Octopus's Garden

Everyone's had their say on the weather, so I'll just say that I spent most of Wednesday with the Beatles' song, "Octopus's Garden" stuck in my head. It would have been much nicer to spend that day underwater!

I spent some time looking for a youtube video of Octopus's Garden to share, but I didn't find anything shareworthy. However, one thing always leads to another on youtube, and I did find a gorgeous little octopus short that I can't resist sharing. (Full disclosure -- before I switched to marine affairs, I acquired an undergrad degree in Russian & Eastern European Studies, with a thesis on the animated works of on Yuri Norstein, and I still have a severe weakness for animated shorts.) Also, if you missed it when we tweeted this link a few weeks back, Ross Anderson wrote an awesome piece about meeting a Giant Pacific Octopus at the Seattle Aquarium last summer.

Home life

If you're curious what's it like, living on Puget Sound's southern-most island, then this is the news story for you. On a different track, how far would you have to go to live a life completely chemical free? This California woman had to go pretty far... (Of course, people travel for many different reasons. Down in Oregon, the Salmon Stewardship Summit is bringing together teens from Sakhalin Island, in the Russian Far East, and Oregon. )

We caught word of a new website launched this week -- Northwest Hub promises to be "your source for land use, environmental news and real estate news" and looks like they're off to a good start. Perhaps they'll be writing about shoreline master planning, which is happening all over these days. News site pnwlocalnews.com has a piece on a recent public meeting discussing management strategies in Island County.

Eye Candy

If you're a photo fan in general, there are lots of photoblogs, which I am keenly watching for when they provide that gorgeous water shot. There've been quite a few this week. For instance, Seattle Daily Photo snapped this "Seattle Summer Sunrise" this week and followed it up with a "Sunset Hill Summer Sunset"  Sequim Daily Photo reposted some aerial shots of the John Wayne Marina.  I'm fascinated by some of the shapes that breakwaters come in; this one obviously involved adding a lot of rock out there. San Juan Island Daily Photo Blog was just full of shoreline shots this week; my favorite is "Even The Dentist Has a View."

This week's header photo is thanks to flickr user dierken and the creative commons.