Merry Christmas from Frozen Maine

Marine biologists have to work around the tides. The plus side of that is that we rarely have to be in the field for more than about 4 hours at a stretch. The minus side is that we often have to be in the field really early in the morning or late in the evening, or over weekends or holidays. This year the late fall offered no opportunities to access our seaweed experiment in Lubec, Maine... except for December 22nd - 24th. If we missed the chance, we wouldn't have another one for months, and the whole huge, multi-year experiment would be ruined. So I rescheduled Christmas with my family for later, and rallied a Jewish colleague (Michael Hutson) to help me do the seaweed stuff. It turned out to be a pretty fantastic adventure. We were successful in our scientific objectives, and being in an unusual place at an unusual time we witnessed some special things, documented in Michael's photos.

Frosted seaweeds.


Frozen mist and waterspouts over the Bay of Fundy,


Enjoying the view.


Ready to rock, in our "Mustang" survival suits.


Slideshow and link to the full set of photos.

Daisy Hasselhoof?

I went windsurfing with my GoPro camera this afternoon, but apparently I didn't mash mash the shutter button hard enough with my gloves, because I filmed exactly nothing. D'oh! Actually, that may be a good thing for you blog readers, because I'll take the opportunity to post a video more entertaining than any I might have produced myself. From the windsurfing magazine website, here is a speedsailing session on the English seashore:

MOOsters of speed from k4 fins on Vimeo.

This is the first time I have ever:

A) Seen a windsurfer do chop-hops, jibes, and freestyle on a speedboard.
B) Seen a cow windsurf.

The sailing venue looks cool, too, with that uber-flat water. But I wonder if the speedsters ever mess up and smack into the rock retaining wall. Yikes!

Was my last session my last session?

When it gets into November in New England you'd better treasure your each and every windsurfing session. You never know which one is going to be your last for the season. I might have had mine about a week ago. It had been blowing hard from the SW all day, but had slowed down a bit by the time I got out of work and got to Josh Angulo's garage to pick up a board. On his recommendation I took an Angulo Magnum 84 slalom board with a 50 cm fin, and I rigged up my camless 8.0 Aerotech FreeSpeed sail. That was just the ticket for a well-powered blast across the flat water along the Nahant Causeway. It was a short sesh, ended by dusk around the same time it would have been ended anyway by my cramping gloved forearms. I'll be OK if it was my last session for 2011, but dang, it would sure be great to get just one more. Here's a video not from the session I just described, but from one a few weeks earlier that I never got around to posting. Nothing too extreme, but I think it fits pretty well with the music and stuff. Enjoy.