The gannet’s dive
Gannets have evolved some very strange adaptations that make them some of the best divers in the natural world.
Category: The oceans
Underwater circumnavigation
The USS Triton was the first submarine to circumnavigate the world completely underwater. It was spotted just once, by a Filipino fisherman.
The Clipper route
The fastest sailing route around the world – the Clipper route – is also the most dangerous.
A quadrillion fish
The bristlemouth, a small ugly genus of fish found in the ocean twilight zone, is probably the most common vertebrate on the planet – estimates go as high as the quadrillions.
Portugal vs. Egypt in India
How about that time that the Egyptian Mamluks, with secret support from Venice, battled the Portuguese in the sea off the coast of India?
Darwin crosses a line
On 17 February 1832 – at the bidding of Neptune, god of the sea – Charles Darwin was blindfolded, his face covered in paint and pitch, and he was dunked into a water bath. He had crossed the line for the first time.
The house in the depths
A significant proportion of the food in the deepest ocean falls from discarded giant larvacean houses.
Pacific aurora
In 1962 the United States detonated a nuclear bomb in outer space over Hawai’i. It caused an artificial aurora in the sky over Honolulu – and another one over Samoa, more than four thousand kilometres away.
Inaccessible island
Inaccessible Island, in the south Atlantic, is surrounded by steep sea cliffs that make landing and entering the interior nearly impossible.
Medieval clam
In 2006 scientists in Iceland caught a clam that was born eight years after Christopher Columbus sailed to America.
Tunnelling through the Atlantic
Bridges go over water. Tunnels go under water. How about the Archimedes bridge, a hypothetical tunnel design that goes through water instead?
Yo ho ho, a sailor’s life for me
Zeppelins, U-boats, the Titanic, Dunkirk, the Klondike Gold Rush, the Great Smog, castaways, cowboys, and hobos all had one thing in common: Charles Lightoller.
Where the tides turn
How high does the high tide go? In the Bay of Fundy, Canada, the difference between high and low tides is more than 16 metres. But at several points in the world’s oceans, called the tidal nodes, the sea level doesn’t change at all.
Largest ocean current
How do you measure ocean flow? One sverdrup equals a million cubic metres of water per second. All of the world’s rivers emptying into the ocean is 1.2 sverdrups; the largest current in the world is more than a hundred times larger.
Deepest shipwreck
The USS Johnston was sunk in the Battle off Samar in World War II. Its wreck descended into the Philippine Trench, the third deepest trench in the world, and we know of no deeper wrecks.
Underwater unknown
A strange honeycomb pattern appears on sea ridges around the world. We think that it is created by living creatures, but no-one has ever seen one. Oh, and there are fossils of the patterns going back 500 million years.