Oct 30, 2021 07:45 PM
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science/t...180978954/
INTRO: From a boiling river in the Peruvian Amazon to the blood-red Lake Natron in Tanzania, bodies of water on Earth—and beyond—can be odd, disgusting, mysterious, frightening, deadly and even a little spooky. TikTok creator Geo Rutherford (@geodesaurus) has been highlighting haunted hydrology—everything from dangerously acidic waters to alien-like extremophile life forms—each day of October in her 31-day “Spooky Lakes” series.
The daughter of a geologist, Rutherford is a Wisconsin-based artist and professor whose large-scale mixed media projects focus on the Great Lakes, often exploring pollution, erosion and climate change through natural and synthetic materials she’s found on the shores of Lake Michigan. She began sharing her artwork—reimagined artist “books” featuring sea glass, plastics and fish bones, for example—on TikTok in spring 2020, and as she gained more followers, curious commenters wanted more information about the science and history she explored in her art.
“Because of my passion for the Great Lakes,” Rutherford says, “I began to explore other lakes and I kind of became a hobby limnologist.” A limnologist is a scientist who studies the biological, chemical and physical features of inland aquatic systems, including lakes, rivers, springs and wetlands. “Being a hobbyist means that I still have that spark of excitement when I learn new things,” she adds. “I spend a lot of time teaching myself so that I can teach others. I think that the best teachers are students themselves.”
The first “spooky lake” featured on her account in the buildup to Halloween last year was Kazakhstan's neon blue-green Kaindy Lake, which contains 110-year-old trees that appear dead above the surface, but resist decomposition even though they are partially submerged underwater. The video has more than 700,000 likes, and Rutherford now has a million followers on her page. In her Spooky Lake series alone, she’s featured at least 60 lakes, with many more informational videos throughout the year. (She hopes to pivot to icy lakes this winter.)
Just in time for Halloween, here are six more lakes and other kinds of haunted hydrology featured in Rutherford’s series... (MORE - details)
COVERED: Tanzania’s Lake Natron .... Lake Superior's Kamloops Shipwreck .... Shanay-Timpishka, Peru's Boiling River .... ‘Explosive’ Lake Kivu, bordering Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo .... California's Salton Sea .... Blood Falls in Antarctica
INTRO: From a boiling river in the Peruvian Amazon to the blood-red Lake Natron in Tanzania, bodies of water on Earth—and beyond—can be odd, disgusting, mysterious, frightening, deadly and even a little spooky. TikTok creator Geo Rutherford (@geodesaurus) has been highlighting haunted hydrology—everything from dangerously acidic waters to alien-like extremophile life forms—each day of October in her 31-day “Spooky Lakes” series.
The daughter of a geologist, Rutherford is a Wisconsin-based artist and professor whose large-scale mixed media projects focus on the Great Lakes, often exploring pollution, erosion and climate change through natural and synthetic materials she’s found on the shores of Lake Michigan. She began sharing her artwork—reimagined artist “books” featuring sea glass, plastics and fish bones, for example—on TikTok in spring 2020, and as she gained more followers, curious commenters wanted more information about the science and history she explored in her art.
“Because of my passion for the Great Lakes,” Rutherford says, “I began to explore other lakes and I kind of became a hobby limnologist.” A limnologist is a scientist who studies the biological, chemical and physical features of inland aquatic systems, including lakes, rivers, springs and wetlands. “Being a hobbyist means that I still have that spark of excitement when I learn new things,” she adds. “I spend a lot of time teaching myself so that I can teach others. I think that the best teachers are students themselves.”
The first “spooky lake” featured on her account in the buildup to Halloween last year was Kazakhstan's neon blue-green Kaindy Lake, which contains 110-year-old trees that appear dead above the surface, but resist decomposition even though they are partially submerged underwater. The video has more than 700,000 likes, and Rutherford now has a million followers on her page. In her Spooky Lake series alone, she’s featured at least 60 lakes, with many more informational videos throughout the year. (She hopes to pivot to icy lakes this winter.)
Just in time for Halloween, here are six more lakes and other kinds of haunted hydrology featured in Rutherford’s series... (MORE - details)
COVERED: Tanzania’s Lake Natron .... Lake Superior's Kamloops Shipwreck .... Shanay-Timpishka, Peru's Boiling River .... ‘Explosive’ Lake Kivu, bordering Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo .... California's Salton Sea .... Blood Falls in Antarctica