Saturday saw the departure of the Volvo Ocean Race for Marstrand, Sweden after two fantastic weeks in Galway. Estimates as to the total attendance vary from 420,000 to 600,000 during the course of the stopover, far exceeding the original expectations of 140,000. The success of the event seems to have surprised everyone (and may have had something to do with the brilliant weather we’ve had) and the Chinese-Irish entry has certainly stepped up in terms of race showing since.
The fleet blasted out of Galway Bay on Saturday, and we duly followed, see the gallery below – some shots are from the in port race the previous week and some are from the fleet departure (the RIB got some great use over the two weeks). Green Dragon appeared to take the lead initially, but later conceded first place to Ericsson 4. Click on the photos to embiggen….
As of today, according to the Ocean Race website, Ericsson 4 and Green Dragon are fighting for the lead, while the Telefonica twins, Delta Lloyd and Ericsson 3 have wriggled clear of a low pressure system with PUMA steaming in from the west.
9,000-year-old brew hitting the shelves this summer
This summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world’s oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago—long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia.
University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Northern China. Soon after, McGovern called on Sam Calagione at the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., to do the ancient recipe justice. Later this month, you can give it a try when a new batch hits shelves across the country. The Beer Babe blog was impressed, writing that it is “very smooth,” and “not overly sweet.”
If any of our American friends would like to gift us a six pack or two or three, we’d happily try it out.
Continuing in a marine theme, our source in the Marine Institute has tipped us off to the following excellent links….
First – Here’s the singing humpbacks of West Cork. The YouTube clip below has been edited – the whale sounds aren’t live. Via the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) and recorded by Eugene McKeown of Biospherics Engineering, ‘this is the first recording of “singing” humpbacks in Irish waters and is without precedent in any inshore European waters. This is an important discovery as conventional wisdom is that only the male humpbacks sing, and only when in tropical breeding grounds, when they use these vocalisations to attract females.’
And from the EC Europe’s Aquariums, here’s AquaRing: an ‘innovative semantic demonstration portal for digital content on the aquatic world.’
‘Its content is provided by Europe’s aquariums, natural history museums and science centres. The goal of this online resource, co-funded by the European Commission, is to allow access to a wealth of multimedia digital material and documents, with a particular focus on sustainable use of the world’s oceans. The portal makes use of innovative, multilingual semantic web technology to facilitate intuitive access.’
Meanwhile Europe’s Atlas of the Sea Research Programme has made a significant contribution to a new Google tool that allows Internet users to explore the underwater world:
‘The European Commission provided material from its own ocean mapping efforts to Google Ocean, which charts the world’s seas. The data on European coastal and sea regions, which can be seen on Google Ocean, comes from the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODN), a project that maps ocean floors in European waters.
Google Ocean is a tool which is in line with our own objectives of making marine knowledge more accessible to the interested or concerned citizen as well as other stakeholders,” said Joe Borg, the commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, at Google Ocean’s launch on 2 February. “All of us will be able to understand and appreciate more the wonderful yet fragile marine world that surrounds us.” ‘
Google Ocean will show over 8,200 video clips about marine life, as well as providing scientific data on ocean temperatures and chlorophyll levels in the water.
A copy of the Atlas (~7Mb) can be downloaded from:
Further to Martin’s comment below have had a look and can’t find the atlas – will look again and if we can find it will put the correct link up – if anyone else can find same please leave link in comments…
