WE’RE ON A BOAT! That’s right, The Blogfather Dr. M and myself (Dr. Bik, Assistant Blogmaster?) are in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico AT THIS VERY MOMENT!

To celebrate this awesome scientific cruise, we’re running a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session Tomorrow, Saturday May 27th from 8AM – 8PM Central Standard Time (Louisiana, USA time zone).

Hi @reddit_AMA! Ask me anything this Sat. I’m currently on the ocean for a science research cruise studying the deep sea with a robot #AMA pic.twitter.com/dvkQ67VPx8

— Craig McClain, Ph.D. (@DrCraigMc) May 25, 2017

Why are we here? Well Dr. M has a nifty new NSF grant to research wood falls in the deep oceans; logs and whole trees that saturate with water and sink to the deep-sea floor. These wooden carcasses bring a rare commodity to the deep sea devoid of light and plants: food. On the seafloor, these wood falls are covered in unique marine invertebrates wholly adapted to eating wood.

As part of this work, Dr. M is also collecting sediment cores, which I’ll be using to isolate nematodes for environmental sequencing and genomics work.

But there is a whole team of people here on the boat, and you can ask them anything too! Our scientific cast is:

–Dr. Craig McClain, a deep-sea biologist, DSN Blogfather, and the Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON).
– Dr. Clif Nunnally (LUMCON) – Research Associate, Actual Person in Charge of the cruise
– Chase Landry (LUMCON/Nicholls State) – Undergraduate Researcher, Cajun Translator
– Dr. Virginia Schutte (LUMCON)- Media Officer, unfortunately a Morning Person
– Dr. Thomas Webb (U. of Sheffield) – Statistical Guru, “All the gear, no idear” (he’s British)
– Dr. Holly Bik (U. California Riverside) – Microbial Genomics and nematode taxonomy, bringing high fashion to the high seas
– River Dixon (U. South Carolina) – Undergraduate Researcher, has no idea what she signed up for
– Jason Bradley (Bradley Photographic) – Photographer, probably has kissed more sea animals than you
– Chase Lawson (Texas A&M) – Undergraduate Researcher, literally just spent 2 hours handling raw meat
– Dr. Alicia Caporaso (Bureau of Ocean Energy and Management) – Underwater Archaeologist, studies shipwrecks but can’t touch them

The post Reddit AMA (Saturday May 27th): DSN on a boat, throwing wood in the ocean! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

If dolphins weren’t such a$$holes, they would gently cradle the octopus like a kitten, stroking its mantle and respecting the cephalopod’s amazing intellect. But who are we kidding! This is a dolphin we’re talking about, and marine mammal researchers have found that dolphins “shake and toss” cephalopods like a dog tearing apart his favorite chew toy:

Why is this dolphin such an a$$hole to the octopus? Probably because cephalopods are yummy but dangerous food – they’re smart and sucker-y, and dolphins run the risk of *suffocation* if the octopus isn’t fully torn apart and incapacitated before meal time. As Sprogis et al. (2017) found, death by octopus tentacle is surprisingly common:

It is apparent that octopus handling is a risky behavior, as within our study area a known adult male stranded and a necropsy confirmed the cause of death was from suffocation from a large 2.1 kg octopus.1 The dolphin had attempted to swallow the octopus, however, the octopus was found almost intact, with the head and the mantle of the octopus in the dolphin’s stomach and the 1.3 m long arms separated from the head and extending out of its mouth.1 Similarly, another T. aduncus [dolphin] died from suspected asphyxiation due to an octopus lodged in its mouth and pharynx approximately 140 km north of our study area (Shoalwater Bay Islands Marine Park).2 In these two cases, the dolphins may not have processed the octopus sufficiently by shaking and tossing it to ensure the arm’s reflex withdrawal responses were inactive. Octopus arms have a defensive response, as their receptors can detect stimuli that cause damage to their tissues (Hague et al. 2013). These receptors allow octopus arms to continue reacting even after the arms have been detached from the head, allowing the arms to coordinate a reflex withdrawal response (Hague et al. 2013). Dolphins must therefore process the octopus sufficiently to reduce the arms reflex withdrawal response and limit their suckers adhering to them, which otherwise would make them difficult to swallow.

So mad props to all the octopuses out there, for fighting the good fight against dolphins (and sometimes winning!)

Here’s the frame-by-frame photo in all its glory (Figure 1 from the below paper):

Reference:

Sprogis KR, Raudino HC, Hocking D, Bejder L (2017) Complex prey handling of octopus by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus), Marine Mammal Science, doi: 10.1111/mms.12405

The post Reason 5,879 why dolphins are a$$holes: Octopus “handling” first appeared on Deep Sea News.

This a complicated question without a single answer – but there is no question that we need to do everything we can to get all the young’uns hooked on science. It is especially important to make science accessible (and fun!) for underrepresented groups – African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, LBGTQ youth, first-generation college students…the list goes on. “Diversity” means a lot of things, and all of those definitions are important. I speak from personal experience here, as a first-generation college student coming from a literal blue collar family (my dad wears a blue jumpsuit with a name patch to work – and he is not wearing it in the ironic hipster way).

Today I write with a simple request: Help low income, rural students experience the joy of marine science, with a donation to the LUMCON scholarship fund.

Here at Deep Sea News we have a strong tradition of raising money (and awareness!) for worthy causes. For a time we ran annual campaigns to fund ocean education in K-12 classrooms through the Donors Choose program – Kevin Zelnio and our friends at Southern Fried Science helped us raise over $4800 in 2009 to support >1500 students in classrooms across the country.

Its high time we reach out again, and this time I personally want to highlight the amazing programs at LUMCON (The Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, a marine station located at the tip of the boot in Louisiana). LUMCON is the wonderful institution where Dr. M. has just taken the reins as executive director, and they are doing a big push to establish a scholarship fund for field programs aimed at K-12 students and undergraduates (again, these are rural, low-income students without the financial capability to experience the joy of the ocean).

Why is the LUMCON fund so important? Because it is the literal field course that transformed our own Dr. M from a rural Arkansas kid to a fancy executive director and badass marine scientist.

To reiterate: By supporting the LUMCON fund, you can directly help transform this scraggly youth (Dr. M when he had hair)

Our Executive Director, Dr. Craig McClain @DrCraigMc #FlashbackFriday #deepsn #LUMCONscience pic.twitter.com/eTJCzuFNoO

— LUMCON (@LUMCONscience) February 3, 2017

Into this high-powered marine scientist:

Any amount will help support a student – $10, $20, $100 or whatever you can spare – donate for a friend, donate because you love the ocean, donate because you wish you had this opportunity when you were younger!

So help get these students out on a boat, help them stick their hands in the mud! It just might transform them into a scientist! (…again, speaking from experience here. I love mud so much.)

Please fund a student and break barriers! #LUMCONscience #summerprogram https://t.co/A6enHR8ZdD pic.twitter.com/ksEhFnyMh3

— LUMCON (@LUMCONscience) February 24, 2017

Disclaimer: I have written this post solely under my own volition (without any influence from Dr. M, apart from our undying blog family love). He has had no input or editorial control over what I have written, and is very proper about keeping his official LUMCON duties separate from DSN. But I cannot be controlled! Mwahahaha.

The post Support LUMCON ocean scholarships, and get rural, low-income kids hooked on marine science! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Mola Mola – the Pandas of the ocean? You Decide!

(Note the below post contains possibly NSFW language – copious amounts of swearing.)

The post Ocean Sunfish are the most useless animal (an epic rant) first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Would you want your taxi driver using a paper road map from 1892? Or would you rather he plug in the route on his Google Map iPhone app?

You just got off a 14-hour flight from Australia, you’re exhausted and sore, and counting down the seconds until you can crawl into the soft comfort of your memory foam mattress. You want to get home as fast as possible, and any further delay is unacceptable.

In this scenario, if your taxi driver pulled out a faded historical road map, you would literally shout at him “Are you fucking kidding me? Is this a joke?”. Old maps list wagon trails, not highways, since the modern interstate system wasn’t built until the 1950s. In another scenario, maybe your taxi driver agrees to use Google Maps, but he turns off the traffic settings and also takes away your own smartphone so you can’t see where you’re going. He might be driving down back roads on purpose, choosing to ramp up the mileage and ramp up his final fare to rake in the cash.

Any of these above scenarios would really suck. They’re not cool. You should DEFINITELY not stand for them. You also shouldn’t stand for the gag order (#EPAgag) and grants freeze (#EPAfreeze) that’s happening this week at the EPA – because the results will be sickeningly similar to the above taxi driver scenario.

NPR reports this morning that peer-reviewed research coming out of the EPA may soon face a case-by-case review before it gets cleared for release into the public domain. This is exactly what corporations do when they fund research – do you think tobacco companies would approve studies confirming that cigarettes cause cancer? Nope, they would bury the science and ensures it never sees the light of day – and that’s exactly what the Trump administration wants to happen at the EPA. Climate change facts? Bury them. Gag the scientists. The difference is that corporations don’t fund the science at the EPA – YOU FUND IT, as a taxpayer and US citizen, and you should have a say in how your tax money is spent:

Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who want to publish or present their scientific findings likely will need to have their work reviewed on a “case by case basis” before it can be disseminated, according to a spokesman for the agency’s transition team.

Any review would directly contradict the agency’s current scientific integrity policy, which was published in 2012. It prohibits “all EPA employees, including scientists, managers and other Agency leadership from suppressing, altering, or otherwise impeding the timely release of scientific findings or conclusions.”

The EPA funds a stunning amount of stuff that effects your everyday life – the EPA monitors beach health (so you can swim in a seweage-free ocean!), water quality in lakes and rivers (so you can fish there!), air quality (don’t wanna taste smog on your run, right?), and even programs on Native American reservations to help with initiatives like recycling and sustainability.

If you want to know what the EPA funds in your local area, 1) Click here and enter your ZIP code to find your congressional district, and then 2) Go to the EPA search tool and search for grants awarded to your congressional district (you only have to fill out two boxes – your district number and state). The list of EPA search results will show you exactly what type of projects and how much $$ has been allocated to your town in the past few years.

Finally, CALL YOUR CONGRESSPERSON AND SENATORS to let them know that the #EPAfreeze and #EPAgag is NOT OK! All us scientists at Deep-Sea News are steaming mad, and you should be too. Click here to find contact info for your state senator. And click here and type in your ZIP code for your local congressperson in the House of Representatives. Phone calls are the best way to get in touch – inundate their district and DC offices with phone calls. Phone calls are scary for me as a millennial, but then again so is that dodgy taxi driver who wants to take me home using unpaved wagon trails and historical maps. Make a stand, make your voice heard.

———

UPDATE: 1/25/17, 1:42PM PST

To dig into this issue further, I did my own EPA award search. My congressional district (California 41st) has been awarded $26,369,556 in EPA grants over the last ~15 years. Here’s a screenshot of the awards:

To dig in even further, I started reading about the grants and tweeting short summaries of what the EPA had actually funded in my local area:

In my district alone, EPA has funded projects in basic research, terrorist attack prevention, drinking water and air quality #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

$218k EPA grant went to Fort Mojave Indian Tribe to train staff & implement new environmental protocols https://t.co/VSuUSQWAYQ #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

Other $15k EPA grant funded research on BBQ smoke (small particles that go airborne when grease sizzzles) https://t.co/8uVykdeyoN #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

One $15k EPA grant funded research to build a device that lowers pollution/exhaust from your lawnmower https://t.co/iVchR80lxn #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $1.2 million EPA grant went to Big Bear Lake to replace aging water pipes & ensure safe drinking water https://t.co/iVqo3lt6ia #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

$1.2 million EPA grant even went to “Air Quality Monitoring for Homeland Security” (w/ no other details) https://t.co/cCpdXgG1vi #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

More serious – $450k EPA grant went to the Luiseno Indian Tribe to fund water pollution control programs https://t.co/Ff9lhpj5df #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $408k EPA grant went to Chemehuevi Indian Tribe for community recycling program & to buy a wood chipper https://t.co/Lfq1K4941N #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $1.5 million EPA grant went to San Diego County to fund research and analysis on SoCal air quality https://t.co/xIYo9XSpk4 #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

$1.7mill EPA grant to “advance environ literacy & stewardship” for preschool, senior citizens, businesses https://t.co/GIH8SaZ1Su #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

A $115k EPA grant aimed to reduce vulnerabilities of large drinking water utilities to terrorist attacks https://t.co/Z48XapM2Si #EPAfreeze

— Holly Bik (@hollybik) January 25, 2017

I encourage you to do your own search – what has the EPA funded in YOUR local community?

The post Fight against the #EPAfreeze – Because you don’t want sewage on your beaches, right? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Today is legendary! Why, you ask? Well, we are celebrating TEN YEARS of DSN posts. That’s right – if you go wayyyyyyyyy back in the archives you will note that the proto-Deep Sea News empire began with a little post by Dr. M on December 13, 2006.

What were we all doing in 2006? Well as for myself (this is Holly speaking), I was just starting my PhD research in good ol’ London towne. I was listening to a lot of Pussycat Dolls, and Christina Aguilera was going through that weird jazz phase. I was smoovely fixing nematodes on glass slides to the tune of Chamillionaire, and I had just signed up to this cool new website called Facebook.

As you can fathom, a lot has changed in 10 years. The DSN crew has moved forward and onwards in our careers, many of us metamorphosing from wee little student trainees into Real Scientists. Our list of contributors has changed and evolved. We write different types of posts now (should we remind Dr. M that he used to use DSN as a cruise blog?). In light of recent world events, our message and mission has become increasingly urgent.

But other things haven’t changed – our Core Values, although not formalized in writing until 2011, have always been a fundamental part of Deep Sea News. The passion, enthusiasm, and dedication of all of our past and present writers will never change. And of course I still listen to the Pussycat Dolls (because how can you NOT?)

So in celebration of our site’s 10 year anniversary, here we present you with our Top Ten (and then some) posts in DSN History:

2006 

Wetting my toes

Kim: Do I need to explain that the very first post on DSN is also that years highlight? It’s real, it’s sweet and it kicked off ten years of online shenanigans!

2007 

Just Science Weekend: They Eat Their Young

Jarrett: I <3 DSN in 2007. You can feel the online science world trying to figure out what it was. DSN was a more news-y place, with a heavy dose of reportage on the deep sea, like this awesome interview of sub pilot David Guggenheim. But amidst that, DSN was also figuring out who it was going to become – and this gem of a piece from Peter Etnoyer epitomizes the future, showing us that not only are deep sea fish all around us in our everyday lives, but man, do they sure like to cannibalize their babies. Mmmmmm….babiez.

2008

Dumping Pharmaceutical Waste In The Deep Sea

Rebecca: 2008 was a year or short-and-sweet posts, punctuated by long and well-researched articles on everything from coral age to deep ocean waves. DSN found a unique voice in being a place not just to report on the latest news, but also provide a scientist’s perspective on the way news about the ocean is reported in the press. This was also a year of raising awareness, with Dr. M’s post on pharmaceutical dumping in the deep as a perfect example of how blogs can call attention to unique and important stories that the press might miss.  

2009 

Holly: My favorite thing about 2009 is the epicness of Kevin Zelnio, best summarized with these two posts:

TGIF: TOTELY AWSUM SEE KUKUMBR!!!11!!!!11!

This post is a HILARIOUS animated video about a very boring sea cucumber, complete with rock guitar soundtrack. I think I just re-watched it like five times.

Thank You for Caring About Ocean Education!

(the more serious and dedicated size of Zelnio, where he coordinated a campaign at DonorsChoose.org and raised over $4800 from our readers. This campaign funded Ocean Education projects in K-12 classrooms around the country!)

2010 

All the coverage of the Deep Water Horizon Spill

Kim: Let’s be real, the Macondo well blowout sucked for the Gulf. But in terms of science, DSN was on it providing weekly updates and posting readable summaries of technical reports. The entire archive is here folks.

How To Cuddle Your Lady Right, by Smoove A

In this epic post, Miriam describes how one microscopic crustacean makes all the right moves and makes the mating happen. All biology textbooks should be written like this.

2011

From the Editor’s Desk: The Giant Squid Can Be A Panda For The Ocean

Holly: First of all, I love the 2011 Editor’s Desk posts because Craig very epically summarized himself with a minimalist icon of his bald head and beard. Second, the Giant Squid is WAYYYY more awesome than those damn dolphins and whales that everyone keeps going on about. And I prefer my cuddly mascots with lethal beaks and suckers, thank you very much.

From the Editor’s Desk: The Future of Deep-Sea News

This is the post where we formalized our now infamous core values – they were the brain child of the very first DSN retreat at the Georgia Aquarium, a weekend of meeting rooms and champagne in a rotating sky hotel. One of those things turned out better than the other.

2012 

#IamScience: Embracing Personal Experience on Our Rise Through Science

Jarrett: This post embodies DSN at it’s best. Kevin Z. takes us on his deeply personal and emotional journey into science. It’s a kind of story rarely told, and one that so many need to hear.

How presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline

In this post, Craig connects American history with geological history, and ties it all together to understand how both impacted the 2012 presidential election. This post exploded the internet.

2013 

Kim: 2013 was just so awesome, I couldn’t just pick one!

10 Reasons Why Dolphins Are A$$holes

Do I even need to explain?

A field guide to privilege in marine science: some reasons we lack diversity.

When Miriam left DSN, she went out with a deeply important and thoughtful list. If you are an ally and want to see marine science grow, read this piece.

How many people does Kaiju need to eat everyday 

Sure we love all the creatures of the deep, but we also love Hollywood’s imaginary beasts as well. Craig answers some serious questions regarding the metabolism of the monsters in Pacific Rim.

The 60 foot long jet powered animal you’ve probably never heard of

In case you didn’t know what Rebecca’s niche in the online ecosystem, this is it. Someone found a giant gelatinous tube in the sea, she identifies it, and the internetz go wild. Rebecca, helping jellies go viral since 2013.

True Facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster 

SPOILER ALERT: unless you live within 100 miles of the reactor, radiation from the Fukushima Disaster is still not harmful. This post was meant to be a guide to understanding radiation in the ocean. It ended up being one of most shared posts ever and the one we received death threats over.

2014

The Ever Increasing Size of Godzilla: Implications for Sexual Selection and Urine Production

Beth: Where Craig discusses the body size characteristics of godzilla over time, and the logical implications this would have on the millions of gallons of urine that massive godzilla would generate. This post has the thing that makes me love DSN – using scientific reasoning to explain a totally ridiculous thing. And it features Craig’s weird obsession with the size of things.

Runner up:

Sex, snails,sustenance…and rock and roll 

Where Craig uses great metaphors to explain some cool scientific studies on how snails reproduce based on food availability, featuring inappropriate references to rock stars and sex, and with a bonus soundtrack!

2015 

Ten Simple Rules for Effective Online Outreach

Alex: It’s like we all wrote a blog post… together. And then published it for realsies.

2016 

On Being Scared.

Alex: In which Craig verbalizes the place we have all been. I love and admire the vulnerability in this post and that he ended it so positively… that even when shit hits the proverbial sea fan, we get to choose how we respond. We get to choose how we show up.

Runner up:

The Twelve Days of Christmas: NASA Earth Science Edition

Alex: When you get retweeted by NASA… you get a spot on the list.

(Runner up #2)

The worst ocean environments to catch them all

Rebecca: When you love Pokémon but hate crushing barometric pressure.

The post A Decade of Deep Sea Decadence first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Scientists aren’t always up in their research 24/7 – we have personalities too! Kickass personalities, in fact, that don’t always come across on the internet. For those of you DSN readers that haven’t had the pleasure to meet Dr M in person, we want to give you a taste of what you’re missing. So here we present our Top Ten Facts about Dr M:

1. His obsession with old skool hip hop

Dr. M is slightly obsessed (UNDERSTATEMENT) with old skool rap and hip hop – he can talk for hours about his spotify playlists. His social media feeds are an endless linkfest of Youtube videos. Including some pretty weird ones, like this:

2. Kickass Sock Collection

Like a true southern gentleman, Dr M is always impeccably dressed. If a summer garden party suddenly materialized in the middle of the workday, just hand him a Mint Julep and he’ll fit right in. Exhibit A:

In fact, Dr Mr often schools ME about fashion. He leaves me googling things about men’s fashion that I’ve never heard of, like “Seersucker suit”. Such swank is unheard of in a scientist! And his dress sense boils all the way down to his accessories, like his very colorful and diverse sock collection:

3. Science of the South

Dr M has recently started cheating on DSN with another blog affair: Science of the South. That’s OK, we don’t judge him for it. In fact, we’re in constant awe of his productivity. Does he sleep? The Science of the South is Dr M’s new project that aims to link southern culture with scientific explanations. It involves a lot of road trips, pie-cooking and pie-eating. If you love DSN, you should check it out!

4. Master of Organization + Tidyness

Dr M is the only person I’ve met who understands my obsession with stationery, pens, and post-it notes. I’ve never seen a scientist with a desk so clean; there is never a paper out of place. Again, we ask: Does he sleep? I aspire to this level of tidiness but can never quite get there.

5. Connoisseur of All the Alcohols

Port, wine, bourbon, rum, you name it: Dr M has tried it, and has an opinion about it. In fact, he worked a side job at a wine shop in his younger days – and he has quite the sophisticated palate because of it. In marine biology, knowledge of (and access to) alcohol is almost as important as the science. Take this post, for example (which includes a great cocktail recipe by Dr M). More recently, Dr M has schooled me on All the Ports when we spent a day meandering through tasting rooms in Oporto, Portugal:

6. Great eye for graphic design

Did you know that Dr M designed the DSN site from scratch? The logo, the WordPress theme, the layout, the color scheme: he’s the mastermind behind all of it. Now you know, and you can revel in all the DSN web design glory. Design skills are an overlooked – but very important! – part of being a scientist. I mean, c’mon, just look at Dr M’s professional website. Is that not the greatest choice of fonts you’ve ever seen?

7. Mad SCUBA skills

Dr M is not shy about his diving skills – he’s SCUBA’d on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland, with Whale Sharks in Mexico, and on countless tropical coral reefs. But my favorite SCUBA picture is from the time we had a DSN retreat and he dived at the Georgia Aquarium:

8. Willingness to try weird meats

Thinking back, most of my dining experiences with Dr M have involved him trying some sort of weird meat. I’m not sure if this is coincidence or if this is how he eats all the time. We dined on seabirds and marine mammals in Iceland, and more recently I watched him eat a coil of flaming sausage in Portugal (which he of course turned into a GIF).

9. Slightly addicted to internet memes

Internet memes are almost as prominent as old skool hip hop videos in Dr M’s social media feeds. And his blog posts. And his Tweets. He probably has meme printouts adorning his office walls too. So here we throw in Dr M’s favorite meme, Research Wahlberg:

10. Inspiring leader and eloquent writer

And now here’s where my Top Ten list gets all sappy. Above all, Dr M is our tireless leader here at DSN, and someone who serves as a source of infinite inspiration. We’ve all learned many things from him over the years – about life, about science, about outreach and writing. We all felt it was time to remind him of this fact, and remind him of how important he is to so many people. Marine Biology – and science in general – wouldn’t be the same without Dr M.

The post The man behind the science: Top 10 Facts about Dr M first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Why? Because we felt it was time. And because we want to have some fun. And because we wanted to surprise Dr M (who up until this point had no idea this theme week was about to happen).

Dr M has tirelessly led this blog since 2005. That’s ELEVEN YEARS. DSN authors have come and gone, but Dr M has been here though it all. And it’s about damn time we give him a (virtual) high-five for all the work he’s done, and his unwavering leadership over the years.

And with that, we’re kicking off theme week under the banner of DSN Core Value #2: Saying things others do not.

The post Surprise Theme Week: Tribute to our Leader, Dr M first appeared on Deep Sea News.

If you’re still skeptical about barnacles, you must be a robot. C’mon, look at that thing! If ninjas lived in the deep sea, they would use these barnacles as their weapon. Case in point:

Barnacles live at hydrothermal vents all over the world, sometimes packed as densely as 1500 individuals per square meter. Currently, there are 13 described barnacles species across 4 taxonomic families. But morphology isn’t great at distinguishing species, so in recent years researchers have needed to rely on DNA sequences to untangle the relationships between deep-sea barnacle species.

In honor or Darwin’s birthday today (collectively known as #DarwinDay), the most appropriate marine biology homage is story about the evolution of deep-sea barnacles. Herrera et al. (2015) have a recent, really fantastic paper, in Molecular Ecology, where they used fancy genomics tools to ask:

• Do vent barnacles have a single evolutionary origin (e.g. did they all evolve from a common ancestor)?
• When and where did vent barnacles first evolve?
• Historically, how did vent barnacles spread (radiate) across the deep-sea?

Herrera et al. collected 94 barnacle specimens from 18 hydrothermal vents worldwide (it’s really hard to do deep-sea biology, so this is actually LOT of barnacles painstakingly collected with robotic claws). Next, they sequenced three genes from each individual (the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 gene, the nuclear 28S rRNA gene, and the nuclear Histone H3 gene), and additionally got crazy amounts of whole-genome data from each barnacle using a technique called Restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq).

<cue elevator music and montage of genomic data analysis, where a hacker-looking scientist sits in a dark room, furiously typing code and downing shots of espresso. Finally he/she builds evolutionary trees, glorious trees.>

The results of this study showed that, contrary to prior hypotheses, barnacles have colonized deep-sea hydrothermal vents at least twice in the course of their evolutionary history. This can be seen by the two distinct clades (red and yellow) recovered in Herrera et al.’s phylogenetic Tree O’Barnacles:

The largest group of vent barnacles (Clade A, the red clade above) seems to have originated in the Western Pacific Ocean and then moved east, colonizing “the Eastern Pacific, the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean during the late Miocene to early Pliocene” (Herrera et al. 2015, using ancestral state reconstruction to analyze phylogenetic patterns). Once barnacles had adopted the hydrothermal vent lifestyle, it looks like they moved east. Based on molecular clock estimates using DNA sequences, the timing of their dispersal is concordant with geologic events such as the opening of the Drake Passage (41 million years ago).

Barnacle DNA also indicates that hydrothermal vent species arose fairly recently (well, in geologic time), emerging after a deep-sea mass extinction event during the Cretaceous– Paleogene period boundary. That boundary–65 million years ago–should be familiar. Deep-sea barnacles started their ascension as the dinosaurs were on their last breath.

We’ve only just begun dipping our toes into the world of deep-sea genomics. Given the time-machine-like powers of DNA sequences, and the fact that hydrothermal vents are essentially “islands” in the deep sea (thus giving us the perfect system to test some big evolutionary theories), the next few years should produce some really exciting deep-sea discoveries. Forget hoverboards: if Darwin came Back to the Future I’m sure he’d much rather have genomics.

Reference:

Herrera S, Watanabe H, Shank TM (2015) Evolutionary and biogeographical patterns of barnacles from deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Molecular Ecology, 24:673-689.

The post Deep-Sea Barnacle Genomics. Because, #DarwinDay first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In the last several years, the reefs have drawn swift open-ocean fish, like tuna and mackerel, that use the reefs as hunting grounds for smaller prey. Sea bass like to live inside the cars, while large flounder lie in the silt that settles on top of the cars, said Mr. Tinsman, the Delaware official.

States have experimented with other types of artificial reef materials, including abandoned automobiles, tanks, refrigerators, shopping carts and washing machines.

Subway cars in general, he said, are roomy enough to invite certain fish, too heavy to shift easily in storms and durable enough to avoid throwing off debris for decades. (via NY Times article)

Gothamist has some great photos of these subway car shipwrecks, but if you want an even more immersive experience then check out this video of a subway car scuba adventure:

The post TGIF: Subway Car Artificial Reefs! first appeared on Deep Sea News.