Show Date: March 15, 2006 
Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

JIMMY HALL GOES A’ SWIMMIN’ WITH THE SHARKS
AND
SEEING MARS

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond. Join us each week on Newstalk K57 on Wednesday night from 7 to 8 p.m. for exciting live science expeditions or listen live on our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com

The Deep has had several shows about the horrible waste of shark finning. About a year ago, there were several shark attacks in the news and we did a show that featured those attacks and put them in context. The article that appeared the Marianas Variety was titled, “Is it “SHARK BITES MAN” or “MAN BITES SHARK”?

In 2004, sharks killed seven people worldwide and last year’s article ended with these words.
So, sharks killed seven people last year. And how many sharks did we kill? Around 50 million. Not much of a contest is it? And, by the way, just what is the most deadly animal as far as killing people and causing human deaths? Oh, that’s easy. The mosquito is directly responsible for killing at least 2 million people a year. So, which are you more afraid of, the mosquito or the shark? My vote is with the mosquito!

Well, it turns out that I’m not the only person that isn’t afraid of sharks. This week on The Deep, we’ll be talking to Jimmy Hall, a tour guide operator in Hawaii. In December of last year, the people on his tour saw what they first took to be a humpback whale. Then they realized it wasn’t a whale at all, but a great white shark. Jimmy Hall left the shark cage attached to the boat and began to swim with and photograph the 17-foot long female shark.

We’ll be talking to Jimmy about his incredible experience this week. And even though I’m said I’m more afraid of the mosquito than sharks, I’m still not sure I’d want to get in the water with a great white! It will be an astounding show. Don’t miss it!

Despite the news concerning the undisputed discovery of liquid water inside Saturn’s moon Enceladus, our best hope for a new world to colonize remains the planet Mars. And Mars made news this week too. The most advanced and sophisticated orbiter ever sent to another planet has successfully put on the brakes and gone into orbit around Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a multipurpose mission that will eventually orbit Mars only 160 to 200 hundred miles above its surface. This extremely low orbit (by Earth standards) will enable the hi-res camera onboard to take pictures with unprecedented detail. It will be able to resolve Martian features as small as a card table. But the hi-res camera is only the beginning. The MRO will go into a polar orbit that will allow it to be a weather satellite that sends daily reports to Earth about water vapor, dust, clouds, dust devils and all the other features of weather on Mars. The orbiter also carries a spectrometer that will allow it to analyze the composition of surface rocks and it has radar that will probe beneath the Martian surface to see if water ice is present at depths greater than one meter. The prime mission of MRO is to search for water.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Join us this week on The Deep as we talk about sharks and another of our incredible space-exploring robots. Don’t miss it! The Deep is broadcast on Newstalk K57 every Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. You can also listen live from our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com. Join Jim Sullivan, Pam Eastlick, and Peter Melyan on the deepest radio show on Earth.