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Have you figured out yet what’s weird about this video? Everything is upside down! The fishermen are standing on the underside of the ice, “weighed down” by buoyant suits that have air in them. Notice how their air bubbles “sink.” -via Geekosystem
From spiders who can live underwater for a whole day at a time to underwater rivers with their own wave systems, it’s simply amazing what can happen below the surface.
Above is a scene that scuba divers stared at while drifting underwater. No, it is not the effort of a brave model holding her breath. It’s a photograph mounted on the shipwrecked Vandenberg, part of an underwater art gallery set up by Andreas Franke. The Vanderberg was first commissioned in 1944 by the U.S. Navy as a troop transport ship, and is now resting 7 miles off Key West, Florida to become an artificial reef.
Link -via 1-800-Recycling | Video on YouTube
Destin of Smarter Every Day wanted to find out what would happen if he fired handguns underwater. He rigged a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol to fire inside water-filled tanks and recorded the results in slow motion.
The actual shooting starts about two minutes into the video. After firing off two rounds, Destin provides a brief physics lesson to explain what you’re seeing take place. -via The Firearms Blog
Photo: Mark Tipple
Photographer and surfer Mark Tipple has always been intrigued with what happens below the surface. So, while between projects he "hung out" under the sea to capture some of the best underwater photographs you’ll see today:
"Coming from a surfing background I used to wonder what happens when we’re duck-diving, like, what it looks like from a different angle than what we can see. Kinda hard to explain but it has always been on my mind. I used to surf with a small video camera and housing attached to my helmet, (pauses) it worked surprisingly well but my neck couldn’t take the impact and stress while trying to duck-dive and capture the right angle. Even tried to turn it back on myself to see what happens clearer but that, uh, sucked (laughs). I looked for a new approach to capture what I was seeking, which basically meant getting off the surfboard."
Link – via The Telegraph
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A fat cat in Japan complies with doctor’s orders by starting an exercise routine. I don’t know if it’s the cat’s facial expression, his considerable size, or the appropriate music, but I could not stop watching this video. Link -via Metafilter
The estate at Witley Park in Britain has been a private home and a public facility at different times. What is visible above ground is nice enough, but the secret underground and underwater construction is a treasure. Deep passages lead to the rumored “ballroom under the lake”, which, as it turns out, was originally built as a billiard room, but it wasn’t the only glassed-in room. Guests can watch fish swim around them -or they could at one time or another. Link -via Metafilter
Also see: more pictures at Flickr. Link
An underwater wedding ceremony yesterday at the London Aquarium drew the attention of a turtle who came forward to object to the union of this man and this woman. Or maybe he just objected to the the couple trespassing in his territory. Or possibly he just wanted a bite of that delicious wedding dress! -via Buzzfeed
I was wondering just this week when we’ll get a new animation from PES. Here it is! The Deep looks like an underwater wildlife film, except its made with everyday objects instead of marine animals. -via The Daily What
They are beautiful, otherworldly, full of secrets, and can kill you. It takes bravery and special training to venture into the hydrogen sulfide atmosphere of the Bahama caves known as inland blue holes. Those who dare are looking for the chemistry of how our earth supports evolving life.
Offshore flooded caves, so-called ocean blue holes, are extensions of the sea, subject to the same heavy tides and host to many of the same species found in the surrounding waters. Inland blue holes, however, are unlike any other environment on Earth, thanks largely to their geology and water chemistry. In these flooded caves, such as Stargate on Andros Island, the reduced tidal flow results in a sharp stratification of water chemistry. A thin lens of fresh water—supplied by rainfall—lies atop a denser layer of salt water. The freshwater lens acts as a lid, isolating the salt water from atmospheric oxygen and inhibiting bacteria from causing organic matter to decay. Bacteria in the zone just below the fresh water survive by exploiting sulfate (one of the salts in the water), generating hydrogen sulfide as a by-product. Known on land as swamp or sewer gas, hydrogen sulfide in higher doses can cause delirium and death.
These strange but natural environments are threatened by both rising sea levels and people who use them for garbage dumps. Link
(Image credit: Wes C. Skiles/National Geographic)
Diver Anatoly Beloshchin shot this footage in an underwater cavern at Cenote Angelita, Mexico. The illusion of a river is most commonly attributed to a layer of hydrogen sulfide.
Jill Heinerth has spent the past 14 years exploring underwater caves all over the world. Wired has a gallery of beautiful photographs she’s taken in underwater caves, lava tubes, and glaciers. This picture was taken at Devil’s Eye Spring off the coast of northern Florida. Link -via Digg
How long can you hold your breath underwater? Me? A minute, tops!
Well, however long you can hold your breath, I betcha it’s nothing when compared to what Gianluca Genoni just did: he set a new world record for breath-holding, handily beating what David Blaine did (7 minutes) and the previous world record:
Gianluca Genoni held his breath for 18 minutes 3.69 seconds while lying underwater in a Mantua swimming pool, beating German diver Tom Sietas, who managed 17 minutes 19 seconds in September – also on live TV – to unseat Blaine from the Guinness world record book.
Link – via Underwater Times
