#gulf of maine

[noaasanctuaries]

Smelly Gas Helps Researchers Track Right Whales

In the vast open ocean, how does a large animal like a North Atlantic right whale find enough food to eat? Scientists suspect whales are following odors produced by the natural chemical compound dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a smelly gas released when the copepods eat phytoplankton. To predict where right whales will be aggregating, scientists at NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary are conducting groundbreaking research following the same scent trail the whales may be using to locate their favorite food.

Why does this matter? Click to learn more:

[inatungulates]

Atlantic white-sided dolphin "Lagenorhynchus" acutus

Observed by sarasimma, CC BY-NC

[colegove]

Volition, also known as will or conation, is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action. It is defined as purposive striving and is one of the primary human psychological functions. Others include affect (feeling or emotion), motivation (goals and expectations), and cognition (thinking). Volitional processes can be applied consciously or they can be automatized as habits over time.

Wikipedia

Photos: 1/17- 1/22/2024

[shipwreckguy]

Three Girls

FV Three Girls burnt & sunk in Gulf of Maine; 6 rescued by USCG

Photo: United States Coast Guard On the night of August 12, the 81 foot long fishing vessel Three Girls (MMSI: 368140980) caught fire in the Gulf of Maine off Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The groundfish trawler had departed from Boston and was positioned some 100 miles east of Portsmouth when the fire broke onboard the vessel. The United States Coast Guard received a distress call from the Three…

[stephscreativechaos]

I Am Not a Lizard

My youngest daughter is a lizard. That’s what her sister calls her because, like her father, she loves the heat. She thrives in it. She basks in. She goes jogging in it for Pete’s sake. Like her sister, however, I am not a lizard. If you put me in heat over 85F I tend to wilt. Like my oldest daughter, I am inclined to stay inside with the AC on and the fans going full tilt rather than subject…

[harveyspictures]

Crossing the Gulf of Maine Sept 19, 2022. All night run, crazy currents. But saw some puffins.

[plaguedocboi]

Who wants to guess what kind of fish we got at the aquarium from the trawl survey (I’ll reveal it tomorrow)

[nguyenfinity]

hey if rinne can have his mum and niki can have his can himeru have kaname back

He nii-chan jacket too big for he gotdamn he,,,,,

[popsicle-stick]

people who give jonathan harker a devon accent in dracula. i owe you my life

[senadimell]

It’s been several weeks since I started watching Nosferatu, and I finally picked it up last night since I now have a knitting project suitably mindless that I can do without having to look at it and can watch the movie in peace. I’ve finished the third act, and I have to say, this is honestly really faithful to Dracula. Since it’s never been a secret that Nosferatu is heavily inspired by Dracula (read: an unauthorized adaption), I’m going to assign Dracula names to the roles characters play in the story rather than use their actual names most of the time.

The character combinations are interesting, but make a lot of sense given the large cast of characters in the book. I haven’t gotten far enough for most of the secondary characters to be a major presence, but I’ve read that they’re mostly absent, so the focus remains mostly on the Jonathan and Mina figures.

One of the biggest changes so far is that Mr. Hawkins and Renfield are combined into Knock, a now-malicious solicitor secretly in kahoots with the Count.

Narratively speaking, this actually makes a more of sense than it might sound at first. Mr. Hawkins is mostly a plot device in the original story, not really a character, and given the restraints of a silent film, it would be rather challenging to establish why and how the Count wants to visit England. When you strip down the conversations from the captivity portion of the novel, you’re left with the challenge of how to convey the Count’s desire or to establish how exactly he made arrangements with a foreign solicitor, so giving him an agent abroad is a pretty economical way to convey that. Then, when the Count is travelling, using Knock as a Renfield-figure and thrall of the Count serves to heighten the tension, and while the “the life is in the blood” speeches are a little less mysterious, they do pair very well with the back-and-forth between the not-Demeter and not-Van Helsing teaching a botany class about carnivorous plants. 

The major downside of that choice is that it removes much of the nuance present in the books regarding the characters under the Count’s sway. Renfield and Seward’s back and forth about the nature of sanity is so far completely absent, and I expect this will be the case through the movie, going off of the visual language’s cartoonishly malicious depiction of Knock. Renfield’s humanity is really just not shown, and while Knock’s gleeful manner while eating bugs is quite similar to Renfield’s manner in the book, I highly doubt the element of resistance will show up.

Still, overall, this feels like a simplification rather than a warping of the story. Unfortunately, it’s a simplification that results in a caricature of mental illness, and yet I don’t think it’s a fundamental misreading of the story, unlike Drac/Mina pairings.

The second major change so far is that Mina and Lucy’s role have been combined into one, and given their similar narrative roles as vulnerable and beloved targets, this makes a lot of sense. Now, the Mina-figure is the sleepwalker. There is a slight change in that the prophetic dreams start earlier, but it also serves to emphasize her connection with Jonathan without the letter and journal devices. It also establishes her vulnerability early on, pretty much as soon as we realize that Jonathan is in peril, which is an effective way to convey the peril of Lucy-Mina without diary entries and serves to jump-start the middle act of the story (which I admittedly found rather slow during Dracula Daily)

In a related vein, there’s another convenience change that’s either big or small depending on what you view as an important theme. In Dracula, the Count seems primarily interested in England, and his later vendetta is the result of his predatory nature, not the driving motivation. In Nosferatu, that’s flipped, and his primary motivation to leave his castle is to track down not-Mina. He presumably did first send for a solicitor, though, so the motivation isn’t absent, it’s just less developed.

Apart from character changes, the biggest other change is that the Count spreads plague rather than just killing or turning characters. So far, it doesn’t feel fundamentally different from the book, but I don’t know yet if it will have larger plot implications down the line.

I will say, though, that the time period is always waiting a little bit uncomfortably at the back of my mind. It came out in 1922, and there’s just so much going on in the Weimar Republic at this time. It’s a culturally wild time. I don’t know a lot about this film, or its make, or how it was received, so I’m just left with vague implications about the various changes and how they would be received. What does it suggest that he spreads a plague? What does his increased focus on preying on Mina mean? What are the implications of the fact that he has an apparently willing agent abroad, or that Renfield is only a slavish caricature, totally devoted to the count?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they’re always looming somewhere as I watch.

[inatungulates]

Atlantic white-sided dolphin “Lagenorhynchus” acutus

Observed by ryanvanmeter, CC BY-NC-ND

[toytulini]

woe, Gull upon ye

[colegove]

“Happiness is a complex and multifaceted emotion that encompasses a range of positive feelings, from contentment to intense joy. It is often associated with positive life experiences, such as achieving goals, spending time with loved ones, or engaging in enjoyable activities. However, happiness can also arise spontaneously, without any apparent external cause.”

Wikipedia

April 5th - 9th 2024

[that-fellow-from-dres]

is it true that it always rains in the england because the last time i went there it was always raining. his one time it was fvdry nice and blue outside and so we went outside without sn umbrella and not 10 minutes later it was pourin. i made a vow that day to never go out in the uk without an umbrella and i never did . please corroborate

I can confirm, it always heckin rains in britain

It's like a big thing in Britain, it's why we're always talking about the weather. It changes about every 10 seconds.

[brunhielda]

You all know me for the Eclipse mania I continued to post about from April of 2023-May 2024.

I have great news.

It’s not done.

Online there is an interactive map covering the path of the eclipse, run by the Gulf of Maine Science Institute. On it are icons that will lead you to videos, articles, poetry, photos, and all sorts of artwork.

It is run by one Terence Finnegan, Eclipse Coordinator for the Gulf of Maine Institute. They hired him for six months to run all their community eclipse programs, and this is what he is leaving behind for the greater online community.

First off, it is just super fun to click through-

https://felt.com/map/GMRI-Total-Solar-Eclipse-April-8-2024-jYYarRjOQKmrnTI8cdGYsD

But more importantly- you can continue to submit works for this map!

If you caught video, or photos, or filled out scientific notes, or made art, or wrote songs, or have ANYTHING to relay what your eclipse experience was like, they want it on their map!

It’s best to submit before July 3rd, 2024, but hopefully they will continue to take submissions throughout the summer. They are more likely to keep working on it if they have a steady stream of submissions.

You can submit work here: https://www.gmri.org/projects/in-the-path-of-totality-eclipse-2024/

I just think this is the coolest thing, and most of the info on this map so far is what ONE guy went out and collected from local communities and postings online.

Imagine what it could be if the science nerds and artists of tumbler got behind it????

This could be a major resource for anyone looking to study eclipse experiences leading up to future eclipse events.

This could be a major resource for anyone looking to write stories with eclipses as a plot point.

If we want to get super fanciful about it, this could be one of those things aliens some day use to understand us. Did you know, they don’t have total eclipses on any other planet we know of? The moon and the sun only line up with the correct size on our planet.

Or it could just be a fun thing for kids to scroll through when they study sun science in school.

In any case, I think we should get on this.