In this Science on the SPOT: Preserving the Forest of the Sea, watch Kathy Ann Miller, PhD, curator of the University Herbarium at the University of California - Berkeley, as she shares the wide variety of seaweeds in the collection.

We love when someone gives a personalized video tour of their work, especially when it mixes nature, science and beautiful, art-like specimens all together. Kathy and her team are digitizing samples of 80,000 kinds of seaweed collected from the North American west coast, so that they can be shared online with researchers from around the globe. You can read more about the project here.

PS. Need a DNA primer? Watch this vid.

From KQEDscience

The naked mole rat is a fascinating creature, as introduced by Sir David Attenborough in Natural Curiosities. Not only are they mostly hairless, underground dwellers with a long lifespan for a rodent — 32 years! — but they organize their large groups based on a eusocial structure, like that of ants and bees. From wikipedia: 

Only one female (the queen) and one to three males reproduce, while the rest of the members of the colony function as workers. The queen and breeding males are able to breed at one year of age. Workers are sterile, with the smaller focusing on gathering food and maintaining the nest, while larger workers are more reactive in case of attack.

Arguably, the Damaraland mole rat (Cryptomys damarensis) is the only other eusocial mammal currently known.

Dr Chris Faulkes explains more about the naked mole rat in this behind the scenes collection of clips:

What does it look like underneath a lake covered with Antarctic ice? McGill University doctoral student and scientific diver Michael Becker shares the view in this New York Times video under Lake Untersee, Antarctica.

In the blog post, he also explains the prep behind keeping the dive safe — note that yellow tether that keeps divers in communication with their team and leads them back to safety — and what they are looking for in the lake sediment: precisely described data and carefully collected samples that help illuminate the history of the lake and its organisms. Brrrrr.

from Scientist at Work.

From the BBC’s The Secret Life of Ice, an experiment for the DIY files:

Dr Gabrielle Walker and Dr Andrea Sella investigate the molecular make up of ice crystals. They use supercooled water to create a mass of ice crystals instantly and discover why water expands as it freezes into ice.

Watch more BBC videos in the archives.

From KQED Quest, the challenges and new research being explored by marine biologists that breed, collect and care for jellyfish and siphonophores at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.

Learn more about the diverse family tree of jelly-like creatures in this beautiful HD video from the Aquarium’s Research Institute, or watch more about marine biology.