White House Takes a Bigger Role in the Oil Spill Cleanup

A boat collected crude oil that had leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico.
(Photo: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

New York Times, April 29, 2010
By: Campbell Robertson, Leslie Kaufman and Liz Robbins

NEW ORLEANS — President Obama increased his administration’s role in the cleanup of the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, by positioning the Department of Defense to assist the giant oil company BP in dealing with the spill and by sending three top officials to Louisiana.

In Baton Rouge, Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Thursday afternoon, saying that the oil slick, which has been spreading perilously closer to shore, “threatens the state’s natural resources.”

Janet Napolitano, the Secretary for Homeland Security, said at a White House briefing on Thursday that the oil slick was “a spill of national significance.” That designation meant that federal resources from many regions can be used to combat it.

Ms. Napolitano will be in Louisiana on Friday, along with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We will continue to push BP to engage in the strongest response possible,” Ms. Napolitano said. “We will continue to oversee those efforts, and add to those efforts where we deem necessary.”

Cleanup efforts, however, suffered a setback on Thursday when sea and wind conditions prevented officials from executing a controlled burn of some of the floating oil, said Rear Adm. Sally Brice O’Hare of the Coast Guard, who also took part in the briefing.

Admiral O’Hare added that the oil slick would probably touch land in the Mississippi Delta region sometime later on Friday.

“We are being very aggressive, and we are prepared for the worst case," Rear Adm. O’Hare told reporters.

Government officials announced on Wednesday night that the oil spill was worse than they first thought: five times as much oil might be leaking from the well into the Gulf of Mexico as initial estimates suggested. Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard said, citing a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that 5,000 barrels of oil appeared to be leaking each day, not 1,000.

The oil leak resulted from an explosion and fire on April 20 on a drilling rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, which left 11 workers missing and presumed dead. When the rig sank two days later, the riser pipe connecting the rig with the well it was drilling bent, broke and fell 5,000 feet to the sea floor. Oil is now escaping from that pipe at the open end and at two other points, according to Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP.

Mr. Suttles and others said on Wednesday that it was difficult to gauge the leakage rate accurately so far below the ocean’s surface. Doug Helton, a fisheries biologist who coordinates oil spill responses for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the leaks were being gauged mainly by looking at video images from remote-control submarine vehicles. “That takes a practiced eye,” he said Wednesday in an e-mail message, adding that it was “like being able to look at a garden hose and judge how many gallons a minute are being discharged.”

For the oil on the surface, Mr. Helton said, the approach is “to measure the area of the slick, the percent cover, and then estimate the thickness based on some rough color codes.”

The threat of landfall by the slick is prompting consideration of urgent measures to protect coastal wildlife, including using cannons to scare off birds and employing local shrimpers’ boats as makeshift oil skimmers in the shallows, officials said.

By late Wednesday, some 100,000 feet of protective booms have been laid down to protect the shoreline, with 500,000 feet more standing by, said Charlie Henry, an oil spill expert for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cleanup crews began on Wednesday evening to conduct what is called in-situ burning, a process that involves corralling a concentrated part of the spill using fireproof booms, moving it to another location and burning it. It has been tested effectively on other spills, but weather and ecological concerns can complicate the procedure.

Such burning also works only when the oil slick is thick enough; it may not be effective for much of this spill, 97 percent of which is estimated to be an oil-water mixture.

[read more; see video, images]

The Story of Bottled Water

New Marine Protected Areas Safeguard Northern California's Iconic Coastal Areas

“Underwater parks” will boost the region’s environmental and economic health

SACRAMENTO—On May 1, California’s underwater state park system will expand to include iconic north central coast areas like Point Reyes Headlands, the Farallon Islands, and Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Last August the California Fish & Game Commission approved a sweeping marine protected area plan that sets aside northern California’s ocean hot spots to boost the health and productivity of the entire coastline.


The science-based marine protected area network, which extends from Point Arena to Pigeon Point, is designed to restore sea life and protect habitat. It creates 21 marine protected areas, 3 marine management areas and 6 special closures. Eighty-six square miles (11 percent) of state waters along the north central coast have been designated as fully protected marine reserves, leaving almost 90 percent of the coast open to fishing.
This marks the latest step in a five-stage process to implement the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), which requires the state to develop a network of marine protected areas down the entire 1,100 mile coastline. California is the first state in the country to propose such a comprehensive plan to protect its marine resources. The MLPA planning process is well underway in the far north and south coasts, with statewide implementation expected by 2011.

“We need a healthy ocean for a healthy economy and environment, but our coastal waters face threats that require visionary action,” said Karen Garrison of Natural Resources Defense Council, who participated in the negotiations. “The Marine Life Protection Act allows us to create a legacy of healthy, resilient oceans for our kids and grandkids.”  

Read more...

Reef Offers Model for Conservation

Image: Institute for Ocean Conservation Science

Erik Olsen, The New York Times

GLOVER’S REEF, Belize — As Alex Tilley powers his 15-foot skiff over the turquoise surface, a dark form slips across the white sand floor below. “Sting ray,” Mr. Tilley says. 

For the next half mile, en route to the Wildlife Conservation Society research station here at Glover’s Reef in Belize, at least half a dozen rays are spotted moving beneath the surface. To Mr. Tilley, the presence of so many rays says a lot about the state of the reef here.

“The fish populations at Glover’s are still very robust,” he said. “This is definitely one of the healthiest reefs in the region.”

Read more...

98 right whales spotted off R.I. coast

A North Atlantic right whale and her calf (submerged at left) swam off the coast of Rhode Island. The sighting of the 98 whales set a record.
(Credit: Pete Duley/NOAA via Associated Press)

Scientists say animals were drawn by a large supply of food

Boston Globe, April 24, 2010
By Carolyn Y. Johnson

A circular patch of smooth water spotted in Rhode Island Sound this week led scientists to a surprising discovery: a quarter of the entire North Atlantic right whale population is hanging out and feeding in a spot where the endangered animals are not usually seen.

That tell-tale patch of water — a “flukeprint’’ generated when a whale pumps its tail up and down as it dives, roiling the surface in a distinctive way — led researchers doing an aerial survey to circle their plane to find a large cluster of whales in an unexpected location. In total, researchers found 98 whales in the waters east of Block Island, including two pairs of mothers and calves.

“It is really quite a bit higher [number of whales] than you find, even in places where you expect to find them,’’ said Charles “Stormy’’ Mayo, senior scientist at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. Recently in Cape Cod Bay, where the whales regularly migrate to feed, “the highest numbers we’ve had have been over 70, and we thought that was mind-blowing.’’

What almost certainly drew the whales to Rhode Island Sound, scientists said, was a good supply of copepods, microscopic shrimplike creatures. The whales, which often hover near the surface to feed, can be come so absorbed in sampling the water and eating when they hit on a rich supply of copepods that they are in danger of being struck by ships. Such collisions pose a serious threat to the whales, which were nearly wiped out by whalers before they won protection 80 years ago.

In the next several days, a research team plans to visit the area where the whales are feeding to take samples that could help them better understand the habitat and the food source, to see whether any more information can be gleaned about what drew the whales there in such unusual numbers.

“Hopefully we’ll get some answers as to why the whales have aggregated there, but the oceanographic processes that are at work there are pretty complex,’’ said Tim Cole, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s going to take a while to put the pieces together and figure out what happened this year that is so different than in the past.’’

For now, the scientists have counted the whales and have taken pictures so that researchers can identify the individual whales and better understand whether this is the same group that was previously in Cape Cod Bay, where the numbers have lately diminished.

Right whales have distinctive “callosities,’’ wartlike bumps on their heads infested with whale lice, that can be used to identify individuals.

Their presence has caused local boaters to be on alert. The state Division of Marine Fisheries sent out a notice to boat operators, urging them to reduce their speed to 10 knots and exercise caution in the waters around Martha’s Vineyard. Federal and state laws also prohibit coming within 500 yards of the whales, an endangered species whose population is estimated at 400.

Wayne Lamson — general manager of the Steamship Authority, which runs ferries to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard — said the authority’s schedule hasn’t been affected by the whales, because they are mainly to the west of Martha’s Vineyard. But he added that the service adds extra spotters and adheres to reduced speed regulations when whales are in the area.

Christine Blount — co-owner of Frances Fleet in Narragansett, R.I., which operates whale-watching tours in the summer — said there had been several calls from people interested in whale watches but that none were scheduled.

For scientists, the unexpected behavior is an opportunity to try to unravel how availability of food influences whales’ behavior. They would like to understand, for example, if an environmental trigger or some other factor altered the availability of food, attracting the whales.

“You can’t manage whales and protect them from the things that kill them if you don’t know where they are,’’ Mayo said. “This offers us a real big chance to answer what the food looks like, and how that is likely to influence the whales in the next days . . . but we’re also interested in the long term.’’

Holland America Line Partners with Marine Conservation Biology Institute

New “Our Marvelous Oceans” Program to Foster Greater Marine Environment Understanding

Seattle, April 22, 2010 – Holland America Line and Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) announced a new partnership to promote sustainable and compatible use of the oceans to protect the world’s marine ecosystems.  Called “Our Marvelous Oceans,” the new program will start with a three-year commitment that includes adopting sustainable seafood purchasing onboard, new programming for guests and support for the MCBI education program under which annual grants are made by MCBI to graduate students and young scientists in historical marine ecology.

“Our Marvelous Oceans” will embrace three elements:  guest and staff education; support for marine conservation biology research; and promotion of healthy marine economic practices by identifying more sustainable choices for the premium line’s seafood menu offerings.

“Holland America Line is deeply committed to protecting the marine environment and this partnership will help our company and our guests learn more about issues facing the world’s oceans,” said Stein Kruse, president and chief executive officer.  “We are very fortunate to be partnering with MCBI — an organization that is an international expert in protecting our oceans.  This partnership will enable us to benefit from their team of professionals while at the same time enabling them to provide important information to our guests and crewmembers on what is required to improve the health of our oceans.  We are delighted to form this mutually beneficial partnership and provide needed funding for studies as well as apply sound practices by working with MCBI to, among other items, select more sustainable seafood choices for our menus.”

“We are quite proud to be working with Holland America Line because they’re the environmental leader in the cruise industry,” said Dr. Elliott Norse, president and founder of MCBI, located in Bellevue, Wash.  “We share a strong interest in healthy oceans and this is an innovative opportunity to advance the conservation message and reach a new audience – Holland America Line guests.

“We know the oceans from different points of view,” added Dr. Norse.  “That’s a major reason to do this.  Together we will strengthen what we can learn and do for the living oceans that everyone loves and needs.”
The educational element begins with the launch of a video program series in summer 2010 to be aired on all ships.  Individual programs will introduce ocean issues and highlight important marine conservation topics that relate to the ships’ itineraries.  A final program will address marine spatial planning – an ecosystem-based approach to benefit ocean life and the ocean economy that MCBI, leading marine scientists, ocean policy experts, the United States and a growing number of governments around the globe are advocating. 
The “Signature of Sustainability” seafood program also begins in summer 2010 by adopting sustainable seafood purchasing practices recommended by MCBI.  Kruse added, “Holland America Line wants to make sure that the seafood we serve is consistent with our programs for protecting the oceans on which we operate.”

Holland America Line will also annually fund Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants.  The grants, determined by MCBI and given in the areas of marine environmental history and ecology, fund several projects each fall by providing critical support for graduate students and other researchers.  MCBI scientists will also conduct lectures aboard select cruises throughout the year.

Acidifying Oceans Dramatically Stunt Growth of Already Threatened Shellfish, Research Finds

Adult oysters soon to be separated for culturing for lab experiments. (Credit: Kirk Sato)

ScienceDaily, April 20, 2010

New research shows that global warming and its effects -- in particular, ocean acidification -- have descended upon shellfish reefs, particularly those formed by the Olympia oyster.

More than one-third of the world's human-caused carbon dioxide emissions have entered the oceans, according to Brian Gaylord, a biological oceanographer at the Bodega Marine Laboratory of the University of California at Davis.

"Similar to what happens in carbonated soda," says Gaylord, "increasing carbon dioxide in seawater makes it more acidic."

Even with small changes in acidity, seawater becomes corrosive to the shells of aquatic organisms.

That's not good news for most marine life, especially for oysters.

Gaylord is investigating the consequences of this increasing ocean acidity on the growth of larval and juvenile Olympia oysters native to the U.S. West Coast.

"Such early life stages can be extremely sensitive to environmental stresses like ocean acidification," says Gaylord.

"These stages operate as bottlenecks that drive overall population numbers. If larval and juvenile Olympia oysters decline as a result of an acidifying ocean, what does that mean for the species as a whole?"

Likely nothing good, he and colleagues say.

"Changes now happening in the ocean's chemistry are expected to continue far into the foreseeable future," says David Garrison, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s biological oceanography program, which funds Gaylord's research. "They may have myriad effects on marine animals."

Gaylord conducted experiments on larvae and juveniles produced by adult oysters in Tomales Bay, California. Adults were collected in the bay, then held at the Bodega Marine Laboratory until they released larvae.

In the lab, the free-swimming larvae were reared into early juvenile life.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in laboratory seawater were controlled to match present-day conditions in the oceans, 380 parts per million (ppm), as well as two carbon dioxide scenarios projected to occur by the year 2100 (540 and 970 ppm).

Mid-way through the larval phase at day nine, oysters in the high carbon dioxide treatment had shells that were 16 percent smaller than those reared in control, or ambient, conditions.

These effects continued through the time the larval oysters settled onto hard substrate at day 12. Shell size was seven percent smaller for oysters in the 970 ppm treatment than in the control group.

By a week later, the effects were dramatically magnified. The bottom-dwelling juveniles in the 970 ppm treatment had grown 41 percent less than juveniles under control conditions.

The consequences persisted, even after the juveniles from all treatments had been returned to present-day conditions.

"One and a half months after being transferred back to normal seawater," says Gaylord, "juveniles that had come from the high carbon dioxide environment were still 28 percent smaller than oysters reared for the entire experiment in control conditions."

The results strongly suggest that the effects of ocean acidification on oyster larvae persist well into the juvenile phase, he says, with potential consequences for oyster populations.

"If similar impacts happen to species beyond the Olympia oyster, there could be repercussions for oysters around the world."

Globally, 85 percent of shellfish reefs have been lost, making oyster reefs one of the most severely threatened marine habitats on the planet.

"Shellfish reefs in some places are at less than 10 percent of their former abundance," says Garrison. "Oysters have gone extinct in many areas, especially in North America, Australia and Europe."

Just as coral reefs are critical to tropical marine habitats, shellfish like oysters are the ecosystem engineers of bays and estuaries, creating dwelling places for countless plants and animals that find refuge in their three-dimensional structure.

The surface area of an oyster bed across its dips and folds and crevices may be 50 times greater than that of an equally extensive flat mud bottom.

Shellfish reefs also provide important services to people by filtering water, and serving as natural coastal buffers from boat wakes, sea-level rise and storms.

Oysters have supported civilization for millennia, from the ancient Romans to railroad workers in California in the 1880s. In the 1870s, eastern oyster reefs extended for miles along the James River in Chesapeake Bay. By the 1940s, they had largely disappeared.

"It's unclear whether we will ever be able to return to that by-gone era," says Gaylord. "The constellation of environmental and other pressures on oysters--including the consequences of ocean acidification--places them at grave risk."

Gaylord and colleagues presented early results of their research at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon, in February. They plan to publish a paper with updated findings later this year.

Beached whale's stomach found to be full of fresh trash

A gray whale that came ashore and later died near the Fauntleroy ferry dock last week had all that is pictured here in its stomach, all ingested while feeding in Puget Sound.
(Credit: Cascadia Research Collective)

A gray whale's last meal in Puget Sound included plenty of trash, and it was fresh enough to indicate the animal took the "eat local" mantra enthusiastically to heart before coming ashore at Arroyo Beach, and later dying about a mile south of the Fauntleroy ferry dock.

Seattle Times, April 20, 2010
By Lynda V. Mapes

Sweatpants. A golf ball. Surgical gloves. Small towels. Bits of plastic. And more than 20 plastic bags.

A gray whale's last meal in Puget Sound included plenty of trash, and it was fresh enough to indicate the animal took the "eat local" mantra enthusiastically to heart before coming ashore at Arroyo Beach, and later dying about a mile south of the Fauntleroy ferry dock.

In 20 years of examining more than 200 whale carcasses, research scientist John Calambokidis says Tuesday he has never seen so much trash in a whale's stomach. Founding member of the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Calambokidis says he does not yet know what caused the whale's death, and tests are continuing.

"It kind of dramatizes the legacy of what we leave at the bottom," Calambokidis said. The sediment at the bottom of Puget Sound bays is loaded with other contaminants, "and an animal feeding and being exposed to this kind of garbage is also being exposed to those, too."

Gray whales are bottom feeders. They feed by stirring up great snoutfuls of mud, then shutting their mouths, and pressing the muck and water through a comb-like filter in their mouth. They swallow the remainder — usually crustaceans and other tiny fare. Debris ingested along with their meal where they usually feed in the Arctic typically include rocks or wood, and the animals pass them out of their system naturally.

But this whale, a 37-foot-long male, fed in Puget Sound's industrial waters, and had the goods to prove it. "We are viewing this as an indicator that what we do has an impact on other animals we share the planet with," Calambokidis said.

While it fed here, the whale is not believed to be among the small population of gray whales that regularly frequents Puget Sound's waters, particularly in the west end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and near Whidbey Island. Scientists know those animals by distinct markings, and this animal wasn't in that crowd.

Rather, this gray is believed to be one of the migrating whales streaming right now by Washington's outer coast, heading north from the calving lagoons in Baja, back to the animals' feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas in the Arctic.

A more than 4,000-mile journey each way, it's among the longest migration of any mammal, and the whales make the entire trip south and back again without eating. Some animals don't start out with a big enough fat pad, run out of fuel on the way home and duck into Puget Sound for a meal. But this whale did not seem to fit the emaciated look of that kind of desperation feeder, Calambokidis said.

Scientists will analyze its blubber and other tissues to determine if a disease killed the whale, and what, if any role, pollution played in its demise.

Puget Sound is actually cleaner than it used to be, the result of everything from volunteer beach cleanups to state and federal regulation requiring sewage treatment and restricting industrial discharges.

Sediment samples taken in Elliott Bay, the state's most urban waters, showed marked improvement in 2007 over the same sites sampled in 1997, according to Maggie Dutch, a benthic ecologist at the State Department of Ecology.

Levels of toxic metals such as mercury, lead and tin were all lower, as were levels of PCBs and some other chemicals. But others, such as plasticizers, were higher. The sediments beneath urban waters are the most affected by industrial pollution, of course. In other areas of the Sound, pollutant levels in the sediments are too low to even detect, Dutch said.

Tracking the pollutants is important because they travel up the food chain. The higher up the chain an animal eats, the more contaminated it is, because the toxins bioaccumulate. Orcas are about 10 times more contaminated than grays because they eat other marine mammals and fish, while grays are less affected because they subsist mostly on tiny crustaceans.

[read more]

It's a microbial world

Left, Karenia brevis; Middle, Cryptopharynx; Right, Ceratium longipes.
(Credits: Bob Andersen and D. J. Patterson; D. J. Patterson, L. Amaral-Zettler and V. Edgcomb; avid Patterson, Linda Amaral Zettler, Mike Peglar and Tom Nerad)

Worldwide census ups diversity estimates for marine microbes one-hundred-fold.

Nature News, Published online April 18, 2010
By Jane Qiu

Researchers scouring the world's oceans have been forced to drastically revise estimates for the number of microbial species residing there after a census indicated up to one hundred times the expected diversity may be present.

When the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM) kicked off in 2003, microbiologists had identified 6,000 kinds of microbe and predicted that they might find as many as 600,000.

After collecting samples at more than 1,200 sites around the world, ICoMM researchers compiled a database of 18 million microbial DNA sequences and identified hundreds of thousands of different microbes. They conservatively estimate that there must be at least 20 million kinds of microbe in the oceans. The true number may even be billions or trillions.

"The findings have dramatically expanded our understanding of microbial life in the oceans," says microbiologist Norman Pace at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who was not involved in the census. "They have opened the door to an entirely new world we didn't know before."

The ICoMM is one of 14 projects that make up the Census of Marine Life, which involves over 2,000 scientists from more than 80 countries.

Some of the microbial habitats discovered in the oceans by the census are astounding. A patch of microbes identified on the sea floor off the west coast of South America covers an area roughly the size of Greece. Meanwhile, even the deepest mud brought to the surface by the project — from more than 1,600 metres below the sea floor off Newfoundland in Canada — still teemed with microbes.

Ecological Wildcards

The surprising wealth of species presents researchers with fresh questions, says Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who leads the ICoMM. "The overwhelming majority of the novel diversity comes from microbes that are rare and present in low abundance," he says. "Why are there so many different kinds of low-abundant microbes? What roles do they have in ecological processes in the oceans?"

Some researchers speculate that these organisms have important functions in the ecosystem — perhaps in producing certain essential compounds. Others suspect that low-abundance microbes represent a reserve of genetic and genomic innovation for different environments. When ecological conditions change, the relative abundance of marine microbes may shift.

The future of those microbes in a warming world is unclear. "They are basically wild cards," says Sogin. "We don't know what they do or how they are going to respond, but they could have an enormous impact."

As a major constituent of marine biomass, microbes continue to serve as the primary engine of Earth's biosphere, driving biogeochemical cycles that shape our planetary atmosphere and environment. Despite this, "we know very little of the microbial world in the oceans", says Ian Poiner, chief executive of the Australian Institute of Marine Science at Cape Ferguson in Queensland.

"Wherever we look in the oceans, we see a great diversity of life," says Poiner, who chairs the Census of Marine Life's scientific committee. "With new technologies, researchers have dramatically revised their estimates of diversity and improved understanding of the key role microbes play in maintaining the health of the planet."

Sequencing Step-change

The census focused on sequencing of an evolutionarily conserved gene that encodes ribosomal RNA in seawater samples. The low sequencing power of early technologies meant that researchers were able to pick up only the most abundant organisms.

The breakthrough came in 2005, when the researchers found that a rapidly evolving region of the ribosomal RNA gene could serve as a proxy for the evolutionary divergence of microbes.

With the advent of high-throughput sequencing technologies, the census team has been able to get hundreds of thousands of sequences of that evolving region in one day, as opposed to the mere one thousand sequences of the entire gene that were attainable previously.

[read more]

'Black Box' Plankton Found to Have Huge Role in Ocean Carbon Fixation

New research shows that eukaryotic phytoplankton account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Meckelmann)

ScienceDaily, Apr. 16, 2010

Scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened "the black box" of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.

Carbon fixation by phytoplankton in the open ocean plays a key role in the global carbon cycle but is not fully understood. Until now researchers believed that cyanobacteria overwhelmingly accounted for phytoplankton's role in carbon fixation in the open ocean. But now scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened "the black box" of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton.

Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, grow in vast numbers in the sunlit surface waters of the oceans, the photic zone. They use sunlight to 'fix' carbon by converting carbon dioxide into sugars and other organic compounds through photosynthesis.

Cyanobacteria belong to the 'picophytoplankton', the tiniest phytoplankton. Until now they have been thought to dominate carbon fixation in the open ocean, with species belonging to the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus being particularly abundant.

Like all bacteria, cyanobacteria are prokaryotes, distinguished from eukaryotes by the absence of a cell nucleus. However, although much less abundant than cyanobacteria, the photic zone also has a high biomass of small eukaryotic phytoplankton capable of carbon fixation.

"The eukaryotic phytoplankton community has long been a 'black box' in terms of its composition as well as contribution to carbon fixation," says Professor Dave Scanlan of the University of Warwick; "Determining how much carbon different groups fix into biomass is required for a full understanding of the Earth's carbon cycle," adds Professor Mikhail Zubkov of the National Oceanography Centre.

In research, published April 15 in the Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, the scientists report how they measured carbon fixation by dominant phytoplankton groups in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean, using samples collected from surface waters during a research cruise aboard the Royal Research Ship Discovery.

They discovered that eukaryotic phytoplankton actually fix significant amounts of carbon, contributing up to 44% of the total, despite being considerably less abundant than cyanobacteria. "This is most likely because eukaryotic phytoplankton cells, although small, are bigger than cyanobacteria, allowing them to assimilate more fixed carbon," says Zubkov.

Two groups of eukaryotes were distinguished, 'EukA' cells being more abundant but smaller than 'EukB' cells. Molecular techniques revealed that EukB largely comprised photosynthetic organisms called prymnesiophytes, most of which have never been cultured in the laboratory. Many of these are probably previously unknown species.

"Prymnesiophytes accounted for up to 38 per cent of total primary production in the subtropical and tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean," says Scanlan: "This suggests that they play a key role in oceanic carbon fixation, but this needs to be confirmed by widespread sampling from the world's oceans."

Zubkov recently showed that small eukaryotic phytoplankton can obtain carbon by feeding on bacteria, supplementing carbon fixed through photosynthesis.

It is likely that some of the organic carbon of prymnesiophytes and other eukaryotic phytoplankton is eventually exported from the photic zone to the deep ocean, rather than being returned to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

"Given their clear importance, it is crucial that we now go on to understand the factors controlling growth of small eukaryotes in the oceans," concludes Scanlan.

Endangered monk seal found dead off Waimanalo

Honolulu Advertiser
A 9-month-old Hawaiian monk seal was found drowned in a gill net Tuesday offshore from Waimanalo.
The female, nicknamed Mikala by monk seal volunteers, was seen floating offshore from Bellows Beach at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and brought to shore by lifeguards, said Charles Littnan, lead scientist for NOAA Fisheries' monk seal research program.
The animal was entangled in a net known as a lay, or gill net.
A necropsy of the animal determined that it drowned, Littnan said.
The seal is the sixth confirmed monk seal drowning in a laynet since 1976 -- and the third since 2006, Littnan said.
"When you're looking at an endangered species, every animal is important," Littnan said. "The fact this was a young female -- that's the future of the species. Losing any young female is a tremendous loss to the population, as well as that individual."
State law requires that users of lay, or gill nets register their nets with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and inspect nets in use every two hours, removing any illegal or unwanted catch.
NOAA Fisheries and the DLNR are investigating the seal's death.
NOAA Fisheries' 24-hour entangled or injured marine mammal hotline: 1-888-256-9840.

How the Sea Snake Got Its Stripes

A banded sea krait (Laticauda colubrina) is seen here off the shoreline of Wakatobi, Indonesia.
(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

ScienceDaily, Apr. 14, 2010

We all know that looks matter, and for snakes, a colour which works well on land has dramatically different results under water, according to a recent study by biologists from the University of Sydney.

Professor Rick Shine and Dr Adele Pile from the School of Biological Sciences have discovered a sea snake's colouration can influence its susceptibility to algal fouling which can reduce swimming speed by up to 20 percent.

Their study, reported this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, sheds new light on how the transition from terrestrial to aquatic life has shaped the evolution of sea snakes.

Professor Shine said sea snakes evolved from venomous land snakes -- such as the highly toxic tiger snake -- who reinvaded the oceans around five million years ago.

"The fact that sea snakes have made the transition from terrestrial to aquatic life, makes them the perfect model to study evolution because we can compare traits between land snakes and sea snakes and hence identify selective forces unique to those habitats," he said.

"The shift from land to water brought with it a new set of challenges, and sea snakes evolved unique physical traits which enabled them to survive in the aquatic environment -- a paddle-shaped tail for swimming, valves to close their nostrils and large lungs to provide oxygen while under water.

"Another consistent attribute of sea snakes involves coloration: most are banded rather than unicoloured, blotched or striped. Fouling by algae has also been reported in several groups of sea snakes, and we wondered if maybe a snake's colour could influence its susceptibility to this."

To test this hypothesis, the scientists turned to a population of sea snakes in the tropical Pacific, in which members of the same species ranged from jet black to brightly black-and-white banded, and many patterns in between. Over a four-year period, the researchers examined free ranging individuals and found that black snakes supported significantly more algal cover than black-and-white snakes.

"Once we knew there was a relationship between a snake's colour and the amount of algal fouling, the next step was to determine if a snake's dark colour was the actual cause of the higher algal levels," Professor Shine said.

To do this, the researchers suspended plastic snake models -- in black, white and black-and-white -- in mid water and scored the amount of algal colonisation over the subsequent days. The results showed that colour directly affects the amount of algal growth, with black surfaces attracting the most algae, followed by black-and-white, and white the least.

[read more]

Drowned out

SFBG | Rebecca Bowe

The tiny, rigid-hull inflatable boats that researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography use for whale tagging are a mere fraction of the size of the blue whales they are deployed to search for. But Scripps PhD candidate Megan McKenna says there's no reason to worry about the mammoth creatures — which can weigh as many tons as 27 elephants put together — bumping up against the boat when she reaches overboard with a pole to tag them.

"They're just pretty mellow, I guess," McKenna says. "There's no flailing or anything. Some barely even notice that we're there." For two summers, she's ventured out in pursuit of the endangered whales, popping short-term monitoring tags on them to learn how they behave when massive cargo shipping vessels motor past.

It's an important question for a couple of reasons. Government funding was provided for the Scripps study after two blue whales were struck and killed by commercial shipping vessels in 2007, tragedies magnified by the fact that the marine mammals are still struggling for survival. If even two die in such collisions every few years, the entire species could be imperiled, McKenna says.

At the same time, a less-understood phenomenon has marine scientists worried that the deep-blue giants' survival is being undermined by a subtler problem, that Jackie Dragon of San Francisco-based Pacific Environment likens to "death by a thousand cuts." Noise generated by whirring ship propellers registers at the same frequency as the low tones whales use to communicate and forage for food, and researchers are concerned that the constant interruption is affecting their ability to engage in basic survival behavior.
Put together with an array of concerns including chemical pollution, marine debris, over-fishing, and ocean acidification, noise pollution is just coming onto the sonar of local marine sanctuary councils and federal environmental agencies, and proposed solutions are only in the fledgling stages.

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At an April 8 joint meeting between the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank marine sanctuary advisory councils, the groups discussed creating a working group — bringing together stakeholders from the U.S. Coast Guard, shipping industries, and others — to establish a set of recommendations for how to regulate noise pollution in the sanctuaries.

"The purpose is to better understand the issue from the standpoint of the sanctuary," explains Lance Morgan, who chairs the Cordell Bank council. "Ideally, we'd produce a report that says, here's what we think the issues are."

Yet Morgan acknowledges that it won't be easy to get the federal government to impose new sanctuary regulations since there are still so many outstanding questions. "We're learning a lot about the acoustic environment," he says. One concern is whether whales are actually able to perceive the sound of the giant shipping vessels, he notes, since the environment has become so noisy. If they can't hear the ships, they're at a much higher risk of collision. "We certainly know we can drown out whale calls in certain situations," he says, "but what does that mean in the long term?"

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Studying Sea Life for a Glue That Mends People

STICK-TO-IT-IVENESS Clockwise from top left, the sandcastle worm builds its home by using tentacles to grab sand and shell bits and glues them with adhesive from an organ on its head; its tube-shaped dwelling; two beads of a worm’s home, microscopically enlarged; a section of a sandcastle worm colony. (Credits: Top and bottom left: Fred Hayes/University of Utah; top and bottom right: Russell Stewart)

New York Times, April 12, 2010
By: Henry Fountain

SALT LAKE CITY — Along one wall of Russell J. Stewart’s laboratory at the University of Utah sits a saltwater tank containing a strange object: a rock-hard lump the size of a soccer ball, riddled with hundreds of small holes.

It has the look of something that fell from outer space, but its origins are earthly, the intertidal waters of the California coast. It’s a home of sorts, occupied by a colony of Phragmatopoma californica, otherwise known as the sandcastle worm.

Actually, it’s more of a condominium complex. Each hole is the entrance to a separate tube, built one upon another by worm after worm.

P. californica is a master mason, fashioning its tube, a shelter that it never leaves, from grains of sand and tiny bits of scavenged shell. But it doesn’t slather on the mortar like a bricklayer. Rather, using a specialized organ on its head, it produces a microscopic dab or two of glue that it places, just so, on the existing structure. Then it wiggles a new grain into place and lets it set.

What is most remarkable — and the reason these worms are in Dr. Stewart’s lab, far from their native habitat — is that it does all this underwater.

“Man-made adhesives are very impressive,” said Dr. Stewart, an associate professor of bioengineering at the university. “You can glue airplanes together with them. But this animal has been gluing things together underwater for several hundred million years, which we still can’t do.”

Dr. Stewart is one of a handful of researchers around the country who are developing adhesives that work in wet conditions, with worms, mussels, barnacles and other marine creatures as their guide. While there are many possible applications — the Navy, for one, has a natural interest in the research, and finances some of it — the biggest goal is to make glues for use in the ultimate wet environment: the human body.

It is too early to declare the researchers’ work a success, but they are testing adhesives on animal bones and other tissues and are optimistic that their approaches will work. “I would have moved on to something else if I didn’t think so,” said Phillip B. Messersmith, a Northwestern University professor who is developing adhesives based on those made by mussels and is testing whether they can be used to repair tears in amniotic sacs, among other applications.

While some skin sealants — mostly of the cyanoacrylate, or superglue, variety — are on the market, their effectiveness is limited. They often cannot be used, for example, on incisions where the skin is pulled or stretched, or must be used in tandem with sutures or staples. Adhesives strong enough to hold skin together under tension, or repair bone or other internal tissues — without inviting attack by the body’s immune system — have eluded researchers.

Nature shows how it can be done, said J. Herbert Waite, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who did much of the early work of identifying the adhesives that mussels use to stick to rocks and other surfaces. But researchers should view nature’s approach as a general guide, he said, rather than a precise pathway.

“In my view of bioinspired research or materials, I almost always don’t think it’s safe to be slavishly wed to the specific chemistry,” Dr. Waite said, “but rather to distill the important concepts that can then be mimicked.”

So the goal of these researchers is not to duplicate natural adhesives that work well underwater, but to imitate them and make glues that are even better suited for humans. “We want to take elements of the structural adhesives that chemists have made and combine them with the unique elements that nature has used,” Dr. Stewart said.

Synthetic adhesives might not only work better, but they should also be able to be produced in large quantities. Marine organisms make their glues in very small amounts — the typical dollop from a sandcastle worm, for example, is on the order of 100 picoliters. Even if it could somehow be collected before it set, it would take roughly 50 million dollops to make a teaspoon.

“At the end of the day, the single biggest reason to do this is you can get more stuff,” said Jonathan Wilker, an associate professor of inorganic chemistry at Purdue University who works on analogues of mussel adhesives and studies oysters, barnacles and other organisms as well.

But there are several hurdles to making glues that work underwater, Dr. Wilker said. “One is that whenever the surface is really wet, you’re going to be bonding to the surface layer of water, rather than the surface itself. So it’s going to lift off.”

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Long-distance larvae speed to new undersea vent homes

"Pioneer" vent species travel hundreds of kilometers to settle new deep-ocean territories. (Credit: Nicole Rager-Fuller, National Science Foundation)

Marine scientists discover ocean "superhighway" for tiny life forms

National Science Foundation
April 13, 2010

Working in a rare, "natural seafloor laboratory" of hydrothermal vents that had just been rocked by a volcanic eruption, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and other institutions have discovered what they believe is an undersea superhighway.

This superhighway carries tiny life forms unprecedented distances to inhabit the post-eruption site.

One such "pioneer species," Ctenopelta porifera, appears to have traveled more than 300 kilometers to settle at the site on the underwater mountain range known as the East Pacific Rise.

"Ctenopelta had never been observed before at the study site, and the nearest known population is 350 km to the north," said Lauren Mullineaux, a senior scientist in WHOI's biology department.

The discovery--in collaboration with scientists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL)--clashes with the widely accepted assumption that when local adult life is wiped out in a hydrothermal eruption, it is replaced by a pool of tiny creatures from nearby vents.

In this case, however, the larvae that re-settled the post-eruption vent area are noticeably different from the species that were destroyed, according to David Garrison, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Biological Oceanography Program. In addition, the larvae appear to have traveled great distances to reach their destination.

"That raises the question of how they can possibly disperse so far," said Mullineaux. She added that the findings have implications for the wider distribution of undersea life.

A report on the research by Mullineaux and her colleagues is published in the April 12 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The discovery of hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in 1977 revolutionized ideas about where and how life could exist.

The seafloor vents gushing warm, mineral-rich fluids and teeming with life raised new questions that researchers have been studying ever since, including: How can so much life thrive at the sunless seafloor? What is the nature of organisms at hydrothermal vents? How do animals migrate to other vent sites?

It was this last question that motivated Mullineaux and her team as they began their study of a vent area on the East Pacific Rise "to gather observations of currents, larvae and juvenile colonists in order to understand what physical processes might facilitate dispersal," Mullineaux said.

One of the group's primary challenges was to determine where the organisms around the vent came from.

As the scientists set out on their mission in 2006, "we got a surprise," said Mullineaux. "A seafloor eruption was detected at our study site, resulting in changes in topography and enormous disturbance to ecological communities. The eruption was, in essence, a natural experiment."

By the time the researchers arrived at the site, they found a scene quite unlike that usually observed at a hydrothermal vent.

Normally, such fissures are teeming with life, supported by the hot chemicals that spew from the vents and provide food through microbial chemosynthesis, a deep-sea version of photosynthesis.

But at this spot on the East Pacific Rise, near 9 degrees North, there was no life.

The eruption had wiped it out.

"Although the vents survived, the animals did not, and virtually all the detectable invertebrate communities were paved over," said Mullineaux. "For us, this was an exciting event. In essence it was a natural clearance experiment that allowed us to explore how the elimination of local source populations affected the supply of larvae and re-colonization."

What the scientists found went against the accepted assumption that most of the organisms needed to re-populate an area come from relatively nearby. But instead, the new larval inhabitants were from a considerable distance away.

"These results show clearly that the species arriving after the eruption are different than those before," says Mullineaux, "with two new pioneer species, Ctenopelta porifera and Lepetodrilus tevnianus, prominent."

The most important finding is that "the processes of the larval stage--as opposed to those of adult organisms--seem to control colonization," Mullineaux said. "We found that a pioneer colonization event by one species, Ctenopelta porifera, radically changed the community structure."

But aquestion remained: How were these weak-swimming larvae propelled such vast distances to the decimated vent area?

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High-tech transmitters giving up secret lives of Hawaiian seals

Hawaiian monk seal Kermit snoozes on an Oahu beach, oblivious to the transmitter on his back that gathers data about his movements for NOAA researchers. Up to 14 other seals in Hawaii will be wearing similar transmitters. (Credit: Barbara Billand)

Navy pays for devices that also gauge how sonar affects species

Honolulu Advertiser, Sunday, April 11, 2010
Written by Diana Leone

Up to 15 monk seals in Hawai'i will be doing their part over the coming year to help scientists understand them better.

he critically endangered animals will wear small transmitters that reveal their movements, including how deep they dive, when they haul out on land and how far they roam.

Accumulating normal habits of the seals also will be used to gauge the effect Navy training exercises, including use of sonar, may have on the animals.

The Navy is footing the bill for the $4,500-each transmitters, NOAA scientists' travel and veterinary costs associated with the project. The project is slated to last several years.

Currently five seals are wearing the transmitters — one on O'ahu and four on Moloka'i. Additional transmitters will be placed on 10 more seals on Kaua'i and O'ahu in coming months, said Charles Littnan, lead scientist for NOAA Fisheries' Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program.

The transmitters are slightly larger than a deck of cards with a short antenna and are glued to fur on a seal's back, where it will least interfere with its daily life. Pregnant, nursing, sick or wounded seals, or seals near to their annual molt of their fur will not be tagged, Littnan said. Only seals of 200 pounds or more will be tagged.

The transmitters "are a lot like a smartphone," Littnan said. They show a seal's location with global positioning coordinates and also track water temperature, salinity and depth of dives. They "phone home" when the seals are on the surface of the water or on land and the devices can transmit via a cell phone tower, Littnan said.

So far, an O'ahu seal dubbed "Kermit" by seal protection volunteers has been the star of the project. Several tagged seals lost their transmitters, prompting a change in the glue used to attach them, and the Moloka'i seals have only recently been tagged.

Already, Littnan knows that Kermit travels regularly back and forth between Diamond Head and Nānākuli. Some of his favorite fishing grounds seem to be offshore from 'Ewa Beach. The seal often spends 12 to 24 hours at a time swimming and diving in the ocean, then hauling out at a variety of beaches for a rest.

"Monk seals dive pretty much from the time they hit the water through their entire trip," Littnan said. "Depth varies, but duration of each dive is usually around six minutes, and surface times usually about one or two minutes. They feed almost entirely along the bottom, which is why the dives are so flat."

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The Great Barrier Reef scandal

Fuel leaks from the Shen Neng 1 as it lies aground on the Great Barrier Reef. (Photograph: Getty Images)

The Great Barrier Reef is threatened by the worst environmental disaster in Australia's history after a ship ran aground. So why are giant coal carriers allowed to use this well-known shipping hazard as a shortcut?

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 April 2010
By: Ellen Connolly and Jon Henley

On 11 June 1770, six weeks or so after becoming the first European to make landfall on the east coast of Australia, Lieutenant James Cook unexpectedly ran aground. His ship, the Endeavour, had struck a reef now known as the Endeavour Reef, within a manifestly far bigger reef system, nearly 25 miles from shore. Only the urgent jettisoning of 50 tonnes of stores and equipment (including all but four of the ship's guns), a delicate operation known as fothering (in which an old sail was drawn under the hull, effectively plugging the hole), Cook's expert seamanship and a great deal of hard pumping saved the vessel and her crew.

It would be another 30-odd years before the great Lincolnshire explorer and cartographer Matthew Flinders, having circumnavigated the entirety of Terra Australis Incognita, the Unknown Southern Land, gave the vast reef system its name. But despite his astonishing success in charting a safe passage through its treacherous waters, mainly by the expedient of sending small boats ahead to sound the depths, Flinders himself was later stranded on it while heading home for England in 1803.

For nearly 250 years, the Great Barrier Reef has been a hazard to shipping. It is the world's largest reef system, made up of more than 2,900 coral reefs and 900 islands scattered over 344,400sq km off the coast of Queensland in north-east Australia. Covering an area bigger than the United Kingdom, it is also a priceless and unimaginably fragile world heritage site, home to 30 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises; six species of sea turtles; 125 species of shark, stingray and skate; 5,000 species of mollusc; nine species of seahorse; 215 species of birds; 17 species of sea snake; 2,195 known plant species and more than 1,500 species of fish.

And it is still a hazard to shipping. In recent years, its pristine waters, in theory protected by the statutes of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, have become known as the "coal highway", a busy thoroughfare for foreign-owned bulk carriers bound for Asia. Laden with coal and fuel oil from Australia, thousands of ships, such as the Chinese-owned Shen Neng 1, which ran aground off the country's eastern seaboard on Saturday, continue to jeopardise the largest marine conservation site in the world. Last night, as salvage teams worked to prevent what would be the biggest environmental disaster in Australian history, environmentalists were not slow to accuse the government of turning a blind eye to the problem.

"This is the $60bn-a-year, largely foreign-owned coal industry that is making a coal highway out of the Great Barrier Reef," said Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens party. "There needs to be a radical overview of this huge coal export industry, whether these ships need to use the reef at all, and what the alternatives are," he said. Local fishermen have dubbed it the "reef rat run," saying ships routinely take shortcuts to save time and money on their voyage to China.

It was this so-called shortcut, near the Douglas Shoal, off Rockhampton, that is believed to have caused last weekend's accident. According to reports, the 230m-long ship, carrying 975 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and 65,000 tonnes of coal, was travelling at full speed when it hit a sandbank, in a protected part of the Great Barrier Reef.

Its fuel tank ruptured, causing a 3km-long oil slick. Authorities stemmed the spill, but have warned that the salvage operation could take weeks, as moving the vessel will be "a very delicate" operation that risks sending hundreds of tonnes of oil on to the reef. Salvage teams are now being flown in to begin pumping the 950 tonnes of oil fuel off the vessel and on to another ship before an attempt can be made to move her.

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Disease hits Kāne'ohe Bay reefs

More than 100 colonies of red rice coral have been killed by MWS (the white cluster of coral above was once alive, the same color as the coral surrounding it). The disease appears most advanced in south Kāne'ohe Bay. (Credit: Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology)

MWS has killed 100 colonies of red rice coral

Honolulu Advertiser, April 5, 2010

By John Windrow

Hawai'i scientists are battling a new threat to coral reefs in Kāne'ohe Bay that could imperil the biological balance in the bay's ecosystem.

The coral disease called Montipora white syndrome was discovered in the bay in late February, said lead researcher Greta Aeby of UH's Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology. She said that a similar outbreak devastated the coral reefs of the Florida Keys in the 1970s and '80s.

Greta said a team composed of scientists and students from the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology, U.S. Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center and Bishop Museum are mounting a rapid response to study the disease, measure the damage it has done and come up with a way to contain it.

MWS has killed 100 colonies of red rice coral in the bay, which represents less than 1 percent of the bay's coral colonies.

The disease appears to be most advanced in the southern part of the bay.

"It is not catastrophic at this point at all," Greta said. "But this is the first documentation of a coral disease here in Hawai'i that causes a lot of mortality. We've never seen a disease like this to this extent."

She said that the ecosystem in the bay is a delicate balance between the living tissue that lives in the reefs, the algae it feeds on, the small sea creatures and fish that live in the reefs and the larger fish that feed on them.

"The reefs are the foundation for the entire ecosystem," she said.

Greta also stressed that coral reefs are inhabited by living tissue. "It is the living part of the coral," she said. "It eats, feeds, grows and reproduces. Coral only grows at a rate of about 10 centimeters a year, so if you see a yard of coral that has died, that represents 10 to 15 years of growth."

When the tissue dies, she said, the bare white coral that remains is the skeleton, the bare bones, of what was once a living, breathing organism.

She also said two external factors that imperil the reefs and can create conditions where a coral disease might flourish are sediment runoff from land around the bay and overfishing.

Greta said the response team's plan is to measure the progress of MWS to see how widely dispersed it is and to collect samples of affected coral that will be "studied by microbiologists to try to determine what is causing this."

The researchers' goal, she said, is to devise a way to contain the disease.

To that end, the research group is enlisting the aid of a statewide group called Eyes of the Reef Reporting Network to be on the lookout for visible signs of the disease in the bay's coral. The scientists train fishermen, tour guides, sportsmen and boaters and other community members who are often out on the water to help spot various threats to the marine ecosystem.

For more information, see www.himb.hawaii.edu/hawaiicoraldisease.

Chinese Freighter Slams Into Great Barrier Reef - NYTimes.com

The New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — Salvage experts and a tugboat crew struggled on Monday to save a large Chinese freighter that slammed into the Great Barrier Reef off Australia over the weekend, trying to prevent the vessel from breaking apart as some of the 1,075 tons of engine fuel in its tanks began oozing from the hull, threatening the world’s largest collection of coral.

The freighter, the Shen Neng 1, crashed into the reef at full speed late Saturday, a few hours after leaving the port of Gladstone, the Australian authorities said. The ship, which was nine miles outside its authorized shipping lane, was hauling 72,000 tons of coal.

Patrick Quirk, general manager of maritime safety for Queensland, the Australian state where the vessel ran aground, said in a statement Monday morning that a hole in the bottom of the ship allowed water into the main engine room. The main engine was damaged and the rudder was seriously damaged, he said. “One of the most worrying aspects is that the ship is still moving on the reef to the action of the seas, which is doing further damage,” he said.

Anna Bligh, Queensland’s premier, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio early Monday, “It’s possible that this could be one of the most complex and difficult salvage operations we’ve seen, certainly in Queensland’s maritime history and possibly Australia’s.”

An Australian aircraft dropped chemical dispersants on Sunday on what the authorities described as a ribbon of oil two miles long and as wide as the length of a football field.

Ocean swells of 6 to 10 feet prevented the deployment of floating booms to contain the oil slick. The swells also repeatedly lifted the ship and dropped it on the shoal, where it ran aground.

Basil M. Karatzas, a project manager at Compass Maritime Services, a ship broker in Fort Lee, N.J., said it was not unusual that the 755-foot Shen Neng 1 would be carrying so much bunker fuel. A ship of that size and design would burn about 35 tons of fuel a day, he said, and would require at least two weeks to travel from eastern Australia to China.

Ships headed to China carry extra fuel to be ready for long delays on arrival. Port delays are common because commodities are pouring into the country to sustain its economic boom. Depending on the fuel’s density, the amount carried by the Shen Neng would equate to about 325,000 gallons.

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Microbial Answer to Plastic Pollution?

These are microbes from the coastal seabed attached to plastic, as seen through a microscope. (Credit: Jesse Harrison)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2010)

Fragments of plastic in the ocean are not just unsightly but potentially lethal to marine life. Coastal microbes may offer a smart solution to clean up plastic contamination, according to Jesse Harrison presenting his research at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh.

The researchers from the University of Sheffield and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science have shown that the combination of marine microbes that can grow on plastic waste varies significantly from microbial groups that colonise surfaces in the wider environment. This raises the possibility that the plastic-associated marine microbes have different activities that could contribute to the breakdown of these plastics or the toxic chemicals associated with them.

Plastic waste is a long-term problem as its breakdown in the environment may require thousands of years. "Plastics form a daily part of our lives and are treated as disposable by consumers. As such plastics comprise the most abundant and rapidly growing component of man-made litter entering the oceans," explained Jesse Harrison.

Over time the size of plastic fragments in the oceans decreases as a result of exposure to natural forces. Tiny fragments of 5 mm or less are called "microplastics" and are particularly dangerous as they can absorb toxic chemicals which are transported to marine animals when ingested.

While microbes are the most numerous organisms in the marine environment, this is the first DNA-based study to investigate how they interact with plastic fragments. The new study investigated the attachment of microbes to fragments of polyethylene -- a plastic commonly used for shopping bags. The scientists found that the plastic was rapidly colonised by multiple species of bacteria that congregated together to form a 'biofilm' on its surface. Interestingly, the biofilm was only formed by certain types of marine bacteria.

The group, led by Dr. Mark Osborn at Sheffield, plans to investigate how the microbial interaction with microplastics varies across different habitats within the coastal seabed -- research which they believe could have huge environmental benefits. "Microbes play a key role in the sustaining of all marine life and are the most likely of all organisms to break down toxic chemicals, or even the plastics themselves," suggested Mr Harrison. "This kind of research is also helping us unravel the global environmental impacts of plastic pollution," he said.