We really are.

THE oceans of the world are covered in mysterious "stripes", scientists have discovered.

Oceanographers have uncovered a regular pattern of currents imprinted on every sea on the planet. It is the first time the strange phenomenon has been spotted after researchers collected data from a global network of 3,000 free-floating buoys that measure the temperature and salinity of the oceans and are tracked by satellites. . .

The scientists found the 93 mile-wide bands covered almost every ocean basin. They recorded the striations flowing in opposite directions at about 0.022 mph, says the study published in Geophysical Research Letters. This is slower than most known currents – which is possibly why they have remained hidden until now.

The researchers also found the striations extend below the surface to a few hundred metres and the eastward bands are slightly hotter than westward ones. This could turn out to play a role in the circulation of nutrients.

Ya think?

Mystery 2

While the recent Arctic summer was the warmest on record satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the largest sea-ice extent ever recorded. . . Warming is a lot less global when you get south of Chile, it seems.

And there's the coccolithophore discoveries that were mentioned earlier.

Ocean water today is somewhat alkaline, at 8.1, down from 8.2 at the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago.

The laboratory findings agree with what has been observed in the oceans. Over the past 220 years, the average mass of a coccolithophore increased 40 percent as ocean pH levels dropped.

More acid oceans - actually, less alkaline, but acid ocean sounds more frightening - turn out to be good for building "single-cell, carbonate-encased algae that are a major link in the ocean food chain" since when levels of carbon dioxide in the water rise — speeding up the algae’s photosynthesis machinery — as well as levels of bicarbonate ions - the building material for the carbonate disks - coccolithophores are fat and happy.

Lot's of discoveries lately, and many of them refute things we already knew that weren't so. All told, it's not all told. We are just eggs.