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22nd Oct, 2007: Two teachers rewarded with underwater field trip

Imagine taking an underwater journey a mile deep to the Pacific Ocean's floor, surrounded only by darkness and the occasional jellyfish, sea anemone or octopus flashing by the window.

Two Northeast Georgia high school teachers took that trip last month when they joined a University of Georgia professor studying hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor using the famous research submarine, Alvin.

Through daily blogs and e-mail, the teachers were able to bring their classrooms along with them, turning their trip into an oceanography and physics lesson students could never get out of a textbook.

"It's the dream of a lifetime," Oconee County High School oceanography teacher and avid scuba diver Vicki Soutar said. "It just takes on a whole new meaning when you can tell (students) first-hand what it's like to do something like this."

Joining Soutar was Jackson County High School physics teacher Ron Prescott, who said the three-week trip was "one of the most incredible experiences of my life."

The teachers were selected to assist University of Georgia marine science professor Daniela Di Iorio to study hydrothermal vents located in the Juan de Fuca Ridge about 300 miles off the coast of Washington. The vents - first discovered using Alvin in the 1970s - are created when water seeps beneath the Earth's crust, where it is heated by magma and then blown back into the ocean like an underwater geyser.

By heating the water around it, the vents make life possible for sea animals that never could survive so near the cold ocean floor.

Di Iorio received a grant three years ago to design equipment to measure the heat flow from the hydrothermal vents, and she recruits high school teachers to assist her to promote oceanographic research and education.

After two years of designing and testing the equipment, Di Iorio placed the devices about 6,000 feet deep in the Pacific in August. Last month, she returned to the site to inspect the equipment with the crew of the research ship Atlantis and its sub, Alvin.

Soutar and Prescott went along for the ride, joining Di Iorio and the 46-member crew of the Atlantis for three weeks in the Pacific.

Both teachers kept a daily blog on a Web site, often posing the same questions to students that scientists were using in their research.

"There were a lot of different ways to learn from this, from the kind of chemistry that goes on, to the biology and physical forces involved and studying the effects of pressure and the makeup of sea water," Soutar said. They also brought their students shrunken cups, a popular souvenir from Alvin's deeper dives.

Before the trip, students decorated and wrote their names on Styrofoam cups and sent them along with the teachers. The sub's crew places the cups in a mesh bag on top of the Alvin, which then descends thousands of feet. When the sub returns to the surface, the cups are squashed to about a quarter of their former size. It's a dramatic example of the extreme pressures experienced under a mile of water.

The teachers also made videos for their class talking to crewmen and researchers about their work and how they found jobs and careers in science.

"We give them the opportunity to be there as research scientists, and they've done an excellent job of making use of what they learned and implementing it in their classrooms," Di Iorio said. But the highlight for both Prescott and Soutar were the dives.

Both got to spend several hours in Alvin and experience life almost a mile below the ocean's surface. The sub has achieved worldwide fame in a 44-year career that included the discovery of wreckage of the sunken liner Titanic in 1986.

Alvin has room for only three people packed into a tight glass sphere loaded with electronics. Soutar said it was more like being on a space ship on a different planet, as the sub moved around in total darkness, its lights occasionally picking up jellyfish and bacteria floating past outside.

"You see creatures that other people will never have the chance to see," Prescott said. "There are bioluminaries near the bottom, an octopus latched on to some of our equipment, and you see rattail fish, sea cucumbers, anemones and jellyfish and spider crabs."

The grant paid for each teacher's travel and paid the school districts for substitute fees while they were out of the classroom for three weeks.

Di Iorio's project will continue for two more years, and she plans two more trips to the Pacific in July and August of next year before publishing the results of her data.

18th Oct, 2007: Awestruck by close encounter!

Dominion Post
JUST VISITING: A 12-metre southern right whale has been cruising Wellington's coastline since Sunday.

By JENNY LING - When Lyall Bay resident Kevan Anderton heard there was a 12-metre whale in nearby waters he didn't hesitate. Tossing aside ideas of work, the film technician grabbed his kayak, snorkelling gear and camera.

"I looked out and saw it and pulled my wetsuit straight on instead of going to work." Mr Anderton spent up to an hour swimming with the southern right whale, which has graced Wellington's south coast since Sunday. It would disappear beneath the water's surface for several minutes before resurfacing, he said. "It didn't seem to notice I was there at all. It was pretty amazing."

There were several more sightings of the massive mammal on Tuesday. Sergeant Dave Houston said maritime police had received reports from two Lyall Bay residents concerned for people diving and swimming in the area. One cafe staff member said he had seen two or three whales about 400 metres from shore the same day.

The southern right was first spotted swimming between Island and Houghton bays on Sunday, drawing huge crowds. Among them was Ben Ashby, who got right up to the "big dark shape, covered in seaweed and barnacles," on his kayak. "It was a little scary but pretty cool."

But nature lovers should probably farewell the whale - Conservation Department Poneke area manager Rob Stone saying it will probably head to subantarctic waters to feed on its favourite food, krill, a small shellfish.
"I wouldn't expect it to hang around in Wellington for a long period of time - it's passing through. Source: www.stuff.co.nz

17th Oct, 2007: Deep Sea Jellyfish Juvenile Boxfish Zooplankton Juvenile Squid Courtesy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Scientists exploring a deep ocean basin in search of species isolated for millions of years found marine life believed to be previously undiscovered, including a tentacled orange worm and an unusual black jellyfish.

Project leader Dr. Larry Madin said Tuesday that U.S. and Philippine scientists collected about 100 different specimens in a search in the Celebes Sea south of the Philippines.

This small Benthocodon jelly has been found near sea mountains, some of which dwarf the Himalayas.

See more of these amazing Ocean discoveries "click here"

17th Oct, 2007: Seafood led Early Man to come out of his shell
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter: Ancient shells left in a cave 164,000 years ago suggest that a love of seafood and daytrips to the beach date back to the earliest days of mankind.

The discovery is so early in the history of Modern Man that the shellfish may mark the time when Homo sapiens first developed distinctive human behaviour.

Tools and a pigment associated with body painting were found with the shells in a cave at Pinnacle Point in South Africa and show that people were able to use their imaginations and would probably have spoken the first language 164,000 years ago.

“The ability to think symbolically is fundamental for language and many of the modern behaviours,” Professor Curtis Marean, of Arizona State University, said. It was “very likely” that the people living in South Africa were the ancestors of everyone today, he added.

The discovery of several species of shellfish in the cave puts back the date where mankind first treated the oceans as a larder by 40,000 years from 125,000 years ago.

Coastlines are recognised by scientists as likely migration routes and the discovery of how to exploit the shore for food would have been a factor in Man’s ability to colonise the rest of the world.

Researchers identified 15 types of marine creatures in the cave, which would have been about three miles from the coast when it was occupied. The remains of ancient fires indicate that the molluscs would have been cooked in their shells.The international team of researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Nature, said that it was likely that the transition to using beaches as a source of food was crucial to Man's survival. Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

15th Oct, 2007: Why we should all care about this bird
IAN JOHNSTON - ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
THE gannet was thought to be the one seabird immune to the food shortages which have caused devastation in colonies across Europe.

Its famed tendency to eat almost anything, its hunting ability and a foraging range of hundreds of miles supposedly safeguarded the gannet from the mass breeding failures affecting colonies of such birds as the puffin, guillemot and kittiwake.

Conservationists have watched live on monitoring cameras as kittiwake chicks starved to death because their parents have been unable to find enough food to sustain them.

But now, scientists have found the first signs that even gannets - which will eat anything from tiny sandeels to large mackerel - are struggling to find enough food for their young.

While problems at a puffin colony on St Kilda show there is a local food shortage, the discovery that gannets are starting to suffer suggests marine life is in trouble throughout the food chain and over a wide area of the sea.

Research using tracking devices has found the birds have been flying farther from their nests at the world's largest single gannet colony on Bass Rock, off the East Lothian coast, to find food, with some flying to Norway - a round trip of more than 600 miles.

They have also increased their flying speeds in an attempt to get back to nest sites in time to relieve their mates.

Dr Keith Hamer, of Leeds University, said a lack of food appeared to be forcing more adult birds to do what was previously almost unthinkable for a gannet: abandon their chicks on the nest.

"The received wisdom was they don't leave chicks unattended and, quite often, one adult would come in and you'd have both birds there together for a while," Dr Hamer said.

"What's happened quite recently is gannets have been extending their foraging and trip durations so the bird at sea is away so long that the bird on the nest has to leave.

"An unattended chick is quite vulnerable, particularly on the Bass Rock where there are lots of non-breeders looking for nest sites. If they can kill the chick, then they can get the nest site."

A nest is of central importance to gannets as almost all will keep to the same site with the same mate for life. A study on Bass Rock found that while the percentage of chicks left alone at any one time was less than five per cent, about 70 per cent of chicks were left unattended at some point during the 13 weeks from hatching to fledging.

Gannets are a protected species, although inhabitants of Ness on Lewis are allowed to kill up to 2,000 a year to make the traditional delicacy, "guga". The birds are still breeding successfully, but the increasing struggle for food suggests fundamental problems beneath the waves.

Dr Hamer said: "We haven't had any years of breeding failures for gannets, but we know they have been working much harder. It looks as though things are turning bad for them.

"There is some evidence to suggest the fish the birds are bringing back are of poorer quality. The fish are there, but they have been growing badly because they cannot get enough food."

Dr Bryan Nelson, one of the world's leading experts on gannets, said the birds were "our most spectacular seabird with a six-foot wingspread, dramatic pale blue eye, dagger-like bill and this terrific plunge-diving ability".

Dr Nelson, who lived on Bass Rock from the early 1960s to the 1980s, said it was "extremely uncommon" for both parent birds to leave the nest in the 1960s, but in the last few years gannets on the island had been laying their eggs later in the season than usual, another sign of difficulties finding food.

He added: "They normally come back in late January, early February and the first egg could be laid in March. The mean laying date - the date on which the middle egg of all the eggs laid in the season - used to be 24 April.

"That's moved back a bit so now the mean laying date is into May, which means things have changed in the feeding situation in such a way that they are being slightly delayed in breeding."

Dr Nelson echoed Dr Hamer's warning that the problems faced by the gannet indicated a much wider problem affecting life beneath the waves.

He said: "It could be there are two factors at work here - the movement of prey species northwards due to global warming and a diminution in available prey due to overfishing.

"Alone among British seabirds, gannets have, until now, not shown any signs of chicks starving. They are still doing well, but they are just beginning to show the first signs [of trouble] - coming back to breed later and both parents having to forage at the same time.

"You can just sense that something is happening. And if the feeding is bad for gannets, something serious is happening to the marine food web."

Seabirds face misery of starvation and death

MANY seabird populations rose strongly in the late 20th century, but since the new millennium, several species have experienced starvation, misery and death, writes Ian Johnston.

The latest official survey, Seabird 2000, shows numbers of common guillemot, gannets and northern fulmars rose and while populations of herring gulls and kittiwakes fell, the overall picture looked fair.

However, in 2000, things turned sharply for the worse and since then, kittiwakes, guillemots, puffins, Arctic skua and others suffered serious breeding failures in colonies all around Scotland and beyond. Last year, starving guillemots were reported in unusual inland locations, including the centre of Glasgow and Crianlarich - and last autumn, 120 dead guillemots and razorbills were discovered near Loch Fyne, Argyll.

In colonies from the east coast to St Kilda, the survival rate of hatchlings has dropped to as low as one in five. Many effects have not yet been seen; most seabirds are counted as breeding pairs and guillemots, for example, take six years to reach maturity.

There were population crashes in the 80s and early 90s, largely due to a lack of food because of severe over-fishing of sand eels, a mainstay of many seabird diets, by industrial fisheries. But the latest declines appear to have been due to global warming. Changes in temperature and ocean currents seem to have changed the distribution of plankton populations to the detriment of sand eels and other small fish.

Birds have been forced to feed on less nutritious alternatives like the snake pipefish, which is a similar size to the sand eel but hard for hatchlings to digest. The result? Baby birds starving to death and, in some cases, whole colonies simply failing to breed.

Dr Norman Ratcliffe, senior research biologist at RSPB Scotland, said: "In 2000, we started to see these breeding failures recur. They have become worse and we have started to see diving species affected as well.

"I think for many species we are going to continue to see declines. More seabirds are going to be of conservation concern."

Tom Brock, chief executive of the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick, said: "Things certainly seem to be changing fairly rapidly. Probably the most dramatic of all is what we are seeing with the kittiwakes."

He said this was seen in the breeding season from cameras monitoring a kittiwake colony near Dunbar: "Adults have been trying to feed snake pipefish to their chicks, but there's hardly any nutrition in it and the chicks are starving. The chicks are dying and we are watching this happen live on camera. It's horrendous."

12th Oct, 2007: Jean-Louis Etienne unveils Total Pole Airship
French explorer Jean-Louis Etienne* will unveil the Total Pole Airship tomorrow at the Boussiron hangars of the Marseille Provence airport, marking a new step in his project to fly over the Arctic Ocean in April 2008. Organized as part of the fourth International Polar Year, the expedition is placed under the high patronage of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Secretary of Ecology, has accepted to be the airship’s sponsor and His Serene Highness Albert II of Monaco will attend the unveiling ceremony.

With this exceptional adventure, Jean-Louis Etienne is writing a new chapter in the history of discovery. He and his international team have come together to measure the thickness of the Arctic sea ice for the first time so that the international scientific community will have a baseline from which to study the impact of human activity on the earth’s climate.

Built in Russia by RosAEroSystems and assembled in Marseille, France in September, the 5,500-cubic-meter Total Pole Airship measures 54 meters long, 17.5 meters high and 14 meters wide. The airship offers sufficient flying range to cover vast areas of the ice bank, as well as speed and altitude capabilities that comply with the requirements of the EM-Bird measurement device developed by researchers at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). The measurement campaign will take place in March and April of 2008.

As on his past expeditions, Jean-Louis Etienne will be sharing his experiences: “This undertaking has both a scientific and an educational purpose. The expedition will provide us with invaluable data on the ice pack at a time when we’re seeing a record reduction in its surface area. It will also draw attention to the threats to this unique environment and enable us to secure the future together,” he explains.

To carry out this project, Jean-Louis Etienne has teamed up with Total**, a global energy producer and provider with a strong stake in various aspects of climate change and a powerful commitment to the future of energy. “Total is very pleased to support this expedition, which should help advance our understanding of climate change phenomena,” notes Total Chairman and CEO Christophe de Margerie.

Supported by the French Research Ministry in partnership with the French Education Ministry, the expedition is sponsored by UNESCO. The scientific program is being conducted in cooperation with AWI, France’s national weather bureau Météo France, Mercator Ocean, Damoclès, the Paris Earth Physics Institute (IPGP) and the French Atomic Energy Commission’s Information Technology Electronics Laboratory (CEA/LETI). Partners including Air Liquide and Gore-Tex are providing technical expertise. The Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie science center in Paris is hosting related educational events for children and adults.

* A qualified physician and member of the French Polar Environment Cross-Departmental Committee, Jean-Louis Etienne has taken part in a number of expeditions to the Himalayas, Greenland, Patagonia, and the Arctic and Antarctic over the past 30 years. In 1986, he became the first man to successfully reach the North Pole solo, after hauling his own sled for 63 days. In 1989-1990, he co-led the international Trans-Antarctic expedition. From 1990 to 1996, he made a number of expeditions onboard the polar vessel Antarctica. During his most recent Arctic venture, the Polar Ice Cap Mission in spring 2002, Dr. Etienne spent three months navigating through the sea ice at the North Pole. This was followed by a brief tropical interlude in 2004-2005, when he headed a team of 40 researchers studying France’s Clipperton Atoll in the Pacific. More information is available at www.jeanlouisetienne.com

11th Oct, 2007: New microbes found on Pacific Ocean floor
by MT Bureau - Woods Hole, Maine -- U.S. marine biologists have discovered thousands of new kinds of microbes at two deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast. The discovery was made by scientists from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Maine, and the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean.

Using a new analytical technique called "454 tag sequencing," the scientists surveyed 1 million DNA sequences of bacteria and archaea. The DNA was taken from samples collected from two hydrothermal vents on the Pacific deep-sea volcano, Axial Seamount.

The researchers discovered that while there might be as few as 3,000 different kinds of archaea at those sites, the bacteria exceed 37,000 different kinds.

"Most of these bacteria had never been reported before, and hundreds were so different from known microbes that we could only identify them to the level of phylum," said lead author Julie Huber of the MBL. "Clearly, additional sampling of these communities will be necessary to determine the true diversity."

10th Oct, 2007: Quest for new energy supplies is becoming tougher

By Jad Mouawad: HAMMERFEST, Norway: For a quarter-century, energy executives were tantalized by vast quantities of natural gas in one of the world's most inhospitable places - off Norway's northern coast, beneath the Arctic Ocean.

Bitter winds and fierce snowstorms lash the region, located 90 miles, or 145 kilometers, from the country's shoreline. The sun disappears for two months a year. No oil company knew how to operate in such a harsh environment.

But Norway has finally solved the problem. The other day, on an island just offshore, a giant yellow flame illuminated the sky here. It was just a temporary flare for excess gas, but it signaled a new era in energy production.

Across the bay from this small fishing village, where reindeer wander the streets, one of the world's most advanced natural gas plants is coming to life. Within weeks, natural gas will start crossing the ocean in specially designed ships, feeding into the pipeline network for the eastern coast of the United States. Before Christmas, furnaces in New York and stoves in Washington will be burning the fuel. It will be the first commercial energy production from waters north of the Arctic Circle.

As global demand soars and prices climb, energy companies are going to the ends of the earth to find new supplies. In Kazakhstan, petroleum engineers are braving wild temperature swings in the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea to tap the biggest oil discovery of the past 30 years.

They are drilling wells six miles deep in the Gulf of Mexico. And on the island of Sakhalin, in eastern Russia, they have drilled horizontal wells through miles of rock to produce oil from a stretch of ocean beset by giant icebergs.

But as the industry extends its reach, the quest is becoming more arduous. The cost of producing new oil and gas is rising fast, and companies are plagued by worsening delays. Drilling rigs are scarce. Engineers, geologists, and petroleum specialists are in critically short supply. And the politics of oil and gas are getting trickier, with hydrocarbon-rich countries demanding a bigger share of the revenues and growing angry about project delays that postpone their payments.

Industry executives say their ability to keep up with global demand is badly strained. "We're facing bigger risks and bigger difficulties when we go into new frontier regions," said Odd Mosbergvik, a senior manager at the Norwegian state energy company, Statoil Hydro. "But this is why the oil industry is for big boys. It's a big gamble."

The industry's new reach is shifting the economics of energy extraction. According to a recent study, discovery and development costs - a leading indicator for the industry - tripled between 1999 and 2006, to nearly $15 a barrel. Last year alone, companies spent $200 billion developing new energy projects worldwide, according to the study by two consulting firms, John Herold and Harrison Lovegrove. That sum is bigger than the economies of 147 countries.

These higher costs mean the industry needs higher energy prices to finance new projects. They are also constraining its ability to expand quickly.

"As the CEO of a major oil company told me, 'This is an industry in crisis masked by high prices,' " said J. Robinson West, chairman of PFC Energy, an oil industry consulting firm in Washington. "There are no easy barrels left. The only barrels are going to be the tough barrels."

There is plenty of oil and gas still in the ground, energy executives say. But global consumption is rising so fast they must keep looking for new sources. Despite concerns around the world about global warming and the role of fossil fuels in causing it, government specialists project that global oil and gas demand will jump about 50 percent in the next 25 years.

At the same time, the big discoveries of the past three decades, like the North Sea and Alaska's North Slope, are drying up. That is leading oil companies to remote places like Hammerfest.

"We're not pushing anything on an unwitting public," said Bill Cooper, executive director of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, an industry group. "Consumers demand gas and we have to secure the supplies, even if it's from the end of the world."

Producing oil and gas in polar regions is not entirely new. In Siberia, Russian engineers have been doing it for decades, with mixed results, and Alaska's North Slope was long the most important U.S. oil field.

But those fields are on land. The Norwegian field is the first Arctic project to tap oil and gas reserves far offshore, in water depths exceeding 1,000 feet, or 305 meters, and where traditional exploration methods would be too costly.

28th September, 2007: To our Supporters, Octopus Club members and the general public of NZ,

The Wellington Marine Conservation Trust sole purpose is to enhance and protect the Wellington Region’s coastal marine environment through public education. We firmly believe that inspiration and education will bring about conservation. We know this through our experience at the Island Bay Marine Education Centre.

To achieve our goal we set out on a mission to expand the Island Bay Marine Education Centre and its programmes to provide public marine education programmes centred around and subsidised by the Aquarium of New Zealand. A facility to show case our region’s unique marine environment, and by doing so, fostering sustainable guardianship of New Zealand’s marine and coastal environments and resources.

After careful and expert consideration the optimum location was chosen by the Marine Conservation Trust and Wellington City Council who then undertook considerable consultation with the wider community of Wellington.

As a result a resource consent to build was granted. This was unfortunately appealed with the decision rejecting the location, being released by the Environment Court last Friday. This was of course disappointing. The court’s summary, clearly endorsed the programmes provided by the Marine Education Centre and the need for such a facility, they just did not agree on the chosen location.

The trust and key stakeholders are currently considering the path forward and this will become clearer over the weeks ahead.

Seeking another site clearly has to be part of this mix – is there another site that can still facilitate the construction of this much needed facility without compromising too much? Should there be another appeal? These options will need to be considered in the weeks ahead.

In the meantime, the trust is committed to continuing to provide to the lucky few (10,000 school and pre-school kids a year) "Marine Conservation through Education" at its existing facility in Island Bay, where we can immerse young people in the wonders of our ocean and instil in them a knowledge and a guardianship of New Zealand’s marine and coastal environments and resources.

We again sincerely thank you for your support and will keep you posted of any decisions.

Our next OPEN DAY is on the 28th October from 10.00am - 3.30pm, Bring the entire family and interact with marine life at the historic Bait House on the eastern foreshore of Island Bay.

18th September, 2007: OUF team builds concrete reefs to study overfished grouper
By STEVEN WEINER: Whether you like your grouper blackened or baked, a UF associate professor has been working on saving the fish favorite for the past 17 years, according to a UF press release.

Bill Lindberg, a UF associate professor, and his team of researchers and students have been on a quest to understand how artificial reefs can increase a dwindling population of gag grouper, a popular game and food fish. The team has been doing this by building a 26-mile span of artificial reefs using 1,350 tons of concrete tubing in the Gulf of Mexico. The reefs are located about 20 miles off shore between the coasts of Levy and Dixie counties.

It has studied the reef's impact on the grouper, according to the release. Their work has recently been extended with additional funding of $1 million. Lindberg said gag grouper is in the midst of a severe overfishing crisis.

The release stated that in 2004, scientists confirmed that grouper fishing on the west coast of Florida has increased by almost four times in the past 20 years, making Lindberg's efforts even more timely and urgent.

After Lindberg's team put the reefs in place, individual fish were tagged so their movements could be monitored and behaviors scrutinized.

Lindberg said he and his researchers concluded that smaller reefs were highly beneficial to the grouper. In smaller reefs, there are fewer fish and less competition for food, which leads to bigger and healthier fish. Healthier fish, Lindberg said, produce more eggs and potentially more offspring.

"Smaller, widely-distributed reefs give you more bang for your buck," Lindberg said. "Fish like densely-populated areas, but grow faster and are less likely to be fished in small reefs." Lindberg said the artificial reefs are located halfway between inshore sea grass beds, where young grouper mature, and the deep gulf waters, where they eventually go to reproduce.

Lindberg calls this in-between area "the bottleneck." The bottleneck is where the population suffers its heaviest losses to predators and faces heavy competition for resources. By placing the reefs there, he gives grouper a place to hide and grow before reproducing, he said.

The concrete reefs mimic the dimension and structure of limestone outcroppings, stone reefs that are native to the area. Lindberg said the incoming money would fund a second and bigger reef system that's already in the planning stages, called the Steinhatchee Fisheries Management Area.

This reef will not be primarily for research, but will act as a working shelter for the grouper. The project has been a partnership between UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and several environmental organizations, including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

In the release, Jon Dodrill, an environmental administrator from the commission, said Lindberg's work constitutes, "one of the largest artificial reef projects that's been undertaken." Lindberg said the artificial reefs are powerful when it comes to replenishing the shrinking grouper population.

The reefs won't solve the overfishing problem, he said. "There is a scientific consensus that artificial reefs cannot completely offset the fishing pressure," Lindberg said. "They are not an alternative to properly managing the fishing effort, but just one tool in the toolbox."

See Wellington's own artificial reef, the former HMNZS Wellington, sunk off Island Bay on the south coast    www.divewreck.co.nz

8th September, 2007: On at least one place, the land at the bottom of the ocean is nearly naked, scientists have discovered.

A swath of seafloor beneath the Pacific Ocean (outlined in orange) has little or no sediment. This area is about the size of the Mediterranean Sea.The rocks that form Earth's surface beneath the oceans are usually covered with a thick layer made up of sand or dirt and the skeletons of tiny ocean creatures called plankton.

Plankton are microscopic plants that spend their lives drifting in the ocean. When they die, their skeletons sink to the seafloor. Some parts of the oceans contain abundant plankton, and their skeletons can eventually form a very thick layer on the ocean floor.

But one patch of ocean floor is missing this layer entirely. The patch, called the South Pacific Bare Zone, is about the size of the Mediterranean Sea. It's located thousands of miles east of New Zealand. Scientists found the bare zone using equipment that can detect different kinds of rocks and soils. The measurements showed that there was very little sediment, or accumulated particles, in this region.

Scientists were surprised by their discovery. But they came up with several reasons why this particular area would lack sediment. The waters in this part of the ocean have low levels of nutrients, so there's little food for plankton. As a result, there aren't large quantities of plankton to die, fall to the bottom, and build up into a thick layer of sediment. Any skeletons that do reach the bottom tend to dissolve.

The bare zone is also far from any continents, which are a big source of windblown dust and other particles that drop into the sea. And it's far from any major ocean currents, so Antarctic icebergs carrying material scraped from that continent don't pass over the bare zone and drop sediment. Researchers are excited by the discovery of the Pacific's bare zone because this may be the one place on Earth where they can directly study seafloor materials that are normally hidden by sediment.—C. Gramling

26th August, 2007: Oak Bay Marine Group Donation of $11 Million to UVic Ocean & Climate Research
Robert H. Wright. “A gift back to the ocean.”

The University of Victoria is honoured to announce an unprecedented gift of $11 million by Bob Wright, President and CEO, Oak Bay Marine Group of Companies, towards the support of ocean, earth and atmospheric research and education at the University of Victoria.

This donation – the largest cash gift UVic has ever received – will allow the university to reach a new level of research in the most critical issue facing the world today – climate change.

“A lifelong passion and affinity for the sea has underscored my concern about the impact of global warming on our oceans,” Wright said. “As a community and as a country, we must expand our investment in solid scientific research so we can pass on a healthy environment for generations to come.”

“As a global centre of excellence in ocean, earth and atmospheric sciences, this generous gift will help take the University of Victoria’s scientific research to an even higher level,” said UVic President David Turpin. “Bob Wright’s $11 million investment is testimony to how we as Canadians can play a leading role in discovering the facts about environmental change on the global stage.”

The gift is being donated on behalf of the crew who work at the Oak Bay Marine Group. Of the $11 million gift, $10 million will help fund the new Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Building and $1 million will fund student scholarships. “I have had many UVic graduates and students work with the Oak Bay Marine Group over the years and I’ve always valued the education they received there. The scholarship fund will help more students experience the tremendous benefits of a UVic education,” added Wright.

“Bob Wright’s profound generosity is a true example of how an individual and company can go above and beyond to both support the community in which they operate and contribute to the solution of global issues,” added Turpin. Today’s gift further builds upon the recent philanthropy that UVic has been honoured to receive from individuals, which includes the $5 million Mearns family gift and the $2.25 Mohr family gift.

18th August, 2007: Oceans of Garbage

The largest dump in the world isn’t outside New York or London or Shanghai but in a desolate stretch of the Pacific Ocean nearly a thousand miles from the nearest island. Held together by a slowly rotating system of currents northeast of Hawaii, the Eastern Garbage Patch is more than just a few floating plastic bottles washed out to sea; the Patch is a giant mass of trash-laden water nearly double the size of Texas.

The Eastern Garbage Patch is just the most obvious manifestation of the amount of pollution filling the seas. Even though seventy percent of plastic items will eventually sink, the UNEP estimates there are 46,000 pieces of marine debris for every square mile of all the world’s oceans. Nearly four fifths of this garbage has been carried from litter on land, washed into storm drains, or floated down rivers.

The problem, of course, is plastic and its nearly complete resistance to the elements. Able to last indefinitely in seawater, plastics will continue to plague the Ocean long after new solutions have been adopted on land. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-series,0,7842752.special

15th August, 2007: Coral reef monitoring stations installed

The installation of coral reef monitoring stations, accompanied by a survey of reefs, was undertaken in early August, along the coast of Fujairah in the UAE. The purpose of monitoring stations is to study the re-growth and re-colonisation of corals damaged during Cyclone Gonu, which struck the coast of Oman, UAE (in the emirate of Fujairah), Iran and Pakistan in June 2007.

To benefit from the presence in the UAE of coral reef experts from NCRI for an on-going research programme in the waters of Abu Dhabi, where monitoring stations have already been set up, the EWS-WWF, Fujairah Municipality and partners decided to install similar stations on the east coast. Besides recording post-cyclone re-colonisation of corals, these monitoring stations will also allow comparisons between populations of Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman corals.

Globally, coral reefs are dying at an accelerating pace. According to recent estimates, up to 35 per cent of the coral reefs worldwide may have been lost already due to natural causes such as fluctuation of temperatures, attacks by the Crown of Thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci), and anthropogenic stresses such as oil pollution, unmanaged coastal development, unregulated commercial and recreational fishing and diving.

When a natural catastrophe occurs, like the recent Cyclone Gonu on the eastern coast of UAE, coral reefs suffer but are able to recover, provided no other supplementary stresses, such as the afore-mentioned ones, occur.

The installation of stations and the survey along Fujairah benefited from the help of the Fujairah Marine Club, which provided a boat to conduct surveys on the emirate. Also of help were Dibba-Fujairah Municipality and the Marine Research Centre of the Ministry of Environment and Water, which provided all logistical support for the Dibba sites.

The coral monitoring stations include three basic components:

1) A settlement plate rack resembling a tree with steel branches supporting small limestone tiles that act as artificial substrate on which the coral larvae will attach.

2) Photo transects along three lines of about 12 metres, disposed in a 'Mercedes star' pattern from the settlement plate rack

3) Temperature recorders.

So that these monitoring stations do not suffer damage, an information notice has been provided by the NCRI, to alert diving associations, clubs and centres about the operation. A formal meeting between all the stakeholders to discuss the preliminary results of the survey and further collaborations is planned in Fujairah in September-October 2007.

Coral reefs in Fujairah

Coral reefs in the UAE play important ecological, economic, recreational and cultural roles by providing food and shelter for numerous fish and marine species, protecting coasts from erosion, supporting commercial fishing and an array of recreational activities. The coastal and offshore waters of the Arabian Sea in Fujairah support a rich and diverse fish fauna, including many species of reef-associated fish, seasonally abundant large pelagic species, and small schooling fish.

While contributing to the cultural heritage of the UAE, and Fujairah in particular, these fish support moderate-to-large local commercial and artisanal fisheries of substantial economic value to the people. Fujairah also has a number of seafront attractions, including beaches and islands. Tourist traffic to the emirate rose by more than half during the last couple of years.

The construction in the north of Bidiyah of the first international hotel to open on the east coast in over two decades has generated renewed interest in Fujairah and been a catalyst for further development of the tourism sector. Five more hotels and marinas in the same area have been started since 2005 and further projects are expected.

With the tremendous industrial and tourism development of the country, the pressure is increasing on the coral reefs, used as breeding, foraging and shelter for numerous fish and marine species. There is then an urgent need to better understand the role Fujairah's coastal waters has in the conservation of marine biodiversity, spawning and nursery grounds for the regional coral reefs and fish stocks, and to mitigate the impacts of coastal development and other activities.

HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Mohammad Al Sharqi, ruler of Fujairah, issued an Emiri Decree back in 1995 to establish four marine protected areas in Fujairah: Dibba, Al Faqueet, Dadna and Al Aqa. A further step in developing effective conservation and management of coastal marine habitats, as vital resources for biodiversity, fishery and tourism, is the provision of information on the distribution, abundance, composition and health of these habitats through a mapping and assessment of the status of coastal marine habitats. http://www.ameinfo.com/128937.html

14th August, 2007: Is Life Thriving Deep Beneath the Seafloor?

Recent discoveries hint at a potentially huge and diverse subsurface biosphere. In 1991, scientists aboard the submersible Alvin witnessed the aftermath of a very recent volcanic seafloor eruption and found themselves in a virtual blizzard of white debris. ( first published in Haymon et al., 1993 (EPSL). WHOI National Deep Submergence Facility, Alvin Operations Group. Research supported by the National Science Foundation)

A titanium ring deployed at a Pacific hydrothermal vent site indicates the presence of bacteria thriving beneath the seafloor. Within days, Arcobacter bacteria, discharging from the subsurface, rapidly colonize the ring, producing a white sulfur filament mat up to 3 centimeters thick as they grow. (Craig Taylor and Carl Wirsen, WHOI and Françoise Gaill, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France)

World’s largest bacterium—In 1999 scientists discovered a previously unknown bacterium, which is large enough to be seen with the naked eye. Found off the coast of Namibia, the bacteria grow in long lines of single cells, each stuffed with reflective white globules of sulfur. The bacteria resembled a string of pearls to its discoverers, who named it Thiomargarita namibienus (“Sulfur pearl of Namibia”). The bacteria have evolved to live on seafloor sediments, where they find hydrogen sulfide for energy and nitrate for respiration. Their size is due to a large vacuole that fills the interior of their cells like inflated balloons. The vacuole stores nitrate, giving Thiomargarita the ability to survive periods when oxygen is lacking—a built-in equivalent of an oxygen-storing SCUBA tank that allows humans to remain alive underwater. (Photo courtesy of Ferran Garcia-Pichel, Arizona State University.)In 1991, scientists aboard the submersible Alvin were in the right spot at the right time to witness something extraordinary. They had sailed into the aftermath of a very recent volcanic eruption on the seafloor and found themselves in a virtual blizzard.

They were densely surrounded by flocs of white debris, composed of sulfur and microbes, which drifted more than 30 meters above the ocean bottom. The seafloor was coated with a 10-centimeter-thick layer of the same white material. This vast volume of microbes did not come from the ocean. The eruption had flushed it out from beneath the seafloor.

The discovery was transforming. It strongly suggested that previously unimagined and potentially huge communities of microbial life were thriving in the dark, increasingly hot, oxygen-depleted rocky cracks and crannies below the ocean bottom. An abundance of life apparently flourished in conditions we had considered too extreme. It shattered our narrow preconceptions and stretched our view of the places and circumstances that can harbor life.

‘Everything is everywhere’
With our horizons expanded, we have launched new initiatives in the past decade to search for life deep within the earth—to explore the so-called subsurface biosphere. In recent years, scientists have discovered many new subsurface biosphere habitats—reaffirming the principle of the pioneering microbiologist Martinus Willem Beijerinck (1851-1931), who said, “Everything is everywhere, the environment selects.” Beijerinck’s approach—to study “the relation between environmental conditions and the special forms of life corresponding to them” —certainly applies to the subsurface realm, where biology and microbiology interact with geology and hydrology.

What organisms inhabit this deep biosphere? How deep are they living? How long can they survive under these conditions? How have they adapted to take advantage of energy supplied by the planet, rather than by the sun?

What impact, in turn, does this biosphere have on the oceans and the planet? What can these hardy, entrepreneurial organisms teach us about the origin and evolution of life on Earth? How can they guide our search for possible life on other planetary bodies?

We are at the frontiers of answering these questions.

Better living through chemistry
The amazing discovery of life at seafloor hydrothermal vents in 1977 reminded us that solar energy, oxygen, organic matter, and photosynthesis are not the only fundamental building blocks and chemical processes that foster life.

In place of energy from the sun, certain organisms use chemosynthetic reactions to live and grow. They use inorganic chemicals, such as hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide, rather than organic matter for their energy and carbon dioxide as their source of carbon. Geothermal, rather than solar, energy catalyzes chemical reactions that generate these life-sustaining chemicals from rocks and seawater. Water is the only absolutely essential ingredient.

But below the seafloor and deeper into the subsurface, it was reasonable to assume that conditions would become more extreme and life would become sparser or nonexistent. Yet in the past decade we have found an extraordinary diversity of subsurface microbes living in a wide range of conditions—buried deep within ocean sediments, in hot ocean crust crevices, in frozen polar soils, and in the subterranean bowels of deep mines.

In all these places, individual species have adapted to extreme conditions that include high pressure, high and low temperatures, unusual or toxic chemicals and minerals, or low availability of essential nutrients. Often they take advantage of specific extreme conditions to carve out a niche where they can thrive and other species cannot.

Life finds a way—often cleverly
Take, for example, the mats of white microbial sulfur debris witnessed by scientists aboard Alvin in 1991. WHOI scientist Craig Taylor, Stefan Sievert, and I subsequently found that such mats are produced by a genus of bacteria called Arcobacter. It lives in low-oxygen conditions and metabolizes hydrogen sulfide (H2S) to obtain energy. An end-product of this metabolism is a unique form of sulfur, which the bacteria ingeniously excrete in the form of solid, white filaments.

Together, large populations of these bacteria produce crosshatched mats of these filaments. In the face of flowing subsurface hydrothermal fluids, these mats help keep the bacteria anchored to rocky surfaces where Arcobacter are perfectly suited. They are bathed in hydrothermal fluids percolating from the ocean crust, which are low in oxygen and high in hydrogen sulfide. In this niche, Arcobacter feasts on ample H2S-rich fluids and outcompetes other oxygen-respiring bacteria.

It turns out that these discharged bacterial mats may also provide an important carpeting around hydrothermal vents that attracts other animals, such as Alvinella tubeworms, and encourages them to settle and grow. And when we looked closer to home, we found Arcobacter bacteria in sediments in the shallow depths of Eel Pond in Woods Hole that grow and produce the same sulfur filaments as those at the deep-sea vents.

The world’s largest bacterium
Remarkable microbial adaptations like this seem to be common nearly everywhere we look. In 1999, far from any undersea volcanic areas, the world’s largest bacteria were identified by an international scientific team that included former WHOI microbiologist Andreas Teske, who is now at the University of North Carolina. They were found in the surface layers of ocean sediments off the coast of Namibia, where they find what they need: hydrogen sulfide for energy and nitrate to respire.

This bacterium, Thiomargarita namibienus (“Sulfur pearl of Namibia”) reached sizes up to 750 microns (normal bacteria are only 1 to 2 microns). It was so large it could be seen with the naked eye, and it shattered our conventional wisdom that inherent bacterial physiology prevented them from ever getting so big. Their size is due to a large vacuole in their cells, in which they store nitrate, as do some hydrothermal vent microbes, to survive periods when oxygen is lacking—much the way we might store oxygen in external SCUBA tanks to remain alive underwater.

Deep, dark, old, and cold
Arcobacter and Thiomargarita are examples of well-adapted bacteria found in the shallow subsurface. But deeper subsurface explorations in the past decade have revealed unique, heretofore unknown microbial habitats.

Some of the first investigations of the deep subsurface were motivated by concerns about pathogens and toxic chemicals in groundwater supplies. The Witwaterstrand Deep Microbiology Project, for example, a multinational effort led by Swedish scientists, sampled groundwater in fractured rock from 3-kilometer-deep gold mines in South Africa and found a wealth of microbial diversity in the deep continental crust.

In 2000, researchers from West Chester (Penn.) University claimed to have discovered the oldest known living microorganism in an ancient salt deposit in New Mexico, buried 610 meters (2,000 feet) below ground. It was trapped in a tiny brine-filled pocket that formed in a salt crystal 250 million years ago. Long after the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, it lay in a dormant state, waiting for the right conditions to “awaken” its genetic machinery and resume growing and reproducing, the researchers said.

In the Arctic and Antarctic, scientists have found metabolically active microbes in subsurface permafrost frozen at temperatures of –10°C (14°F) or colder for 2 million to 3 million years. High populations of viable microbes have been found in oceanic sediment cores deeper than a half-kilometer, which would make them older than 10 million years.

Some like it hot
Ultimately, a combination of physical and chemical factors will set the limits at which life can exist. In general, increasing pressure will not limit the depth at which subsurface life is found. Increasing heat is the primary limiting factor, and it is doubtful that we have discovered the maximum temperature at which life can exist.

At hydrothermal vents, volcanic heat has created an environment in which so-called hyperthermophilic (super-heat-loving) microbes thrive. The maximum growth temperature for a microorganism so far was discovered in 2003 by scientists at the University of Massachusetts. They called it Strain 121, because it grows at a 121°C (250°F). But scientists generally agree that life could exist at temperatures as high as 140° to 145°C (284° to 295°F).

In the mid-1990s, scientists found novel hyperthermophilic microbes in hot oil reservoirs 3 kilometers below the North Sea and the North Slope of Alaska. Oil producers had thought that microorganisms, which “sour” or contaminate oil, were introduced into wells, but, in fact, they are naturally occurring and live on organic compounds in oil.

Such discoveries push our understanding of the limits of life and the limits of where to look for it. The known largest biosphere—fully 80 percent of Earth’s available living space—is in the deep ocean, yet this may be eclipsed by the subsurface biosphere as research into this realm proceeds.

Drilling down to search for life
Deep-sea drilling remains the best way to sample the subsurface, though it has limitations. It is costly, and potentially results in contamination of the samples retrieved.

The deep biosphere has been targeted as a major research initiative of the new multinational Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which operates deep-sea drill ships for the oceanographic community. A new permanent microbiology laboratory was outfitted aboard the JOIDES Resolution drill ship.

Scientists have also developed new instrument packages that plug into and seal drilled seafloor holes, where they remain for months. These probes offer potential windows into the interacting chemical, hydrological, geological, and biological processes that occur beneath the seafloor. These long-term observatories have been dubbed “CORKs,” which is both an eponym and an acronym (Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kits).

The real challenge is to develop sensors that can be placed in situ in a way that doesn’t disrupt the ecosystems they are meant to record and that are sensitive enough to provide continuous, even real-time, monitoring of processes occurring on even a molecular scale.

Drilling cruises are scheduled to search for microbial life buried hundreds of meters deep under thick ocean sediments piled atop ocean crust in volcanically quiescent continental slope regions. In 2000, a consortium of Japanese scientists launched a several-year project using drill ships, manned submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, and long-term sensors, to explore, drill, and monitor the subsurface biosphere beneath hydrothermal vents near Suiyo Seamount, an active subsea volcano in the western Pacific.

Going to extremes
A major research goal of the Deep Ocean Exploration Institute at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is to extend our subsurface search into conditions on Earth that are deeper, hotter, and harsher than anything previously studied. We want to learn more about the biological and geochemical interactions that take place within this biosphere.

Any residents we find in these frontiers may well be biochemical pioneers. In their genes, they will still have the original blueprints for a wide range of possible biological processes. Some of these processes—like Arcobacter’s sulfur filament machinery, or Thiomargarita’s large nitrate-storing vacuole, or the extreme heat tolerance of Strain 121—we may never have seen before.

Life on Earth and other planets
We may never know with complete certainty where and how life originated on Earth, but the hot subsurface around hydrothermal vents is a likely candidate. It is an environment that seems to have all the necessary ingredients to spark critical chemical reactions that could create the precursor building blocks of living organisms—ultimately resulting in amino acids for proteins, the genetic machinery DNA and RNA, sugars for energy, and lipids to make membranes.

In a hot subsurface melting pot, far from solar ultraviolet radiation that can break down complex molecules, these chemicals could find sanctuary in tiny rocky crevices where they could congregate, interact, and perhaps combine eventually with a membrane around them. Below the sea, they would certainly be sheltered from meteor bombardment and other life-threatening conditions that buffeted the early Earth’s surface.

Further insights into life’s ability to survive harsh conditions will guide our search for extraterrestrial life. New evidence from Mars shows that it once had water, and it may once have had seas that left salt deposits like those in New Mexico. Europa, Jupiter’s moon, is probably volcanic, and beneath its ice-covered surface may lie oceans with hydrothermal activity. The same tools and techniques we devise to search for life within and beneath Earth’s volcanic oceans will prove useful there.

Our journey into Earth’s subsurface biosphere is a quest to find the limits of life. http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2497

11th August, 2007: The Deepest Divers; D-tags give scientists in-depth records of whales in the depths

For years, sperm whales and elephant seals were thought to hold world records for holding their breath under water. But those animals have nothing on beaked whales.

Using digital tags temporarily suction-cupped to two species of beaked whales, researchers led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tracked Cuvier’s beaked whales diving to depths of nearly 6,230 feet (1,900 meters) and staying down for 85 minutes. They also documented smaller Blainville’s beaked whales diving 4,100 feet (1,250 meters) for up to 57 minutes.

“These data establish beaked whales as the extreme breath-hold champions of all animals studied so far,” said WHOI engineer Mark Johnson, who developed the “D-tags,” which record whale movements, their echolocations, and other underwater sounds.

“Because these animals spend so much of their lives under water, we knew very little about them beyond what we could learn from strandings and see from research vessels,” said WHOI biologist Peter Tyack, lead author of a paper published October 2006 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “Now we know more about the behavior of beaked whales at depth than many of us had ever dreamed.”

Working with colleagues from the University of La Laguna in Spain, the University of Aarhus in Denmark, BluWest, and the NATO Undersea Research Center in Italy, WHOI scientists tagged and studied seven Cuvier’s beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) in the Ligurian Sea off the coast of Italy and three Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) off the island of El Hierro in Spain’s Canary Islands in 2003 and 2004. Both sites boast gaping undersea canyons that plunge more than 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) below the ocean surface.

Deep dining
Data from the D-tags (see “D-Tagging Along with Whales,” below) may help answer questions surrounding possible impacts of sonar testing on beaked whales, which have been found stranded with symptoms of decompression sickness after naval exercises in both regions. The information has also shined light on the dark and mysterious world of beaked whales.

Tyack said the beaked whales’ diving capacity outmatched reigning breath-hold champions such as sperm whales and elephant seals. Sperm whales, which have been studied far more extensively, can dive for more than an hour to depths greater than 4,000 feet (1,200 meters), but typically dive for 45 minutes to depths of 2,000 to 3,280 feet (600 to 1,000,meters). Elephant seals, can spend up to two hours in depths nearly 5,000 feet (more than 1,500 meters), but typically dive for only a half-hour to 1,640 feet (500 meters).

“We’re still not sure about the physiology behind how beaked whales do it,” Johnson said, “but somehow or another, they do, and they make a living out of it.”

The beaked whales dive deep to feed on squid and deep-water fish. During deep dives, hydrophones on the D-tags recorded regular echolocation clicks and buzzes, as well as echoes of what appeared to be prey—strong evidence that the whales were using echolocation to forage.

Details of feeding behavior emerge
Accelerometer and magnetometer sensors on the tags combined with the hydrophones to indicate that the beaked whales are highly selective about what they eat. They pass up echoes from hundreds of targets before selecting one to capture and eat.

On at least one occasion, two whales descended in tandem and foraged in the same general vicinity, feeding independently but remaining close enough to keep acoustic tabs on each other by listening for each other’s clicks, Tyack said.

In his lab, Tyack played a computer file that juxtaposed whale movement and audio data collected by the D-tags. The file show dots (representing whales) descending and making regular series of echolocation clicks in search of food. Every now and then, the clicks accelerate, indicating moments when each whale found and tried to catch prey, Tyack said.

“To a point, there definitely was some degree of synchronicity to their diving movements,” he said recently. “I don’t know if they have a social mechanism for catching prey, but maybe they stay in contact to find the best patch.”

Scientists observed that beaked whales only engaged in echolocation at the very deepest parts of their dives, and that these clicks had little energy below 20 kiloHertz—well beyond the human hearing range. To Tyack, these data suggested that the animals were doing their best to remain undetected by predators such as killer whales and white sharks, which generally patrol only the uppermost reaches of the water column.

Possible impacts from sonar
D-tag data showed that once the whales reached the surface after a deep dive, they stayed near the surface making shallow dives for an hour or more. It appears that the whales dive so long that they use up most of their oxygen stores before the dive is done and need to resort to anaerobic metabolism for part of their dives. The shallow diving behavior seems to indicate that the whales may need to rest to process lactic acid, a byproduct of anaerobic metabolism, before they embark on their next deep plunges. Tyack likened this recovery process to “the way human athletes use gentle exercise to clear lactic acid from overworked muscles after an intense workout.”

The data also indicate that after their deep dives, the whales ascend slowly. This behavior is mysterious because the animals, being breath-hold divers, don’t have to ascend gradually to avoid decompression as scuba divers would: Underwater pressure below 330 feet (100 meters) collapses the animals’ lungs, preventing gas from entering their blood, Tyack said.

“Why don’t they stay longer at depth to feed and then come up more rapidly?” Tyack asked. “We have learned a lot, but clearly there are still some puzzles about why they dawdle on the way up.”

Despite the whales’ physiological adaptations to avoid decompression, necropsies on beaked whales that stranded after recent sonar testing showed that the animals had symptoms consistent with decompression sickness. Tyack hinted that sonar may provoke behavioral changes that make whales vulnerable to stranding.

Tyack said it is imperative for scientists to help reduce the impact of sonar on whales in the future. In their ongoing efforts, he and colleagues will use hydrophone arrays off the Bahamas this summer to detect the telltale echolocations of beaked whales and conduct controlled experiments to measure how beaked whales respond to sonar-like sound stimuli. Meanwhile, Johnson, is working on a kind of “distant early warning system” for beaked whales that could help alert navy personnel to the presence of beaked whales before they start the sonar. http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=29067&sectionid=1021

9th August, 2007: Ten-year Climate Model Unveiled
Scientists say they have developed a model to predict how ocean currents, as well as human activities, will affect temperatures over the next decade. By including short-term natural events, such as El Nino, a UK team says it is able to offer 10-year projections.

Models have previously focused on how the globe will warm over a century. Writing in Science, Met Office researchers project that at least half of the years between 2009 and 2014 are likely to exceed existing records.

However, the Hadley Centre researchers said that the influence of natural climatic variations were likely to dampen the effects of emissions from human activities between now and 2009. But over the decade as a whole, they project the global average temperature in 2014 to be 0.3C warmer than 2004. Currently, 1998 is the warmest year on record, when the global mean surface temperature was 14.54C (58.17F). Doug Smith, a climate scientist at the Hadley Centre, explained how the new model differed from existing ones.

"On a 10-year timescale, both natural internal variability and the global warming signal (human induced climate change) are important; whereas looking out to 2100, only the global warming signal will dominate." The latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that human activity was "very likely" causing the world to warm, and predicted the global average temperature were probably going to increase by 1.8-4.0C (3.2-7.2F) by the end of the century.

"It is the same model as used in the latest IPCC report's predictions for the coming century, but the difference is that it starts from the real observed status of the ocean and the atmosphere," Dr Smith, the paper's lead author, explained. "Greenhouse gases and aerosols are also included, but it is really trying to predict any [natural] variability on top of that. "We start with the present state of the ocean, and we try to predict how it is going to evolve," he told BBC News.

The model, called the Decadal Climate Prediction System (DePreSys), is based on a well established climate model already used by Hadley Centre scientists.But in order to offer a projection for the coming decade rather than a century ahead, it also assesses the current state of the oceans and atmosphere. This allows the researchers to predict how natural shifts, such as the El Nino phenomenon in the eastern Pacific and the North Atlantic Oscillation, will affect the global climate system.

They hope this data, when combined with projections of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions from fossil fuels and volcanic eruptions, will present one of the most detailed outlooks to date. "One reason why the 10-year projection has not been done before is because the ocean has traditionally had very poor observational coverage," Dr Smith said. "They been very sparse and a little bit "noisy" so they have been difficult to interpret what the real temperatures were over large parts of the ocean."

However, recent improvements in data collection from satellites and in-situ instruments have allowed climatologists to improve their understanding of how ocean dynamics influence the climate system. He added that decadal outlooks would provide businesses and politicians with meaningful information. "Nearly all businesses have to make decisions on that sort of timescale; they plan for the next five to ten years.

"The climate has already changed, and it is continuing to change; people need the best information available to help them adapt to these changes." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6939347.stm

Middle of the Pacific contains clearest ocean waters on Earth

June 30 (ANI): In the middle of the Pacific, there is a patch that scientists claim contains the clearest ocean waters on Earth. It is as clear as the clearest lake on Earth, as salty as ocean waters, and is roughly the size of the Mediterranean. In October 2004, Patrick Raimbault of the University of the Mediterranean, in Marseille, France, together with colleagues, set out to study the remarkable patch of ocean water on a three month cruise – called BIOSOPE.

They left from Tahiti in French Polynesia, passed by Easter Island and ended on the Chilean coast. Along the way, they sampled the water's chemistry, physics and biology.Marc Tedetti, also from the University of the Mediterranean, who was on the expedition to investigate the water's clarity, described the color of the water as closer to violet than to blue.

According to him, this patch contained “unequivocally" the clearest ocean waters on Earth."Some bodies of freshwater are equally clear, but only the purest freshwater. For instance, researchers have found equivalent measurements in Lake Vanda in Antarctica, which is under ice, and is really extremely pure,” said Tedetti. Tedetti further found that at the clearest point, near to Easter Island, UV rays penetrated more than 100 meters below the surface.

According to Raimbault, this suggested that the patch contained roughly 10 times less chlorophyll than what was generally found in most ocean waters. "Satellite images that track the amount of chlorophyll in ocean waters suggest that this is one of the most life-poor systems on Earth," said Raimbault. He however, said though this patch of ocean was one of the least productive marine region known to man, it nevertheless did support a food chain.According to Raimbault, this might be due to the organisms' ability to recycle nutrients. "As there is no supply, there cannot be any loss either," he said.

Raimbault made another surprising discovery: the patch of the ocean that was poorest in life appeared to be extremely rich in dissolved organic carbon.The team is now currently sifting through data in an attempt to explain the apparent contradiction, which they believe, may be due to the limited availability of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. It means the bacteria that would normally degrade the dissolved organic matter are not able to complete the task, he said. The findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reports New Scientist. http://news.sawf.org/Health/39366.aspx

Exploring the Arctic abyss

By Doug O'Harra, June 27, 2007: A team of scientists and engineers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) plan to penetrate the Arctic's abyss. With new robotic submarines and other tricky technology, they will roam this unseen world for signs of new forms of life, some possibly stewed into existence by hot magma and boiling sea water.

"They hope to discover exotic seafloor life and submarine hot springs in a region of the ocean that has been mostly cut off from other ecosystems for at least 26 million years," WHOI announced this week.
With funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation, the 30-member team has successfully tested two underwater vehicles and a new tethered sampling system, and now plans to launch the expedition on July 1 from the Norwegian island of Svalbaard. Read the whole story at http://alaskareport.com/do77827_arctic_ocean.htm

Plankton Pilot Programme ''Voyage of Recovery''

June 26, 2007: Research Ship Weatherbird II Expected to Begin Next Leg of ‘Voyage of Recovery’ into the Eastern Tropical Pacific in the Month of July

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ecorestoration firm Planktos, Inc. (OTCBB:PLKT) whose research ship Weatherbird II sailed from the nation's capitol in early March has been conducting sea trials, training its crew, and is now in South Florida engaged in the installation of key scientific gear. By mid to late July, it’s planned that the ship will be headed into the Eastern Tropical Pacific to begin its series of ocean plankton pilot projects. The company expects to have aboard the ship a sophisticated array of oceanographic instruments including autonomous and remotely controlled ocean sampling vehicles. Planktos has also been negotiating to have a manned submersible join the ship to assist in the collection and verification of data. The Weatherbird may also be joined by other ships to assist in the project work by the time it arrives in the Pacific.

The much-anticipated ‘Voyage of Recovery,’ a pioneering ocean science effort to restore vital phytoplankton populations, is expected to significantly slow the rate of global warming, and offer climate policy makers important, affordable new options. The work of the Weatherbird will comprise of several four-six month pilot projects planned to help develop new applied science ocean stewardship via iron micronutrient replenishment in depleted Pacific and Atlantic ocean basins. This will develop the means to help revive the marine food chain and sequester millions of tons of global warming CO2.

The first pilot project will take place near the massive natural Galapagos bloom, one of the most prominent features of the world’s oceans. The waters north and south of this giant natural bloom are ideally suited for studies of iron restoration, of diminished ocean productivity, and were the site of two previous international iron bloom research studies in the mid 1990’s.

In the coming months, Planktos plans to provide regular updates, including progress reports from the deck of the Weatherbird, as it sets about demonstrating the importance of micronutrient replenishment in the restoration of the ocean and upper atmosphere. Planktos public filings may be viewed at www.sec.gov.

"Climate may be helped by iceberg ecosystems"

By Alice Ecker: Jun 25, 2007. While global warming has been associated with increased abundance of icebergs, a new research article in the journal Science suggests that icebergs may actually stem the rate of climate change.

A team of scientists, lead by Kenneth Smith of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and funded by the National Science Foundation, studied two icebergs in the Weddell Sea, near Antarctica. While icebergs as long as 300km have been found, the two chosen for the study were 2km and 21km long, respectively. Researchers evaluated attached and floating communities of phytoplankton and associated animals to depths of 60 meters by trawling and by taking measurements with a remote controlled vehicle.

The researchers found that the icebergs, and waters within several kilometers of them, were "hot-spots" of life when compared to waters further away. The icebergs were found to enrich the waters around them with iron; iron is required for the function of several enzymes, and as such is required for algal growth. Although the amount of iron required by algae is small, the amount of available iron in ocean water is low enough that the addition of small amounts of iron is enough to stimulate growth. The increased algal abundance in turn supports more dense populations of krill and other small animals. Sea birds were also found to be more abundant and diverse near the icebergs. Based on their data for two icebergs and estimates of iceberg density in the Weddell sea, authors estimated that roughly 39% of the sea surface area in the region had increased biological density as a result of icebergs.

By fostering more dense communities of organisms, the icebergs may impact atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Organic detrius from the algae and animals living on or near icebergs can settle to the bottom of the ocean, where it remains. As the ultimate source of this organic material is photosynthesis, which takes up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locks its carbon away in larger molecules, the sequestration of the detrius on the ocean floor leads to a net decrease in atmospheric carbon. According to the study authors, current models of atmospheric carbon dioxide inputs and outputs do not account for iceberg-induced carbon sequestration. As elevated carbon dioxide levels are believed to be the cause of global climate change, a further study of communities of organisms around icebergs may ultimately lead to better understanding of the global warming.

References: "Climate may be helped by iceberg ecosystems" http://www.sunsentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-flaicebergs0622nbjun22,0,4713165.story?track=rss

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