Sea Notes

Film Friday: Shrimp a-go-go

This video, of a shrimp on a treadmill (oh yes, you read it right), has become a YouTube sensation, with many, many versions set to different soundtracks.

The scientists conducting the research are somewhat bemused by this, as their research, of course, had a scientific purpose. They wanted to understand more about the impacts of disease and illness on a shrimp's ability to be able to stay alive without becoming someone's lunch. You and I can take a day off work/school and rest up; wildlife needs to hide illness in order to survive.

Here is a shrimp in action. Couldn't resist the Benny Hill version!

Mountains to be thankful for

Underwater mountains, or seamounts as they are known, are one of the last undisturbed treasures of our oceans. These refuges harbor undocumented species of invertebrate and fishes, and unique underwater communities that cannot be found anywhere else on our planet.

In a historic move this week, the Davidson Seamount, 75 miles south of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, was officially incorporated into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Although the process took several years to come to fruition, it is a decision that is much welcomed by the conservation community, including our own sister institution, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

MBARI's unmanned submersibles have been instrumental in documenting the inhabitants and aquatic visitors to the Davidson Seamount, and the scientists were astonished to discover many new forms of life previously unseen and undescribed during several expeditions over the last few years.

You can see video footage of these underwater crown jewels and the strange critters of Davidson, in the Aquarium's daily auditorium program "Exploring Monterey Canyon".

Acid Ocean Update

New in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: Ocean acidification is occurring at a rate 10 times faster than previously thought.

The new study, published by a team of ecologists from the University of Chicago, is based on eight years of observations off the coast of Washington state. There, mussel populations are in steep decline because they're unable to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions.

Earlier studies have indicated that effects like these will first be felt in cold polar regions, where productive waters support a host of marine life and commercially important fisheries.

Said biologist Timothy Wootton, a lead author of the study:

"Declines in seawater pH were expected to happen very slowly, so we've been lax in dealing with the problem, but our study shows ocean acidification may be happening much quicker."

A Tuna Disaster

You'd think that common sense would prevail. Or at least self interest. Sadly, that's not always the case.

When you've already watched the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery, when you've been told by the international scientific community that the maximum fishing quotas should be slashed if you want to avert another fishery collapse, when two of the biggest fishing nations in the region want a moratorium because collapse is imminent, wouldn't you pay attention?

That's what the world hoped from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas  (ICCAT), when it met this week to set the bluefin tuna quota for 2009.

Instead, ICCAT approved a quota that exceeds by 50 percent the maximum level that its own scientists believe the fishery can bear--setting the stage for a long-forecast disaster after decades of steady decline.

ICCAT officials say the quota, together with a crackdown on illegal fishing, will set the stage for recovery. Environmental groups are more than disbelieving; they are outraged.

The WWF called this decision a "mockery of science" and a "disgrace"; Greenpeace called it "disastrous and shameful."

Through the Tuna Research and Conservation Center--the partnership between the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Stanford University--ICCAT's received all the scientific background it needed to make a decision that could reverse the decline and offer some hope of recovery for Atlantic bluefin. 

Now, say tuna advocates, there's only one route left to save these magnificent ocean giants: designation of Atlantic bluefin tuna as an endangered species under CITES--the international body that regulates (or bans) trade in threatened and endangered wildlife.

It didn't have to come to this. But here we are.

Underwater Exploring - by Alexa

 

WOW!!!!!!!!! Surfperch and anemones and bat stars, oh my! Can you guess why I’m so happy???? Just this weekend, I became a certified scuba diver! And I got certified right here in Monterey Bay!
 
I bet some of you are thinking; “What’s there to see? It’s just a bunch of kelp!” Well...yes, there is kelp… but no… there is a TON of other stuff! I saw this awesome type of fish called a scorpion fish, which have a sting, which is really a spine coated with venomous mucus. But they are soooo beautiful, and as long as you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. I also saw tube anemones, which look sort of like regular anemones, but I think they look just a little but cooler. They have longer tentacles, and tend to be more tube-ish. And you wouldn’t believe how many sea stars I saw! They were everywhere, and they had so many different colors!

The other awesome thing I saw were the decorator crabs. I’m sure that there was a decorator crab to match every color of the rainbow. Decorator crabs put little objects from their environment to make themselves blend in to what’s around them. So there were squishy crabs with sea anemones on then, and red crabs with kelp on them, and plenty of others besides. 

If you want to start diving, a great first step would be the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Underwater Explorers program. I did it a few years ago, and LOVED it! You dive in the Aquarium’s great tide pool, and get to see some pretty cool stuff. I saw a Monkeyface-eel, a sea cucumber, lots of fish, and sea stars. This program is available for ages 8-14, although it’s only available in the summer.  If you want to learn, please go online to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s website, go to Fun & learning, and then click on Discover Diving.  Hope to see you in the water next summer!

Sea Grapes A Go-Go

A single-celled organism that researchers disparaged as "doo-doo balls" is forcing deep sea scientists to reevaluate their understanding of the evolution of life on Earth.

Turns out the inch-long balls, known as Bahamian gromia--a grape-shaped animal--can roll about on their own, leaving tracks in the mud similar to those in the fossil record that have long been attributed to multi-celled organisms.

It's the first time that any single-cell organism has been shown to leave animal-like tracks as it moves.

"We now have to rethink the fossil record," said biologist Mikhail V. Matz of the University of Texas at Austin, one of the authors of a paper appearing Tuesday in the journal Current Biology.

“The discovery throws into doubt when people believe multi-cellular life began,” said Professor Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland, Australia, a co-author of the paper.

My favorite quotes are from Duke University researcher Sönke Johnsen:

"At first, we assumed they were snails, because they had trails," Johnsen said. But after sucking up a few with the tools aboard the NOAA research submarine Johnson-Sea-Link and having a look, the research team figured the soft, nondescript blobs were simply some kind of elaborate poop.

"We called them doo-doo balls," Johnsen said.

Scientists are still puzzling about why they're moving, at a rate of about an inch a day. One theory that Texas' Malz put forth: They're pulling sediment in one side and pushing "pseudo feces" out the other.

Added Australia's Marshall: "It really just shows the nature of science how we can stumble upon these things. This really shows the importance of going to places where people have not been before.”

 

Friday's Featured Film: Meet the Penguins

This weekend, is our celebration of all "feathered friends", where our guests can learn about birds such as albatross, penguins and the local efforts to recover the California condor. Today is our annual "meet the penguins" day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where lucky contest winners get some personal time with some of our black-footed penguins.

Perhaps the contest would be less popular if the penguins to meet were some of the penguin ancestors, whose fossils suggest they stood six feet tall!

But this week, researchers found evidence of a whole new - and smaller - species of penguin in a Polynesian settlement in New Zealand. This relative of the yellow-eyed penguin - one of the world's rarest penguins - has probably being extinct for the last 500 years. Conservationists are working hard to ensure that history does not repeat itself for its living cousin, featured in our Friday Film.

The poop scoop

 

It seems we just can't get off it this week - the subject of poop is a fascinating one. You can learn a lot from poop. Scientists on land can recognize which animals have gone by just by the shape of the "scat". Ocean critters' poop is less easy to study unless you are on hand just at that right moment to collect it, but it can tell you about hormone levels in sea otters, or what a gray whale had for lunch.

Scientists in Alaska were curious to know what a group of gray whales were feeding on each summer. Samples of the muddy bottom did not reveal the usual menu item of choice for gray whales - amphipods - a shrimp-like creature that makes it's home in the sand. Sampling showed another shrimp-like critter - cumaceans - were super abundant, but seemed an unlikely food choice. "They have the nutritional value of chips," said one researcher. The way to confirm was to collect the poop and identify body parts! Sure enough, the poop contained the indigestable remains of cumaceans and with that problem solved, a bigger question arose. Why? Does then switch to a low-nutritional diet for these animals reflect something amiss in the ecosystem? Could this be a symptom of climate change? How might gray whales help us learn about what's going on in our coastal waters?

These were the questions posed this week at the Grey Whale symposium in Monterey Bay, where gray whale experts tried to piece together pieces of the puzzle they work on, to address whether gray whales could be the canary in the coal mine for the North Pacific and Arctic. It's a question we will follow with great interest at Sea Notes.

Of Cats and Commodes

Today is World Toilet Day, and Margaret Wertheim has a great article celebrating the flush toilet, "Ode to the Commode" in the Los Angeles Times. (Note to the weak of stomach: Best not read during breakfast.)

For all their environmental benefits, in some cases flush toilets aren't the answer. That's especially true when it comes to disposing of cat poop. Turns out, feline feces can contain oocysts that carry toxoplasmosis. When the poop (or poop-laden kitty litter) is flushed, the disease-bearing parasites make their way through sewage treatment plants and into the ocean, where they've been implicated in sea otter deaths.

So, convenient as it may be to flush kitty litter down the loo, and cute as it may be to toilet train your cat -- please don't. Sea otters pay a high price.

Kudos once again to California Assemblyman Dave Jones, who co-authored the bill (now law) that requires labels on kitty litter sold in California alerting cat-owners not to flush the litter; and gives Californian's an opportunity to designate part of their income tax refund for sea otter field research. State taxpayers have checked the box for sea otters enough times in the past two years to raise more than $500,000 that researchers are using to discover why California's threatened sea otter population is recovering so slowly.

(We're proud to note that the sea otter bill was inspired by a 2005 visit Assemblyman Jones and his family made to the sea otter exhibit here at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.)

Urban Turtles

Wrap your head around this news: There's a colony of green sea turtles living in an urbanized river in Los Angeles County, basking in the warm water from a power plant discharge line.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and that's certainly the case with the San Gabriel River sea turtles, documented by the Los Angeles Times and, in the case of one injured turtle, rescued and rehabilitated by our colleagues at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Turns out that southern California waters are well within the range of green sea turtles. In fact, they occasionally make forays as far north as Monterey Bay, which is why you'll find sea turtles in the Outer Bay exhibit here at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (Not now though; they're off exhibit until we complete repairs to the exhibit.)

But upstream from Long Beach? As one blogger noted, "I would have sooner believed that there were alligators living in LA's sewers."

Check it out, and wish them well. And if you want to help out sea turtles and their kin, join our Ocean Action Team to take part in activities supporting marine protected areas that preserve sea turtle habitat in California, or to weigh in on legislation that will safeguard sea turtles from threats ranging from destructive fishing practices to plastic pollution.