Working at the Cal Academy, I have spent a good amount of time in our aquarium, particularly our main setpiece, the giant Philippines coral tank. I must admit I have wondered if the sheer diversity and density of life in our tank actually represents what you would encounter here in the Philippines. Having done several dives …
As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve got a really neat makeshift lab that we’ve set up in the dining area of the Atlantis Beach Resort. I did a little walk through and spotted these cool specimens that were recently collected. Kelly Markello was working on this beautiful echinoderm. It appears to be leeching …
I'm excited to finally be able to share the news about a new podcast I will be co-producing called "Object Oriented: Digital Learning in Collections-based Museums." I am honored to be co-hosting the podcast along with my friends Barry Joseph, head of digital learning at the American Museum of Natural History, and Eve Gaus, head …
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on a snorkeling dive with Rich Mooi, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Cal Academy. Dr. Mooi is one of the principal investigators of the expedition and an expert on marine invertebrates, particularly sea urchin. He’s also an amazing illustrator and science educator. So really a triple threat! …
We’ve arrived! After about 20 hours of flights from San Francisco to Honolulu to Guam to Manila, an overnight stay in Manila, a three hour ride in a van, and a one hour boat ride, we finally arrived at the Atlantis Dive Resort in Puerto Galera yesterday afternoon (Tuesday, April 7). I have not spent much …
I’m off to the airport, but before I go I wanted to give you alls an easy way to follow along on the progress of our researchers and outreach team in the Philippines. We’ll be tweeting using the hashtag #casfieldnotes. There’s already a bunch of really interesting tweets posted by our researchers who are there …
The Hyperlapse app seems pretty cool. But the latest iOS already includes a timelapse function in the camera. So what’s the big deal? A lot, apparently, as you can see from comparing the two videos of the same subject that I shot with the iOS timelapse function and Hyperlapse, respectively. In this case, I chose to …
[crossposted from the "Academy Adventures" blog] Hi Folks! Rik Panganiban here, senior manager of Digital Learning at the Academy. I’m super excited to announce that, beginning on April 5, I will be participating in the 2015 Philippines Verde Island Passage (VIP) expedition, along with 40 or so other scientists and other experts from the Cal …
Hi Folks! Rik Panganiban here, senior manager of Digital Learning at the Academy. I’m super excited to announce that, beginning on April 5, I will be participating in the 2015 Philippines Verde Island Passage (VIP) expedition, along with 40 or so other scientists and other experts from the Cal Academy and other science institutions in the United States and …
A few weeks ago, the Academy's Digitization Team scanned some tiny objects for myself and our TechTeens, using our awesome Gigamacro camera "Maggie." Of course, they have lots more work on their plate starting to produce high resolution images of our 45 million specimens and providing images for our upcoming "Color of Life" exhibit. Check …