Tag: Oceans

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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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OceanGate sub hits Titanic depth of 4,000 meters

Titan submersible
The Titan submersible rests on its underwater platform. (OceanGate Photo)

OceanGate successfully lowered its Titan submersible to a depth of 4,000 meters in waters off the coast of the Bahamas, during a series of uncrewed dives aimed at testing the integrity of the craft’s carbon-fiber hull. The Everett, Wash.-based team lowered the sub on a monofilament line on June 25 while sensors measured the strain on the hull. OceanGate CEO and chief pilot Stockton Rush will conduct solo dives later this summer in preparation for five-person dives to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic next June. The 4,000-meter milestone is significant because that’s how deep the Titanic is.

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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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OceanGate reschedules Titanic sub trips for 2019

Titan sub
OceanGate’s Titan submersible is undergoing testing in the Bahamas. (OceanGate Photo via Twitter)

OceanGate is putting its underwater trips to the Titanic shipwreck on hold for a year, due to difficulties encountered during deep-water testing of its submersible in the Bahamas.

The Titan sub’s first trips to the world’s most famous shipwreck had been set to start next month in the North Atlantic. This week, team leaders at the Everett, Wash.-based venture decided they couldn’t make the schedule.

“While we are disappointed by the need to reschedule the expedition, we are not willing to shortcut the testing process due to a condensed timeline,” OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said today in a news release. “We are 100 percent committed to safety, and want to fully test the sub and validate all operational and emergency procedures before launching any expedition.”

Making the decision now gives advance notice for OceanGate’s clients, crew members, partners and affiliates to make other plans for the summer, Rush said.

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Antarctic drone duty gets a successful start

Seaglider at work
Pierre Dutrieux, an oceanographer from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, works on one of the three Seaglider underwater drones deployed in West Antarctica. (Paul G. Allen Philanthropies Photo)

A scientific team supported by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is reporting the successful deployment of a trio of undersea drones to monitor how climate change affects Antarctica’s ice sheets.

Now it’s up to the drones.

“We are so pleased with both the initial data collection and the unprecedented operational success of the mission thus far,” Spencer Reeder, director of climate and energy for Paul G. Allen Philanthropies, said in a news release. “It is hard to fathom that we have already witnessed multiple fully autonomous Seaglider forays of up to 140 kilometers round-trip under the ice shelf.”

The project is being conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, with almost $2 million in funding from Allen.

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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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Shipwreck linked to ‘Fighting Sullivans’ found

USS Juneau propeller
The propeller of the USS Juneau rests on the South Pacific seafloor. (Navigea via PaulAllen.com)

The latest chapter of an Irish-American family tragedy played out on St. Patrick’s Day when an expedition team backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered the shipwreck of the USS Juneau in the South Pacific.

The Juneau was sunk by a Japanese torpedo during the Battle of Guadalcanal on Nov. 13, 1942, leading to the deaths of 687 sailors — including the five Sullivan Brothers.

The Sullivans insisted so forcefully on serving together that naval officers bent their rules against having brothers serving on the same ship during wartime.

The Iowa family’s tragic story rallied the nation during World War II, inspired a movie titled “The Fighting Sullivans” and led to the christening of two Navy ships in honor of the Sullivans.

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Aging icebreaker Polar Star returns to Seattle

Polar Star arrives
Videographers document the return of the icebreaker Polar Star to Seattle. (USCG Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard’s only active heavy-duty icebreaker, the 42-year-old Polar Star, returned to its homeport in Seattle today to cap off a challenging months-long mission to Antarctica.

The 13,000-ton cutter is built to break through ice as thick as 21 feet by backing and ramming, and can steam continuously through 6 feet of ice at a speed of 3 knots.

Every year, the Polar Star voyages to the waters off Antarctica to keep shipping lanes open to McMurdo Station, on the southern tip of Ross Island.

The ship left Seattle last November to take part in Operation Deep Freeze 2018, and faced numerous challenges — including two flooding incidents and the loss of one of the ship’s three main gas turbines. No injuries resulted, but the Coast Guard acknowledged that the problems took a toll on the crew and slowed the cutter’s progress to McMurdo.

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Titanic sub takes to the water with a new name

Titan submersible
OceanGate’s Titan submersible sits on its mobile platform at the port of Everett. (OceanGate Photo)

Don’t call it Cyclops 2: The five-person submersible built by Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate has been renamed Titan, befitting its role as a vehicle designed to get up close to the Titanic’s shipwreck.

Today OceanGate announced that it has launched Titan for its initial rounds of in-the-water tests at Everett’s marina. Shallow-water trials are due to continue in Puget Sound through March.

Titan is scheduled to undergo deep-sea certification dives in the Bahamas in April. That will be when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush first pilots the vessel to Titanic-level depths of 4,000 meters (13,000 feet).

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