Themes this week include climate change, and in particular how phytoplankton, some of the smallest plants on the planet, have a vital role in managing the Earth’s carbon dioxide budget. Otherwise, scientists are starting to evaluate how climate change will effect key organisms in the marine ecosystem, and results from these studies are beginning to come in. Fisheries are an important component of many maritime economies, and there are a few interesting papers in this area this week. Historic studies of fisheries are important for understanding how and why they develop, and what economic pressures can lead to collapse. Otherwise, husbandry is becomming important in the marine field, as demonstrated by the breeding of new ‘super prawns’ for the Australian market.

If climate control and resources are two positive things, it is less easy to find good things to say about pollution and the continuing oil spill. The importance of monitoring marine systems for organic mercury compounds is emphasised – while the marine ecosystem dilutes these compounds, the marine food chain concentrates them right back up again, and guess who is at the top of that food chain…

On the oil spill there is a very interesting blog post on how likely the spill was to occur – was it an event so unlikely that (as the US regulators agreed when they licensed the Deepwater Horizon) there was no likelihood of environmental damage? Beyond that, we look at some of the less visible casualties of the spill, and start to quantify just how much of the Gulf marine ecosystem has been wiped out.
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The Chagos Islands and surrounding seas were designated a Marine Protected Area by the UK government in early April 2010. The Chagos has the world’s largest coral atoll and 55 tiny islands set in quarter of a million square miles of the world’s cleanest seas.  This is the UK’s greatest area of marine biodiversity.

To see short film which shows the wonderful life click on following link: protectchagos.org

As a local area group we try to inform, entertain and educate people about the wonderful marine life in the seas around Britain. We do this through a programme of talks and events – both within our own lecture series, (see our diary) but also to other groups by invitation.

For some years now presentations have been moving to electronic format – Powerpoint(R) and the like, and we have struggled to borrow equipment (thanks to everyone who has helped out!), and with compatibility issues. While we have never yet had to cancel a presentation due to total incompatibility between a speaker’s talk and the equipment to hand, it has come pretty close on a number of occasions…

As a consequence it is a great relief to announce that we have been awarded National Lottery Funding to purchase our own digital projector, laptop and the associated software. While it will take us a couple of weeks to get fully organised, we hope this is the end of pre-presentation worries!

A big thanks to the Big Lottery Fund, and to Jo for co-ordinating our application.

This roundup has a focus on oceanography, physical and chemical processes in the worlds oceans. The chemistry and biology of natural seawaters are very tightly linked, with most reactions being biologically mediated. The physical side, however, dominates what chemical species marine biology has to work with, an interaction that scientists are now claiming to be able to model. Many marine systems are rather less than ‘natural’, with a range of human influences. In the oceanography section we look at the underlying science of these man-made changes, whilst in our pollution section we look at the dirty stuff…

We finish on a few general papers that don’t fit into the two main themes for the week – living underwater, mapping the salmon genome, dolphins and ichthyosaurs. Finally, if you can only conserve one thing, what would it be? – This is the root of a difficult question facing coral reef conservators. Do you concentrate on the core of the reef? – science is starting to show that the fringes of the reef (an other eco-systems?) are more genetically diverse, and may offer a stronger pool of organisms better able to survive ongoing climatic change…
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The Marine ID course on Wednesday 9th June looked at two of the most commonly found animals in the sea – starfish and the anemones, or to get more technical, echinoderms and cnidaria. The talks looked at the characteristic features of the two groups, and were beautifully illustrated with photographs of many different species, mostly taken by the speakers in UK waters. Thanks to Gordon and Ron for a couple of excellent presentations!

Lots of interesting articles over the last week, some physiology – how sharks and seals find their food, and how far can crocodiles migrate? Prehaps my favourite was the article on classifying arrow-worms, a group I knew nothing about them before the article. There is also a nice set of maps of North Americal marine ecosystems, which you can view on Google Earth. Maps almost had a separate section this week, with 3D maps of the oil-spill being computed by the University of Texas at Austin. Unfortunately the article was so uninformative that I couldn’t see any point in referencing it…
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Conditions for the dive at Roa Island on Saturday 5th. June were almost perfect, bright sun.little wind, calm and undisturbed water which gave underwater visibility  in excess of  3 metres.

Swimming approx. SW from the jetty towards the middle of the channel, initially over  a sea bed of cobbles covered with tube worms, common winkles and dog whelks with numerous clumps of dog whelk eggs.  At about 4 metres deep the bed changed to small boulders with a dense  covering of  various seaweeds which included sea lettuce and  bootlace weed.  continuing downward at minus 6 metres the weed  disappeared  to be replaced on the boulders by a number of species of sponge. Between the boulders were many varied and different animals including peacock worms, anemones, and various species of crab.  After a short distance the sea bed changed again to  pebbles with hard mud patches, this continued to max. depth of dive at 10.3 metres. There was still lots of life to see on this gentle slope, including hermit crabs, whelks, anemones and the greater pipe fish. The pipe fish were quite common at all depths through-out the dive. On this deeper part of the dive there were many common starfish, a large number with parts of arms missing.  They had not been shed, more like cut or torn off, the detached parts were also strewn over the sea bed. All in all an excellent and very interesting dive.

This week’s science news is a mixed bag – so I’ve not tried to pull out articles by theme. Many of the articles have a strong central thread of common sense running through them, however! If the amount of fresh water entering the Baltic is reduced, the Baltic will become saltier, dispersing an oil-slick is not the same as making it disappear…
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In early April the British Government declared the Chagos islands and the seas surrounding them as a  marine protected area, MPA. It also includes a no-take marine reserve where commercial fishing will be completely banned.  The new MPA is the world’s largest, and it will double the global coverage of the world’s oceans under protection.

Professor Charles Sheppard of Warwick University has spent many years undertaking scientific research and campaigning for protection for the Chagos. In an interview  Professor Sheppard outlines the importance of the Chagos itself  and the much wider influence it can have on the Indian Ocean as a whole.

Listen to this interview

Lots of new species, and excess nutrients encouraging algal blooms. I’ve avoided the oil-spill, which still contributes a lot to the scientific news, but I don’t have anything new or insightful to say on this. I’m afraid that disasters breed liggers even in the scientific community, all too often I find myself stripping out tenuous links to the disaster of the moment (climate change or oil-spill) added to spice up the press report, to try and find the meat of the scientific study…

Algal blooms

Sewage: From source to sea: In a recent study, engineers from Stanford University have shown that sewage can contaminate bathing beaches after percolating through groundwater from septic tank leach-fields. The main contaminants entering the seawater were nitrates, which cause localised blooms of phytoplankton, rather than bacteria, which might be a direct risk to human health. Overall, the authors did not cite a preference between septic tank and leach field vs piping to a sewage treatment facility, largely due to the lower energy costs of the former system. From ScienceDaily (May 25, 2010)

Algal blooms can hit the poor hard: The south west Indian coast is particularly prone to algal blooms. These are triggered by excess nutrients in the coastal seawater, from monsoon runoff from the land. The problem is amplified by the increased use of fertilisers. As Indian authorities encourage aquaculture along the coast to provide local income, and a source of protein for a booming population, it is becoming more important to understand how and when blooms are likely to occur, and how this might change in future, possibly as a result of climate change. From ScienceDaily (May 31, 2010)

New species discovered

Top ten new species in 2010: The new list from Arizona State University includes a multi-coloured frog fish (found in Indonesia), an electric fish (that had been used for demonstrations of the ‘electric effect’ for many decades, but not described and formally identified untill this year!) and a killer sponge. There is a nice photo of the spicules from this sponge (see ‘Why we have bones, and not spicules’ in evolution, below), but this is one you probably wouldn’t want to scrub your back with.

Six new antarctic gorgonians discovered: Gorgonians are cnidaria with large branched calcareaous skeletons, the surfaces of which are covered by tiny feeding polyps. The branches of a gorgonian are usually held in one plane across the current so the animal can capture food particles efficiently. This gives the animal a fan-like appearance, and they are commonly referred to as ‘sea-fans’. They are closely related to sea pens, which are common around the UK on muddy bottoms below about 20m depth. From ScienceDaily (May 30, 2010)

New fish species described: Nine new species of handfish – small fish that use their fins to ‘walk’ along the bottom – have been described in Tasmania. The discoveries are part of an urgent project to catalogue and protect Australia’s marine life. The discovery brings the total number of known handfish species to fourteen. From ScienceDaily (May 24, 2010).

Evolution

Genetic divergence in coral reefs: This study from PLoS 1 analyses changes in the DNA of individuals of the coral Seriatopora hystrix and its symbiotic alga (Symbiodinium). Their data show that there are changes in genetics of both coral and symbiont between individuals sited in diffferent locations on the same reef (e.g. back reef, deep slope and upper slope). However, inviduals on different reefs, but in a similar habitat, are genetically similar despite being isolated by distance. Similar changes have been documented before in Littorina (periwinkle), and I suspect this is quite common for a wide range of sedentary organisms (seaweed, anemones, sponges, tunicates). From Bongaerts P, Riginos C, Ridgway T, Sampayo EM, van Oppen MJH, et al. (2010) Genetic Divergence across Habitats in the Widespread Coral Seriatopora hystrix and Its Associated Symbiodinium. PLoS ONE 5(5): e10871. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010871

35 million years of whale evolution: Whales are a diverse bunch of marine mammals – showing great variations in size and a large number of different adaptations to the marine environment. The study shows that whale species diverged quickly shortly after adopting a fully marine life-style, and have since maintained a relatively conservative pace of change. From ScienceDaily (May 31, 2010)

Early power cell: Researchers at the University of Leeds suggest that pyrophosphite might have been an important energy source for the earlies forms of life on earth. The mineral is thought to have played a similar role to that of ATP in modern cells. From ScienceDaily (May 25, 2010)

Why we have bones, and not silicate spicules: Sponges are very simple multicellular animals. So simple, in fact, that I am told that you can liquidise many of them, and the cells will slowly go back together again afterwards. For structure, and some measure of protection, sponges secrete silica or calcium carbonate ‘spicules’ (often quite intricately shaped, the microscopic examination of these structures is an important aid for their identification). Deposition of carbonate minerals – used to make the bones of many animals (including ourselves) – relies on αCarbonic Anhydrase enzymes, which have been shown to appear first in the sponges about 530 MYA. From Deep Sea News, May 27 2010.

Other stuff

Hurricanes stir the bottom at 90m: Hurricane Ivan, a category-4 storm, crossed the Gulf of Mexico in 2004, right over a network of sensors laid by the US Navy. These showed sediment clouding the water column to a height of 25m above the bottom at 90m, indicating considerable scouring even at this depth. The hurricane set up powerful currents in the deep water that persisted for a week after the event. The authors suggest that these currents may be a threat to oil pipelines. From ScienceDaily (May 26, 2010)

Jellyfish in motion: Video of jellyfish from the Monteray acquarium, California. From KQED, May 25 2010

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library available through Google books: About half of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library has been digitised – focussing on rare out of print publications and expedition reports. Unfortunately, it appears that this resource is only freely available in the US. From Library Journal 5th May 2010. (Link to Google Books)

Shark attack Sunday: Apparently sharks are more likely to attack people on Sundays during a new moon. Other statistically significant parameters included depth of water (less than 6ft/2m) and colour of bathing costume (black and white preferred). From ScienceDaily (May 27, 2010)

Historical Atlas of Marine Ecosystems (HMAP): The Historical Atlas of Marine Ecosystems shows where species and ecosystems have been reported to occur, with data displayed on a Google World view. They have recently added areas showing where Sperm whales were caught between 1760 and 1920. (I think this might be a really useful resource, but I found it hard to use).