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Ocean Wild Things

It’s Shark Week!

August 14, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft Leave a Comment

In case anyone out there missed it, Shark Week launched on the Discovery Channel August 12th! Shark Week isn’t an official week set aside for recognizing sharks, but thanks to the Discovery Channel it has become a very popular unofficial week that provides great press for sharks everywhere. And unfortunately sharks need all the good… [read more]

Filed Under: Fishes Tagged With: action alert, shark, shark fin soup, shark finning

Synchronized swimming sea lions

August 8, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft 1 Comment

Here is another shout out to the 2012 Olympics in London, this time to synchronized swimming! There is actually more synchronized swimming in the ocean than you might think. For starters, many species of small schooling fish look the same and swim the same way traveling en mass for protection such as the Pacific sardine.… [read more]

Filed Under: Seals, sea lions Tagged With: pinniped, sea lion

Track and field pigeon

August 4, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft Leave a Comment

Recently, I saw another odd looking pigeon at the Ahmanson Theater in downtown Los Angeles. As you can tell in the photo above, the pigeon is a pretty amber brown color with white tail feathers. What you can’t tell from the photo is that this pigeon was running all over the place and let me… [read more]

Filed Under: Birds Tagged With: bird, pigeon

The sea star Olympics

August 2, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft Leave a Comment

With everyone going Olympic crazy these days, it seems fitting to discuss ocean athletes, but instead of talking about the already famously fast bluefin tuna, I started wondering about a much slower ocean animal…the sea star. If sea stars lined up for a race, what species would win? It seems safe to say that very… [read more]

Filed Under: Sea stars and relatives Tagged With: echinoderm, sea star, starfish

Oceans of garbage means plastic for dinner

July 26, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft Leave a Comment

Here is another great infographic by mastersdegree.net, which seemed extremely appropriate to post after writing about the Risso’s dolphin that died from eating too many plastic bags. All the plastic entering our oceans is completely disrupting the food chain and it’s inevitable that we will be eating plastic too. This graphic does a nice job… [read more]

Filed Under: Ocean pollution Tagged With: marine debris, ocean trash, plastic, plastic bag, pollution

Risso’s dolphin: death by plastic bags

July 24, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft 2 Comments

Here is another photo featuring plastic bags from a stomach, this time from the stomach of a Risso’s dolphin. Dr. Alexandros Frantzis, Scientific Director at the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute in Greece sent me this photo and provided this explanation: “The photo shows the large quantity and size (the meter-tape used as scale is 2… [read more]

Filed Under: Dolphins, Ocean pollution Tagged With: cetacean, dolphin, marine debris, ocean trash, plastic, plastic bag, risso's dolphin

Meet the bat star

July 20, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft 2 Comments

Batman is pretty cool, but what about the bat star or Asterina miniata? A bat star is a type of sea star. You may be wondering if this sea star has bat powers. No, it doesn’t, but it does have cool webbing between its arms reminiscent of the webbing on a bat’s wings, hence the… [read more]

Filed Under: Sea stars and relatives Tagged With: echinoderm, sea star, starfish

A pelican’s bill can hold more than its belly can

July 17, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft 4 Comments

Ah, the pelican, what a bird, what a bird. On a recent outing to the beach I had the chance to watch several California brown pelicans hanging out on the rocks. In fact one pelican was a real ham for the camera, turning its neck to the side and posing. Even Southern California’s wildlife has… [read more]

Filed Under: Birds Tagged With: brown pelican, pelican

Tracking the albino pigeon

July 14, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft 4 Comments

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been slightly obsessed with an albino pigeon I spotted during the middle of January. Of course at the time I did not have my camera or phone with me since I was out on a walk of the Palms neighborhood (Palms is the oldest community in Los Angeles… [read more]

Filed Under: Birds Tagged With: bird, pigeon

Jump start your creativity and help save the oceans!

July 9, 2012 by Carolyn Kraft 1 Comment

Game on! There’s a pretty cool contest going on that ocean fans, recycling nuts and crafty creatives should participate in: the Summer Sustainability Creativity Challenge! This contest is all about taking things destined for the trash or recycling bin and giving them a second life as art (functional or not). For inspiration, check out the… [read more]

Filed Under: Imagine Something, Ocean events, Ocean pollution Tagged With: creativity, marine debris, ocean art, ocean trash, plastic

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