Heather Spence, Marine Biologist

The Readers Digest August 2011 issue has an excellent article “What Drowning Really Looks Like: It’s not the flailing, wailing, glug-glug drama of Baywatch. Here’s how to prevent the No.1 water danger”

Taking information from mariovittone.com and other sources, they highlight the 8 QUIET signs of a person in trouble – after an introductory story – both of which I will reproduce here:

~

The captain of the new sport-fishing boat jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and started swimming fast toward the boat’s owners in the water. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other, and she had screamed, but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sandbar. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off. But the captain kept swimming hard.

“Move!” he barked.
Not ten feet away, the couple’s nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Once she was safely above the surface and in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears. “Daddy!”

How did this captain know from 50 feet away what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? The captain was trained by experts and years of experience to recognize drowning. The father learned by watching television. But drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect, says water safety expert Frank Pia, PhD. It’s almost always a quiet event.
Drowning is the second-most common cause of accidental death in children ages 1 to 14 (just behind motor vehicle accidents). In a 2004 study by a national safety group, 90 percent of children who drowned did so while under the care of an adult or a teenager. In many cases, the study suggests, that person had a momentary lapse of attention. But the fact is that often those watching don’t know what to look for – because drowning doesn’t look like drowning.
To ward off a tragedy in the making, watch for the signs detailed [below].

1. Sometimes the most important indicator that someone is drowning is that she doesn’t look like she’s drowning. She may just seem to be looking up at the sky, shore, pool deck, or dock. Ask her, “Are you all right?” If she can answer at all, she probably is. If she returns a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to her.
2. A drowning person can’t call for help—she has to be able to breathe before she can speak. When a person is drowning, her mouth sinks below and reappears above the surface of the water. There isn’t time for her to exhale, inhale, and call out.
3. She can’t wave for help either. A drowning person instinctively extends her arms to the sides and presses down to lift her mouth out of the water; a child may extend her arms forward. She can’t use her arms to move toward a rescuer or reach for rescue equipment.
4. A drowning person remains upright in the water, with no evidence of kicking. She can struggle for only 20 to 60 seconds before going under.
5. Head is low in the water, with mouth at water level; head may be tilted back with mouth open. A child’s head may fall forward.
6. Eyes are glassy, unable to focus, or closed.
7. Hair may be over forehead or eyes.
8. Children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you need to get to them and find out why.

The Fourth Annual Whale Shark Festival will be held in Isla Mujeres this month (main events July 15-17), bringing together scientists and others from around the world to compare notes and celebrate the world’s largest fish, and the richness of the waters off the Yucatan Peninsula that attract the world’s largest aggregations of these polka-dotted gentle giants.

Scientific presentations will be given on Saturday July 16, including “Learning by Listening: Passive Acoustic Monitoring in the Mexican Caribbean” by Heather Spence, presented by Rafael de la Parra (Proyecto Domino).

For a full schedule of events (mostly free!), go to the whale shark festival webpage

And for more info about events on and around World Listening Day (July 18) go to the World Listening Project webpage

The show is called “Chundereke” – a parallel universe where everything is fun and very easy to do

Sunday, June 12 in Playa del Carmen at 5pm
Teatro del Arbol

A show for the whole family, with magic, live music, dance, clowns, storytelling, circus arts, more…

and yours truly on cello

Monday, June 13 at 7pm in Parque Las Palapas, the state orchestra of Quintana Roo will perform a free concert

On Sunday there will be a performance in Playa del Carmen, and Tuesday in Chetumal

The 2011 Blue Vision Summit is May 20-23, held by the Blue Frontier Campaign at George Washington University. Celebrating the oceans, sharing results and sucesses, networking with other ocean advocates from around the nation – it promises to be a very powerful event culminating in Capitol Hill Ocean Day. For more information, see the summit website.

This Saturday promises to be a lot of fun and a lot of gambas. We will be performing a piece I wrote in memory of Dominik Zuchowicz, a renowned viol maker and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Hope to see you Saturday, May 14, 4pm, at The Lutheran Church of Our Saviour’s Atonement, 178 Bennett Avenue (at 189th St.), New York, NY 10040-3830

Oysters are awesome animals, and not just for their ability to make pearls. These bivalve molluscs also are filter feeders, keeping nitrogen and algae in check.

What do you call a group of oysters? A bed, or oyster reef. Oyster beds provide important complex habitat for other critters, including snapping shrimp!

At 8:30pm (your time, wherever you are) on Saturday, March 26, 2011, turn off the lights and leave them off for an hour.

This is a worldwide effort, to raise awareness of sustainability issues (including excessive electricity use and light pollution) and appreciation for our planet.

For more information, go to www.earthhour.org the official page of Earth Hour

And, also, www.darksky.org the page for the IDA the International Dark-Sky Association

Slides from my Animal Behavior class presentation yesterday:

Click here for PDF – Animal Behavior Presentation on Honest Signals

.

bunnies illustrate honest signal concept

The first sounds from the Ecological Acoustic Recorder have successfully been recorded and retrieved. This is the first acoustic monitoring data from the region, and we are excited to listen to them.

Last September, when we deployed the EAR off the coast of Isla Contoy, it looked like this:

EAR, the day of deployment, September 19, 2010

When we retrieved the EAR, after four months of deployment, it looked like this:

EAR, the day of retrieval, Jan 18, 2011

We brought it back to the lab, disassembled it, retrieved the data, reset the recorder and put it back together.

Three days later, we put it back in the water:

Jan 21, 2011, EAR in boat immediately before redeployment.

Thank you to all the groups who have contributed to this project, including:

Michelle’s Earth Foundation, Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas, Project Domino, Universidad del Caribe, Oceanwide Science Institute, University of North Carolina, Asterisk tours, Obi Kue tours

Photo credits: Rafael de la Parra