On  Saturday, July 31, 2004 2:11 PM, Russ wrote:

>         WASHINGTON - Two strange new species of worms, without eyes
> or stomachs or even mouths, have been discovered living on the bones
> of dead whales in California's Monterey Bay.
>         "Who knows what we can learn here," researcher
> Robert Vrijenhoek said. "There are many things left to discover
> in this world. Some we find by accident ... and some we find because
> we look in places that few people have explored before, as in much
> of our work in the deep oceans."
>         In this case, it was a bit of both because the unexpected
> discovery was made about 9,400 feet below the surface.
(snip)
>         "They have no mouth, no guts, no obvious segments like
> all worms are supposed to have," Vrijenhoek said. They looked a
> lot like little miniature versions" of the strange worms
> discovered living around hydrothermal vents in the oceans. These
> vents are cracks in the ocean floor where very hot, mineral-rich
> water bubbles out from the earth's crust.

G'Day, Mate!  I flew back into Sydney a couple of hours ago after spending a
week in Kuala Lumpur chairing a marine Eco-Tourism conference and 'Celebrate
The Sea' - an underwater film and photographic festival - both of which were
held at the National Science Centre in KL (the Capital of Malaysia).  :-)

There was a great line up of guest speakers, (I'll get back to the deep
ocean floor in a minute<bwg>) including: Dr Walter Stark, an early diving
pioneer who - among other things - invented the Electro-lung rebreather as
well as the optical dome port to create the first fish-eye lens for wide
angle u/w photography;  Wyland - the marine artist who's made his name
creating 'whaling walls' all around the world; Danile Mercier and Pierre
Cotton, organisers of the Antibes Festival of Underwater pictures; Dr Mark
Erdman, the Coeleocanth expert and marine Protected Areas adviser for USAIDS
natural resources management project in Indonesia; Dr Gerry Allen,
internationally renowned authority on the classification and ecology of
coral reef fishes of the Indo-Pacific region; Tony White, an u/w
photographer and film maker from the UK (who, co-incidentally, was also in
the R.N. and happened to have served on one of the same ships as me!); Mark
Ellyat - holder of a record dive to 313 metres; Todd Essick - from the
States, who's produced some stunning B&W images; Michael Aw - who just
written a book called, 'An Essential Guide to Digital Underwater
Photography' that he launched at the event; Lots of other folks - and Emory
Kristoff.

I met Emory for the first time at last year's event, just befor the premier
of, 'Volcanoes of the Deep Sea', an IMAX production produced by Stephen Low,
that shows the magnificent deep sea vents and the abundance of life that
survives boiling hot temperatures in the mineral rich plumes spewing out of
the ocean floor.  Operating and filming from a submersible down to depths of
12,000 feet, Emory's images are just superb.  Rather than being just a
barren waste, the areas around the vents are teeming with exotic and
colourful life forms that live in perpetual darkness.

Absolutely fixated on what is still to be discovered at extreme depths all
of his diving is now from submersibles.  'Cause we'd drunk one or two beers
at the end-of-the-festival-speaker-party on Sunday night we were both in
need of a carbohydrate fix yesterday, and so we both sneaked off to a nearby
MacDonalds where we sat for several hours while he told me about his various
expeditions to film the Titanic; the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Bismarck and his
future expeditions to this part of the world to 'seek out new life forms'.
:-)

Having endured the overnight flight without a wink of sleep, my brain's a
bit fuzzy at present - but it was a bloody great week.  :-))

Strike