boon·dog·gle
/ˈbo͞onˌdäɡəl/

noun:  work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value.

verb: waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects.

The end of 2018 was tough for the Ocean Cleanup and its founder, inventor, and CEO Boyan Slat.   In September, the 2000 foot-boom and supposed plastic collection device, was first deployed about 240 nautical miles offshore of San Francisco where it was tested for two weeks.  The boom was then towed an additional 1,400 miles off the West Coast, about halfway between California and Hawaii, to begin collecting plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  This was supposed to be the first real-world proof of concept and trials of the device in the Pacific Garbage Patch.

Note that the previous prototype in the North Sea also failed at a shallower depth in calm seas. Of course, the next step is to build a bigger one and place it in rougher and deeper seas.

But in November, Ocean Cleanup stated the system was not holding plastic it collected.  This lack of plastic collection arose from the system moving too slowly at times to hold plastic within the U-shaped collection area.  The system is supposed to work by currents pushing plastics into the booms and nets.  Yet slow and complex currents in this region of the Pacific allowed plastics to float out of the device again.

In late December, 60-feet of boom had detached due to material fatigue.  Slat then indicated that this likely occurred due to wave action placing stress on the boom. The fracture was caused by material fatigue, he wrote. That’s likely because of the intense action of the waves that puts tremendous stress on objects in the water.

So to recap, the Ocean Cleanup system cannot either collect plastic or withstand the Pacific Ocean.

 In a September interview with NPR, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow. The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it.

However, both of these issues could have easily been avoided by more appropriate simulations, analyses, and information prior to construction and deployment.

When the material failure occurred, it wasn’t due to the result of a major Pacific storm. It was just normal wear and tear, Slat said

Understanding material stresses is a key component of an engineering project and one that is well understood before construction.   Note as well that the system is not something actually new, but is a modification of RO-BOOMS used in oil spill clean up since 1988.  I am confident the specifications for use and the ocean states the booms can operate in are well known by the manufacturer and previous users alike. [UPDATE: The booms used ar eno longer the RO-BOOMS.  It is a completely different design, a recent internal iteration which may explain the failure.]

And while currents are complex, a whole field of physical oceanography exists and provides readily the information to know the current regime in the area.  If more detailed temporal or spatial resolution is needed, the Ocean Cleanup team should have conducted more field studies to gain the data on the currents beforehand.    The Ocean Cleanup has always seemed poorly developed and executed, ignorant of the best science and data available, blatantly dismissive of critique, and far too hurried.

This rush to place the device in the ocean for both good publicity and for the feeling of accomplishing something is unproductive at best and dangerous at the worst.  And it clear that Slat is committed to an overly ambitious timeline no matter the consequences.

Founder & CEO Boyan Slat announced the news in a December 31 blog post, saying “setbacks like this are inevitable when pioneering new technology at a rapid pace”, and maintaining that ” these teething troubles are solvable, and the cleanup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be operational in 2019″.
Read more at http://www.mysailing.com.au/latest/ocean-cleanup-s-20-million-plastic-catcher-breaks#1R7mecWOPU9tLbJl.99

I get no pleasure in saying I told you so but…

As noted in a recent article featuring Dr. Goldstein,

But a critic who has followed Slat’s project since he unveiled it more than five years ago said the failure was predictable and that systems deployed closer to shore stand a greater chance of slowing the deluge of plastics spilling into the world’s oceans.

“I certainly hope they will be able to get it to work, but this is a very difficult environment where equipment breaks, which is why you normally do things closer to shore, where things are easier to repair,” said [Dr.] Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress

In 2014, Drs. Kim Martini and Drs. Miriam Goldstein, a physical and biological oceanographer, provided a detailed technical review of the feasibility study here at DSN. Note the two of them pointed nearly 4 years ago about these issues.

….The modeling studies severely underestimate potential loads and tensions on the moored array and boom. Therefore, they are insufficient to properly design a mooring concept and estimate potential costs…

Since the authors had access to ORCAFLEX, a professional software package to design offshore marine structures, a full-scale mooring array could have been modeled to estimate loads and tensions on the moored array, but was not.

Structural deformation of the array and loss of functionality by ocean currents are not addressed…

Yeah. So these exact failures were predicted four years ago.

As this article clearly lays out, we should focus our funding and time, on more promising solutions to the ocean trash problem.

The post The Continued Boondoggle of the Ocean Cleanup first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, three quarters of a mile deep, lies the peak of an underwater mountain.  Rising 1.4 miles off the abyssal plains, Davidson Seamount, nearly 26 miles long and 8 miles wide, is one of the largest known seamounts in U.S. waters. Davidson contains an abundance of life including massive groves of large bubblegum corals and reefs of glass sponges.  Life is so abundant at the seamount, we proposed nearly a decade ago that Davidson Seamount with its dense aggregations of invertebrates may serve as source of many species to nearby canyons and rocky outcrops off the California coast.  Davidson may be a perfect habitat for many species allowing their populations to explode.  This Davidson Seamount cradle then may serve as source of migrating individuals into other less perfect habitats nearby.  This idea of Davidson as a biodiversity source was instrumental in getting Davidson added to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) in 2009.

A recent expedition by NOAA, MBNMS, and Nautilus, returned to Davidson Seamount.  And is typical of Davidson delivered with a spectacular display of life.   Over 1,000 individuals of the small sized octopus Muusoctopus robustus were caught on video hugging the rocks in a brooding position.  It is unclear why these octopuses are using the seamount as a nursery.  Higher currents around seamounts may bring more oxygenated waters.  The dense aggregations of other animals may provide abundant prey.  The crevasse, cracks, and rocky rubble of this old volcano may provide shelter from predators.

The post An Octopus Nursery Discovered on a Deep Underwater Mountain first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Recently we at Deep-Sea News have tried to combat misinformation about the presence of high levels of Fukushima radiation and its impact on marine organisms on the west coast of the United States.  After doing thorough research, reading the scientific literature, and consulting with experts and colleagues, we have found no evidence of either.  In the comments of those posts and on Twitter, readers have asked us about the “evidence” of dead marine life covering 98% of ocean floor in the Pacific as directly attributed to Fukushima radiation.  After some searching I found the main “news” article that is referenced.

The Pacific Ocean appears to be dying, according to a new study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California recently discovered that the number of dead sea creatures blanketing the floor of the Pacific is higher than it has ever been in the 24 years that monitoring has taken place, a phenomenon that the data suggests is a direct consequence of nuclear fallout from Fukushima.

Before I discuss this “evidence” further, I want to provide a little background.  I am a deep-sea biologist and over the last several years my research has focused on the biodiversity of deep-sea communities off the California coast.  Like many others, I am also working toward understanding how deep-sea life will respond to increased anthropogenic impacts particularly climate change.  This resulted in a high profile publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.  I mention this background because 1. It explains why I view myself as an expert to comment on this and 2. it explains why I was confounded for a moment when I thought I had missed a paper in a journal I have published in, on a geographic region I study, and on a topic close to my own research.  And to boot from researchers at institution (MBARI) I was formerly employed with.

The reason I am unfamiliar with a study providing evidence of  “Dead sea creatures cover 98 percent of ocean floor off California coast; up from 1 percent before Fukushima” is because no such study exists.  Here are the details of the actual study.

Ken Smith’s group at MBARI has monitored a deep-sea abyssal site called Station M off the California coast continuously since 1989 (24 years).  Their work has lead to many major findings.  A majority of deep-sea animals are completely reliant on the sinking of food from the surface, i.e. marine snow. One of the most important findings from Smith and colleagues’ work is that rhythm of deep-sea life is intrinsically linked to the production of phytoplankton at the oceans surface. Thus El Nino/La Nina cycles and other such meteorological/oceanic events leave a deep-sea signature.  Ken’s research has been paradigm shifting for deep-sea research.  We have moved from a belief of a stable and climate-buffered view of the deep sea to one of a dynamic system intimately related to seasonal, annual, and decadal changes in surface production and ocean currents.

This group’s newest paper

Smith, K. L., H. A. Ruhl, M. Kahru, C. L. Huffard, and A. D. Sherman. (2013). Deep ocean communities impacted by changing climate over 24 y in the abyssal northeast Pacific Ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1315447110.

reports findings that large and episodic pulses of marine snow occur.  These large blizzards are met by hungry deep-sea animals that quickly gobble the meal.  The amount of food these blizzards deliver are huge equaling years, if not decades, of normal marine snow.  But the amounts and frequency of both normal marine snow and the blizzards are changing.

From 2003 to 2012 the amount of phytoplankton production, fodder for marine snow, was higher than years prior.  After 2006, the frequency of spikes in marine snow, i.e. blizzards, also increased.   In the summer of 2011, the first of three dramatic blizzards occurred.  During this event a large number of diatoms bloomed at the surface and sank rapidly to the seafloor.  The second event in the spring/early summer of 2012, was triggered by a major bloom of gelatinous salps. As mentioned in the press release of the paper, “These salps became so abundant that they blocked the seawater intake of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, located on the California coast east of Station M.”  When these salps died, as they do after a bloom, they carpeted the seafloor.  In September 2012 another plankton bloom occurred and this combined with fecal pellets from salps (who hungrily munched on the algae) again carpeted the floor with marine snow.  In addition the greatest amounts of marine snow and consumption by deep-sea life (as measured by respiration rates) occurred in the last two years of the time series.

What caused these recent changes in marine snow?

From the paper,

The abyssal area surrounding Station M is influenced by the California Current, which is experiencing increased wind stress, resulting in increased upwelling of nutrient-rich subsurface waters, contributing to increased primary production. With increasing primary production there has been a corresponding increase in POC flux and detrital aggregate accumulation on the sea floor over the past several years.

And from the press release,

The researchers note that deep-sea feasts may be increasing in frequency off the Central California coast, as well as at some other deep-sea study sites around the world. Over the last decade, the waters off Central California have seen stronger winds, which bring more nutrients, such as nitrate, to the ocean surface. These nutrients act like fertilizer, triggering blooms of algae, which, in turn, sometimes feed blooms of salps. The fallout from all of this increased productivity eventually ends up on the seafloor.

Nowhere does the paper or the press release mention radiation or Fukushima. Nilch, negatory, nadda, never.

But this is not good enough for staff writer Ethan Hunt and others outlets that continue to recycle this story.

Though the researchers involved with the work have been reluctant to pin Fukushima as a potential cause — National Geographic, which covered the study recently, did not even mention Fukushima — the timing of the discovery suggests that Fukushima is, perhaps, the cause.

MBARI today also issued a press release addressing the “several misleading stories [that] have been in circulation on the internet.”  The press release points out the obvious.

1. MBARI research actually showed evidence that there were MORE algae and salps living in California surface waters during 2011 and 2012 than during the previous 20 years.
2. Salps are small gelatinous animals that eat single-celled algae. They are known to experience large blooms in their populations. Large populations of salps have been periodically documented in California waters since at least the 1950s.
3. Blooms of gelatinous animals (including salps) and single-celled algae are a common occurrence off the California Coast. They come and go, running their course when they use up their food and nutrients.
4. Animals and algae that live in the surface waters eventually die. If they are not eaten in surface waters then they sink to the deep sea. This is the main food source for deep-sea animal and microbe communities.
5. Soon after the salp bloom and die-off at the surface in 2012, the deep seafloor at the researchers’ study site was littered with dead salps. This was observed at one location, and salps were the only dead animals observed in large numbers.
6. There is no indication that any of the events in this study were associated with the Fukushima nuclear accident.

I will also note the Fukushima disaster occurred in March 2011, five years after the researches begin to see changes in surface production.   To reiterate the statements points, there is evidence of more life recently in California waters. The supposed “die off” is a common feature of any bloom of short-lived invertebrates. The “die off” was experienced at one location and with one species.  The entire Pacific seafloor is not littered with dying organisms.  I would also point out that these massive food falls of marine invertebrates are a common occurrence. For example, in 2002 a massive deposition of jellyfish was seen in the deep Arabian Sea.

As I write this post on this cold Saturday morning, my attitude matches.  I have wanted to write about this paper for a while here at DSN.  And I’m sorry I did not.  I shoudn’t be defending great science against propaganda and poor journalism.  I should be writing about how this paper answers a major question about the deep sea.  Previous studies have noted that the energy requirements of deep-sea animals could not be met by normal and minimal marine snow.  Research over the last decade or so set out to determine how this deficit is made up.  Smith and colleagues’ work solves this riddle.  Deep-sea animals simply wait for a sporadic feast.  Smith’s work suggests this is likely linked to climatic events.

If anything the paper is a cautionary tale of climate change not radiation.

The post Is the sea floor littered with dead animals due to radiation? No. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Sometimes when you read a paper, one statement or figure sticks out and in the Nadon paper it’s their Figure 3(c), and here it is:

In this figure Nadon and his colleagues show the relationship between the density of sharks measured by towed diver surveys (how do I get THAT job?), and the number of humans living within 200km of the sampling site.  A couple of things jump out at me in this interesting figure.  The first is that the relationship is heavily, heavily skewed.  It’s so skewed that plotting a curve on it actually seems fairly pointless. What we appear to be dealing with is a sort of binary situation.  If there are no people living near the sampling site, then shark numbers are in the 0.5-3.0/ha range, but if there are  people living within 200 klicks – any number of people – then there are effectively no sharks present.  I might have tried a log scale on the x-axis to give better resolution at the low population end, but there are few data points there anyway, which is a bit frustrating but probably just reflects the difference between populated and unpopulated islands.  There’s also one outlier, which I marked with a red arrow; I really wish they’d labeled that one, because it’s so different from all the others and outliers are always interesting. (aside: I think it was Steven Jay Gould who said that if you want to know how normal folks think, one thoughtful deviant will tell you more than a thousand solid citizens)

A binary relationship between the abundance of sharks and that of people is effectively saying that they are mutually exclusive: people = no sharks, no people = sharks.  That’s a pretty disappointing thought.  Of course it doesn’t tell us the mechanism, or even if the relationship is causal in any way, but I don’t think it’s a huge leap to suggest that human impacts on reef diversity and function in general, especially overfishing, are likely to put a pretty negative pressure on reef shark populations.  If this proves true then it may not be that humans are doing anything to the sharks per se, just not looking after the reef generally, and that is being reflected at the top trophic level.  However you slice it, their results are more grist to the mill that we need to be doing a better job with the conservation of both reefs and sharks, because sometimes those two things are inextricably intertwined.

The Nadon paper is open access; you can read it here

The post Are humans and reefs sharks mutually exclusive? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

All captured in video by scientists exploring 1220m (4000ft) beneath the surface in Pacific Ocean near Samoa the previous summer.  The lava erupting from the West Mata volcano is predicted to be the hottest lava erupting one Earth.

[googlemap lat=”-15.284185114076433″ lng=”-172.08984375″ width=”500px” height=”500px” zoom=”2″ type=”G_SATELLITE_MAP”]Samoa[/googlemap]

The post Deepest Underwater Volcanic Eruption first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Now this same group filmed swarms of the snailfish Notoliparis kermadecensis nibbling at bait 7560 meters, the deepest for a locality in the southern hemisphere. You can see that video here.

Of course all of this reminds me of…

The post Deepest Fish On Film first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Back From the Blue first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The 285  macrourid fishes, the rattails, whiptails, and grenadiers, are one of, if not the, most abundant fish in the deep.  You cannot throw…well anything…without hitting one.  What do all these fish eat?  In one scenario, macrourids feed on organisms living on the seafloor, that in turn originally feed on detritus, i.e. marine snow, raining from the surface.  Or these fish could cut out the middle man and feed directly on dead prey originally from surface. Or they could do both?

In simplified terms, phytodetritus is consumed by deposit feeders, which in turn are consumed by primary carnivores and so on to the top trophic positions including many fishes.  However, an alternative trophic pathway exists. Many deep-sea fishes are attracted to cameras baited with pelagic carrion and a few studies have noted carrion in their diets.  However, these observations have rarely been quantified. Scavenging on the sunken carcasses of epipelagic nekton bypasses the conventional benthic food web, although the beginning of each path shares primary production in surface waters. The relative importance of these 2 trophic pathways remains uncertain.

The question may seem trivial but the answer gets at nothing less than the pathway of carbon into the deep, and impacts how we understand carbon cycling and sequestration. A new study by Drazen et al. in Marine Ecology Progress Series examines the fatty acids of two macrourids and a whole host of their potential prey items.  All the samples were collected from the well-known Station M site (see map).

[googlemap lat=”34.9″ lng=”-123″ width=”500px” height=”500px” zoom=”7″ type=”G_HYBRID_MAP”]Station M[/googlemap]

What is generated from the data are the two plots below.  All you need to know is that the closer two points are on the graph the more similar the fatty acid content of their tissue.  The first plot is for macrourids and benthic prey and the second plot adds a few more pelagic prey.  Macrourids are black, echinoderms green, polychaetes, orange, anemones purple, crustaceans blue, and either living or dead on the seafloor, depending on the plot, pelagic species in red.

So it is obvious what is going on here , right?  Benthic crustaceans and pelagic-derived carrion taste good.  Echinoderms and polychaetes not so much.

So Number 1, as the press release for this paper states “This indicates that epipelagic populations constitute a significant part of the diet in abyssal fishes”, and thereby circumventing part of the food web.  And Number 2, no doubt making Chris Mah smile, and a bit of conundrum, is that they do not eat echinoderms.  As Chris Mah would quickly tell you, probably over cocktails at a party, echinoderms are one of the most dominant taxa in the deep.  You cannot throw a macrourid without hitting one.  Why do macrourids, obviously opportunistic scavengers/predators, not eat the most abundant food source in the deep?

Drazen, J., Phleger, C., Guest, M., & Nichols, P. (2009). Lipid composition and diet inferences of abyssal macrourids in the eastern North Pacific Marine Ecology Progress Series, 387, 1-14 DOI: 10.3354/meps08106

The post Simple Summer Recipes for Dead Seafloor Carrion first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Errant polychaete from a Pacific coast kelp holdfast; filmed during an Invertebrate Zoology lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The post TGIF: Polychaete first appeared on Deep Sea News.