The retired engineer first spotted the creature in April, and has now seen two of them – one bigger and one smaller. He estimates the largest to be at least 30 feet long.

“His head come up out of the water, and then he rolled up in a double roll behind him and he was long he was huge,” he said of that first sighting.

Sittlow think it might be a sea serpent and has nicknamed it Normandy Nessie since he lives on Normandy Road.

“This is a snake I guarantee you, or a serpent like thing that looks like a snake,” he explained, adding that it might be an anaconda or a python or “a mutation there of.” He believes the creature to be dangerous and doesn’t recommend anyone swimming in the canal until the thing has been positively identified.

In order to capture the creature on film, Sittlow set up a surveillance camera and has now recorded “Normandy Nessie” three times. (see the video here) The video shows a dark form that appears to be 30 feet long swimming close to the surface. There is also a sequence where the creature is splashing in the water.

Sittlow’s neighbour Maria VanAiken and her husband have also encountered the elongated animal in the canal.

“I looked up and I saw this like huge-looking creature,” VanAiken said, adding that it wasn’t a manatee or dolphin.

She spotted the creature from her back porch which overlooks the canal. “This huge thing just came out of the water,” she said.

State wildlife officials that have seen the video do not give much for the sea serpent theory; they believe the animal is a manatee.

Starting early next month, authorities will inject the powerful fish poison Rotenone into a five-mile stretch of the canal; from Lockport Locks to the electronic barrier system near 135th Street in Romeoville. The government wants to stop Asian carps from entering the Great Lakes while one of the electronic barriers is shut down for routine maintenance.

Completed in the year 1900, the canal is the only shipping link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system, and the aim of the mass killings is to save the Great Lakes ecosystem from the Asian invaders that have found their way into the manmade waterway.

Two species of Asian carp – the bighead* and the silver** – were imported by catfish farmers in the 1970’s to remove algae and suspended matter from the catfish ponds. During the early 1990s, large floods in the area made farm ponds overflow, giving the carps a chance to escape into the Mississippi River basin.

Since then, the carps have steadily made their way up the Mississippi river and are today the two most abundant species in parts of the system. They outcompete native species and cause starvation in large native game fish by devouring such large amounts of plankton.

Introducing rotenone to the canal will kill all fish, not just the Asian carps, and this has naturally stirred up some controversy. The poison is said to be safe to people, pets and other wildlife in the area, but no one should eat any fish killed by the chemical.

The plans to poison the canal were announced during a special telephone press conference Friday afternoon with members of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

“This plan has been developed with input from many biologists and scientists who all agree this is the best course of action,” said John Rogner, assistant director of the IDNR. “All of the (dead) fish will be removed and disposed of in our landfills. The clean up will take a couple of days and the cold water should remove any odours.”

Electro-fishing techniques will be used to remove and relocate as much game fish as possible from the canal prior to the release of the poison, and there are also plans to restock game fish in the area afterwards, as soon as chemical accelerants have been applied to remove the rotenone from the water.

* Bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis)
** Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix)

Israeli researchers Omri Bronstein from Tel Aviv University and Gal Dishon from Bar-Ilan University were conducting a survey on reefs when they spotted a mushroom coral sucking in a moon jellyfish.

“During the survey we were amazed to notice some mushroom corals actively feeding on the moon jellyfish,” says Ada Alamaru, a member of the research team who is doing her PhD in marine biology supervised by Prof Yossi Loya at Tel Aviv University. “We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw it.”

Corals are predatory animals but most of them feed on tiny plankton, and corals living close to the surface can also obtain energy by forming symbiotic relationships with photosynthesising algae. While it may be possible for plankton eating corals to ingest miniscule embryonic jellyfish, this is the first time anyone has photographed a coral feasting on adult jelly.

“This is definitely unusual. As far as I know no other coral are reported to feed on jellyfish. However, some sea anemones, which are close relatives of corals, are documented feeding on other jelly species,” Alamaru explains.

The coral in question was a mushroom coral belonging to the species Fungia scruposa while the unfortunate jellyfish was an Aurelia aurita – a type of moon jellyfish. Exactly how the coral managed to capture the jellyfish remains a mystery. The area was subjected to a seasonal bloom of jellyfish brought on by nutrient rich ocean currents.

The boat is intended for carrying workers and equipment to underwater structures in need of repair or maintenance work, such as oil rigs and bridge structures. Since it is capable of travelling on water as well as submerged, the vessel can quickly travel to the right location on the surface before submerging down to the desired depth.

The vessel consists of outer and inner tubes, plus an underneath compartment that holds the main fuel tank and lightweight batteries. The underneath compartment can be flooded to aid submerging and keep the vessel stable underwater. The outer tubes will normally be open, but can be closed if necessary. The inner tubes are inflatable and will be used to provide positive buoyancy when its time to resurface.

Beaufort is a small city located in a marshy estuary adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of South Carolina. The species of shark has not been identified, but it was probably caught nearby.

Animal keepers at the public aquarium didn’t even know the female School shark was pregnant, and was amazed to see four tiny sharks swim out of the gouge. When the female was treated for her injury, four more shark pups were found inside her.

Despite being born prematurely, all eight shark pups are healthy. They have been transferred to a predator free area and will be raised by Kelly Tarlton’s curator team until they are strong enough to be released into the wild, something which will probably happen within 6-8 weeks. The pups are currently being fattened up on a diet of herring and mullet.

Interestingly enough, the aggressive Broadnose Sevengill shark may actually have saved the lives of the School shark pups by attacking their mother and forcing them to enter the world prematurely.

“Ironically the fight their mother got into probably saved these pups’ lives! Sharks don’t have maternal instincts and just birth or ‘drop’ their babies and swim off - leaving them incredibly vulnerable. Because we didn’t know she was pregnant, and she would be most likely to give birth at night, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to the pups in time to move them to a safe, predator free area,” said Marine Biologist Andrew Christie, curator at the aquarium.

“The overall numbers are still tiny compared with the original populations before whaling started, but the trend is at last in the right direction,” said John Calambokidis, a marine scientist whose research on whale movements and populations has just been published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. “This may represent a return to a migration pattern that existed in earlier periods for the eastern north Pacific blue whale population,” he said.

Richard Sears, founder of the Mingan Island Cetacean Study in Canada, has noticed a similar trend with blue whale sightings increasing in the north Atlantic during the past few years. Sears is cautiously optimistic, but warns that the increase in sightings may be partly due to more people looking for whales. “There is still no room for complacency,” he said.

Until the 20^th century, blue whales were normally avoided by whalers since these oceanic giants were too large and too fast for traditional ships to handle. With a maximal reported length of over 30 meters and the capacity of exceeding 170 metric tons in weight, the blue whale is the largest animal even known to have existed on our planet and capturing it using an old fashioned sailing vessel is certainly no picnic.

Before the invention of the steam-powered whaling ship and the exploding harpoon, the estimated global population of the blue whale was somewhere between 350,000 and 400,000. By the 1960s, no more than 5,000 blue whales were left.

Unlike whales such as the humpback which has undergone a remarkable recovery since the international ban on whaling was imposed, the blue whale populations have not shown any clear signs of recovery during the last few decades and scientists have worried about them being too shattered and fragmented to be viable populations in the long run. Illicit harvesting has also been a problem – files handed to the International Whaling Commission by Alexey Yablokov, environmental adviser to Boris Yeltsin, showed that the Soviet Union killed over 9,000 blue whales from the time of the ban until 1972.

“These revelations go some way towards explaining why blue whale populations stayed low for so long,” says Dan Bortolotti, author of the book Wild Blue. “It also suggests that they may now have a chance to recover — but only if the ban on hunting all large whales stays in place.”

When employees from Contractor’s Choice and members of the Summer Lake Homeowners Association walked into the vacant town house at Miramar Beach, Florida, they discovered what appears to be a plecostomus.

The fish was apparently overlooked when lawmen removed the other pets – fish and birds - from the home after the arrest of the pet owner Dannie Baker. The fish went unnoticed for so long because Baker’s home was closed to the homeowners association after the arrest.

“I was very upset because I thought the police had taken everything after Dannie’s arrest,” said Dianne Richmond, vice president of the homeowners association. “This poor fish has been in that boiling house with no air conditioning and nothing to eat for about seven months.”

The pleco was discovered by the fiancée of Contractor’s Choice owner, who noticed something moving in the tank and sprinkled some fish food in the water. This caused the pleco to swim out into the open to feed.

When the pleco was discovered, much of the water in its tank had evaporated and the remaining water had turned dark.

Josh Olis, an account manager at Contractor’s Choice, said he didn’t believe it when his boss told him a fish was still alive in the tank. After seeing it for himself, he and the owner refilled the tank with about 50 gallons of water. He said he will make sure the fish is fed for as long as the company is working in the home. The contractors have even given the fish a name – Theo.

“I think we’re going to accept him into the cleaning family for now,” Olis said. “He’s been living in that tank for so long, surviving off algae. I have so much respect for him, I had to name him.”

The employees at Contractor’s Choice are now looking for a permanent home for Theo.

“This poor fish has really worked for a new home,” Richmond said. “It’s a wonder he’s survived this.”

AC Comment

Although I certainly don’t recommend neglecting your plecos for seven months, I’m not very surprised that Theo was alive and kicking when they found him. Many of the catfish species commonly referred to as plecos are algae-eaters (especially when young), so if there was any light coming into the room, Theo probably had some food to eat since nobody was there scrubbing away the algae. It all comes down to how large the tank is; a big tank may generate enough algae to keep a pleco alive (albeit hungry and malnourished) for several months.

Also, the natural habitat of plecos is Central and South America, so living without air conditioning in Florida is probably not something that bothered Theo much, especially if the aquarium was placed in a location where it was sheltered from sunlight during the harshest hours of the day.

Evaporation on the other hand, that is a real threat. The build up of waste in the water was probably tolerated by Theo since the progress was slow and gradual, but eventually ending up with hardly any water due to evaporation would naturally have killed him.

Last but not least, a word of caution. Although the employees of Contractor’s Choice acted admirably and should be applauded for taking such an interested in an abandoned fish, giving Theo 50 gallons of new water was actually quite risky since such a rapid change of water quality (and probably also temperature) can be lethal to fish – especially if the tap water is also heavily chlorinated. (But this is naturally impossible to know unless you’re an aquarist so I don’t mean to sound condescending here.) If you find a neglected fish, the safest method is to gradually change water quality and temperature until conditions are ideal for that particular species.

After being exhibited for two months at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a young female white shark was released back into the ocean Wednesday this week.

“I’ve always said that these animals will tell us when it’s time to put them back to the ocean. Now was clearly the time,” said Randy Hamilton, vice president of husbandry for the aquarium.

The release was prompted by a change in behaviour; she started acting aggressive towards other sharks in the million-gallon aquarium and during the Halloween weekend she received a superficial bite wound. She also injured a galapagos shark by biting it and was observed chasing the scalloped hammerhead sharks.

“We monitor the behavior of great white sharks very closely while they’re on exhibit,” Hamilton explained. “When we saw a new pattern of aggressive behavior, we decided it was best to release her.”

The young female was the fifth great white shark exhibited and successfully released back into the wild by the aquarium. Monterey Bay Aquarium is the only institution to keep a great white shark on exhibit for more than 16 days, get the shark to consistently take food from the staff, and document the animal’s successful return to the sea.

Just like this young female, the four previously released great white sharks were fitted with electronic tracking tags which make it possible to confirm the shark’s successful adaptation back into the wild. Two of the sharks travelled to the southern tip of Baja California and beyond after being released, while the third one opted for Santa Barbara waters. The fourth shark also stayed near Santa Barbara where it was caught and released by a commercial fisherman just a few days after being released from the aquarium and it was then reportedly in good health.

The female shark released this week has been fitted with two tracking devices; one that will deliver real-time data on her location and one that will collect and store information about her travels, the depths she dives to and the water temperatures she favours for about six months, before it pops free and delivers those data to scientists via satellite.

You can find the real-time data emitted by the first device on the TOPP website (Tagging of Pacific Predators): http://www.topp.org .

The shark was released in offshore waters near the southern tip of Monterey Bay shortly after sunrise.

“Her health is excellent, and we learned a lot while she was with us. Based on past experience, we have every expectation that she’ll do well after release,” said Hamilton.

During her two month long stay (69 days to be exact) in the aquarium, she grew from 5-foot 3-inches to 5-foot 5-inches and put on an extra 20 pounds. She ate mackerel only and would happily gulp down up to three percent of her body weight in a day.

The exhibit of young great white sharks is part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s effort to change public attitudes towards the feared white sharks and raise awareness about the threats facing them in the wild. The first white shark was exhibited in 2004/2005 and was seen by over a million visitors before being released after six months in captivity. Collectively, the four sharks exhibited before the newest addition has been seen by almost 2.5 million visitors.

“I can’t overstate the impact of this single animal on advancing our mission to inspire conservation of the oceans,” aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard said of the first white shark the aquarium had on exhibit.

The million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit will undergo renovations starting late August 2010 and it will therefore not be possible to see any great white shark at the aquarium until summer 2011 at the earliest.

As reported earlier, the artificial reef – which is located in Boscom on UK’s South Coast – consists of big geo-textile bags pumped hard with sand and aids in the formation of powerful barrel waves by pushing the naturally occurring waves upwards.

Prior to the opening, surfers had expressed fears that the reef was too big, situated the wrong way around, located on the wrong side of the pier, and potentially dangerous, so many eyes are now carefully monitoring the project to see if it’s a flip or flop.

“We have now got to give it the chance to see if it [the reef] does perform against the criteria that we have agreed with them,” says Roger Brown, the council’s director of leisure services.

Sean Wade, from Sorted surf shop, said: “Longer term it will need tweaking but with any project it is finding out how it works and what the best conditions are. Yesterday it looked pretty amazing.”

The artificial reef is part of the £8 million Boscombe Spa Regeneration Project funded through the sale of a seafront car park to a company that will use the space to build flats. On days with good swell, the new reef is expected to provide grade five waves.