Studying the Actual Size of Undersea Giants

A group of scientists have decided to study and analyze the body size of 25 marine species. These species include the Great White Shark, the Giant Octopus, and walrus as well as lesser known creatures such as the Giant Tubes Worm and the Colossal Squid.

Their aim is to arrive at a more realistic data when it comes to establishing sizes of undersea giants and overcoming the human bias regarding this.

The scientists also wants to establish the relationship between size and varied factors such as lifespan, environment, and nourishment. Unlike mammals that have the same diet throughout their lifespan, marine species eat different foods as they grow. Another factor is metabolism which is the amount of energy required by the species on a daily basis.

Environmental factors were also considered that could give rise to bigger species, as well as situations in which a larger size would be beneficial. An example would be the Giant Clam. The additional nourishment from symbiotic photosynthetic bacteria allows it to reach sizes of up to 1.37 meters (4.5 feet). Another example would be Whale Sharks and Blue Whales which has the ability to support a migration and subsequent fasting to reach more plankton-rich waters when its habitat is low on food.

They gathered data by contacting fisheries, marine centers, and other scientists. "It's one part a databasing effort and one part historical research: double-checking museum specimens; talking with other scientists and collectors; and even checking eBay for specimens for sale," says Craig McClain, the assistant director of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C. and the primary author of the paper.

Coralline Algae Aids in Climate Reconstruction

Scientists are studying coralline algae at the Labrador Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean. These algae (Clathromorphum compactum) can be used to study the progression of the ice cover in the Arctic sea over the last 150 years. The purpose of the study is to reconstruct the past climates on Earth (Climate Reconstruction)

Climate reconstruction aims to reconstruct a consistent record of the Earth's climate dating back to thousands of years. By understanding the long term history of Earth's climate, scientists can explain and project the planet's current and future climate trends. Scientists usually drill for sediments which can reveal the past state of the Earth's climate.

The new method of using studying algal deposits on the ocean floor is similar to the practice of using tree rings to track the passing of the time. With algae, these "rings" can be as small as 30 microns. Scientists study the magnesium levels in these layers which is dependent on the amount of sunlight and water temperature.

Past climate data only goes back 150 years but with the new method of using coralline algae, this record can go back to the life span of the algae which is more than a thousand years.

High Rate of Microbial Activity Found in the Deepest Place on Earth

Two years after sending an underwater robot to the deepest place of the Earth's surface, an international team has released their scientific findings on the Mariana Trench.

The deepest part of the Earth is the Mariana Trench. At the deepest point, the measured depth is 11 kilometers (6.8 miles).

The Mariana Trench is located at the western Pacific Ocean along the east side of the Mariana Islands. There have been four descents into the trench. The first was achieved on 23 January 1960. The fourth most recent descent into the Trench was on 26 March by film director James Cameron (see embedded video). He reached the bottom of the trench in his vessel, The Deepsea Challenger.

90% of ocean life lives 660 feet from the ocean surface. Despite the depth, lack of sunlight (sunlight stops penetrating the ocean at around 3,300 feet), and intense pressure, life can still be found past 660 feet.

In July 2011, dropcams (untethered landers with digital video cameras and lights) found giant 4 inch sized single-celled amoebas belonging to the class Xenopyhophores living in the seabed of the Mariana Trench.

In a separate experiment, an underwater robot was sent to the bottom of the trench in 2010 to study the environment and study the seabed. After more than two years, the team that sent the robot has released their scientific findings.

Evidence Show Decline of Caribbean Coral Reefs Due To Low Carbonate Production

Research evidence show that coral reefs in the Caribbean have started to decline.

Corals are marine animals living in a cluster of identical polyps. Basically, a polyp is an individual organism within a coral community. Most corals consist of many small polyps living together in a large group or a colony. These polyps, which are cylindrical and elongated, are inter-connected to each other directly or indirectly.

Corals can be found in different shapes and sizes. A striking feature of these corals are the vibrant colors they come in. The colors are provided by a small algae called zooxanthellae. The algae uses sunlight to perform photosynthesis, providing the coral with necessary oxygen.

The relationship between the algae and corals are mutually beneficial. The coral provides the algae with shelter and nutrients needed for photosynthesis. In return, the algae produce oxygen and help the coral to remove wastes. Most importantly, zooxanthellae supply the coral with glucose, glycerol, and amino acids, which are the products of photosynthesis. The coral uses these products to make proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, and produce calcium carbonate

Cable Bacteria Capable of Generating A Network of Electrical Current Under the Seabed Discovered

Three years ago, Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark discovered the presence of electric currents in the seabed. They suspect at the time bacteria joined together in a network is responsible for this phenomenon. After three years, they have discovered proof to their theory: the actual bacteria.

The image shows cable bacteria in the mud of the sea bottom.
Credit: Mingdong Dong, Jie Song and Nils Risgaard-Petersen

While studying the phenomenon, the researchers noted that drawing a horizontal wire through the seabed cut off the current flow, similar to cutting power cables in real life. They also noted the presence of the bacteria whenever they studied the ocean floor.

The whole thing came together when they studied and observed the bacteria and noticed wire-like strings enclosed by a membrane.

“Such unique insulated biological wires seem simple but with incredible complexity at nanoscale,” says PhD student Jie Song, Aarhus University, who used nanotools to map the electrical properties of the cable bacteria.

Research Point To Microbe As Cause For Ocean's Methane Levels

Methane is a simple chemical molecule and is a principal component of natural gas. The chemical formula for methane is CH₄. It is colorless and odorless.

Methane is created by bacteria that feeds on organic material. During the process, some methane can get trapped in the ground while some rises up to the atmosphere where it breaks down to (CO₂) and water (H₂O).

When methane is burned in the presence of oxygen (O₂, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water (H₂O) is produced. The principal use of methane is as a fuel.

Methane is classified as a greenhouse gas. It has a global warming potential (GWP) of 30. This means that for each kilogram (k) of methane emitted to the atmosphere has the equivalent forcing effect on the Earth's climate of 30 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100 year period. Methane has a short lifespan and usually breaks down within 10 years of its release to the atmosphere.

According to an April 2012 NASA report, cracks in Arctic sea ice are leaking alarming levels of methane.

Study identifies prime source of ocean methane

Up to 4 percent of the methane on Earth comes from the ocean's oxygen-rich waters, but scientists have been unable to identify the source of this potent greenhouse gas. Now researchers report that they have found the culprit: a bit of "weird chemistry" practiced by the most abundant microbes on the planet.

The findings appear in the journal Science.

The researchers who made the discovery did not set out to explain ocean geochemistry. They were searching for new antibiotics. Their research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, explores an unusual class of potential antibiotic agents, called phosphonates, already in use in agriculture and medicine.

Many microbes produce phosphonates to thwart their competitors. Phosphonates mimic molecules the microbes use, but tend to be more resistant to enzymatic breakdown. The secret of their success is the durability of their carbon-phosphorus bond.

"We're looking at all kinds of antibiotics that have this carbon-phosphorus bond," said University of Illinois microbiology and Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) professor William Metcalf, who led the study with chemistry and IGB professor Wilfred van der Donk. "So we found genes in a microbe that we thought would make an antibiotic. They didn't. They made something different altogether."

The microbe was Nitrosopumilus maritimus, one of the most abundant organisms on the planet and a resident of the oxygen-rich regions of the open ocean. When scanning microbial genomes for promising leads, Benjamin Griffin, a postdoctoral researcher in Metcalf's lab, noticed that N. maritimus had a gene for an enzyme that resembled other enzymes involved in phosphonate biosynthesis. He saw that the microbe also contained genes to make a molecule, called HEP, which is an intermediate in phosphonate biosynthesis.

Wave Glider Robot Track Ocean's Great White Sharks And Shares Info With Public

Shark Net app available free
Credit: Stanford University

Sea-surfing 'wave glider' robot deployed to help track white sharks in the Pacific

A sleek, unmanned Wave Glider robot has been deployed off the US coast near San Francisco -- the latest addition to an arsenal of ocean observing technologies revealing in real time the mysterious travels of great white sharks and other magnificent marine creatures.

The self-propelled, solar-powered glider is part of a new network of data receivers on fixed buoys will pick up signals from acoustic tags on animals passing within 1,000 feet and transmit the data to a research team on shore, led by Stanford University Marine Sciences Prof. Barbara Block.

The long-lasting, relatively inexpensive acoustic tags and the local array of both fixed and mobile ocean transmitters will fine tune 12 years of insights gleaned from satellite-connected tags used to follow thousands of animals throughout their entire Pacific journeys.

Dr. Block and her team are on a mission to create a "wired ocean" where live feeds of predator movements are relayed by a series of "ocean WiFi hotspots" on moored buoys and self-propelled Wave Gliders carrying acoustic receivers.

The technology is central to Dr. Block's "Blue Serengeti Initiative," which builds on the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project, part of the international Census of Marine Life (2000-2010).

"Our goal is to use revolutionary technology that increases our capacity to observe our oceans and census populations, improve fisheries management models, and monitor animal responses to climate change," says Dr. Block.

Wave Glider Carey and Dr.Barbara Block & Keith Kreider
Credit: Stanford University

The bright yellow, seven-foot long Wave Glider and fixed buoys will transmit data this summer and fall from animals off the California coast near San Francisco, between Monterey Bay and Tomales Point. In time Dr. Block hopes to extend this ocean observing network down the entire west coast of North America, tracking animals that range in size from salmon smolts to large ocean going predators such as white, mako and salmon sharks.

Says Dan Basta, Director of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service: "Animals may tell us more about how the world works and is changing then any other source of knowledge."

Importantly, the public can now follow the tracking of animals in real time on a smartphone and tablet computer app.

"Shark Net," a new iOS app available free of charge at the Apple app store, was created by Dr. Block and her colleagues with developers from TOPP, EarthNC and Gaia GPS to enable a direct, personal connection between the public and wild marine animals and to raise public awareness of the ocean wilderness teeming with life just off North America's West Coast.

Rebuilding Global Fisheries Increases Worth Five Times and Improves Ecology

Rebuilding global fisheries would make them five times more valuable while improving ecology, according to a new University of British Columbia study, published today in the online journal PLoS ONE.

By reducing the size of the global fishing fleet, eliminating harmful government subsidies, and putting in place effective management systems, global fisheries would be worth US$54 billion each year, rather than losing US$13 billion per year.

"Global fisheries are not living up to their economic potential in part because governments keep them afloat by subsidizing unprofitable large scale fishing fleets with taxpayer money," says study lead author Rashid Sumaila, a fisheries economist and director of the UBC Fisheries Centre. "This is like sinking money into a series of small, cosmetic fixes in an old home rather than investing in a complete, well thought-out renovation that boosts the home's value."

Despite the US$130- to US$292-billion price tag for transitioning global fisheries, the study's authors estimate that in just 12 years, the returns would begin to outweigh the costs and the total gains over 50 years would return the investment three- to seven-fold.

2012 Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grant Recipients Named on World Oceans Day

Since 1992, every 8th of June is World Oceans Day. The celebration was proposed during the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil by Canada.

In 2008, The United Nations officially recognized the event.

This year there are events all around the world, in aquariums, zoos, museums, and even online. World Ocean Day provide ways to inspire and motivate people to help the oceans of the world and learn more about them.

On World Oceans Day, the Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants will announce its recipients.

Holland America and Marine Conservation Institute announce historical marine ecology awards

Today, Holland America Line and Marine Conservation Institute announced the recipients of the 2012 Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants in Marine Environmental History and Historical Marine Ecology. Funded through a partnership between Marine Conservation Institute and Holland America Line, the program supports efforts of promising young scientists and graduate students to study the history of ocean ecology to predict future impacts from human interactions.

Information gathered through research studies is essential to help lawmakers, regulators, and conservationists set appropriate targets for marine conservation efforts that take into account the sustained health and productivity of the world's oceans.

Deep Sea Animals Accidentally Introduced To A New Environment In The Juan De Fuca Ridge

Caption: This is a photo of Lepetodrilus gordensis, the species recovered from the Alvin submersible. Credit: Todd Haney

Located off the coasts of the state of Washington in the United States and the province of British Columbia in Canada is the Juan de Fuca Ridge. The Juan de Fuca Ridge is an underwater volcanic mountain range. It was created by the separation of the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Pacific Plate. It is a tectonic spreading center. In plate tectonics, this means that the two tectonic plates are moving away from each other.

It is also home to a diverse community of life that depends on sulfur based nutrients rather than from the sun.





Deep sea animals stowaway on submarines and reach new territory

Marine scientists studying life around deep-sea vents have discovered that some hardy species can survive the extreme change in pressure that occurs when a research submersible rises to the surface. The team's findings, published in Conservation Biology, reveal how a species can be inadvertently carried by submersibles to new areas, with potentially damaging effects on marine ecosystems.

After using the manned submersible Alvin to collect samples of species from the Juan de Fuca Ridge under the northeastern Pacific Ocean, the team discovered 38 deep-sea limpets ( Lepetodrilus gordensis) among their sample. Intriguingly this species is believed to occur only in the vents of the Gorda Ridge, which are 635 km south of the dive site.

Limpets are kinds of saltwater and freshwater snails.

Movement of Greenland Glaciers Speeding Up. May Affect Ocean Level and Climate Change

These icebergs recently calved from the front of the north branch of Jakobshavn Isbrae, a large outlet glacier that drains 6.5 percent of the Greenland ice sheet. The fact that they are upright, indicated by their dirty and crevassed surfaces, suggests they calved from the floating end of a glacier.

Photo Credit: Ian Joughin/University of Washington

When snow accumulates over the same area undisturbed over time to form ice, a glacier forms.

As time progresses and snow forms layers over the previous layers, the snow underneath compresses and forces it to re-crystallize to form grains similar in size and shape to grains of sugar. These grains gradually increase in size and the air pockets between the grain gets smaller. This causes the snow to slowly compact and become denser. After two years or so, the snow is in a state that is between snow and glacier ice, this is called FIRN. Over time, the ice crystals become so compressed that any air pockets between them are very tiny. In very old glacier ice, crystals can reach several inches in length. For most glaciers, this process takes over a hundred years.

It can be simply described as a big mass of ice, water and rocks. Some glaciers are as small as a football field while there are others that are over a hundred kilometers long.

Glaciers have the ability to move. They flow like very slow rivers because of the stress induced by its own weight. Glaciers form on land, often elevated, and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice and lake ice that form on the surface of bodies of water. The establishment of a glacier, its growth and its flow is a process called glaciation.

Crossing a crevasse

Distinguishing features of a glaciers are a crevasse, and a serac. Crevasses are deep cracks formed in the glacier resulting from the resulting stress from the glacier's movemnt. Seracs are block or columns of ice formed by intersecting crevasses on a glacier.

Glaciers move because of gravity and the meltwater it forms. Gravity pulls the heavy weight of the glacier down a hill very slowly. Underneath the glacier, the ice breaks up and melts because of the rocks it is dragging. This melt water, as it is called, makes the glacier slippery allowing it to move. The movement of a glacier is so slow that it is barely noticeable.

Increasing speed of Greenland glaciers gives new insight for rising sea level

Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland's contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible, a new study shows.

"So far, on average we're seeing about a 30 percent speedup in 10 years," said Twila Moon, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences and lead author of a paper documenting the observations published May 4 in Science.

The faster the glaciers move, the more ice and meltwater they release into the ocean. In a previous study, scientists trying to understand the contribution of melting ice to rising sea level in a warming world considered a scenario in which the Greenland glaciers would double their velocity between 2000 and 2010 and then stabilize at the higher speed, and another scenario in which the speeds would increase tenfold and then stabilize.

Population of Reef Sharks Plummet By More Than 90 Percent In Certain Areas

Curious gray reef sharks (Carcharhinus amlyrhynchos) at Kure Atoll in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Hawaii were studied as part of a study published April 25 in the journal Conservation Biology. An international team of marine scientists provide the first estimates of reef shark losses in the Pacific Ocean using underwater surveys conducted over the past decade across 46 US Pacific islands and atolls, as part of NOAA's extensive Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program. The team compared reef shark numbers at reefs spanning from heavily impacted ones to those among the world's most pristine. The results are sobering.

Reef sharks are found around coral reefs and in tropical and warm temperate waters in the Indo-Pacific region.

Reef sharks are spread across different shark species. Species classified as reef sharks are

• Blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus)
• Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezii)
• Grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos)
• Whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus)

Scientists provide first large-scale estimate of reef shark losses in the Pacific Ocean

Many shark populations have plummeted in the past three decades as a result of excessive harvesting – for their fins, as an incidental catch of fisheries targeting other species, and in recreational fisheries. This is particularly true for oceanic species. However, until now, a lack of data prevented scientists from properly quantifying the status of Pacific reef sharks at a large geographic scale.

In a study published online April 27 in the journal Conservation Biology, an international team of marine scientists provide the first estimates of reef shark losses in the Pacific Ocean. Using underwater surveys conducted over the past decade across 46 U.S. Pacific islands and atolls, as part of NOAA's extensive Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program, the team compared reef shark numbers at reefs spanning from heavily impacted ones to those among the world's most pristine.

Neptune Grass (Posidonia Oceanica) in the island of Formentera is World's Oldest Living Organism Estimated At 200,000 Years Old

Posidonia Oceanica is a seagrass that is commonly known as Neptune Grass or Mediterranean Tapeweed.

The seagrass forms large underwater meadows that form an important part of the ocean's ecosystem. Presence of the plant is a sign that the waters around it are clean and pollution free.

Posidonia can only be found in the Mediterranean Sea where it is slowly disappearing, occupying an area of only about 3% of the basin. This corresponds to a surface area of about 38,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi).

Posidonia Oceanica thrives in clean waters, and its presence is a marker for lack of pollution. The fruit is free floating and known in Italy as 'the olive of the sea' (l'oliva di mare). Balls of fibrous material from its foliage, known as egagropili, wash up to nearby shorelines. It is a flowering plant which lives in dense meadows or along channels in the sands of the Mediterranean.

It is found at depths from 1 to 35 meters (3.3 to 115 feet), depending on the water clarity. Subsurface rhizomes (stems) and roots stabilize the plant while standing and erect rhizomes and its leaves reduce silt accumulation.

Heat Stress May Condition Corals in Surviving Climate Change and Coral Bleaching

Corals are marine animals that lives in a cluster or colony of identical polyps. Polyps are cylindrical in shape and elongated. Coral polyps are connected to each other directly or indirectly. The oral end contains the mouth, and is surrounded by a circlet of tentacles. Corals are classified in the class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria. The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.

Corals come in different shapes, sizes and colors. The color of a coral is due to an algae called zooxanthellae which is also necessary for their survival. Without the zooxanthellae algae to provide the corals the bright and brilliant colors, the coral turns white in appearance. This condition is called coral bleaching.

A team of international scientists working in the central Pacific have discovered that coral which has survived heat stress in the past is more likely to survive it in the future.

The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, paves the way towards an important road map on the impacts of ocean warming, and will help scientists identify the habitats and locations where coral reefs are more likely to adapt to climate change.

"We're starting to identify the types of reef environments where corals are more likely to persist in the future," says study co-author Simon Donner, an assistant professor in UBC's Department of Geography and organizer of the field expedition. "The new data is critical for predicting the future for coral reefs, and for planning how society will cope in that future."

Studying Coral Reefs, Global Warming and Coral Bleaching. Can Corals Adapt?

Coral reefs are found in the ocean and are an important ecosystems. These corals are inhabited by small algae called zooxanthellae. The algae provide the coral's brilliant color and use sunlight to perform photosynthesis, providing the coral with necessary oxygen.

Coral bleaching happens when coral polyps, the animals that build corals, shed the algae (zooxanthellae) that give them their color, and which are necessary for their survival. Without the zooxanthellae algae to provide the corals the bright and brilliant colors, the coral turns white in appearance.

Coral scientists are not sure what causes coral bleaching, but warming water is the most likely culprit. Corals in the Caribbean and Florida have bleached when sea surface temperatures rose and were higher than the mean sea surface temperature for as little as one month.

Coral reefs are among the ecosystems most severely threatened by global warming, but hopeful new evidence has emerged that some coral species may be able to adapt to warmer oceans.

In a study published in the journal PLoS One, an international team of researchers reports that coral populations which unexpectedly survived a massive bleaching event in 2010 in South-East Asian waters had previously experienced severe bleaching during an event in 1998.

The team analysed what happened at three sites during the 2010 event and found that in Indonesia, corals responded to higher sea temperatures in a typical way, with fast-growing branching species - such as staghorn corals – suffering severe die-offs. But at sites monitored in Singapore and Malaysia, the usual trend was reversed: normally susceptible colonies of fast-growing Acropora corals appeared healthy and fully pigmented, while most colonies of massive coral were severely bleached.

"Mass coral-bleaching events, caused by a breakdown in the relationship between the coral animals and their symbiotic algae, are strongly correlated with unusually high sea temperatures and have led to widespread reef degradation in recent decades," notes lead author Dr James Guest, currently a joint research fellow at the UNSW Centre for Marine Bio-innovation and the Advanced Environmental Biotechnology Centre at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

"The severity of these events varies considerably but until now we've seen one consistent trend: certain types of coral tend to be more resistant to bleaching than others. This has led to the prediction that hardier, slow-growing massive species will replace less hardy, fast-growing branching species on reefs in the future.

MIT News: Sometimes The Quickest Path Is Not A Straight Line

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Sometimes the fastest pathway from point A to point B is not a straight line: for example, if you’re underwater and contending with strong and shifting currents. But figuring out the best route in such settings is a monumentally complex problem — especially if you’re trying to do it not just for one underwater vehicle, but for a swarm of them moving all at once toward separate destinations.

But that’s just what a team of engineers at MIT has figured out how to do, in research results to be presented in May at the annual IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The team, led by Pierre Lermusiaux, the Doherty Associate Professor in Ocean Utilization, developed a mathematical procedure that can optimize path planning for automated underwater vehicles (AUVs), even in regions with complex shorelines and strong shifting currents. The system can provide paths optimized either for the shortest travel time or for the minimum use of energy, or to maximize the collection of data that is considered most important.

Collections of propelled AUVs and gliding AUVs (also called gliders) are now often used for mapping and oceanographic research, for military reconnaissance and harbor protection, or for deep-sea oil-well maintenance and emergency response. So far, fleets of up to 20 such AUVs have been deployed, but in the coming years far larger fleets could come into service, Lermusiaux says, making the computational task of planning optimal paths much more complex.

He adds that earlier attempts to find optimal paths for underwater vehicles were either imprecise, unable to cope with changing currents and complex topography, or required so much computational power that they couldn’t be applied to real-time control of swarms of robotic vehicles.

Deepest Underwater Volcanic Vent Full of Life

Deep down in the Caribbean seafloor, around 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) is the Cayman Trough. It is the world's deepest undersea volcanic vent. Known as "black smokers", these vents eject water hot enough to melt lead.

The undersea hot springs, which lie 0.5 miles (around 0.8 kilometers) deeper than any seen before, may be hotter than 450 °C and are shooting a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometer (0.62 miles) into the ocean above.

Despite these extreme conditions, the vents are teeming with thousands of a new species of shrimp that has a light-sensing organ on its back. And having found yet more 'black smoker' vents on an undersea mountain nearby, the researchers suggest that deep-sea vents may be more widespread around the world than anyone thought.