Sea Notes

In Over Our Heads

More climate change impacts, in unexpected places. This time, it's the deep sea -- another frontier where ocean animals are affected by what we humans do on the dry-land portion of the planet.

Our colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have just published findings that food supplies for animals on the abyssal plain -- flat, muddy expanses that cover 60 percent of the ocean floor -- are affected over periods ranging from days and weeks to decades. The amount and type of food reaching the bottom of the ocean is affected by weather and climate-related events up at the surface. And productivity of the deep sea could, in turn affect how much carbon is captured and held on the sea floor in the tissues of living (and formerly living) ocean animals.

Lead researcher Ken Smith, a marine ecologist at MBARI, thinks it's all worthy of more study, involving a comprehensive network remote sensing stations on the sea floor. MBARI's prototyped one such station -- the Monterey Accelerated Research Station, or MARS (pictured top) -- in Monterey Bay. It's an approach that can be replicated elsewhere, to fill the gaps in our understanding of the connection between surface waters and deep sea ecosystems. And its engineers have also created a Benthic Rover (lower picture) -- a robot that can travel on the sea floor and measure the impacts of climate change far below the surface.

Bullies of the Reef

Climate change is affecting the oceans in surprising ways. Consider the latest research findings on an unexpected impact of coral reef bleaching: Damselfish that are literally being bullied to death.

Scientists at Australia's James Cook University found that younger, smaller damselfish on portions of the Great Barrier Reef affected by bleaching are being bullied and chased out of sheltered nooks by larger adult fish. The displaced youngsters are pushed into more exposed areas of the reef, where they fall victim to hungry predators.

Lead researcher Mark McCormick also found that the damselfish don't settle in more desirable habitats nearby, even when there is room for them to relocate.

He told Discovery News that the patterns that turned up in his research will have long-term impacts on everything from the abundance of damselfish predators that people like to catch and eat, to the survival traits passed along to future generations of damselfish.

The only way to reduce the impacts on fish from coral bleaching (apart from tackling climate change in a big way) is to make reefs more resilient by addressing other pressures -- from pollution and overfishing, McCormick said.

Coral Economy

Right now, most people are focused on an economic recovery and liking the signs they see, but marine scientists are also excited about a different kind of recovery: a coral reef that is gradually restoring itself back to health. The economic value of coral reefs should not be underestimated either. Many important fisheries rely on coral habitat, as does the tourist industry.

A few years ago, the world's remotest coral reef of the Phoenix Islands, part of the Republic of Kiribati  - in the Pacific - experienced a coral die-off event known as bleaching. This is when the tiny plants (algae) that live within the coral and provide it with the nutrients it needs, die, and the corals turn white without their symbiotic plant support. Coral bleaching is induced by warming waters. With ocean temperatures increasing around the world, scientists have long feared for the future of our coral reefs, with some estimating that warm water corals could be gone by 2050 if we continue to warm our water and not control our CO2 emissions. Corals are also impacted by the increasing acidity of our oceans, as the oceans absorb our pollution. We will be telling this important story in our new temporary exhibition opening in March 2010.

So scientists on a return trip to the Phoenix Islands recently were astonished and delighted to find that over half of the coral reef had regenerated and was teeming with life; corals are critical habitat for so many creatures.

The region is being proposed as a World Heritage Site, and perhaps this additional protection may have some benefits. But what is really important here is the ability of our ecosystems to self heal, if left alone from human interference. Marine scientists have been saying that this is true for some time - and other examples - closing areas to fishing, species protection etc. have shown it time and time again. But this is yet another example of how nature knows best and if we can allow it space and time, it can recover and renew.

Fishy Physics

Our oceans are not all created equal, though to us they all look the same! Different temperatures, salinity and the amount of nutrients in the water varies widely. Some places teem with life, and others are vast biological deserts.

In the 1950's, the grandson of Charles Darwin proposed that fish and other swimming ocean animals could be responsible for transporting nutrients from deeper waters to shallow; a process scientists refer to as ocean mixing. His idea was not taken forward at the time, but now, in the year we celebrate his grandfather's legacy, two California researchers have found merit in his theory, and have carried out experiments to show it in action.

It all seems rather complicated, but it involved some cooperative jellyfish, a laser and maybe some green dye. But their results indicate that the upward pulsing of a jelly, did indeed transport water upwards- and likely with it, nutrients from colder, deeper water.

This research is now being considered by climate scientists. Nutrients brought from deep water create blooms of phytoplankton in shallow waters - the tiny plants at the base of the ocean food web. These algal blooms can take up excess CO2 in our atmosphere (like the forests of the land) and as the algae is passed through the food web, it takes a parcel of CO2 with it, and returns it to the ocean depths. A process known as carbon sinking. This process is helping the oceans store up to 30% of all the carbon pollution we emit. Without this, our planet would already be much warmer. Once again, thank you oceans!

Fishing for (Climate) Change

With our growing demand for seafood, there's barely a region on earth that we haven't explored and exploited. Except perhaps, for one of the last remaining frontiers, the polar ice-cap of the Arctic. With rising global temperatures, sea ice is thinning and and some species are already moving northward. In the not-too-distant future, some of our favorite dinner plate items may be living in the ice-free waters of the Arctic, and not Alaska or California. Should we go seek them there?

No! Says NOAA - the U.S. governing body for our ocean waters. The new Arctic Fishery Management Plan closes about 150,000 square nautical miles, an area larger than California and five times larger than all our national parks combined. The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council already voted unanimously in favor of the plan, which prevents commercial fishing in U.S. waters north of the Bering Strait, including the Chukchi and Beaufort seas; a favorite feeding ground of the gray whales that pass through Monterey Bay each year.

This is an historic, extremely thoughtful and precautionary decision on the part of the Council and the Administration. The opening of the arctic creates all kind of possibilities for extraction - oils, minerals and fish. Not to mention trade routes for shipping. Some of our last remaining wildnerness will suddenly become accessible. Let's hope that similar decision-making processes will lead to an equally promising outcome.

Climate Watch

We just remodeled a small gallery in our Outer Bay Wing at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to focus on one of the lesser-discussed elements of climate change: the impact carbon pollution is having on our oceans' chemistry. Something scientists are calling "ocean acidification."

We hope you'll stop by and take a look next time you're here. We're encouraging our visitors to let their Senators know that they care about how a changing climate is affecting our ocean wildlife. You can contact them too by going to http://www.senate.gov/ and finding your State's Senator.

A couple of ocean climate stories are in the news this week - and for once - it's not all bad!

For some time, scientists have feared that the current rapid melting of freshwater ice would change the salinity of our oceans and ultimately shut down the Atlantic ocean conveyor belt that keeps most of Europe out of the next ice age. This would not be a new phenomenon - in fact it most likely has happened in periods of warming in the past.

A new article in the journal Science suggests that the change may be less drastic than first feared - and could result in a slow down, rather than a complete meltdown. Let's hope that turns out to be so!

Also in the news this week - one tiny Pacific island nation pledges a zero-carbon strategy, with all of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. With most of the island only a few feet above sea level, it's not hard to imagine where the incentive came from. However, the example is a fine one to set for others, and we wish them success.

Fate not sealed

There's encouraging news in recent research that shows the adaptability of seals in the face of a changing climate.

Scientists studying the impacts of shrinking ice in the Holocene period (8,000 years ago), found evidence that elephant seal colonies adapted by moving to new remote breeding grounds where they flourished.

The lead researcher said, "In general, this approach of looking to the past to understand what might happen in the future, has good potential for predicting the impact of environmental change in both marine and terrestrial systems."

They believe that this new information shows how today's mobile marine species might adapt too. In a time when it often seems hard to find some good news, it is heartening to hear that for elephant seals at least, their fate is not necessarily sealed!

Squid Shake

The Humboldt squid - or Jumbo squid -  is one of the Pacific Ocean's top carnivores. But this weekend, predator became prey, as the beaches of La Jolla Shores, Southern California, became littered with the giant calamari.

Scientists are still trying to figure out if the exodus was somehow connected to a 4.0 earthquake which struck the region earlier in the morning. But they are unable to reach that conclusion for now, and do not know of any similar past occurences.

Local residents did their best to return the stranded squid to their watery realm - scenes perhaps reminscent of whale strandings in other parts of the world - but without the cute whale part. At the end of the day sadly, only the gulls were the winners.

Julie Packard: Obama's Big Blue Commitment

Monterey Bay Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard's latest commentary for HuffingtonPost.com is live now.

Julie's got great things to say about President Obama's big blue commitment: his announced plan to begin crafting a coordinated national ocean policy. It's worth checking out!

Cooking Our Cetaceans?

Nearly 20 years ago, our colleagues at Hopkins Marine Station (Stanford's seaside marine lab next door to the aquarium) made headlines when they documented a dramatic shift in the types of animals living in the Monterey Bay tide pools beside the lab.

By repeating a survey conducted 60 years earlier in exactly the same waters, they found that cold-water invertebrates had been displaced by animals that favor warmer temperatures.

Now a researcher in Scotland has published similar findings. This time, the displacement involves dolphins. He says global climate change is the culprit.

The immediate shift involves the disappearance of white-beaked dolphins (a cold-water species) and their succession by common dolphins (a species that prefers slightly warmer waters). Worse, it could signal a loss of potential habitat that would affect many more temperate-water marine mammals.

“The disappearance of white-beaked dolphins from the West Coast of Scotland should be a wake-up call both for the general public and politicians alike," says Dr. Colin McLeod, a research fellow at the University of Aberdeen and author of the paper published in Endangered Species Research.

“It shows that climate change is not something that will only affect people living in far off corners of the world in the future, but is already affecting Scotland’s wildlife.”

He says 16 cetacean species that could be affected by loss of habitat as ocean temperatures rise, in waters from northern Europe (including the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scandinavia) to New Zealand, Australia, South America and the Arctic. Species range from belugas and narwhals to vaquitas and both bowhead and southern right whales.

As goes Scotland, so goes the ocean?