NRDC scientist heads out to survey canyons southeast of Georges Bank

Brad Sewell of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is heading out to explore underwater life in the canyons southeast of the Georges Bank.  - GWC

Day 1: Setting Sail to Explore Deep-Sea Worlds in the Atlantic | Brad Sewell's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC:

I’m about to set out on the 125-foot Scarlett Isabella (above) with team of scientists and engineers from the Waitt Institute, the University of Connecticut, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to undertake the first ecological investigation of two Atlantic seamounts, two of just four seamounts in U.S. Atlantic waters. We will then explore several nearby “submarine” canyons that cut into the southern flank of Georges Bank southeast of Cape Cod, again cataloging for the first time the life at the bottom of these ocean features. 

Seamounts and submarine canyons typically teem with all types of marine life – from vast schools of squid and mackerel to whales, tunas, and sharks – because of strong localized currents and upwellings that bring in and trap food (and sweep away wastes). The rocky walls and crevices of seamounts and canyons are frequently home to rare deep sea corals, some of which have been growing for hundreds, even thousands of years, in depths from several hundred to several thousand feet, splashes of color beyond sunlight’s reach.   

iWindsurf.com - NY- southeast Wind Data

iWindsurf.com - NY- southeast Wind Data

Tipping point? Arctic Sea Ice Lower than Ever

A new video produced by independent videographer Peter Sinclair for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media explains what expert scientists now find to be the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice in recorded history.

Fear of flying: The Twilight Zone

Oregon Gov. Kitzhaber: Act now to save salmon and energy | OregonLive.com

We can end the Columbia basin salmon wars now by balancing energy, conservation | OregonLive.com:
By John Kitzhaber

If you look only at the courtroom record, environmentalists are winning the war to save salmon in the Northwest. A year ago, U.S. District Judge James Redden sent the federal plan for managing the Columbia hydro system back to the drawing board -- marking the fourth time in the past 20 years that federal agencies have failed to present a defensible program for saving salmon. 

View full sizeAssociated PressGov. John Kitzhaber

But wins in court don't keep our salmon and steelhead from going extinct. At almost the same time as Judge Redden's decision, the federal government released its most recent review of wild salmon in the Northwest. That review found that many runs remain at high risk of extinction and that the level of risk is not changing for most species. Federal agencies, including the Bonneville Power Administration, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to stem the decline, but they are losing in court and they are losing in our rivers and streams. ....
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Valiam - Linda and Bill Anderson circle globe in homemade plywood sloop

Linda and Bill Anderson have covered a lot of territory - and water - in the past three years.  Thirty countries and thirty three thousand miles.  Aussies from the Suncoast, Queensland, they gave up the W word and  headed off in Valiam, their plywood, homemade sloop.  I met them in New York where they did a slideshow and talk at Le Cheile, our local Irish pub.  They're headed home (by plane.  Next will be the Med and northern Europe.  And some day these warm weather sailors are going to try Patagonia - the Magellan Strait and Cape Horn.  Follow their journeys HERE

Dismasted

After the storm

The storm of September 18 - gusting to 48 kts from the south according to the Execution Rocks buoy - sent a bunch of boats adrift at City Island.  One of them snagged the forestay of my North River 2, taking her mast down. (click pix to enlarge and for slideshow)

Eastchester Bay - wind gusting to 48 kts at Execution Rocks

No. 4 nun salvaged by CIYC launch

Under tow by salvager

Restless - no one aboard

Prout's Neck - Where Waves Moved Winslow Homer’s Brush - NYTimes.com

In Maine, Walking Where Waves Moved Winslow Homer’s Brush - NYTimes.com:

For the last hundred years or so, the only way visitors could see those cliffs was to stay at the Black Point Inn, the sole hotel on this two-and-a-half mile-promontory. But as of Sept. 25 the public will be able not just to observe the ocean as Homer did, but also to visit the two-story clapboard studio where the artist lived and painted what many consider to be his most majestic works.

This is thanks to the fact that the Portland Museum of Art bought the house six years ago when Homer’s great-grand-nephew decided to sell it. After Homer’s death in 1910 the house was passed down through a series of relatives and ultimately to this nephew, Charles Homer Willauer, who rented it to others for many summers. 

Winslow Homer's cottage

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Tornado at Breezy Point and Gerritsen Beach

New York's "Irish riviera" - Breezy Point at the west end of the Rockaways barrier beach - today was the site of a tornado.  As was Jamaica Bay at Gerritsen Beach.