We start this issue with a look at a new species of archaea – where we learn how difficult it is to find out anything specific about these organisms. We put phytoplankton on ice, and in ice, use them to make pretty patterns and find them hard to kill; unlike blue sharks, which just wind up dead by accident.

Our conservation section starts with a look at alien species and threat networks, and has news of a new marine protected area off Costa Rica, before links to some personal accounts of manatees and the sex life of groupers (amongst other subjects).

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We have the usual crop of articles involving DNA sequencing this issue – but I can offer you a link to Deep Sea News promising to demistify some of this – so that is where we start. DNA sequencing of a brown-tide algae helps to show how it can form these potentially harmful algal blooms. Our article on cryptic dolphins, however, uses isotope analysis to show that two sub-species are feeding on very different prey that they are finding in different locations. We pick up on isotope analysis again in pollution, where ⁷Be is used to track global pollution and rainfall – but no formal climate change section on this occasion…

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Janet took us through a range of mammals that can be classed as ‘marine’, from polar bears to whales via sirenians, otters, dolphins and – her particular favourite – seals.

Mammals have problems adapting to life in the marine environment, not least of them insulating themselves against the chilling effect of the water on their warm blooded bodies. While most marine mammals rely on a layer of fat to help keep them warm, we learnt that not only is the sea otter the smallest marine mammal, it is the only one that relies solely on its fur for insulation, having the densest fur in the animal kingdom. It’s probably the only tool user too: they often use a rock to break open shellfish, lying on their backs in the water with the shellfish on their chests and pounding down with the rock.

As well as the problems of keeping warm marine mammals have all the problems of being air breathing animals in a watery environment, tied to maintaining contact with the surface, and with a range of breeding strategies to cope with this. They have also reached differing levels of adaption to moving through water; some being fully aquatic, and others needing to return to land.

We skimmed on past whales, dolphins, and porpoise to concentrate on Janet’s favourite animals – seals.

Both species of seals we have in this country are true seals, as opposed to the sea lions and fur seals, and the walruses. True seals are more adapted to the water than the other two groups but are still tied to the land.

Our two species are the harbour (or common) seal Phoca vitulina, and the grey seal Halchoerus grypus. We have significant proportions of the world populations of both species in our seas, which makes them globally significant.

Janet covered some of the threats to seals and other marine life in general. One of the most shocking was the ‘corkscrew killer’, where animals have been found with deep wounds spiralling along their bodies; the most likely explanation for this being that the animals have been caught in a ‘ducted’ propellor. Other threats included all the usual suspects – pollution, plastic bags and ballons, discarded fishing gear, hunting, and the effects of overfishing on the food chain.

Some great pictures and stories of seal encounters around the Farnes reminded me of some of my own seal encounters around the Farne Islands and others. I haven’t got any Janet’s pictures but some of my pictures are at –
http://www.zen102367.zen.co.uk/diving/farnes0806.htm

A selection of interesting facts that I picked up on the way –
If you find a dolphin or porpoise stranded on the shore it can be difficult to tell the difference; but if you look at the teeth, dolphins have conical shaped teeth and porpoise have spade-like teeth.
Walruses use the “squirt and suck” method of feeding (I can’t remember exactly how it works but I just love the way it sounds!).
Whales make footprints. Their skin is oily and the tail will leave an oily ‘print’ on the surface of the water as they dive.

In this week’s science section the life history of the Nautilus is being revealed. It proves to be an animal with a long life span, and low fecundity, so in severe danger of becoming the once and future fossil, if it is placed under much pressure. On a more aggressive note, female squid select their males by proxy – encouraging them to fight it out amongst themselves for the privilege of passing on their genes.

A couple of videos this week in the fisheries and exploitation section. These come from the HMAP (History of Marine Animal Populations) project, which endeavours to quantify what the ocean food web looked like before we had such a dominant, and apparently disastrous, impact.

Finally in climate change we have a couple of reports showing how plankton can be used to monitor ocean circulation patterns – past and present.
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The first two meetings of 2011 were very well attended. They both had quite different themes and each provided all present with a most enjoyable evening.

The January meeting started off with a quick AGM followed by the annual photo. competition. the competition had three categories , Underwater, Above water and Humorous images. Entrants were allowed to submit a total of  four images across the three categories. We had 32 images from 8 entrants, and the winners were:-

Above water, Lewis Bambury. –    Underwater, Mark Piotrowski. – Humorous, Christine Fletcher.

Congratulations to all the winners. (Images can be seen on a previous post).

Janet Preece from Blackpool & Fylde Coll. was the speaker at the February  meeting, the subject of her presentation was marine mammals.  Janet briefly covered the whole range of marine mammals from the small sea otters to the giant blue whales.  Many interesting facts emerged, we heard about the extremely dense fur sea otters have in place of a fatty layer which protects them from the cold and the oily footprint  left on the surface by a sperm whale when it submerges.  Much of the presentation focused on the  sea lions, walrus and seals with the emphasis on the two species of seal, the common or harbour seal and the much more common grey or Atlantic seal  that inhabit our UK coastal waters.  Features to look out for when attempting to identify the different species of the various groups and the many threats to the survival of these animals were explained in some detail.  The whole presentation was both educational and entertaining and fully enjoyed by the whole audience.  Thank you Janet.

Here are the winners from the 2011 Lancashire MCS photo competition. Winners are divided into three sections – above water, below water, and humour. Winning photos were by popular acclaim at the January AGM:

Click any picture for a larger version, images are copyright as indicated.

We start this issue with a look at the most ubiquitous species on the planet* – Prochlorococcus; a bluegreen algae (or photosynthesising bacterium if you want to be rude) that has adapted to life in the open ocean, but relies on other friendly bugs to do it. We also see the sequencing of the first crustacean genome; the child microscopist’s friend – the water flea!

In the conservation section we have news of more reports in the Census of Marine Life (CoML) series, covering South America, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Maine. While the Indian Ocean study suffers from a lack of core data, the US study provides a wealth of information, and a valuable insight into temperate marine ecosystems. We also have a nice paper looking at how penguins have fared since the 1970’s, when water temperatures changed in the southern Indian Ocean (but no formal climate change section this time).

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This issue we have tantalizing news of a new algal group – the rappemonads, which are reported to be common in both fresh and marine ecosystems, and goes to show the power of DNA based analysis. In conservation we have an article on seagrass in Northern Europe, which suggests that the eutrophication of coastal waters is an important factor. Seagrass (Zostra spp.) beds have largely disappeared from British waters, though I believe that disease has also been implicated here…

Finally, we end up in both hot and cold water in our section on climate change!

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I’d been asked to look for diatoms in Morecambe Bay, – the project was to help people understand life in the Bay, and marine life in general, so it was an opportunity to look at the base of the marine food-chain. I was a little worried about actually finding anything at this time of year – January and February are usually very quiet for phytoplankton, before the spring bloom starts. As a consequence I suggested we looked for epiphytic diatoms, ones that live on surfaces, rather than floating in the water column. In this search we were lucky, with every one of our samples having some diatoms in. This is perhaps the nicest micrograph, with a couple of free-swimming pennate diatoms. No-one is actualy sure how these small plants move, but they are most certainly capable of a fairly respectable pace under the microscope!

We have three articles on how fish sense their surroundings in marine science this issue – from electrosensory arrays of sharks and rays, which help them oreintate themeselves in the water column and hunt for food, to a sense of smell that warns fish about predator activity on the reef. We end in climate change with a paper from PLoS 1 about how changes in carbon dioxide levels effect gene regulation in marine snails…
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