(Click to enlarge) Disabled T/B DBL 152 vessel discharges oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. (Credit: ENTRIX, Inc.)

NOAA presented to the U.S. Coast Guard today a new report that finds that 36 sunken vessels scattered across the U.S. seafloor could pose an oil pollution threat to the nation’s coastal marine resources. Of those, 17 were recommended for further assessment and potential removal of both fuel oil and oil cargo.

(From ScienceDaily) — The sunken vessels are a legacy of more than a century of U.S. commerce and warfare. They include a barge lost in rough seas in 1936; two motor-powered ships that sank in separate collisions in 1947 and 1952; and a tanker that exploded and sank in 1984.

The remaining sites are 13 merchant marine ships lost during World War II, primarily along the Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico. To see a list of the ships and their locations, visit: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/protect/ppw/.

Dr. Andrew Rosenberg

Science is under attack. With corporations manufacturing uncertainty to undermine studies that hurt their bottom lines and the sequester cutting billions in funding for scientific research, you’d think the American science community would be hunkered down in their labs avoiding outside interference at all costs.

(From Moyers & company / by Theresa Riley) – A new project of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the Center for Science and Democracy, is encouraging scientists to do just the opposite. The center encourages scientists to speak out and help others to better understand scientific information and to distinguish evidence from political positioning. We spoke with the Center’s director Dr. Andrew Rosenberg by phone this week. This is an edited version of our conversation.

Theresa Riley: In Bill’s conversation with public health historians David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, they talk about a “war on science” that is being waged by industries to prevent and weaken regulations. In Heads They Win, Tails We Lose, a report released last year, UCS investigators showed how widespread the practice is. What tactics do they use?

Andrew Rosenberg: In the political arena, there are lots of avenues where corporate influence comes in. Sometimes it’s directly lobbying elected officials. For example, on fracking, Common Cause found that the industry has spent almost $750 million over the last decade lobbying to try to ensure that regulation isn’t increased, that the federal government stays out of fracking — even, to some extent, in the monitoring and evaluation of impacts of fracking. And that’s unfortunately a pretty common picture. On medical devices it’s a similar sum, $700 million, to lobby on behalf of medical devices and pharmaceuticals to try to keep the rules as business friendly as possible. People understand that there’s lobbying. I’m not sure they understand the magnitude.

A second way is creating a false and parallel science. Of course, that’s quite dramatic on climate change, where there’s been very extensive funding, particularly from the energy industry, of so-called climate change skeptics. I think it’s less well known that that occurs in many other fields, particularly the testing of chemicals, such as toxic contaminants, formaldehyde and silica, where the industry is creating a body of science, ostensibly of science that says, “Well, really this isn’t such a problem.”

One of their tactics is to create groups that are labeled things like Safer Chemicals for a Healthy World — I’m making that one up, but there are actual groups like this. You find out they’re funded by The American Chemistry Council (and they’re funded by the chemical industry). They cast doubt and continually challenge scientific results. Formaldehyde is a good example. The formaldehyde industry is continually challenging evidence that shows that formaldehyde is a carcinogen in the crafting of EPA regulations and product safety regulations.

Riley: In some cases, they go as far as suing scientists. For instance, Markowitz and Rosner tell Bill that in the 1970s and ’80s, the lead industry went after researchers like Herbert Needleman who had uncovered the fact that even low levels of lead were damaging children. They accused him of scientific misconduct and filed charges against him. It took several years for him to prevail.

Rosenberg: Attacking scientists unfortunately, directly and personally, has become part of the toolbox for industry and for political groups. We have instances of attacking scientists in court (as in the lead example), but in the digital age it’s become “let’s subpoena all the private emails of scientists and we’ll find something in there that will cast doubt on the results.”

For example in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP asked for help from some scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to try to estimate how much oil was leaking into the Gulf, because the government estimates seemed to be low. So these scientists came up with methods to figure out a better way to calculate how much was spilling before they capped the well and showed that the amount of oil was very much larger than had been initially estimated.

BP subsequently went to court to subpoena their private emails to cast doubt on their results. They needed to know the actual amount of oil to figure out how to cap it, but then after the fact it pertained directly to [their] liability. So they really went after these guys to cast doubt on their results by saying, “Well, gee, in the email traffic, one of the scientists said to the other, ‘I’m not sure I think that’s quite right. Maybe we ought to try it a different way,’ and ‘I’m not sure we can rely on this result’” — the usual process of science that goes on in any analysis now becomes a weapon in court, and, in addition, is not only demoralizing, but potentially expensive. It certainly dampens the enthusiasm for scientists to get involved in issues. We’ve seen that with climate change, too. It’s not a new phenomenon; it’s still going on.

Riley: What role does the media have in this, particularly in terms of facilitating the production of uncertainty and, ultimately, the undermining of the truth.

Rosenberg: We live in a very noisy media environment and there are huge changes in news and media, as you know better than I. If somebody wants to know something about fracking and they type it into Google or Bing they get a whole bunch of information and it’s really hard for someone who’s not working in the field to sort through that information and know what its provenance is. I think that’s true for many people in the media who are writing about this as well. All of this effort to undermine or misrepresent science affects the media too, because certain media outlets are spinning their own opinion pages and then cherry picking the science. We’ve done a report on News Corp reporting on climate science, for the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal and for Fox News. It becomes easier for people to hammer away at their position because they’re able to go to think tanks that are funded with a particular bent, Heartland being the classic case.

I also think the media still has a tendency to say, “We’ve got to have a balanced view, so let’s get one person who thinks climate change is occurring or thinks that there’s a problem with formaldehyde and we’ll find somebody who doesn’t, and disagrees,” as if it’s an adversarial system in court and these are expert witnesses. But that’s not what happens in the science community. Yes, people challenge each other, but then you ask, “what’s the weight of the evidence.” It’s not a courtroom where you present alternatives in that way. That’s problematic and it gets disseminated very broadly on digital media.

Riley: In 2009 when President Obama took office, he called for comprehensive scientific integrity reform in federal departments and agencies. How is he doing?

Rosenberg: There is good policy in many agencies. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — and this isn’t because I used to work at NOAA — did an outstanding job, as I think is noted in the report you mentioned earlier, in creating a scientific integrity policy. They enabled scientists to speak out.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House has said they stand behind scientific integrity policies. But the real challenge now is making sure that the implementation follows those policies. And there it’s a little harder to be quite so laudatory. I think they did a great job of putting the policies in place. We worked very intensively with many of the agencies to help provide guidance, since it was critically important in our scientific integrity program. But the implementation of those policies in some places, like USDA, FDA and others, has lagged. There are still concerns in Department of Interior and its many various departments. I think there’s an opportunity for improvement.

Riley: Last month, in a speech at an event marking the 150th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences, President Obama told scientists, engineers and doctors that his goal is to reach for a level of private and public research and development investment that we haven’t seen since the height of the space race. At the same time, the sequester is expected to take a significant toll on scientific research with numerous federal agencies and organizations now facing the possibility of huge cuts to their budgets. Some examples of that are the National Institutes of Health (NIH) expecting $1.6 billion in cuts, the National Science Foundation (NSF) possibly shrinking by $283 million, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science estimating a $9.3 billion cut across the board in R&D this year. How concerned should we be about these cuts?

Rosenberg: We should be very concerned. I’m not sure that outside the science community it’s well known that the competition for NIH and NSF grants is really intense, meaning that there’s intense scrutiny of every grant proposal. If you add to that now a reduced pool of money, then those success rates become really shockingly low, like less than 10 percent, I believe. That means that many scientists will have difficulty continuing their programs. Some people would say, “Oh well, maybe they should just be funded by private industry or private funding.” That’s all well and good but it’s totally different from a basic research enterprise of an NSF or an NIH, where people are doing the basic, fundamental, underlying research, not to immediately produce a product, but because it helps our understanding of the world. So that’s one area that is frightening.

But we also need to remember the applied science agencies like NOAA, NASA and USGS and others that are doing the basic daily scientific work for the country, everything from weather forecasts, climate forecasts, monitoring of water tables and the research that goes along with those things, understanding weather systems and understanding hydrologic systems, understanding fisheries — the area that I worked in for many years. You start to cut that research, which is also taking a very large hit, and that means our understanding gets weaker as the challenges are only increasing. It’s not as if the issues of trying to maintain the health of the oceans is diminishing, we need that applied scientific research for climate impacts and a whole range of other things.

One of the great things about the U.S. science enterprise and why it was so powerful is because it was valued not just with dollars but in the way that scientists were allowed to operate with much less hierarchy and with much greater freedom than many other places. We’re going to lose that if we continue not only with the sequester but also with this scrutiny of grants, restrictions on travel and attacks on scientists.

Federal budgets are moving along here in Washington, albeit at a slow pace. Spend plans for the federal agencies’ fiscal year (FY) 2013 budgets were due May 10 so we should know soon what the agencies have to spend once these plans are approved by OMB and then Congress. Of course, this could take time. Appropriations discussions are well underway on the Hill for FY2014, but we really won’t know the outcome for several weeks as well. Remember that the FY14 budget numbers all depend on the Congress’s and President’s ability to come together on a solution for the sequester. And, as you all know that involves the entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare). The odds of that happening are anyone’s guess although the President keeps pushing. In addition, on Tuesday, the latest Congressional Budget Office prediction showed that the 2013 deficit may turn out to be significantly lower than predicted even three months ago, less than half of its size from four years ago as a percentage of the economy. This takes the pressure off of a deal having to be made.

Over the past several weeks, I have met with a number of senior people at the federal agencies that fund ocean sciences. As you are well aware, there are a number of issues related to these difficult budget times. I want you to know that support for core programs was a top priority of mine in all of our discussions. This involves a careful balance between new initiatives, core projects and facilities. I was assured that this message has been received from several quarters, and that plans were already underway to address this issue.

We will certainly keep you posted as the budget planning process proceeds. In the meantime, be sure and enjoy the spring weather.

Bob

Federal budgets are moving along here in Washington, albeit at a slow pace. Spend plans for the federal agencies’ fiscal year (FY) 2013 budgets were due May 10 so we should know soon what the agencies have to spend once these plans are approved by OMB and then Congress. Of course, this could take time. Appropriations discussions are well underway on the Hill for FY2014, but we really won’t know the outcome for several weeks as well. Remember that the FY14 budget numbers all depend on the Congress’s and President’s ability to come together on a solution for the sequester. And, as you all know that involves the entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare). The odds of that happening are anyone’s guess although the President keeps pushing. In addition, on Tuesday, the latest Congressional Budget Office prediction showed that the 2013 deficit may turn out to be significantly lower than predicted even three months ago, less than half of its size from four years ago as a percentage of the economy. This takes the pressure off of a deal having to be made.

Over the past several weeks, I have met with a number of senior people at the federal agencies that fund ocean sciences. As you are well aware, there are a number of issues related to these difficult budget times. I want you to know that support for core programs was a top priority of mine in all of our discussions. This involves a careful balance between new initiatives, core projects and facilities. I was assured that this message has been received from several quarters, and that plans were already underway to address this issue.

We will certainly keep you posted as the budget planning process proceeds. In the meantime, be sure and enjoy the spring weather.

Bob

(Click to enlarge) The researchers at the University of Bristol state that limiting the global warming could buy some more time for tropical coral reefs. (Photo : Reuters)

According to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers at the University of Bristol state that limiting the amount of global warming could buy some more time for tropical coral reefs.

(From Science World Report / by Benita Matilda) – With the help of computer models, the researchers investigated how shallow water tropical coral reef habitats may respond to a change in climate in the future.

The study, led by Dr. Elena Couce and colleagues, noticed that limiting greenhouse warming to three watts per square meter is required so as to avoid a large-scale reduction of coral reef habitats in the future.

The shallow tropical coral reefs are known to be among the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. However, their numbers are dropping due to the increasing frequency of bleaching events, associated with increasing temperature and fossil fuel emissions.

“If sea surface temperatures continue to rise, our models predict a large habitat collapse in the tropical western Pacific which would affect some of the most biodiverse coral reefs in the world. To protect shallow-water tropical coral reefs, the warming experienced by the world’s oceans needs to be limited,” Dr. Couce said in a press statement.

For the current study, the researchers tried whether artificial means of reducing global temperature i.e., solar radiation ‘geoengineering’ could be of any help. They noticed that if geoengineering could be successfully set up, then the decline of habitats for tropical coral reefs could be reduced. They also noticed that over engineering the climate can cause harm, as tropical corals do not favor overly-cool conditions. Solar radiation geoengineering does not check the carbon dioxide issue known as ‘ocean acidification’.

The only way to curb the decline of reefs caused by ocean acidification is by lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

(Click to enlarge) The shelled sea butterfly Hyalocylis striata can be found in the warm surface waters of the ocean around the world. (Photo: © Karen Osborn)

The chemistry of the ocean is changing. Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean.

(From Smithsonian.com) –   Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic—a process called ocean acidification—and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic.

Tiny sea butterflies are related to snails, but use their muscular foot to swim in the water instead of creep along a surface. Many species have thin, hard shells made of calcium carbonate that are especially sensitive to changes in the ocean’s acidity. Their sensitivity and cosmopolitan nature make them an alluring study group for scientists who want to better understand how acidification will affect ocean organisms. But some pteropod species are proving to do just fine in more acidic water, while others have shells that dissolve quickly. So why do some species perish while others thrive?

It’s a hard question to answer when scientists can hardly tell pteropod species apart in the first place. The cone-shaped pteropod shown here is in a group of shelled sea butterflies called thecosomes, from the Greek for “encased body.” There are two other groups: the pseudothecosomes have gelatinous shells, and the gymnosomes (“naked body”) have none at all. Within these groups it can be hard to tell who’s who, especially when relying on looks alone. Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History are using genetics to uncover the differences among the species.

(Click to enlarge) This gymnosome (Pneumodermopsis sp.) pulls shelled pteropods from their shells with a set of suckers. (Photo: © Karen Osborn)

This effort is led by zoologist Karen Osborn, who has a real knack for photography: in college, she struggled over whether to major in art or science. After collecting living animals while SCUBA diving in the open ocean, she brings them back to the research ship and photographs each in a shallow tank of clear water with a Canon 5D camera with a 65mm lens, using three to four flashes to capture the colors of the mostly-transparent critters. The photographs have scientific use—to capture never-before-recorded images of the living animals—and to “inspire interest in these weird, wild animals,” she said. All of these photos were taken in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Mexico and California.

(Click to enlarge) Cavolinia uncinata. (Photo: © Karen Osborn)

Although sea butterflies in the gymnosome group, like the one seen above, don’t have shells and are therefore not susceptible to the dangers of ocean acidification, their entire diet consists of shelled pteropods. If atmospheric CO₂ continues to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels and, in turn, the ocean becomes more acidic, their prey source may disappear—indirectly endangering these stunning predators and all the fish, squid and other animals that feed on the gymnosomes.

For years, sea butterflies were only collected by net. When collected this way, the animals (such as Cavolinia uncinata above) retract their fleshy “wings” and bodies into pencil eraser-sized shells, which often break in the process. Researchers then drop the collected pteropods into small jars of alcohol for preservation, which causes the soft parts to shrivel—leaving behind just the shell. Scientists try to sort the sea butterflies into species by comparing the shells alone, but without being able to see the whole animals, they may miss the full diversity of pteropods.

(Click to enlarge) In the Arctic, this pteropod species (Limacina helicina) can compose half of the zooplankton swimming in the water column. (Photo: © Karen Osborn)

More recently, scientists such as Osborn and Smithsonian researcher Stephanie Bush have begun collecting specimens by hand while SCUBA diving in the open sea. This blue-water diving allows her to collect and photograph fragile organisms. As she and her colleagues observe living organisms in more detail, they are realizing that animals they had thought were the same species, in fact, may not be! This shelled pteropod (Cavolinia uncinata) is considered the same species as the one in the previous photo. Because their fleshy parts look so different, however, Bush is analyzing each specimen’s genetic code to establish whether they really are the same species.

(Click to enlarge) The shell of Clio recurva is a perfect landing strip for a colony of hydroids. (Photo: © Karen Osborn)

This string of eggs shot out of Cavolinia uncinata when it was being observed under the microscope. The eggs are attached to one another in a gelatinous mass, and, had they not been self-contained in a petri dish, would have floated through the water until the new pteropods emerged as larvae. Their reproduction methods aren’t well studied, but we know that pteropods start off as males and once they reach a certain size switch over to females. This sexual system, known as sequential hermaphroditism, may boost reproduction because bigger females can produce more eggs.

(Click to enlarge) It was once thought that Clione limacina was found in the Antarctic and Arctic, but it’s likely that they are two separate species. (Photo: © Karen Osborn)

This pteropod (Limacina helicina) has taken a beating from being pulled through a trawl net: you can see the broken edges of its shell. An abundant species with black flesh, each of these sea butterflies are the size of a large grain of sand. In certain conditions they “bloom” and, when fish eat too many, the pteropod’s black coloring stains the fishes’ guts black.

Not only is the inside of this shell home to a pteropod (Clio recurva), but the outside houses a colony of hydroids—the small pink flower-like animals connected by transparent tubing all over the shell. Hydroids, small, predatory animals related to jellyfish, need to attach to a surface in the middle of the ocean to build their colony, and the tiny shell of Clio is the perfect landing site. While it’s a nice habitat for the hydroids, this shell probably provides less than ideal protection for the pteropod: the opening is so large that a well equipped predator, such as larger shell-less pteropods, can likely just reach in and pull it out. “I would want a better house, personally,“ says Osborn.

Gymnosomes are pteropods that lack shells and have a diet almost entirely composed of shelled pteropods. This species (Clione limacina), exclusively feeds on Limacina helicina (the black-fleshed pteropod a few slides back). They grab their shelled relative with six tentacle-like arms, and then use grasping jaws to suck their meal out of the shell.

This post was written by Emily Frost and Hannah Waters. Learn more about the ocean from the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal.

(Click to enlarge) Fish catches could be hurt by climate change. (Credit: Jeff Rotman/Photolibrary/Getty Images)

It’s easy to forget that global warming doesn’t just refer to the rising temperature of the air. Climate change is having an enormous, if less well understood, impact on the oceans, which already absorb far more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere.

(From Time / by Bryan Walsh) – Like so much of what goes on in the vast depths that cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the effect of climate change on the oceans remains a black box—albeit one that scientists are working to illuminate.

Here’s one way: fisheries. Wild fish remain a major source of protein for humanity—as well as a major source of reality TV shows—and for some coastal communities, fish mean even more. Scientists aren’t clear about what climate change, including the warming of the oceans, will have on wild fisheries. As Mark Payne of the National Institute of Aquatic Resources writes in a new piece in Nature, ocean researchers “tend to view climate change as a dark cloud on the horizon: potentially problematic in the future, but not of immediate concern”—especially compared to the much more pressing threat of simple overfishing.

But now a new study in Nature makes the case that climate change—including the warming of the oceans—is already having a direct impact on global fisheries. Researchers led by William Cheung at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre created a new model that took the known temperature preferences of different species of commercial fish and compared those figures to global catch numbers from around the world. They found that species comfortable in warmer waters have been replacing fish that are more accustomed to cool temperatures. That means climate change is altering the makeup of fisheries around the world—and that could be particularly bad for the tropics, which may eventually become too hot for even for fish that tend to prefer it on the warmer side.

As Cheung’s co-author Daniel Pauly put it in a statement:

We’ve been talking about climate change as if it’s something that’s going to happen in the distant future—our study shows that it has been affecting our fisheries and oceans for decades. These global changes have implications for everyone in every part of the planet.

The study’s methodology is clever. Trying to estimate fish populations and distributions has always been a difficult and highly contentious process for the simple reason that there is so much ocean. You can use sonar estimates and trawl surveys—literally dredging the ocean—to try to get more precise samples, but that’s difficult and expensive. Another option is to use commercial catch statistics, which are kept by nearly every country in the world—but lack tend to lack the requisite rigor. Countries have all sorts of motivations to fudge their catch numbers—especially in an age when catch quotas are being implemented to limit overfishing—and fishermen logically go after commercially viable species over unpopular fish, which then further skews the data.

The Nature team got around this problem by developing a sort of “thermometer” for fish distribution, analyzing the mean temperature of the catch (MTC). For each species in their database, the researchers derived a characteristic temperature range—in short, how hot or cold the fish could stand—weighted by the amount of each species caught.

They applied their metric to nearly 1000 species across 52 large marine ecosystems between 1970 and 2006, looking at how water temperature changed over that period. (Hint: it got warmer.) And they found what you might expect—as water temperatures increased, so did the MTC, meaning that warm-water preferring species moved in and cold-water preferring species moved out.

Because catch numbers do not automatically equal actual populations, we can’t say for sure that the changes Cheung and his colleagues saw are an absolute reflection of what’s happening to wild fish beneath the waves. Other factors—like a consumer preferences or fuel costs—influence what kind of species fishermen think are worth catching. But even the changes in the catch data alone are startling—especially for tropical regions, as Payne writes;

In these regions, the fact that the catch composition seems to have reached the terminal hot-water state means that further warming may reduce fishery yields, if it has not already done so. The countries that border tropical waters are also those that are the most dependent on fisheries as sources of employment, foreign revenue and food, and are least able to adapt to such changes.

The oceans can sometimes seem so vast that nothing we could do could possibly alter them. But climate change—and our enormous hunger for seafood—seems up to the task.

(Click to enlarge) Sarah Thornton – Senior Lab Instructor, UVIC

A University of Victoria instructor is one of two Canadian educators on board the scientific ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution that is docked off Ogden Point in Victoria.

(From the University of Victory) – Sarah Thornton, a senior lab instructor at UVIC’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, is part of the “School of Rock,” a professional development workshop for educators. Since 2005, the program has provided teachers in the U.S. and Canada with hands-on training in scientific techniques. They use the same laboratories, samples, and data available to working scientists aboard the research vessel.

For 12 hours a day—mimicking the long shifts that scientists work during regular two-month expeditions—the teachers work alongside the ship scientists and crew, using the advanced lab equipment on the ship.

They study what has been achieved during the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international research program dedicated to advancing scientific understanding of the Earth through drilling, coring, and monitoring the sub-seafloor. During normal operations, the ship’s complement consists of up to 60 scientists and technicians, and 70 crew members.

Thornton is on board with 17 other educators from the U.S. and one from Canada. She is thrilled about the opportunity to expand her experience and bring it back to the classroom at UVIC.

The vessel is named for the HMS Resolution, which explored the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and the Antarctic region under the command of Captain James Cook more than 200 years ago. Like its namesake, the purpose of the current Resolution is to sail for scientific exploration. But this time, its discoveries lie deep beneath the oceans.

Media advisory: Thornton is on board the ship until the morning of April 9. Thornton is busy working most of the day, but will check her emails three times a day and respond.

(Click to enlarge) Author Kevin Kurtz of the children’s book “Uncovering Earths Secrets” holds a picture of the JOIDES Resolution, whose crew members children spoke via Skype during Saturday’s BID Science Day at the New Rochelle Public Library. (April 6, 2013) (Photo Credit: Lisa Weir)

Children and parents learned about the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling, or JOIDES Resolution,  America’s only research vessel dedicated to scientific ocean drilling, during “Uncovering the Earth’s Secrets” during Saturday’s BID Science Day at the New Rochelle Public Library.

(From Newsday) – The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, an international marine research program, uses the scientific drilling ship in its research.

Click here for original story and more photos.

(Click to enlarge) Beth Christiansen onboard the Joides Resolution.The Midland teacher was selected to participate in a Deep Earth Academy School of Rock expedition in April.

MPS teacher gets firsthand look at ocean cores during expedition

(From The Daily News / by Angela E. Gambrel) -- Each one looks like an ordinary rock, but the information contained in each core is extraordinary.

 “It is history of what was going on … back in time,” said Beth Christiansen. “You can look at the cores as time capsules.”

 Christiansen, 44, is a seventh-grade science teacher at Northeast Middle School. She had the opportunity to observe ocean core models while attending a Smithsonian Academy for teachers in Washington D.C. this past summer.

(Click to enlarge) Beth Christiansen studying a core sample.

“I was really excited about the ocean core models they were showing us,” she said. “One basically showed the change between two different geologic times.”

 Millions of years ago a meteorite struck Earth. The shock waves from that catastrophic event drastically changed the planet’s climate and brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs.

 “The evidence indicates that the meteorite had hit the earth and pretty much caused this global change,” she said.

 Christiansen used the cores in her class plan. The plan caught the eye of Jennifer Collins, one of the organizers of Deep Earth Academy’s School of Rock.

 “She asked if she could share the lesson plan; to show teachers that these cores were available,” Christiansen said. “That the core models were available and that this was one way of using them.”

 Christiansen was eager for the chance to study core samples further. She applied — and was accepted — to be part of the School of Rock’s expedition held during the first week of April. Nineteen teachers nationwide and Canada were accepted to be part of the expedition.

 “I learned so much,” she said. “I’m still trying to digest everything.”

 The teachers and crew were aboard the JOIDES Resolution docked in Victoria, British Columbia on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. JOIDES stands for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling.

(Click to enlarge) A microturbation core sample from the Gulf of Alaska.

As part of the expedition, the teachers studied ocean cores gleaned from the waters off of the Pacific Northwest, Antarctica , and Hawaii.

 Cores are brought to the surface by a technique similar to that used for drilling oil. Each core is more than nine meters, and 60 to 70 cores can be harvested from the same hole.

 Cores are basically made up of ocean sediment that has built up during millions of years. Cores show the various cycles that occurred over time.

 “All of that is history,” Christiansen said.

 For example, consider the ice shelves of Antarctica where sunlight can’t penetrate. What was water at one time is now ice.

 “You’ll find evidence of organisms that were photosynthesized,” she said. “At some point, that water was exposed to sunlight.”

 One of the goals of the expedition was for the teachers to bring back what they learned about cores and apply it to the classroom.

 “I have a better understanding how we use the information, how it’s all put together,” Christiansen said. “By looking at the different layers … you just learn so much about what was going on in the region where you’re pulling the core from.”

 Christiansen was allowed to bring back some core samples containing sediments. Each one will be cleaned and processed to reveal the microfossils that are contained within.

 “You’re left with these micro-fossils,” she said. “I have slides that I made of the core materials. I’m really excited about sharing that.”