Invert of the Month - Marine Snow

Jeff Maynard - Marine Historian

Bron and Anth are back in the studio for another dose of marine stuff. Bron moved yesterday so can tell everyone about how heavy fridges and washing machines are.

The collective noun for whales: pod, herd, school and gam - perhaps it should be a prince of Whales.

The weather - its cold in Anths back yard, but should get warmer everywhere.

After a freighter accident in 1993, there is a whole flock of plastic ducks raveling around the worlds oceans, and they have been tracked by a retired scientist. Expect Canada to be invaded shortly

One of the major ways nutrients are returned to the bottom of the ocean - This stuff is small particles made up of the detritus of the shallow marine environment, flocculating and falling to the bottom of the ocean and acting as the food source for a whole range or organisms on the way down and on the bottom.

This stuff becomes mana from heaven from the bottom dwellers of the ocean and the flow of food and external nutrients from the rich surface water to the depths.

Lovers and luggers was a pearl diving film - King of the Coral Sea was another movie starring Chips Rafferty and Bud Tingwell.

At that time the standard diver was a copper helmet and an inflatable suit where you control your buoyancy by controlling air input and outlet flows.

These guys went down to 40 fathoms (240 feet) using this technology.

The pearl industry went into decline when the plastics industry made a substitute for the major end use - buttons! It began a resurgence in the 70's with the expansion of the cultured pearl industry

Birds Australia used to be the Royal Australian Ornithologists Union, but they got sick of people thinking they were dentists. There are 750 bird species in Australia, so if you are a twitcher, being in the 700 club is a real achievement. The terrestrial atlas was reasonably easy to put together compared to the marine version - where you need to get space on the bridge of vessels to be able to get the information to map the distribution at sea.

The big surprise was that there were a lot more birds out there than was expected, and that the ecosystem was as large as it was.

" Everything must Converge"

" Me and My dog"

"We and the Sea"

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Tiffany Eckhardt

Tamba 4

Brett is wonderful this morning, even after a dive in the buff. The 3mm wetsuit has finally been retired for the winter.