The staff here at Ocean Leadership works hard to make certain that each week we provide you with the most useful and timely information regarding our efforts, activities of the community, news from Capitol Hill, and all opportunities, jobs and internships that we feel you might find beneficial.

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I must admit that I am not sure what is going on because it has been a quiet week here in Washington!  The House has been on recess, and there hasn’t been any progress on the annual appropriations process on the Senate side.  However, as the August recess and November elections are quickly approaching, we will likely see a lot of activity over the next couple of months, so we will be sure to keep you posted as events unfold.  The good news about a quiet week on the Hill is that it gave me an opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends on the myriad number of activities that go on in this town.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend.

Bob

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Fellowships Available for Bay-Delta Science:

California Sea Grant is now accepting applications for the Delta Science Fellows Program from qualified individuals to compete for pre-doctoral and postdoctoral research fellowship opportunities. California Sea Grant will administer and manage the fellowship program on behalf of the Delta Science Program.  

Up to 11 fellowships for pre-doctoral students (approximately 4-6) and postdoctoral researchers (approximately 4-5) will be awarded for proposals addressing the 2012 priority topics from the Delta Plan policy areas as described in Appendix C of the Request for Applications (RFA).  

Timetable

June 4, 2012 (5 p.m.) – Applications due at California Sea Grant College Program

August 2012 (approximate) – Applicants notified of selection results

September 2012 (approximate) – Funds awarded to the selected Delta Science pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships

Postdoctoral fellows will receive a $45,000 per year stipend and pre-doctoral fellows will receive a $25,000 per year stipend, for a maximum duration of two years. In addition, each fellow may request funds (up to $31,750 for postdoctoral fellows and $21,150 for pre-doctoral fellows) for research supplies/equipment and travel expenses necessary for carrying out the proposed research and attending scientific meetings, including the Bay-Delta Science Conference.

2012 Priority Topic Areas

For 2012, the Delta Science Fellows Program encourages the submission of research proposals that address one or more of the following five main policy areas outlined in the Delta Plan:

1. A More Reliable Water Supply for California
2. Protect, Restore and Enhance the Delta Ecosystem
3. Improve Water Quality to Protect Human Health and Environment
4. Reduce Risk to People, Property and State Interests in the Delta
5. Protect and Enhance the Unique Cultural, Recreational, Natural Resources and Agricultural Values of the California Delta as an Evolving Place

The priority topic areas that should be addressed in proposals are fully described in Appendix C: 2012 Delta Science Fellows Priority Research Topics.

Please read the complete RFA carefully as there have been significant changes from previous years.

Detailed fellowship guidelines, eligibility and application instructions are posted at:  http://csgc.ucsd.edu/EDUCATION/DELTA/DeltaFellow_RFA2012-13.html 

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(Click to enlarge) Danish researcher Hans Roy opens a core sample of mud from the last ice age. He reports deep-sea microbes live so slowly that they almost seem dead. They could help in the search for life on inhospitable planets. (Science, Bo Barker Jorgensen / May 18, 2012)

Samples from the depths of the Pacific appear to be almost dead, but scientists say they could help in the search for life on other planets.

(From Los Angeles Times / by Amina Khan) – Had enough of life in the fast lane and looking to take it down a notch or two? You might seek guidance from a colony of deep-sea microbes harvested from the barren depths of the Pacific Ocean that are progressing so slowly, they almost appear to be dead.

Just how plodding are these ancient creatures, who are buried about 100 feet deep in the seabed? Some of them haven’t received any new food for 86 million years, when dinosaurs still walked the Earth. And they are using up oxygen at rates 10,000 times slower than their counterparts on the surface of the ocean floor.

“What they’re doing, they’re doing so slow that from our time perspective, it just looks like suspended animation,” said biologist Hans Roy, who reported on the creatures in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

The single-cell organisms live in such extreme conditions that they could help astrobiologists search for evidence of life on less hospitable planets, scientists said.

The ocean floor contains a wealth of microbial life — some experts estimate that nearly 90% of microorganisms on the planet live beneath the seabed.

“There’s an abundant biosphere below the surface skin where we live … and yet most of what is down there is living at a pace and in a mode that we don’t have represented in the world around us,” said Tori Hoehler, a biogeochemist at the NASA Ames Research Center’s exobiology branch near San Jose, who was not involved in the study. “Most of life lives in a mode we don’t understand at all.”

Chief among them are the slow-living microbes, which were discovered several years ago, said Roy, who is based at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Roy was part of a team of scientists that set out on a ship in 2009 to sample spots around the Galapagos Islands along the equator and up toward an area near Hawaii in the northern Pacific, where ocean currents block nutrient-rich sediments from falling to the ocean floor. That keeps microbes at the bottom from receiving fresh food.

The researchers drilled deep into the ocean floor and extracted a core sample that was about 100 feet long. Among other things, they examined the oxygen levels in the successive layers of thick, grayish mud using needle-like sensors.

When the researchers measured the rate of oxygen respiration, they found that there were still microbes eking out a meager existence in the deepest layers.

The age of these microbes is unclear. Estimates range from a few centuries to many millions of years, researchers said.

Nor is it clear that they’re growing. The creatures could simply be repairing normal cellular wear and tear.

As Hoehler put it in an email, they “are ‘breathing’ at a rate about 2 million times slower than a typical human cell (which is admittedly quite a bit larger).”

Without nature’s help, such slow progress would have taken centuries to track in a lab experiment, Roy said.

Understanding how these microbes survive in such extreme low-nutrient environments could provide pointers for scientists looking for life on other planets, such as Mars. In the search for extraterrestrial life, Hoehler said, such slow-life communities below the bottom of the sea “may be a much better point of reference for us than what’s up here.”

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(Click to enlarge) An ink sac from a 160-million-year-old giant cephalopod fossil contains the pigment melanin; it is essentially identical to the melanin found in the ink sac of a modern-day cuttlefish. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Virginia)

Scientist found that two ink sacs from 160-million-year-old giant cephalopod fossils discovered two years ago in England contain the pigment melanin, and that it is essentially identical to the melanin found in the ink sac of a modern-day cuttlefish.

(From ScienceDaily) – The study is published online in the May 21 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The finding — in an extremely rare case of being able to study organic material that is hundreds of millions of years old — suggests that the ink-screen escape mechanism of cephalopods — cuttlefish, squid and octopuses — has not evolved since the Jurassic period, and that melanin could be preserved intact in the fossils of a range of organisms.

“Though the other organic components of the cephalopod we studied are long gone, we’ve discovered through a variety of research methods that the melanin has remained in a condition that could be studied in exquisite detail,” said John Simon, one of the study authors, a chemistry professor and the executive vice president and provost at U.Va.

One of the ink sacs studied is the only intact ink sac ever discovered.

Phillip Wilby of the British Geological Survey found it in Christian Malford, Wiltshire, England, west of London near Bristol. He sent samples to Simon and Japanese chemist Shoskue Ito, both experts on melanin, who then engaged research colleagues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and India to investigate the samples using a combination of direct, high-resolution chemical techniques to determine whether or not the melanin had been preserved.

It had.

The investigators then compared the chemical composition of the fossil melanin to the melanin in the ink of the modern cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, common to the Mediterranean, North and Baltic seas.

They found a match.

“It’s close enough that I would argue that the pigmentation in this class of animals has not evolved in 160 million years,” Simon said. “The whole machinery apparently has been locked in time and passed down through succeeding generations of cuttlefish. It’s a very optimized system for this animal and has been optimized for a long time.”

Generally animal tissue, made up mostly of protein, degrades quickly. Over the course of millions of years all that is likely to be found from an animal is skeletal remains or an impression of the shape of the animal in surrounding rock. Scientists can learn much about an animal by its bones and impressions, but without organic matter they are left with many unanswered questions.

But melanin is an exception. Though organic, it is highly resilient to degradation over the course of vast amounts of time.

“Out of all of the organic pigments in living systems, melanin has the highest odds of being found in the fossil record,” Simon said. “That attribute also makes it a challenge to study. We had to use innovative methods from chemistry, biology and physics to isolate the melanin from the inorganic material.”

The researchers cross-checked their work using separate complementary experiments designed to capitalize on various molecular features unique to melanin and determined the morphology and chemical composition of the material. This combination of in-depth, multidisciplinary techniques is not normally used by paleontologists to study fossil samples.

“I think the strength of this paper is that it is not tied to a single method,” Simon said. “Any one technique would have brought some insights, but potentially more questions than insights. It was really the more holistic approach that fully characterized it and allowed us to actually do a real comparison between what existed during the Jurassic period and what exists now.

“It’s also given us a handle on ways of identifying organic components in fossils that might have been missed using standard methods.”

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(Click to enlarge) Scientists examine a ridge of tissue sampled from the throat pouch a fin whale (background) in Iceland. Left to right are Jeremy A. Goldbogen (Cascadia Research Collective), A. Wayne Vogl (UBC) and Robert E. Shadwick (UBC). (Credit: Nicholas D. Pyenson / Smithsonian Institution)

Lunge feeding in rorqual whales (a group that includes blue, humpback and fin whales) is unique among mammals, but details of how it works have remained elusive. Now, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and University of British Columbia have solved the mystery.

(From PHYS.ORG) --  They discovered a sensory organ in the chin of rorqual whales that communicates to the brain. The organ orchestrates the dramatic changes and adjustments needed in jaw position and throat-pouch expansion to make lunge feeding successful. The team’s research will be the featured cover story in the May 24 issue of Nature.

Rorqual whales are among the largest vertebrates, yet they feed on some of the smallest organisms in the ocean. They race forward, engulfing more than their own body weight in water and then filter out the millions of krill and small fish inside their mouths―all within seconds. This feeding technique is made possible by several morphological specializations, including hyper-expandable throat pleats, a Y-shaped cartilage structure connecting the chin to the throat pleats and a lower jaw made of two separate bones that move independently. The discovery of this sensory organ is shedding new light on how these features coordinate to create successful feeding.

(Click to enlarge) A new sensory organ, found within the chin of rorqual whales, is responsible for coordinating the biomechanics of their extreme lunge-feeding strategy. Left, a fin whale after lunging; right, anatomy of the new sensory organ. (Credit: Carl Buel)

The organ, composed of connective tissue with papillae (protrusions) that contain nerves, is suspended in a gel-like material and is located in the whale’s chin in the space between the tips of the two lower jaw bones. Vascular and nervous tissue from an ancestral front tooth socket still remains in today’s whales and connect to the sensory organ. Evidence indicates that the sensory organ responds to jaw rotation when the whale opens and closes its mouth and when the whale’s throat pleats expand as it takes in water.

“The odd arrangement of tissues didn’t make much sense to us at first, but then we realized that this organ was perfectly placed, anatomically, to coordinate a lunge because that soft structure is pinched by the tips of the jaws, and deforms through the course of a lunge,” said Nicholas Pyenson, paleobiologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and lead author of the research. “This deformation is registered by the nerves inside the organ, informing the gulping whale about its gigantic jaws, which must close before prey escape. This finding answers several outstanding theoretical questions and puzzling field data that suggest rorquals actively control their lunge, rather than letting their mouths passively inflate like a parachute.”

Fossil records show that the bottom jaw of baleen whales has been unfused, or separated, at its tip since the late Oligocene epoch (23-28 million years ago). Despite the long expanse of time to the present, this organ represents an evolutionary novelty for rorqual whales, based on its absence in all other modern species of baleen whale, such as gray and right whales. This organ has a fundamental role in one of the most extreme feeding methods in aquatic vertebrates, which facilitated the evolution of the largest vertebrates ever.

Because lunge feeding is a critical part of maintaining their large body size―blue whales can grow to more than 100 feet in length and weigh more than 150 tons―this discovery helps illuminate the set of anatomical and behavioral innovations that happened in evolutionary history of rorquals that allowed them to become oceanic giants. “It is a supreme irony,” Pyenson said, “that even after several decades of whaling where scientists had the opportunity to observe hundreds of thousands of whale carcasses, we are still only beginning to understand the anatomy of the largest ocean predators of all time.”

Journal reference: Nature

Provided by Smithsonian

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(From PHYS.ORG) – Drs. Craig Mattocks and Brian Soden will serve as Principal Investigators on the project, which will create a pipeline of ensemble climate simulations to provide critical information on storm strength and the impact of storm surge on coastal communities. Eventually, the advancements made will be transferred to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to enhance the performance of the Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model for operational use in predicting storm surge generated by hurricanes and tropical storms.

“The students and faculty of the Rosenstiel School are internationally recognized as a leaders in marine science research. From ocean conservation, oceans and human health, sustainable fisheries, coral ecology, and marine genomics their work has tremendous benefits for all Floridians, in fact, for all people in coastal communities in the United States,” said U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. “This grant will help improve environmental and storm modeling by making the latest data sets easily accessible to the broader scientific community as well as strengthening tools for the application of that data. With hurricane season just around the corner, it is encouraging to see increased efforts to use computationally driven research to positively serve our community. I look forward to seeing the long term results of this significant project.”

Cloud computing offers unparalleled access to data on demand, and provides a cost-effective manner in which to port code to a new platform. This new method of computation also makes it simpler to make data sets available to the broader community, and helps make harvesting metadata more efficient. In addition, the research team will contribute tools to help scientists share, preserve, publicize and establish the provenance of the scientific data sets that result from their research.

“Compelling and timely application of climate research is our overall goal,” said Soden. “One of the more immediate and dangerous impacts of climate change in South Florida will be rising sea levels. Even with no change in hurricane strength or numbers, increased storm surge from rising sea level could pose a serious threat to property and lives in South Florida.”

This NSF-funded project develops a pipeline framework for running ensemble simulations on the cloud. The pipeline will take data submissions and organize them into controlled batches. It will also create an optimal workflow and establish best practices in data sharing and discovery.

“Our work will provide data to assess societal responses and guide adaptations to climate change,” added Mattocks, “These calculations will assist us in planning and building the sustainable, hazard-resilient coastal communities of the future.”

Climate modelers at UM will be collaborating with Jamie Rhome and Dr. Cristina Forbes in the Storm Surge Unit at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Fla. and Arthur Taylor at NOAA’s Meteorological Development Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md. to assimilate the new knowledge in NOAA’s SLOSH program, as well as in research, operational and classroom settings.

Provided by University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science

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(Click to enlarge) Razor clams.

Amos Winter from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, wants to build self-burying machines.

(From The Journal of Experimental Biology / by Amos G. Winter) – ‘There are many applications that could benefit from a self-burrowing reversible anchor that embeds efficiently as far as energy consumption is concerned’, explains Winter. He adds, ‘When I started the project our hypothesis was that there is probably an animal that has figured out a pretty good way of digging into soil, so I looked around at animals that dig into the ocean bottom and razor clams stood out.’ According to Winter, the 15–20 cm long molluscs can burrow as far as 70 cm down in mud or sand soils beneath the sea, yet muscle force measurements by E. R. Trueman in the 1960s had found that the mollusc’s muscles were not strong enough to heave them through that much soil. Intrigued, Winter and his thesis advisor, Anette Hosoi, decided to find out how razor clams burrow (p. 2072).

But first Winter wanted to know how far a clam could force its way through mud at its seashore home propelled by its muscular foot alone. Packing an empty razor clam shell with epoxy resin and pushing it into exposed seashore mud, Winter measured the resistance encountered by the shell and found that the clam could burrow no deeper than 2 cm. They had to be doing something else to burrow farther, but what? Winter had to get his hands on some animals and successfully reproduce the clam’s environment in the laboratory to analyse their burrowing technique.

Having obtained an official permit and after being taught how to collect the molluscs by the Shellfish Constable of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Winter recalls how difficult it was to build a transparent simulation of the mollusc’s environment. Hitting on transparent 1 mm diameter soda-lime glass particles as a good substitute for one of the clam’s natural homes, coarse sand, Winter filled a narrow chamber with the water-saturated particles and blasted it with two 1 kW halogen bulbs to visualise the clams’ descent as they burrowed.

Analysing the clam’s burrowing technique, Winter saw that the animal initially extended the foot before lifting the shell up. Then, the clam contracted the shell rapidly, inflating the foot with the blood expelled from its body. Having inflated the foot to anchor itself in place, the clam pulled on the secured appendage to drag the shell further down into the simulated soil. But this still couldn’t explain how the clam was able to burrow so far through static soil.

Turning his attention to the glass-particle-simulated sandy soil, Winter eventually discovered that the key to the mollusc’s burrowing technique was the moment when it contracted the shell. ‘As soon as it starts contracting the shell it relieves the pressure it is exerting on the soil and that sucks more water towards its body so that you get increased unpacking of the soil particles’, he explains. Essentially, the clam fluidised the surrounding soil – turning it into quicksand – which dramatically reduced the drag on the shell, allowing the mollusc to pull itself down before the surrounding sand particles slid back into place and the soil resolidified. And when Winter analysed the amount of energy required to move through the temporarily fluidised glass sand, he realised that it was a fraction of the energy required to move through a static soil.

Having discovered how razor clams burrow, Winter has successful designed and built a machine that burrows using the razor clam’s quicksand energy-saving mechanism, which he hopes to develop into a self-contained gadget that can dig into, and out of, the ocean floor.

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Required qualifications include an earned PhD in a field relevant to the HMSC goals, demonstrated leadership and success in securing internal and external programmatic support for instruction, research, service and outreach, proven experience and commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, an ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with a variety of stakeholders, such as university administrators, academic unit leaders, faculty, legislators, government agency leaders and the public with strong communication and interpersonal skills, and an international reputation for achievement meriting appointment as a tenured full professor. Preferred qualifications include demonstrated successful leadership in the strategic planning and management of a large and complex organization or research program, experience with fundraising and development, experience in liaison with local communities and a commitment to high quality and innovative research, outreach and extended education. Salary is commensurate with education and experience.

The Hatfield Marine Science Center is a world class research, teaching and public outreach facility situated on 49 acres in Newport, Oregon, on the Yaquina Bay estuary, about one mile from the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. HMSC is the largest marine laboratory in Oregon and one of the largest on the west coast. The Visitor Center encourages lifelong exploration of marine sciences and is host to over 175,000 visitors each year.

The city of Newport is nestled between the coastal mountains and the Pacific Ocean on Yaquina Bay. The recent establishment of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Operations Center has elevated marine science and education as a core enterprise on the central Oregon coast, producing more than $55 million in regional income and over 1200 jobs in the state. Newport is an active artistic community and features major facilities for the visual and performing arts.
Founded in 1868, Oregon State University is one of only two American universities designated as a Land-, Sea-, Sun- and Space-Grant University and is the only one in Oregon recognized for its “very high research activity” (RU/VH) by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. OSU is Oregon’s largest public research university, conducting more than 60 percent of the research funded throughout the state’s university system and bringing in a record $250 million in scientific grants and contracts this year.

To review the posting and apply, go to http://oregonstate.edu/jobs. Apply to posting #0009074. To ensure full consideration, applications must be received by June 22, 2012. Applications will continue to be accepted after the full consideration date until the position is filled. The closing date is subject to change without notice to applicants. OSU is an AA/EOE.

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To access the announcement and application package:

1. Select www.grants.gov

2. Select ‘Apply for Grants’

3. Select ‘Step 1: Download a Grant Application’

Insert the Funding Announcement Number in the format: CDC-RFA-EH12-1202

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