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Oct 12 2011 - 11:24am
What does a bioluminescent creature that lives more than 2 miles below the surface of the ocean and a glow stick have in common? More than you think. Bioluminescence is the process by which living organisms produce their own light. Using a photographic technique called light painting, you can do...
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Oct 14 2010 - 11:33pm
Local crafters who contributed to the Smithsonian Community Reef proved that there is no limit to the colorful reef forms that can be created using hyperbolic crochet techniques. Their wildly imaginative pieces are on display alongside the main installation of the Institute For Figuring’s...
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Mar 8 2012 - 12:28pm
Real or imagined, everyone has a story about the ocean. In 2010 sound artist Halsey Burgund teamed up with marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols to record as many of these tales as they could. The result was Ocean Voices.
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May 5 2011 - 2:49pm
Rachel Caauwe was one of a dozen artists who spent a recent Saturday sketching specimens from the Smithsonian's musky-scented marine mammal collection. Here she's shown drawing the remains of a harbor seal (Phoca vitulina). The workshop, organized by the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators,...
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Jul 9 2012 - 12:16pm
How do you make science sing? Just ask a couple of female scientists to sing about their research interests and their passion is quickly conveyed in a quirky little tune. Informative, inspiring, and a little bit silly are all adjectives that aptly describe this music video performed and produced by...
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Jun 6 2012 - 1:01pm
Today Ray Bradbury died. It might seem strange that I'm writing about Bradbury here on the Ocean Portal, as he's best known for his short stories about space exploration and strange aliens. But he also considered the unexplored realms of our own planet: the ocean.
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Jul 2 2010 - 12:24pm
This 1890 painting of Charles Darwin is on display at the Turin Museum of Human Anatomy. Darwin brought William Dampier’s books with him on the voyage to South America that led to Darwin’s formulation of the theory of evolution. He called Dampier’s detailed observations “a mine” of information....
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Jun 1 2010 - 7:50pm
When you are shopping for gifts and jewelry, steer clear of gifts that use real coral or other marine animal products. Deepwater pink and red corals in particular have been prized for their beauty in jewelry making, but they belong in the sea, not in our homes. Visit SeaWeb’s Too Precious to Wear...
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Oct 14 2010 - 11:30pm
Visitors to the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef temporary exhibit at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History saw both the main installation created by to the Institute For Figuring and the stunning Smithsonian Community Reef created by local crafters.
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Jul 1 2011 - 10:42am
The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef brings together mathematics, marine science, craft, and community activism in an effort to raise awareness about the threat to coral reefs worldwide. This discussion considers the impact of community projects on conservation efforts with:
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Aug 2 2010 - 1:36pm
In a decade long project, which ended in October 2010, scientists with the Census of Marine Life traveled the world cataloging the ocean’s life forms. From Australia to China to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond, these researchers documented tens of thousands of diverse creatures, which...
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Oct 14 2010 - 5:48pm
Local yarn and craft shops were highly involved in creating the Smithsonian Community Reef—the local community’s accompaniment to the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef exhibit. The HCCR, created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring, was on display in the Sant Ocean Hall from...
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Jul 16 2012 - 10:22am
Massachusetts ceramics artist Joan Lederman glazes her work—including this bowl—with deep sea sediments. Some contain tiny single-celled organisms called foraminifera. Lederman has noticed that sediments with foraminifera often make branching patterns—like the ones you see on this bowl. “I hear and...
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Jun 8 2010 - 8:33pm
Ari Daniel Shapiro is joined for this episode of The Podcast of Life by science contributor Josh Kurz, who tells the story of dinoflagellates through "music from the bottom of the food chain." There are "billions of these microscopic creatures in every bucket of the salty sea," Kurz reveals. Learn...
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May 5 2011 - 10:43am
Is the ocean your muse? Send us your poems that celebrate the Big Blue.
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Mar 22 2011 - 10:18am
A still from The Coral Gardener, part of the 19th Annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital. The film is about Austin Bowden-Kerby, a man who gardens corals to help rebuild reefs.
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
During whale hunts, this carved whale box stored harpoon blades like the three shown beside it. "Living" inside the box was meant to give the blades spiritual powers to carry a harpoon back to the blade's "home" in the whale.
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May 25 2012 - 12:55pm
Three dancers demonstrate the food web in the production Ocean, which blends dance with scientist interviews, facts, and ocean photography. The choreographer, Fran Spector Atkins, hopes dance will help her message of ocean conservation reach more people. "With words, people just tune out after a...
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Mar 22 2011 - 10:24am
A still from Journey of the Universe, part of the 19th Annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital.
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Sep 15 2011 - 12:05pm
Marine debris damages habitat, entangles wildlife, helps transport invasive species, and harms marine animals that mistakenly ingest the trash thinking it is food.
As part of the Smithsonian's Art's and Science program, the museum hosted "DYOB: Design Your Own Bag." The program aimed to...
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Jun 21 2011 - 12:37pm
“While the shore-break at Makena Beach is notoriously dangerous and powerful, it also makes for some amazing images. On this particular morning I convinced my brother, Forrest, to ride a couple of waves on his boogie board just as the sun came over the crest of Haleakala. Shooting barreling shore-...
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Aug 20 2010 - 1:47pm
Crocheted corals from the Smithsonian Community Reef group on Flickr. The community reef project is a satellite reef of the Institute For Figuring’s Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef exhibition, was on display in Sant Ocean Hall from October 16th, 2010 through April 24th, 2011.
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Jul 23 2010 - 4:55pm
This painting of swarthy buccaneers in the midst of a fierce battle was painted by the prolific American marine painter Frederick J. Waugh, and won an award in 1910. The New York Times wrote: “The Thomas B. Clarke prize for the best American figure composition painted in the United States by an...
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Mar 18 2011 - 1:03pm
A still from The Changing Sea, part of the 19th Annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital.
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