Tag: Marine Science

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Scientists in a sub explore the Salish Sea

OceanGate's Cyclops 1 sub
OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible prepares to dive in the waters off San Juan Island as a Washington state ferry passes by in the background. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. — This week’s Salish Sea Expedition is unfolding amid the heavily trafficked waters off the San Juan Islands, but there’s still plenty of room here for scientific discoveries.

For example, researchers riding a deep-water submersible called Cyclops 1 announced that they discovered a new low for the feeding grounds of a prickly marine species known as the red sea urchin.

“We extended the range of red urchins to 284 meters,” Alex Lowe, a marine biologist at the University of Washington, proudly declared at UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories, which is serving as the base of operations for this week’s expedition.

The expedition aims to assess the health of the habitats and species in the Salish Sea, a body of water that takes in the coastal waterways around the U.S.-Canadian border, from the Strait of Georgia to Puget Sound. The Salish Sea offers a rich ecosystem as well as a tourist destination and an increasingly busy shipping lane, but its murky waters make it challenging to study in depth — and at depth.

To remedy that, the expedition’s organizers are making use of Cyclops 1, a five-person craft that can descend far deeper than scuba divers go.

The survey expedition is a joint undertaking that involves scientists from the UW and other research institutions, with support from the non-profit SeaDoc Society and the OceanGate Foundation. Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate, which built Cyclops 1, is playing the lead role in getting the researchers to their underwater destinations.

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Ships set sail to trace tiny creatures’ carbon trail

R/V Sally Ride
With Scripps Institution of Oceanography research scientist Bruce Appelgate as their guide, participants in a NASA Social meet-up walk down Seattle’s Pier 91 with the R/V Sally Ride in the background. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

After seven years of preparation, two research vessels are heading out of Seattle to begin a 40-day voyage to track how tiny organisms in the ocean affect the world’s carbon balance — and it’s a bittersweet moment for one scientist who’s staying behind.

“People ask me, ‘Are you happy?’ ” Paula Bontempi, EXPORTS program scientist at NASA Headquarters, said today at Seattle’s Pier 91, hours before departure. “I don’t know. Are you happy when your kids go off to college?”

It’s graduation time for the EXPORTS oceanographic campaign, jointly funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. EXPORTS stands for Export Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing, but the mission is really about two subjects that aren’t in the acronym: carbon and climate.

The principal focus of the sea survey is a class of near-microscopic plantlike creatures known as phytoplankton, and the slightly bigger creatures that eat them.

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What killed the birds? Scientists blame the Blob

Cassin's auklet
This Cassin’s auklet was found on Oregon’s Kiwanda Beach in 2014. (Patty Claussenius Photo / COASST)

Researchers have untangled the mystery behind a die-off that felled hundreds of thousands of tough seabirds known as Cassin’s auklets in 2014 and early 2015.

It’s not a simple answer: The proximate cause was starvation, but in a study published by Geophysical Research Letters, scientists report that the most likely root cause was an anomaly in Pacific Ocean circulation that came to be known as the Blob.

“This paper is super important for the scientific community because it nails the causality of a major die-off, which is rare,” senior author Julia Parrish, a marine scientist at the University of Washington and executive director of the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, said today in a news release.

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Paul Allen marks Memorial Day in a deep-sea way

Lexington shipwreck
An image captured by a remotely operated vehcile from the R/V Petrel shows the barrel of a 5-inch gun on the USS Lexington. (Image courtesy of Paul G. Allen. Copyright Navigea Ltd.)

It’s traditional to revisit the gravesites of America’s fallen warriors on Memorial Day, but billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen is adding a non-traditional twist.

Today the co-founder of Microsoft is highlighting the work that he’s funded over the past couple of years to document the wrecks of historic warships — and not only U.S. ships, but naval vessels that flew the flags of Japan, Italy and Australia.

A newly unveiled website celebrates the exploits of the Petrel, Allen’s research ship, and its remotely operated vehicle. But more importantly, it celebrates the sacrifices made by the crews of such venerable ships as the USS Indianapolis, the USS Lexington, the USS Juneau and the USS Helena.

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Video captures anglerfish in a sexual hookup

Anglerfish
A video still shows a female anglerfish with whiskery fin-rays glowing in the deep-sea dark. The rays may be bioluminescent, or they may be reflecting light from a submersible’s lamps. The male of the species can be seen hanging from the female’s belly. (Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation Photo)

Scientists studying deep-sea anglerfish have long known about the bizarre mismatch between the species’ whiskered females and teeny-tiny males. But they’ve never captured video of live fish mating — until now.

A newly released video, captured by researchers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen during a five-hour dive in a submersible off the Azores in the mid-Atlantic, documents the sexual hookup for the first time.

Ted Pietsch, a University of Washington professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator emeritus of fishes at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, was stunned by the footage.

“This is a unique and never-before-seen thing,” Pietsch said in a UW news release issued March 22. “It’s so wonderful to have a clear window on something only imagined before this.”

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Science ship returns to duty after midlife makeover

Thompson research ship
University of Washington oceanographer Ginger Armbrust boards the newly refurbished R/V Thomas G. Thompson at a university dock. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

The University of Washington’s biggest research ship is getting loaded up with scientists, supplies and an underwater robot after an extensive multimillion-dollar makeover that’s designed to add 25 more years to its current quarter-century of operation.

And the crew of the 274-foot R/V Thomas G. Thompson can hardly wait to set sail.

“It’s been a long 18 months in the shipyard,” Brian Clampitt, one of the UW crew’s able-bodied seamen, told GeekWire today. “We’re looking forward to getting back to work.”

Clampitt and his mates never stopped working during the refit, most of which was done at Vigor Marine’s Seattle shipyard. But the crew’s duties on land can’t compare with getting back to the sea.

“We’re a bunch of sailors. We’re dying to get underway,” said Jenny Nomura, one of the crew’s marine technicians.

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Peek inside OceanGate’s Titanic sub factory

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is framed by a carbon-composite cylinder that will serve as the heart of the Cyclops 2 submersible. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

EVERETT, Wash. — Today it looks like an eight-foot-long section of culvert pipe, but in just a couple of months, the carbon-fiber cylinder sitting on OceanGate’s shop floor will serve as the heart of a five-person submersible that’s destined to visit the Titanic, the world’s most famous shipwreck.

The Cyclops 2 submersible and its future mission represent the culmination of an eight-year-old dream for Stockton Rush, the Everett-based company’s co-founder and CEO.

“The whole project from Day One was to go deep. … Three years ago, it became pretty clear that the real market opportunity was the Titanic,” Rush told GeekWire on Sept.22 during a company open house.

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DNA points to lots of marine life near cities

Image: Redondo Beach
Washington state’s Redondo Beach is one of the urbanized sites where environmental DNA samples were taken. (Credit: Joe Mabel via Flickr / CC BY-SA 3.0)

A novel method for analyzing the DNA left behind in the waters of Puget Sound shows that urban shorelines tend to harbor a wider array of marine life than less developed shorelines.

That outcome came as a surprise to the researchers from the University of Washington, Seattle’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Oregon State University. In a study published this week by the journal PeerJ, they reported that bivalves and gastropods – clams and snails – were particularly widespread.

“Clams and other things that live in mud seem to like living near cities, which is really interesting,” lead author Ryan Kelly, a UW assistant professor of marine and environmental affairs, said in a news release.

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