Field Trip to the Maine Granite Industry Museum

Steve explains how the quarrymen drilled holes in the 1830's before the advent of steam drills. This was a 4 person job, with 3 "strikers" wielding 8 pound hammers, and one man seated on an iron box who was in charge of holding and turning the drill to chip out a 2.5" hole.

Cait and I were down in Bar Harbor yesterday (April 24, 2014) and had a chance to stop by the Maine Granite Industry Historical Society Museum, which is tucked away just past Somesville on Mount Desert Island. The Museum was founded, curated, and is run by Steve Haynes, who is a fantastic wealth of knowledge about the quarrying process, and who, over the past 46 years, has personally collected and polished granite samples from all of Maine's quarries, interviewed tool boys who worked in the quarries, and collected historic photos and documents of the era. Steve is a stone carver himself, and he took time away from preparing granite memorial stones to step us through the quarrying process and to explain all of the tools that helped cut, shape, move, and polish the granite. We are looking forward to getting Steve out to Hurricane Island, and you should definitely visit the museum if you find yourself on Mount Desert Island! Thanks for everything Steve! You can read about Hurricane's history as a granite quarry town here.

Book review: The Unnatural History of the Sea

If you're looking for some springtime reading that will help you gain some perspective on the scale of marine resource exploitation, I recommend The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts. This is a great nonfiction book that provides an in-depth account of marine resource exploitation dating back to the 11th century medieval Europe. Using firsthand accounts from early mariners and a variety of other sources, Roberts creates a colorful illustration of human reliance on marine resources and inspires awe about the life our oceans once supported. Roberts also warns about the dangers of shifting ecological baselines--a phenomenon where each generation assumes the current conditions they personally experience are the norm rather than looking at historic landings, species diversity, and average body size of different species. The ocean has historically supported a greater diversity of species and in higher abundance than today. If we look at the ocean's current status only within the context of our lifetime, we easily lower our standards, and a "successfull" rebound of a species may be only a fraction of its historic abundance. You can see a great photo series of shifting baselines here. While it is a sobering subject, Roberts' writing is very engaging and his call to action is inspirational and necessary if we want to improve the state of marine resources. I do believe that we can achieve a balance between resource extraction and protection and hopefully maintain the commercial fishing industry as a viable livelihood that honors past generations of mariners.

For his work, Roberts was awarded the 2008 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Visualizing Global Weather Conditions

There is an incredible new visual data resource, earth, developed by Cameron Beccario, that compiles and updates wind and ocean data from a variety of sources including NOAA, the US National Weather Service, and OSCAR, to create beautiful animated data displays on the globe! Take some time to play with all of the modes, overlay options, and global projections to see some unique views of Earth. Check out some of the screen shots I took below (each one clicks through to their respective animation). The surface currents animation reminds me of van Gogh's Starry Night. What do you think?

This is a Waterman Butterfly projection of Earth, looking at the wind direction and speed at the 250 hPa pressure level, which is about the height of the Polar Jet Stream.

This image shows surface ocean currents on an Orthographic projection of Earth.

This is a Stereographic projection of the wind at the surface and the mean sea level pressure.

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Seal Island's Live Seal Cam

Great news! It is gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) pupping season, and Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge is using a HD camera to give scientists insight into this event. It isn't easy to observe events that happen during Maine's worst weather conditions, and this camera means that scientists can observe seals during the whole pupping season from the comfort of their computer screen and without disturbing these 300-pound pinnipeds. Seal Island has the second largest gray seal colony in the United States, and is not too far from Hurricane Island (although Google Maps wouldn't give me directions...I suppose they are still working on their inter-island transit time). You can read more about gray seals here. Speaking of seals, if you want to come out to Hurricane Island for our Maine SEAL program, I promise you will get to see seals lounging on the ledges to the East of Hurricane Island!

This is a still still taken on January 15. Click the image to visit the video feed which broadcasts live starting at 10am every day.

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New Year, New Calendar

Photo of Lisa Goddard by Charlie Naebeck.

If you are in the market for a super cool science calendar, check out the 2014 Climate Models Calendar, which claims to be "the only calendar on Earth that shares the planet's hottest climate science and the people behind it."

Each month, the calendar features one of Columbia’s renowned climate scientists and includes information about their interests, work, and their favorite dataset, chart or climate phenomenon. The calendar also includes dates of weather and climate events that live in infamy, dates of key scientific meetings…in other words, everything you need to have an awesome year of science!

One of the portraits in the calendar features scientist Lisa Goddard, Director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Lisa's work focuses on improving the reliability and use of climate models, especially those that indicate conditions over the next few decades in different parts of the world.