This Week in Water

Put on your drysuits and nose plugs, it's that time again.

First the big news of the week: Diana Nyad, age 64, became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without use of a protective shark cage. It was her fifth such attempt.

Turns out fish like to listen to music, preferring Bach.

Living evidence for evolution? Here's a video of a bamboo shark walking on the ocean floor.

How about this? Here's a video of a puffer fish creating artistic patterns on the sea bottom. Okay, it's maybe the coolest thing EVER. So cool in fact I'm going to post it here so I can watch it again and again. Seriously, dude is like the Picasso of fish.



Scientists have traced ever-increasing mercury levels in Pacific Ocean fish to coal-fired power plants in China and India.

Hundreds of thousands of dead fish were left floating in the Fu River in the Chinese province of Hubei after a discharge of ammonia. This after more than 16,000 dead pigs were recovered from a Shanghai river earlier this year.

Climate change is threatening fresh water fisheries world wide, even ice fishing in Minnesota.

Some officials in Minnesota want to divert the Mississippi River to replenish a seriously depleted lake.

Conservation easements are at stake in a dispute in California about water diversion tunnels proposed to run under an island owned by the Nature Conservancy. Staten Island, CA, is a prime refuge for inter alia the endangered sandhill crane.

A woman in China was arrested for apparently boiling her abusive husband's dismembered corpse in a pressure cooker.

Did you know this is World Water Week? An international conference convened in Stockholm this week with a plea for the energy, food, and water industries to use the scarce commodity more wisely and to clean up contaminated waters that cause upwards of 5000 deaths a day. "Mortgaging our future by draining water from the ground, surface and sky faster than it can be replaced by nature is untenable," said a spokesman.

Also, September 18 is World Water Monitoring Day.

You've heard of carbon footprinting? What about water footprinting? Do you have any idea how much water you use/waste every day? If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.

The politics of water is moving to the forefront globally and can actually be a source of cooperation. The UN has declared 2013 to be the International Year of Water Cooperation.

One area where this is happening is the area around the Guarani Aquifer in central South America between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Hydroelectric dams erected by China and India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan are beginning to deplete the Himalayan region of water.

Closer to home, if the U.S. Forest Service permits hydraulic fracking for natural gas in and around the George Washington National Forest, the D.C. area could experience the same sort of methane pollution in its drinking water that is currently plaguing Texas, Pennsylvania, and other flyover areas of the U.S.

In areas of California, wineries are straining the local water supply.

Japan is planning to build a half-billion dollar 'ice wall' to try to contain leaking radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant destroyed in the 2011 earthquake/tsunami.

The Nicaraguan government has granted a Chinese businessman the right to build a canal through that country that could rival the Panama Canal.

Australians are attempting to harness the kinetic force of ocean waves (and tides?) to desalinate seawater. Now that's what I call synergy! Brilliant, really.

A coal company has been granted a lease by the Commonwealth of Virginia to build the first wind farm off the coast of that state.

Satellite pictures have revealed two large maelstroms in the South Atlantic Ocean—large enough to suck ships under. The mechanics of these whirlpools are quite similar to those of black holes in space.

Melting snow in Norway has uncovered Neolithic artefacts some 6000 years old, including a remarkably well-preserved woolen tunic.

Engineers are developing a design for a waterflow-based battery that could power electric vehicles over much longer distances than lithium-ion batteries do today.

RustOleum's NeverWet apparently repels water completely.

The chemistry suggests Mars was once covered by water and all life on Earth may have originated there.

Japanese astronomers have discovered planets outside our solar system that appear to have water-rich atmospheres.

Oh, and yeah, people stop washing your raw chickens!