Kiwis Prepare for 1000 Years of Mojito Ice

A titanic iceberg some 500 meters wide, 50 meters tall, and 350 meters thick, containing enough fresh ice to power 11.9 billion Mojitos is barreling down on the New Zealand coast this week.

Loose from the Ross ice shelf in 2001 the unprecedented iceberg has members of the New Zealand cabinet rushing to emergency meetings with Cuban trade ministers to complete an ice deal with the tiny Caribbean nation, home of the tasty and iconic alcoholic beverage "The Mojito."

Said one staffer from Hon Tim Grosers office, "The Minister of Trade and Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs and Associate Minister of Climate Change Issues are working round the clock to sell this iceberg to Cuba who, since 1997, have been under a US ice embargo."

The deal gets softer each day as the iceberg comes in contact with warmer waters.

The following Underwater Onion is brought to you by Shark Diver. Always drink Mojitos as responsibly as you can.

Happy Thanksgiving. Go Lions!

Scott Cassell - Undersea Voyager

The Undersea Voyager Project is one of our favorite submersible/conservation efforts right now. Recently the team was in Lake Tahoe making news and discoveries:

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A team of submariners that spent the month of May exploring Lake Tahoe and examined, among other things, evidence of an earthquake fault that may have ruptured thousands of years ago, is hoping the operation is just the beginning of their underwater explorations.

Scott Cassell, the sub's captain and founder of the non-profit Undersea Voyager Project, says his team has plans for a five-year mission to gather information and develop ideas to help restore endangered bodies of water around the world.

The goal, Cassell says, is to collect data and attract sufficient attention to prompt people and governments to halt pollution and overfishing and take other actions to protect threatened bodies of water.

A two-person submarine spent the past month cruising Lake Tahoe, examining earthquake faults, ancient submerged trees and beds of invading clams that threaten the lake.

"I think it's a very useful tool," said John Kleppe, a University of Nevada-Reno scientist who for years has researched submerged trees, some more than 3,000 years old, in Fallen Leaf Lake just west of Lake Tahoe. The trees, which grew when the lake level was lowered by lengthy drought, provide a "very good record of climate change," Kleppe said

2004 Isla Guadalupe...10.00am

Found this classic video clip from Shark Diver and Sterns Bullen. Back in 2004 we had a smaller, very aggressive shark on site for a number of weeks:

Carnival of the Blue - Bigger than a Breadbox

And twice as fun. For the past two years Mark Powell over at the Blogfish blog has been accumulating a monthly meeting of the best "Blue Blog" submissions. The results each month are very entertaining:

Welcome one and all to the twenty-second installment of this monthly meeting of ocean mirth we call the Carnival of the Blue. For nearly two years now, bloggers world-wide have rallied to fill this monthly compendium with their favorite writings on ocean science, conservation, natural history, art, photography, history, critical analysis, and much more.

Read this months Carnival members and no we're not in this months COB since we failed to submit anything. The end of the month comes up on you kinda quick, you know?

Apparently being written up in this months Playboy magazine does not qualify one to be in the COB;)