-188.

McAlpine, D.F., S.A. Orchard, K.A. Sendall and R. Palm. 2004. Status of Marine Turtles in British Columbia Waters: A Reassessment. The Canadian Field-Naturalist. 118. 72-76.

Matsuda., B.M., D.M. Green and P.T. Gregory. 2006. Amphibians and Reptiles of British Columbia. Royal BC Museum, Victoria, Canada, 266pp.

Spaven, L.D., Ford, J.K.B, and Sbrocchi, C. 2009. Occurrence of leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) off the Pacific coast of Canada, 1931-2009. Canadian Technical Report of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 2858: vi + 32 p.

Stinson, M. L. 1984. Biology of sea turtles in San Diego Bay, California and in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. MSc. thesis, San Diego State University, California.

Hodge, R. P., and B. L. Wing. 2000. Occurrences of marine turtles in Alaska waters 1960-1998. Herpetological Review. 31: 148-151.

Image is from here.

Lost Marbles

Not the angle of repose I was looking for

I lost several hours this morning when I fell down a rabbit hole of interesting facts. I was looking for something specific about what is called an ‘angle of repose.’ No it isn’t the angle of my lawn chair - although I did stumble upon a blog called ‘My Angle of Repose’ and a 1971 novel titled ‘Angle of Repose’.

The angle of repose I’m interested in is the maximum angle a pile of something (i.e. a granular material) could reach before tumbling down. A google scholar search found scientists piling a plethora of items from mustard seeds to firewood.

Not surprisingly, the shape of what you are piling matters. In a 1966 paper, piles of tiny spheres and angular crushed quartzite were examined. For diameters of 0.5 mm, the angle of repose for the spheres was 38 degrees while for the quartzite it was a steeper 57 degrees. Meaning flatish, irregular things pile better than round things.

But, diameters of 0.5 mm are tiny, what about something bigger? For bigger things, the angle of repose decreases. The tiny spheres above would form a pile while attempting to pile marbles would only lead to escaped marbles - and an excuse to say: “help, I’ve lost my marbles.”

Adding water changes things - and this is where I really got sucked in. A 1997 paper titled ‘What keeps sandcastles standing’ was irresistible to me and completely unrelated to what I was looking for, so I read it.

If you are going to build a fancy sandcastle, you’ll quickly discover that dry sand won’t work, only wet sand will do. That’s because the properties of wet and dry sand are different. They did a lab experiment to prove it by modeling wet sand with spherical polystyrene beads ‘wetted’ with corn and vacuum-pump oil.

As a tangent - a completely different study used rice piles to model avalanches. What you use likely comes down to what you can get to work in the lab. My experience with lab experiments I designed myself clearly demonstrated that it isn’t easy to come up with something that works.

They found that by only slightly coating the beads (coating of less than 50 nm) dramatically increases the angle of repose. This means that by adding water to sand, the liquid introduces attractive forces that act to bind the particles. At first clumps form, which grow as more liquid is added until what you are working with (sand, polystyrene beads, etc) holds together.

The angle of repose is an important factor when studying slope stability and landslide prediction. How gravity influences the angle has also been studied, so what we know here can be transferred to exotic locals such as Mars. A point to ponder if you have to trek across scree in your local mountains or on Mars.