1. States are requiring insurance companies to plan for climate change. (Grist)
2. Nissan is shipping it’s electric cars on a low-emission, solar-diesel ship. (Clean Technica)
3. A special powder will soon be able to turn your grass clippings into solar cells. (Future of Technology)
4. The worst spate of stranded dolphins in a decade on Cape Cod baffle scientists. (Guardian)
5. After 20 years, Russian drill nears 14-million-year-old Antarctic lake. (Wired)

1. New app will let you monitor home energy use, turn devices off remotely. (TreeHugger)
2. Birds are flying faster because of climate change, but will it last? (Discovery News)
3. Climate change may make lizards smarter, if they don’t go extinct. (Mongabay)
4. A newly discovered lemur climbs out of hiding in Madagascar. (msnbc)
5. Tourists found a “white,” albino-like penguin in Antarctica. (National Geographic)

1. A new oil spill may have released 40,000 barrels of crude. (Guardian)
2. VIDEO: Watch the last release of tiny penguins rescued from the New Zealand oil spill. (Huffington Post Green)
3. Newly developed ‘solar paint’ could provide power for homes. (TG Daily)
4. Last seen in 1976, new evidence suggests Javan tigers may not be extinct. (TreeHugger)
5. A 300 year-old mystery about elephants may have finally been solved. (BBC)

1. New species of frog sings like a… bird? (Mongabay)
2. The lungfish suggests walking originated underwater. (Science World)
3. Scientists are learning how to kill trees — in the name of science, of course. (Green)
4. 16% of the species in “Finding Nemo” face the threat of extinction. (Washington Post)
5. Solar energy gives students in developing countries access to technology. (TreeHugger)

Note: the following post is the latest in a series chronicling the ongoing expedition to the Raja Ampat Islands. Read more here.

Today we’re at Daram Island, located in the southeast corner of the Misool MPA — about as remote as you can get in Indonesia. We’re anchored off a small island smothered in tropical rainforest all the way down to a perfectly white sandy beach.

During the day we listen to the calls of tropical birds, which give way to the cries of bats in the evening. And yet, I can hear the strains of Bollywood music coming from a crew member’s mobile phone — strangely surreal!

Working in remote places is both wonderful and challenging, and it requires a lot of preparation. We have to bring lots of spares of everything we need. Often, people are curious as to what we need in order to work in places like Raja Ampat. To stay underwater for an hour and record all our observations, we require fairly simple — albeit specialized — gear. And some of the items we take along on expeditions like this may surprise you…

Three times a day, we load our equipment onto speedboats and head out to the sites we’ve chosen to survey. To find those sites, we use GPS units — small handheld devices not much bigger than a mobile phone. Once we’ve reached a site, we get into our wetsuits and SCUBA gear. We have enough air to stay underwater for about 60 minutes, so we have to work quickly to collect all our data! We collect data over a defined area that we measure out using five 50m tapes laid out on the reef.

While underwater laptops haven’t yet been invented (I’m sure that’s not far away!), we do use wrist-mounted dive computers that calculate safe dive times based on how deep and how long we’ve been diving.

We use underwater paper — plastic-coated paper we can write on with a normal pencil — to record our observations of fish or corals. The paper, pencils and anything else we need are firmly strapped or tied to our slates, because dropping something underwater means you may never find it again!

And, of course, we always dive with our cameras — safe and dry in underwater housings — so we can document this fabulous underwater world.

There are also a few somewhat odd things we can’t live without:

• Innertubes: Taken from car tires. Turns out, these are the best “rubber bands” for keeping our papers attached to the slates.
• Dive hoods: While we’re only a couple degrees south of the equator and the water temperature is 30°C (86°F), we still get cold because we spend around three hours a day underwater.
• Toothpaste: Not just for brushing our teeth! Toothpaste is great for cleaning the insides of our face masks, and stops them from fogging up.

Explore further coverage of this expedition on nature.org and learn more about the Conservancy’s involvement in the game-changing Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security.

(First image: Community monitoring assistant Naftali gets ready to dive into a site. First image credit: TNC. Second image: Community monitoring assistant Ali takes note of a sea cucumber on his slate. Second image credit: TNC.)

1. The Green Sports Alliance encourages teams to clean up their acts. (Grist)
2. Marines at Camp Smith, Hawaii, cut down on landfill by turning trash into ash. (Popular Science)
3. How many mobile-phone apps does it take to change a light bulb? (Green)
4. Time lapse video takes you on a glorious ride around Earth. (Mashable Tech)
5. Done right, bicycle ‘sharrows’ can point the way to the future. (Grist)

1. Alaska Airlines now offers cooking-oil-fueled cross-country flights.  (EcoGeek)
2. A new report reveals an unexpected threat to some marine life: king crabs.  (Mongabay)
3. Space lasers!  Clean energy!  (CleanTechnica)
4. Here’s another “off-the-grid” dispatch from our scientist Craig Leisher’s family.  (Green)
5. More recycling=more jobs.  (Green House)

1. When it comes to climate change, do your eco-friendly choices really make a difference?  (Grist)
2. So now maybe marine reserves don’t promote coral recovery, according to a controversial new report.  (Mongabay)
3. For the first time in 75 years, an entire genus of mammal may go extinct.  (National Geographic)
4. As the population gets older, carbon emissions may subside a bit…maybe, says a new study.  (Green House)
5. Facebook’s adding solar panels to its new headquarters.  Like!  (EcoGeek)

1. A new solar-powered webcam on Mount Everest monitors climate change at 18-thousand feet. (TreeHugger)
2. Popular Mechanics magazine unveils their seventh-annual Breakthrough Award recipients. And the winners are… (Mother Nature Network)
3. Electric-vehicle drivers unite this Sunday, October 16, for the first National Plug-In Day. (Green Car Reports)
4. Fact or fiction? Yeti conference reveals with 95 percent certainty that Bigfoot exists. (Mongabay)
5. Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, hope to find their likeness on sustainable merchandise at the London 2012 games. (Guardian)

1. Fish exposed to the Gulf oil spill have undergone cellular changes, could have lasting damage. (Washington Post)
2. Be on the lookout tonight for the “dark” supermoon. (National Geographic)
3. The Cincinnati Zoo is now getting its power for pennies, and you could too. (Clean Technica)
4. Birds caught in fishing lines are dying by the thousands. (TreeHugger)
5. Oxford University says the red squirrel could be extinct in the next 20 years. (Guardian)