Take a break from the madness of #blackfriday2018 & marvel at these swimming sea cucumbers, seen during recent #Okeanos expedition: https://t.co/HneVxh2JiI pic.twitter.com/MEYO9OKmQb

— NOAA Ocean Explorer (@oceanexplorer) November 23, 2018

From by Dr. Chris Mah, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, November 7, 2018, and posted at OceanExplorer.  (check Dr. Mah on his blog, Echinoblog, and on Twitter @echinoblog).

The swimming sea cucumber, Enypniastes eximia, sometimes referred to as the “headless chicken monster,” is a widespread species present in the abyss. It is encountered widely around the world with records from the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Atlantic, East Atlantic, New Zealand, and the Southern Ocean (Antarctica). The scientific name Enypniastes was assigned to this animal in 1882 and means “dreamer;” it was taken from Genesis 37:19 of the Septuagint: “… Behold, that dreamer comes.”

Read more at NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

The post Holothurian Hill first appeared on Deep Sea News.

OMG Irma. It is going through the Caribbean and slamming everything in its path. I’ve been getting updates from friends in the Virgin Islands and it sounds like it was harrowing. Thankfully they made it through which is the most important part (even though their stuff may not have). Other islands have not been so lucky.

This is a monster hurricane, fueled by warm waters in the Atlantic. Just to get a sense of how insane it got in Barbuda, here is the atmospheric data from a water level station there. The eye of the hurricane passed right overhead, which is why you see the insane drop in air pressure.

The wind speeds got up to 100 knots before the anemometer conked out. These winds are no joke, reports indicate that nearly every building on the island suffered damage, if not completely destroyed.

Update: The anemometer was completely destroyed.

Just saw highest wind speed I've ever seen on a WX ob. Anemometer at #Barbuda blew away after recording gust to 155 mph. #Irma pic.twitter.com/aNwT5i04gf

— Dan Satterfield (@wildweatherdan) September 6, 2017

Another problem for this tiny island with wide areas of low elevation, storm surge. Preliminary data shows it got up to 8 feet.

There’s also some oceanographic data from a buoy located south of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands that’s part of the Caribbean Integrated Coastal Ocean Observing System (CarICOOS) . Strong winds with gusts over 60 km/h accompany the pressure drop. 

The water temperature data is intermittent, but you can definitely see seawater getting colder. Wave and wind mixing churns up cold water from the deep ocean, causing surface water temperatures to drop. 

This buoy also has salinity data, and you can also see the effect of the mixing in the increase in salinity, as deeper saltier water is mixed to the surface. There is also a drop in salinity right before the hurricane hits which could be caused by rain freshening the sea surface or just fresher water being pushed past the buoy. From this data, you can’t distinguish the two causes.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the wave data. Wave heights got up to nearly 19 feet at the peak of the storm. Some waves might have been larger as this plot shows averaged values.

Another fascinating plot is the wave direction which shows how waves emanating from the center of the hurricane. The wave are coming steadily from the East (90 degrees on the compass rose) until the eye passes overhead, at which point the wave direction turns 180 degrees completely to the West (270 degrees on the compass rose).

That was my oceanographic quick look. I’m hunting around for some ocean robot data, as NOAA AOML deploys their gliders into hurricanes, but haven’t found any yet. I’ll post when I do. For another take on the storm, take a look at my friend Jyotika’s Tropical Storm Blog.  It’s got good science and a good rundown of where Irma has been and where it’s going.

For those of you in Irma’s path, make sure you are prepared and take the necessary precautions to stay safe. Here are tips from NOAA’s Hurricane Preparedness site.

The post A quick look at the data from inside Hurricane Irma first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Do you eat salmon, shellfish or even McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish? NOAA works with fisheries to manage these resources so you can eat safe seafood tonight and tomorrow too.

Did you turn on the light in your house? NOAA provides the information so that the 15% of power that comes from renewable resources gets to customers.

Was your last vacation on a cruise ship? NOAA provided the data so you had a vacation not a re-creation of Titanic.

You are not alone. Both the general public and private business use NOAA products to help make our way of life better, RIGHT NOW. That includes nearly 1/3 OF THE US GDP. And let’s not forget how the military uses this information to keep troops safe and their operations effective.

The proposed 17% budget cut to NOAA will affect all these resources. If you like having these services in you life, then make sure you let your congress person know you use them, you need them, and you want them before they vote on the budget. (UPDATE: Links and script to call your representative with at the bottom of the page)

Additional reading

Four ways NOAA benefits your life today

White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency

2016 NOAA Chief Scientist Annual Report

Matthew Garcia explains how NOAA makes a 1000:1 return on investment

Southern Fried Science: Monday Morning Salvage Call your representative

Two Surprising Facts about NOAA

UPDATE: How to contact your Representative and tell them you care (thanks @southernfriedscience)

1. Find out who YOUR representatives are here http://www.house.gov/htbin/findrep and https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
2. Call them with this script.

Hello,

My name is [NAME] and I am a constituent of [CONGRESSPERSON/SENATOR].

I’m calling to ask [CONGRESSPERSON/SENATOR] to oppose any reduction in the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA provides essential services to the American people, including weather services, coastal resilience, hurricane monitoring, and fisheries management. Programs like SeaGrant are the lifeblood of coastal communities, providing education, job training, and research grants to fund local development. NOAA’s Hurricane Center is critical for tracking hurricanes. One-third of the US economy relies upon services provided by NOAA. Any reduction in NOAA’s budget would be catastrophic to the United States’ coastal economy.

Thank you.

If your livelihood depends on NOAA, consider adding “I am a [FISHERMAN/BUSINESS OWNER/AQUACULTURIST/ETC] in [CONGRESSPERSON/SENATOR]’s district and my livelihood and family depend on the services that NOAA provides.”

Kim Martini was a postdoctoral fellow from 2013-2016 at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO), a NOAA Cooperative Institute at the University of Washington. Kim currently is a Senior Oceanographer at Sea-Bird Scientific providing oceanographic sensors and systems to NOAA.

The post The importance of being NOAA first appeared on Deep Sea News.

What did you do this weekend? Well if you were NASA, you successfully launched NOAA’s brand-spanking new weather satellite GOES-R. Packed with six instruments, this geostationary satellite will be parked over the western US taking all the datas. GOES-R literally has science eyes on the back of its head, with two instruments pointed at the sun, two instruments checking out the weather in outer space, and the last two pointed at earth. Actually scratch that, it’s like the all knowing eye for weather good.

But as an oceanographer, my favorite instrument has got to be the earth-spying Advanced Baseline Imager. It measures all the sea surface temperatures.  All those maps with colorful whirls of warm and cold water? This satellite makes the measurements that makes that. Say that three times fast, or in this case every 15 minutes.  Plus, they put this instrument on earth science steroids for 2016. The ABI monitors 16 different bands of light. That’s a whopping 11 more than its predecessor, adding up to a grand total of 25 different types of data.

Now before you get too excited about all the datas, you are going to have have to chill for year before getting it. Scientists need this time to make sure the data is correct and accurate. One does not simply trust data from a new instrument. But after that one year, it will be fully operational and the data will go live.

But wait…there’s more! *CUE INFOMERCIAL OOHS AND AAHS*. GOES-R is only the first of 4 new weather satellites NOAA is planning on launching. This whole program will extend the US’s weather forecasting abilities until 2036, or right until Justin Bieber hits middle age (at which time both will likely need a reboot). And through cooperative data sharing agreements with other countries that have launched their own weather satellites, this satellite also improves global weather forecasting. Although I can not make any guarantees this will stop people from grumping about weather forecasts. Sorry weather people.

But seriously, satellite oceanography is a wonderful marriage of earth and space science. It gives the big picture of how things are changing everyday on the earth. How do you think we found the BLOB people? Or when there is going to be an El Niño? Satellites, that’s how. Looking forward to the launch of many more!

For more info check out NOAA/NASA’s GOES-R site. 

RELEASE THE SATELLITE!

The post Wherever it GOES, I GOES, we GOES. NOAA and NASA launch another satellite acronym into space. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I’m kind of obsessed with Okeanos Explorer. Why? Because being able to watch a live feed of an ROV exploring the deep ocean on the TV in my living room is pretty amazing. THE FUTURE IS NOW PEOPLE.

Okeanos Explorer is a NOAA boat whose sole business is ocean exploration. It uses two ROVs equipped with mega giant cameras and a network of satellite intertubes to bring you live feed of seafloor exploration. It beams back all sorts of amazing images of weird deep sea sea beasties and geology. Quite often they find specimens they have never even seen before! Just last mission they even explored a wrecked WWII plane! Current mission: The Wake Islands in the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument.

The next dive will happen this Sunday. You can catch all the feeds on your compy at their streaming link http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/media/exstream/exstream.html

If you have a smart TV, ROKU, Apple TV or really any other streaming device you can WATCH IT ON YOUR TV. Just pull up the YouTube app and search for Okeanos Explorer. Camera 1 is where the action is, but Camera 2 (ROV #2) and Camera 3 (Control room) are pretty neat too.

You can also follow along on Twitter at #Okeanos, lots of biologists online to identify all the things! Or post-dive check out Christopher Mah over at Echinoblog with some sea-beastie round ups.

The post Have you been watching Okeanos explorer? If not, this week is your chance! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My tortured emotions aside, it looks like the recent warming is the result of another, albeit successful, equatorial Kelvin wave that caused downwelling across the equator and letting that warming the waters off South America. And you I would be remiss if I didn’t include that the atmosphere decided to cooperate too. Thanks for being a team player wind anomalies!

But there’s a bit of bad news for California. This wimpy El Niño probably won’t trigger more rain and some relief from the drought they’ve been having. Although I dare say the climate predictions, which do factor in contributions from ENSO along with lots of other variables, are looking pretty for the northwest and hell, even the east coast!  Anyway, we’ll see how this all develops and let’s hope that El Niño won’t break my heart again.

* I’m totally griping about the recent spate of predictions, but I know predicting the fate of El Niño is really a very difficult job. It’s a complex set of interactions between the ocean and atmosphere that we are still learning about. In short, hat’s off to all the scientists trying to figure it out and inform the world about it.

SOURCES:

http://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/march-2015-enso-discussion-el-ni%C3%B1o-here

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

http://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/?enso_tab=enso-cpc_plume

The post Are the ocean and atmosphere finally cooperating and is El Niño really here? Probably. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

This satisfies (a bit) my burning desire to fit a Star Wars reference into one of my posts and has absolutely not much to do with marine biology except in my iconographic interpretation of the number 66 and a general ominous sense of impending doom.  That’s because NOAA has recently publicized its intentions to list 66 species of corals (59 Pacific and 7 Caribbean/Atlantic) as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, including the two most important Caribbean stony corals: staghorn Acropora cervicornis and elkhorn A. palmata.

Actually, they were kind of pushed into it by the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned them to list 83 species back in 2009.  NOAA hadn’t responded to CBL by the required deadline so CBL sued them earlier this year to prompt a decision.  After various discussions internally, with CBL and with public and stakeholders, NOAA has responded with a proposal to list 66 species under the ESA.  They are not listed yet – one more round of public comments remains – but the proposal is on the table and barring legal action in opposition, it seems likely to go through.  And there was much rejoicing, right?  Right?  Well, maybe.

On the face of it, protecting endangered species under ESA seems like the Right Thing to do.  It prevents “take” of specimens from the field and protects designated critical habitat from destruction by development and other human activities, which all seems good.  However, it’s not without its problems.  In the drive to prevent Bad Actors, the ESA makes life a lot harder for the Good Actors too, a perennial problem for any restrictive bit of legislation (can you say gun laws, anyone?).  In the case of corals, for example, this might make it harder for those interested in vegetative restoration efforts (“coral nurseries”) to obtain brood stock or plant out their propagated corals.  Another unanticipated problem concerns taxonomy.  It’s relatively easy to list a well-defined species like, say, the black footed ferret, but for corals the story is not nearly as simple.  Among the species proposed for ESA listing in the Pacific arena are many acroporid corals that are damn hard to distinguish, even for experts.  When defining that which needs protection is such a critical first step on the path to effective conservation, such ambiguity makes for a difficult situation.  In a way it may result in a sort of de facto protection of ALL reef forming corals, since the risk of inadvertently damaging an endangered species you failed to identify may well be considered not worth the risk.  Maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know.

At least one research and conservation group has proposed that the ESA listing may not be the best approach to effective coral conservation.  Andy Rhyne from Roger Williams U. and others from Boston University, Conservation International and New England Aquarium have proposed that engaging in regulated trade in live corals for the home aquarium hobby would provide a better motivation for local communities in reef-blessed regions to develop sustainable harvesting (or cultivating, or both) practices that would both protect their precious natural resource and provide for long term economic benefit.  They point out that listing species and designating critical habitat effectively removes the possibility of placing a meaningful value on the ecosystem services provided by intact reefs, effectively taking a lot of potentially beneficial conservation practices off the table.  They may have a point, but I do worry that any sized market also provides incentive for unsustainable harvest by those without the know-how or support to do it sustainably, or who just have bad intentions, thus raising the need for some sort of sustainability certification, which is a whole other kettle of fish.

DSN’s Rick MacPherson, who moonlights on the side as the Conservation Programs Director for the Coral Reef Alliance,  weighed-in on the pros and cons of Order 66:

It depends on what day I wake up as to whether I’m more in Andy Rhyne’s camp regarding access to reefs for aquarium trade, or whether I’m in the “Shut ‘er Down” camp.  It’s a slippery slope for sure.  I don’t think the coral aquarium trade is any different (fundamentally) than any other reef extractive practice (like subsistence fishing for instance).  You have your good players who use sustainable practices and observe catch limits (or Optimum Sustainable Yield), and you have your dickheads who scorch the earth.  Do you close it all down (and pour dollars into enforcement)?  Or do you carve out exceptions and permits (and pour dollars into enforcement)?  No easy answer.

I think the legislation in the end will be important from a political and awareness perspective and will perhaps force a discussion ABOUT the big bad of climate change.  If I were to channel my CBD neighbors here in San Francisco about Order 66, I’d conclude that the lawsuit and proposed listing is part of a much larger, endgame strategy of seeing the US take demonstrable action on curbing CO2.  We will need Order 66, another one for coal, oil, and wood burning, another for refinery and industrial emissions, and yet another for the auto industry.  The sum of these efforts will create a nuisance effect to drive more meaningful Congressional and Executive action.

The consequences of listing corals under the ESA are hard to predict, but any way you slice it, it’s an ominous indicator of the state of coral reefs in both the Pacific and Caribbean.  With live coral cover down to the single digits across most of the Caribbean and on a negative trend in the Pacific, it’s going to take a lot more than one piece of legislative listing to save reefs, even one as profound as the ESA.  Among the challenges lies the biggest and ugliest environmental issue our generation will (or rather, refuses to) face: climate change; without addressing that, we may just be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

If you are interested in participating in the discussion of the proposed listing, there’s an open webinar and public comment session this Wednesday at 4PM Eastern.  Info here

The post Execute order 66 first appeared on Deep Sea News.

If you follow me on Twitter (@para_sight), you would have seen this week a steady stream of screen caps I grabbed from their live video feed (active at the time of publishing this), which I had running  constantly on a second screen in my office.  I’m not part of the OE team, but it’s pretty addictive viewing for the temporarily office-bound!  For non-Twitter folks, here’s a gallery of shots of some of the things they saw.  I am no expert on the taxonomy of deep sea critters; any bad ID’s are mine.  I’ll take any missing ID’s too, just add them to the comments.

If you want to go deeper into the science of deep sea critters, check out Dr Craig’s excellent piece today on what happens to wood at the bottom of the ocean.

The post TGIF – Pretty pictures from Okeanos Explorer first appeared on Deep Sea News.

See more here

The post Okeanos Explorer in the Gulf of Mexico first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The Gulf of Maine cod fishery was deemed to be on its way to recovery in 2008, with a chance of reaching “rebuilt” status by 2014. This was great news for this historically and economically important (and very tasty) fishery. Then, this year, fisheries scientists working on the 2011 stock assessment found that Gulf of Maine cod were much worse off than originally thought. But why the sudden change? Since the 2011 stock assessment isn’t yet publicly available (though here’s a summary), there was no way of knowing other than the mediocre explanations in the media coverage.

To find out what happened, Heather Goldstone of Climatide talked to two NOAA fisheries scientists who contributed to the 2011 report. She has a great article explaining the change. An excerpt:

…The dramatic change in the stock’s estimated rate of growth is still that – a dramatic change. So what’s responsible?

Well, for one, scientists now have a better handle on how quickly cod grow to a size sufficient for reproduction. Previously, estimates of what’s known as weight-at-age were based entirely on the fish that fishermen brought to the fish pier. This time around, scientists also got to look at the fish that fishermen tossed back, their discards. That’s important because there are legal size limits, so the fish that get kept are the biggest ones – not just the oldest ones, but the larges ones at a range of ages. It’s like estimating the average height of 4-yr old kids based only on the 4-yr olds that were tall enough to get on an amusement park ride. When scientists looked at the discards, they figured out that the average 4- or 5-year old cod wasn’t as big as they’d thought. And that dropped their estimates of how many fish would be reproducing each year and contributing to the population’s growth.

The other factor that Brooks and Palmer point to is two survey trawls (that’s where fishery scientists go out, drop a net over the back of the boat, and then use the fish they catch for science rather than profit) – one in 2007 and one in 2008 – which both contained extremely high numbers of fish born in 2005, far more than any of the others. Those oddballs raised some eyebrows on the 2008 asessment team, but there was no clear reason to discard the data – no errors or unusual circumstances that would explain away the high numbers. In addition, the fact that the same pattern was seen two years in a row made it seem more possible that it was real, not just a fluke. So the team decided to include the data. And, to quote Palmer, “the model chased those highs.”

Read the rest here.

The post How did Gulf of Maine cod suddenly go from “recovering” to “overfished”? first appeared on Deep Sea News.