OK, folks, time for some more KEEEELP FROOOOM SPAAAAAACE!!! And an opportunity for you to do some science of your very own!

As you know, I’m super into kelp. Just a wee bit. And one of my great passions is trying to understand how kelp around the planet has changed over time. With things like climate change, fishing-related urchin outbreaks, and the strangeness of sea cucumbers (long story), there are a lot of things that can impact this badass brown group of algae (Laiminariales!!!). To learn what’s going on, divers can only do so much. I mean, how much kelp can you count on one tank of air? And how many times can you go back to the same place over and over again. Ever few weeks. For decades. Yeah, it’s a problem.

But Giant Kelp and Citizen Science is the answer.

For the past three years, I’ve helped to steer an awesome citizen science project called Floating Forests. It’s part of a collaboration between some kickass scientists like Kyle Cavanaugh, Alison Haupt, Tom Bell, and others along with Zooniverse, an amazing online citizen science organization. Way back, they built us an amazing citizen science platform that lets citizen scientists take a gander at a photo sliced up from the Landsat series of satellites, and ask people to circle any kelp they saw.

The project thus far has been a rousing success, with almost 700K images classified Given that we show each image to 15 people if any of the first 4 note kelp, this means almost 3 million classifications!

But now it’s time for a new dawn. Zooniverse has grown and reformed it’s platform into the Voltron of Citizen Science – a modular platform anyone can use – and so we’ve moved our project on over. More than that, we’ve taken all of the collective feedback of our users and completely redesigned how we process images.

We’re starting off asking y’all to take a gander at the lush forests of the Falkland Islands, somewhere that scant little has been done. We’re also launching mini-challenges along the way, such as asking folk to tag images that are #sokelpy with the month they were photographed so we can build a qualitative understanding of kelp seasonality in these remote islands. We’ve also begun to release data for those who want to get really into it and play around with it – and talk about what you see in the forums!

So, deeplings, if you want to become an armchair kelp forest scientist, the time is now!

(And n.b. I might post here about this more in the future – but also feel free to see our blog)

The post Kelp, Spacecraft, and You first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Just in time for the low winter tides, the brilliant minds of the Martone Lab out of University of British Columbia have come to the rescue (just in case you needed one more reason to love Canadia). With over 100 different species represented from the North Western Seaboard of North America, the Seaweed Sorter app is here to blow some minds.

“Unlike printed dichotomous keys, which use jargon and often require specialized knowledge, Seaweed Sorter uses easy-to-understand, illustrated questions that assume no prior knowledge and allows users to skip questions at any time.

Seaweed Sorter includes more than 250 photos, current and former names, taxonomic details, clear morphological and ecological descriptions, and lists of other seaweeds that “could be confused with” your specimen… Books can be quickly out-of-date, but Seaweed Sorter content will be updated frequently with taxonomic revisions, additional photos, new species, and more. Plus, content is available anytime and doesn’t require an internet connection, making Seaweed Sorter an excellent companion on any trip to the coast.”

Just remember….waterproof phone sold separately. You have been warned.

The post Seaweed Sorting? There’s Now an App for That! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Why, by reaching 30 feet deep.

That’s the lesson of Emirates Air that will now provide their first class travelers with the ultimate definition of a life of luxury. What is the true definition of decadence in the sky? Three words.

Moist. Kelp. Pajamas.

The post The Kelp of Luxury first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Kelp.

(*to the tune of Oscar the Grouch’s I Love Trash*)
Oh I love kelp!
I love it because it’s kelp!

So why oh why is kelp the badass algae of the sea? There are a lot of reasons (I’m sure I’ll talk about them later), but, I’m going to talk about the one that hits many of us when we first see them in the wild, or even just as a slide on a screen when you’re a wee boy.

Look at the size of that thing.

Kelp are the ocean’s charismatic megaflora. Sure, we’re used to hearing about and seeing the giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera as kelp’s poster child. It rises up from up from 20m (that’s 60′) up up up to the surface and spreads it’s canopies out.

It’s so big, it’s canopy so huge, that you can see it from space (Cavanaugh et al. 2011, and our own Floating Forests). It covers about 1/3 of the range of kelps around the world – a true cosmopolitan – so it’s many people’s first kelp love.

But to focus just in giant kelp is to ignore some of the other giants of the world.

A second runner up in most commonly seen is the Bull kelp, Nereocystis leutkeana (Which really looks more like a giant flail than anything bull-ish, so, why not Flail kelp? Too close to Fail Kelp?). This big beauty – again, vasty depths to surface tall – is a few short base pairs away from Macro (Lane et al. 2006 which really fracked up the kelp taxonomy world), and grows in the wave-swept places giant kelp cannot countenance in the Eastern Pacific. Aside from thumbing it’s nose at high flow, the wind, and waves, its giant hollow stipe makes a badass horn.

Lest you accuse me of being US-centric, consider Ecklonia maxima – Look at this thing. Look at it. It’s a truffula tree. A giant damned truffula tree. Underwater. Case closed for its awesomeness.

(Oh, and you can see it from space, too (Anderson et al. 2010))

In Japan, Laminaria longissima does the same, extending long blades from the seafloor up to the waiting hooks of passing kelp harvesters. Big. Fast growing, and delicious. Like the longest lasagna noodles ever, waiting to be slurped up. Get it in your mouth (and see my bio below for a recipe).

In the Aleutians of Alaska, the long feathers of Eualaria fistulosa – Dragon kelp – reach up to the surface from the vasty depths, aching for sun. This kelp is legen – wait for it – dary… for needing otters to keep it safe from local marauding sea urchins. If you’ve taken an intro bio course that talked about food chains at all, you may not know it, but you’ve heard of this gentle defenseless giant of the sea.

Last, the Giant Elk Kelp – Pelagophycus pora. This is, bar none, my favorite kelp in the whole wide world. It can grow deep – a hundred feet or more down where light begins to fade out. Heck, it’s babies don’t even like light very much (Fejtek et al. 2011). It extends its impossibly long stipe up to a big floating bulb still beneath the waves. And then it unfurls grand long arms with blades that reach up for the sunlight. Swimming among sparse forests of these algal behemoths, one cannot help but feel like a lilliputian come to a temple of old.

So, yeah. Charistmatic megaflora. How can you not love them and want to cuddle up with them at night?

And will Craig count them among his Ocean Giants?

Refs
* Anderson, R.J., Rand, A., Rothman, M.D., Share, A., Bolton, J.J., 2007. Mapping and quantifying the South African kelp resource. African Journal of Marine Science 29, 369–378. doi:10.2989/AJMS.2007.29.3.5.335

* Fejtek, S.M., Edwards, M.S., Kim, K.Y., n.d. Elk Kelp, Pelagophycus porra, distribution limited due to susceptibility of microscopic stages to high light. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 396, 194–201. doi:10.1016/j.jembe.2010.10.022

* Lane, C.E., Mayes, C., Druehl, L.D., Saunders, G.W., 2006. A multi-gene molecular investigation of the kelp (Laminariales, Phaeophyceae) supports substantial taxonomic re-organization. J. Phycol. 42, 962–962. doi:10.1111/j.1529-8817.2006.00253.x

* Cavanaugh, K., Siegel, D., Reed, D., Dennison, P., 2011. Environmental controls of giant-kelp biomass in the Santa Barbara Channel, California. Marine Ecology Progress Series 429, 1–17. doi:10.3354/meps09141

The post Look at the Size of that Kelp first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Love it or hate it, Pokémon Go is undeniably a phenomenon. Although we here at DSN previously warned of the perils of Poké hunting in the ocean, some Pokémon trainers have not heeded our warning. According to scientists at UCSB, some rather enthusiastic players spotted what they thought was a Pokéball floating in the ocean near Isla Vista, California. So of COURSE they swam out and got it.

Turns out this red and white ball attached to a wad of kelp contained no Pokémon. Instead it contained a GPS unit used to track kelp drift along the California coast. OOPS.

Fortunately the group that deployed the buoy plastered their name and contact info all over it and the Pokéless Poké players were able to return the drifter. But seriously Poképeople, no Pokéballs have been released into the ocean. These are scientific instruments with a job to do, so please don’t catch ’em all.

SOURCE:
First Record of Pokémon GO Disrupting Science

UCSB Kelp Study

The post Pokémon GO players, please don’t take drifters from the ocean. THEY ARE NOT POKÉBALLS. first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I fell in love with seaweed, much in the same way as Josie, albeit I was knees deep in the rocky intertidal covered in sand and all the squishy things. A magical world that many see, but very few take the time to appreciate. This oversight somewhat understandable as many algal species look like clumps of red, brown or green “stuff” when washed ashore. Not entirely exciting to the passing beachcomber.

However, having spent more hours than is considered healthy gawking at algae from all over the world, I just wished there was a way for people to see it like I did. A love built on the intricate lines and flowing fronds of the most exquisite water bound plants.

With this passion, I have collected more algae books over the years than you can count. My library is filled. But there is one book, actually brought to my attention by the lovely Dr. Martini (she is an enabler), that sits on the very top shelf. A place reserved for the best of my collection (and the best of my gin).

With the help of the illustrious Curator of the Berkley Collection and phycology queen herself, Kathy Ann Miller, author Josie Iselin compiled one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen. “An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed” takes you on a colorful and vibrant adventure through littoral and sublittoral seaweed species that decorate our coastal spaces. Using a flatbed scanner, she is able to unclump the hidden secrets of these beautiful plants and reveal their inherent elegance. Masterfully, she has depicted life with these salty flowers exactly as I see it.

Beyond the larger conglomerate of specimens that fill it’s pages, Iselin goes on to discuss their natural history, every day uses, and other savory seaweed vignettes. “An Ocean Garden” is a piece of art, practical in it’s nature for both the well seasoned phycologist and the unfamiliar beach enthusiast. This compilation quite literally sheds light on and brings a new found appreciation for all who thumb through it’s pages of the majestic and not-so-secret world of seaweeds.

The post From the Top Shelf first appeared on Deep Sea News.

At the heart of downtown Oakland, San Francisco’s stereotypically grittier and unpolished sister city across the San Francisco Bay, lies an urban lake that is experiencing a remarkable rebirth. Lake Merritt isn’t so much a lake as it is a contained, urbanized arm of the Bay itself. It is a brackish-water lagoon divided from the cement sphincter of sky scrapers and apartment buildings by narrow strips of oak-studded parkland. I’ve lived by the Lake for the greater part of three decades, and while it hosts a flotilla of migratory ducks in the spring & fall, it was a figurative dead-zone devoid of the rich marine life in the Bay, and sometimes a literal dead-zone when bodies were dredged out of the muck. While making a picturesque and relaxing place to hang out on a warm summer night, the summer days often stank of rotting invasive algae and sulfur-producing bacteria.

In precolonial times, expansive shellmounds around the slough attested to the abundance of shellfish and game that allowed the native Ohlone peoples to thrive. Even with the influx of settlers into the mid-1800’s Lake Merritt was still a functioning part of the San Francisco Bay Ecosystem, The Lake was a vibrant tidal slough that brought migrating salmon to Oakland’s creeks, with historic records of river otters, harbor seals, and enough ducks to host several hunting clubs. Encroaching urbanization morphed scattered clusters of Gold-Rush farms, factories, and merchants into a bona-fide city, forcing changes to the Lake. A cement lining replaced the muddy banks of the slough, and a gated dam was placed at the connection with the Bay in an attempt to mediate the flooding from heavy seasonal rains. In 1870, Lake Merritt was declared the nation’s first wildlife refuge, but such a title didn’t guarantee special protection. Urban runoff carrying sediment and pollution produced a shallow, mildly toxic environment that often became too warm and anoxic in the summer, and too laden with fresh water in the winter, to maintain any real biodiversity. With more residents came more waste. For several decades in the mid and late 1880’s, Lake Merritt was the sewage system for much of downtown Oakland, causing such a literal stink that the federal government intervened to correct the health concerns associated with floating islands of waste and banks caked with human excrement.

Despite this, Lake Merritt remained both a source of civic pride and a focal point for many of Oakland’s social and municipal events. It’s not surprising that in 2002, bond measure DD was approved by more than 80% of Oakland voters, creating a fund of almost $200 million that would renovate much of the city around the Lake from its urban creek headwaters to its connection with the San Francisco Bay, restoring Lake Merritt into a functional ecosystem. Pots of money from this initiative restored the crumbling infrastructure of the Lake, placed trash filters that caught litter carried by curbside gutters, and provided more public education about the health and ecology of the Lake. More importantly, dredging the Lake and modifying the canal that connected it to the San Francisco Bay flushed fresh ocean water with every tide, feeding cool, oxygenated, nutrient-rich water into the Lake.

It took a decade after public approval of the bond measure to begin full implementation, but when it did, results were quick and dramatic: schools of silverside and jacksmelt boomed, feeding growing numbers of terns, herons, and kingfishers. Young steelhead salmon were seen for the first time in decades, as were California Bat Rays feeding on the growing clusters of native and non-native mussels. River otters were spotted for the first time in a century. The real testament to the ecological invigoration of the lake were the lush and diverse gardens of marine algae, and the giant sea hares they fed.

Sea hares, specifically the California Sea Hare (Aplysia californica), are large slug-like gastropods that lack a shell, but make up for this minor shortfall in sheer slimy bulk. As California’s largest gastropod, they can measure two and a half feet long, and weight up to 15 pounds. This year Lake Merritt hosted a population boom of the animals for the first time in my recorded memory of observing the lake. Promoting a natural tidal cycle created a cascade of new colonization. The saltwater influx from the Bay improved conditions and nutrients that produced abundant algae growth, and also brought tiny larval sea hares into the Lake to settle and feast on this algae. This year, their population got a bit of a boost with warmer El Nino waters bringing even more larvae than usual into the Bay. As the sea hares grew into their brown, tan, purple, and green super burrito sized adult stage, they mingled in large orgiastic masses of mating and egg-laying. Being simultaneous hermaphrodites, the sea hares piled into groups of two to two-dozen, exchanging sperm and egg with each other, and leaving behind long strands and woven clusters of neon-greenish yellow eggs.

On a particularly sunny July Saturday, the Lobos Marinos and I hosted an informal community-based interpretation of more than 171 sea hares along the eastern bank of Lake Merritt, where hipsters, hip-hoppers, yuppies, young families, and old couples wanted to know what the heck these things were. The main question was “can you eat them”, to which I relied “yes, you can eat them, so long as you don’t mind their poison glands”, but the no-fishing policy at the Lake actually prohibits the take of sea hares. Some people thought them interesting though a bit disgusting, while others, after learning how Oakland citizens voted to restore Lake Merritt, felt a little more of that Oakland pride. For me, an Oakland taxpayer, renewing the Lake back into a vital ecosystem was worth the money. Today, more than three months later, the boom of sea hares is over. The last breeding adults are at the end of their short lives, with those before them leaving behind decaying masses of mucus. Winter rains will reduce the salinity of the Lake, yet this surge will flush the newly-hatched larvae back into the Bay. Lake Merritt’s restoration will continue for several more years, but with the next summer, the sea hares will hopefully return.

The post How Urban Renewal Gets You Giant Sea Hares first appeared on Deep Sea News.

“Artivism: An explosion of creativity, a marrying of art and activism”

Over the past three years, street artists across the globe have taken up their brushes, prepped their spray cans, and united for one common mission. To Save Our Seas.

From endangered species and coral decline to ocean plastics and loss of global biodiversity, these artists have depicted a myriad of environmental issues for all the world to see. Last year, I covered their decent upon the tiny Mexican island of Isla Mujeres under the conservation flagship PangeaSeed.

“PangeaSeed is an international organization who collaborates with members of the art, science, and environmental activist communities. They are dedicated to raising public awareness and education surrounding the conservation and preservation of sharks and other marine species in peril.”

In 2014, they created over 15 murals on Isla Mujeres alone that have inspired the community and thousands of tourists that flock to this summertime haven.

Recently, the extraordinary team at PangeaSeed, rallied the troops yet again, this time in Cozumel, Mexico. With over thirty supported artists, PangeaSeed nearly tripled this years mural count. An entire island brimming with beautiful ocean artwork. A bold statement to the current status and peril of our global oceans.

Below is just a small glimpse of the larger festival. If you would like to learn more about PangeaSeed or how to support this amazing conservation organization please visit: www.PangeaSeed.org

For more information about the SeaWalls project and other installations: www.pangeaseed.org/swmfo/

You can also view the other murals on Instagram @SeaWalls_ and @SeaWalls_Stories

#SeaWalls #SeaWallsMX #PangeaSeed #StayWild

The post The Art of Saving Our Seas first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Well now 8 year olds of the world (and those who still act like it) can rejoice as I blow your mind with what other sources you can inadvertently obtain those ‘leafy veggies’ of the sea. Here are 10 Not-So-Obvious Ways Seaweeds are in magically delicious foods that you might not have realized.

1. Bacon

Recently, a couple of genius scientists at OSU decided that making seaweed that tasted like bacon when you fry it would be a good idea. They did other more science-y things too, but ultimately, this is the best idea I have ever heard of. They should get a freaking Nobel Prize. NSF shut up and give them all your money.

2. Ice Cream

Phish Food…coincidence? Nope.

Ben & Jerry have just know this whole time….

3. Pudding

A little seaweed in your Snack Pack? Yes, please.

4. Twinkies

Seaweed…now that’s the stuff.

5. Beer

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better. Boom it did.

6. Chocolate

I think chocolate lovers might just be addicted to seaweed…milk, dark, white…don’t matter….it’s everywhere.

7. Pizza

The secret is in the sauce.

8. Marshmallows

Not even marshing your mellow. They are jet-puffed full of seaweed.

9. Candy

Bears, worms, sour patches…if it’s gummy, seaweed will be in your tummy.

10. Frosting

Seaweed. It quite literally tops the cake as the most awesome thing in the ocean.

Beyond the 10 deadly sins we have covered already, seaweed has even broader commercial applications, just perhaps not in the form you were thinking.

These leafy rulers of the world are widely harvested for the unique compounds they contain. A different compound depending on the class of seaweed, but they are chalked full of things like algin, carrageenan, and agar.  Once extracted from their respective weeds, these compounds have properties that make them useful as thickeners, emulsifiers, foaming agents, and congealers.

Bottom line. They are the glue that keeps all the magical foods in the world together. Chocolate, Frosting, Ice Cream…would be sloppy goops. Non-foamy beer. Pizza without sauce. A life without seaweed, would be no life at all.

So eat up and with every bite remember….Seaweed is the best thing that ever happened to you.

The post 10 Not-So-Obvious Ways Seaweed is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You first appeared on Deep Sea News.