1st Hampton Beach Christmas Tree Lighting on Saturday
December 7, 2007
The event will be hosted by the Hampton Beach Village Precinct. “We thought it was a shame that the downtown gets decorated and the beach is usually forgotten during the winter,” said organizer June White.
The Christmas Tree, located at Patriot’s Corner off Ocean Boulevard and the former P Street, was donated by Owen Caster.
The public is invited to help decorate the tree with personalized Christmas balls for a $2 donation. Ornaments are available at the Coffee Break Café, which will be open that day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
High Tech Tagging of White Sharks Off California Coast
December 3, 2007
Advances in electronics, digital and materials technology have now made it possible to embed a new generation of rugged and more sophisticated electronic tags for tagging white sharks. A sophisticated microcomputer is embedded in each $3,500 battery-powered tag. The embedded computer records water depth, temperature and ambient light approximately every 15 seconds. The tags are designed to pop off the shark months later and float to the surface. Once on the surface, the tags can transmit some of their data to a polar-orbiting satellite once it gets a fix on the location of the tag.
The tags are attached near the base of the dorsal fin of the white shark by using a 10-foot tagging pole with a dart that punctures the shark’s skin. These electronic tags are in regular communication with a polar-orbiting satellite.
At the time of publication of the article, approximately 100 white sharks had been tagged by marine scientists. One of the interesting findings of the tagging study so far is that white sharks spend their early years feeding on fish along the coasts of Southern California and Baja, then move north to areas north and south of San Francisco, where as adults they prey on seals and sea lions.
Check out this well written article for a lot more information on the shark tagging program.
