Data from graduate student expedition used to reveal a 40-year upsurge in ocean garbage

Only five species of marine insects are able to survive in the open ocean. Capable of walking along the surface of the ocean, these “sea skaters” (Halobates) boast several adaptations that allow them to thrive thousands [...]]]>

Data from graduate student expedition used to reveal a 40-year upsurge in ocean garbage

Only five species of marine insects are able to survive in the open ocean. Capable of walking along the surface of the ocean, these “sea skaters” (Halobates) boast several adaptations that allow them to thrive thousands of miles away from land. They are wingless—no need for such limbs in an open ocean environment that’s free of barriers—unlike their winged cousins on land that are required to navigate trees, mountains, and other objects.

“Halobates cope with storms at sea by surrounding themselves in an air bubble,” said Lanna Cheng, who has studied sea skaters at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego for more than 40 years. “They also have very efficient UV-absorbing chemicals in their cuticles to protect them against radiation damage and they have the ability to store lipids to tie them over periods of starvation.”

Cheng is coauthor of a paper released this week indicating that the sea skater’s environment is changing due to human-produced trash. Sea skaters must lay their eggs on floating objects such as feathers, wood, or pumice. According to Cheng and colleagues, plastic has added itself to that list in spectacular fashion. In the new study led by Scripps graduate student Miriam Goldstein, the researchers estimated that there has been a 100-fold increase in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean in the last 40 years.

In 2009 Goldstein led an ambitious group of graduate students in the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) to the North Pacific Ocean Subtropical Gyre aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon. During the voyage to the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” the researchers documented an alarming amount of human-generated trash, mostly broken down bits of plastic the size of fingernails floating across thousands of miles of open ocean.

The new study, published in the May 9 online issue of the journal Biology Letters, reveals that Halobates sericeus has exploited the influx of plastic fragments as new surfaces for their eggs, leading to a rise in the insect’s egg densities in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Such an increase, documented for the first time in a marine invertebrate (animal without a backbone) in the open ocean, may have consequences for animals across the marine food web, such as crabs that prey on sea skaters and their eggs.

“This paper shows a dramatic increase in plastic over a relatively short time period and the effect it’s having on a common North Pacific Gyre invertebrate,” said Goldstein. “We’re seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic.”

Cheng, who joined Scripps in 1970, has studied open ocean and coastal Halobates species on expeditions to Hawaii, the Galapagos, Fiji, Tonga, Thailand, Malaysia, and many other locations. Off Mexico, one of her colleagues once collected a discarded milk jug with some 30,000 Halobates eggs, likely laid by hundreds of females.

“Although it is worrisome to see the increasing abundance of plastic trash, they may provide much-needed hard surfaces for Halobates egg laying,” said Cheng. “What effect these may have in the ocean food chain remains to be seen.”

The new study follows a report published last year by Scripps researchers in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series showing that nine percent of the fish collected during SEAPLEX contained plastic waste in their stomachs. That study estimated that fish in the intermediate ocean depths of the North Pacific Ocean ingest plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000 to 24,000 tons per year.

The Goldstein et al. study compared changes in small plastic abundance between 1972-1987 and 1999-2010 by using historical samples from the Scripps Pelagic Invertebrate Collection and data from SEAPLEX, a NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer cruise in 2010, information from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation as well as various published papers.

“Plastic only became widespread in late ’40s and early ’50s, but now everyone uses it and over a 40-year range we’ve seen a dramatic increase in ocean plastic,” said Goldstein. “Historically we have not been very good at stopping plastic from getting into the ocean so hopefully in the future we can do better.”

In addition to Goldstein and Cheng, Marci Rosenberg, a student at UCLA, contributed to the report.

– Mario C. Aguilera

Today, Scripps Oceanography researchers reported that a sharp increase of small plastic debris in the ‘Garbage Patch’ could have ecosystem-wide consequences. News of the Scripps study led to coverage from Time,  AFP, U.S. News and World Report, the San Jose Mercury-News, UT San Diego, New Scientist, AP, NPR,

200 middle school students get a hands-on experience with genomics at Scripps 

To sixth- and seventh-graders everywhere, slimy things whipped up in lab beakers will forever be cool.

But about 200 such middle school students got a little added wonder last month when they came to visit the lab of marine microbiologist and [...]]]>

200 middle school students get a hands-on experience with genomics at Scripps 

To sixth- and seventh-graders everywhere, slimy things whipped up in lab beakers will forever be cool.

But about 200 such middle school students got a little added wonder last month when they came to visit the lab of marine microbiologist and chemist William Gerwick on the campus of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. The goo they were stretching into spaghetti-length strands was pure DNA material cultivated by the Scripps graduate students who served as their guides.

The occasion was a visit orchestrated by the Palomar College GEAR-UP program. Short for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, GEAR-UP is a federal grant project that gives middle school students exposure to experiences that could influence their career choices.

“They’ve never really experienced something like this before,” said Lindsay Barth, a GEAR-UP outreach coordinator at Palomar and a leader of the April 11 field trip. “Seeing the labs, all the different science experiments opens up their minds to how much a university can offer them.”

For Gerwick, who is a professor of oceanography and pharmaceutical sciences at the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine (CMBB) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the benefit was not just for the youngsters. The 57-year-old said his viewpoint has changed as he has aged and the desire to make a difference occupies a larger part of his thoughts these days. He was given the opportunity during a chance train ride to Santa Barbara two years ago. The stranger sitting next to him with whom he struck up a conversation was Cameron Russell, a GEAR-UP tutor at Palomar. The two described what they did for a living and exchanged contact information with no particular end in mind.

Almost two years later, Russell remembered Gerwick when Barth polled her team for field trip ideas.

The tour-takers are from San Marcos, Del Dios, Hidden Valley, and Mission middle schools from the San Marcos and Escondido school districts. The Palomar GEAR-UP program will work with them through high school offering similar opportunities to consider various career choices. The Scripps visit included an introduction by Gerwick to the kinds of research that happens at his lab. Afterward, small groups of the students visited individual labs to learn about how potentially valuable compounds are extracted from marine algae, how genomics could improve medical care, and how molecules are isolated.

“What was most fun was seeing my postdocs and grad students get inspired by the fact that they can have this inspirational effect,” said Gerwick.  “To see them in this role was really satisfying to me.”

Calvin One Deer, director of grant funded student programs at Palomar College, said the visit was among several trips to San Diego State University, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and a science fair at Petco Park that GEAR-UP enabled middle school students to make this year.

Barth said she would welcome a chance for return visits to Scripps.

“We have these students from 6^th grade until their first year of college so we’re hoping to come back and have them learn something new,” she said.

 — Robert Monroe

Related photos:

By Atreyee Bhattacharya

Around 5 p.m. every evening the usual humdrum of the day starts to wind down at Birch Aquarium at Scripps. As the guests leave, voices and footsteps gradually fade away. A sealed underwater [...]]]> Scripps graduate student attempting to create a sonic census of marine animals using BAS tanks as test beds 

By Atreyee Bhattacharya

Around 5 p.m. every evening the usual humdrum of the day starts to wind down at Birch Aquarium at Scripps. As the guests leave, voices and footsteps gradually fade away. A sealed underwater microphone switches on in a behind-the-scenes tank.

By night there is a cacophony of noises–munching, grabbing, calling or just moving. Simon Freeman wants nothing more than to hear this late night cacophony. He would like to understand what these sounds can tell us about the animals and their ecosystem

Freeman is a graduate student in the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Working with Michael Buckingham, a professor of acoustics, he uses sound to monitor animal populations under the sea, noting that sound travels better and for longer distances in water than in air.

The idea of recording noises in the ocean is not new. Using hydrophones, specially designed microphones to record underwater sounds, scientists have been listening to animal sounds in the ocean since the 1940s. A pattern has emerged in the oceans: during the day, the noise level is low. After dark, the noise level increases.

At night, smaller marine animals take advantage of the fact that predators cannot see them. They come out of their hiding places to feed making incidental noises as they move about. These noises have features that are different than other sounds these animals make, such as mating calls. Freeman believes that incidental noise can be used to estimate the number and species of animals in a given area.

The technique could come just in time to document rapid changes in ecologically sensitive ocean areas such as coral reefs, which face threats from ocean acidification, pollution, and abrupt changes in ocean water temperature. One indication of the health of reefs is the number of animals present there. Annual surveys involving dives and underwater photography are conducted to monitor different aspects of coral reef health. The surveys are costly and require long planning and coordination.

Freeman’s research on ocean noise aims to develop a low-cost method to continuously monitor numbers of organisms on coral reefs. For his experiment, he is using hydrophones in shrimp tanks at Birch Aquarium at Scripps to record incidental sound.

“Shrimp have tough skeletons and when they walk on hard coral surfaces, it makes clearly recordable noise,” said Freeman.

In the tanks, there are a known number of shrimp so it is an ideal location to calibrate the noise to the number of animals. For the next year, Freeman will continue to listen to hours of underwater sound. He will be pondering questions such as how scientists can successfully record incidental noise made by animals in the ocean, how one can use recorded noise to estimate the number of individuals and whether particular species make noises that have distinct characteristics.

The process, however, is time-consuming. To get a two-minute recording of useful incidental noise, a researcher may have to record continuously for 48 hours.

“But the low cost of the measuring devices and potential for having a continuous record of ecological parameters more than makes up for it,” said Freeman.

– Atreyee Bhattacharya has a Ph.D. in earth science from Harvard University and is a visiting student at the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps

 Related photos:

Without oceans, the effects of the sun’s heat on the planet would be much simpler to predict. Instead, the wild cards of ocean temperature and heat-carrying currents drive climate in complicated ways.

Climate scientist Shang-Ping Xie describes himself as being lucky to have been [...]]]> Shang-Ping Xie studies the ocean-atmosphere interactions that influence climate

Without oceans, the effects of the sun’s heat on the planet would be much simpler to predict. Instead, the wild cards of ocean temperature and heat-carrying currents drive climate in complicated ways.

Climate scientist Shang-Ping Xie describes himself as being lucky to have been a graduate student during the late 1980s, a “golden age” of studies into ocean-atmosphere interactions.  Now Xie will join Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, to continue work in a field that has matured considerably since then.  Xie will be the first Roger Revelle Chair in Environmental Science when he joins the Scripps faculty in November. His hire is the culmination of a process that began in 2007 when Ellen Revelle, widow of the famous oceanographer and former Scripps director, presented the institution with a $2.5 million gift to establish the chair, the largest single donation for an endowed chair in Scripps history.

“Roger Revelle was instrumental in setting up the long-term CO₂ measurements on Mauna Loa. The result is the Keeling Curve, an icon of global warming,” said Xie. “Prediction should be based on physical understanding of the past and present. Scripps has a world-class program in oceanography, providing a solid grounding for studying climate change under global warming. Scripps researchers are also connecting the science and applications of climate change. This is a big advantage because the needs from the applied community often drive science forward.”

Xie is interested in air-sea interactions that create important climate phenomena such as Pacific Ocean-scale El Niño/Southern Oscillation cycles. That strong interaction drives tropical climate to deviate from what is expected from solar radiation. For example, Xie points out, on the Galapagos Islands on the equator, solar radiation hardly varies year round but ocean temperature shows a large annual cycle with an annual minimum as low as 18degrees C (64.4 degrees F) in September. Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos in the cold season of 1835, and noted an arid climate.

Xie’s work has contributed to understanding the annual cycle on the equator and year-to-year climate variability.  He discovered an ocean-atmosphere interaction mechanism that explains why the earth’s climate develops latitudinal asymmetry across the equator. Such asymmetry is obvious from satellite images: tropical rain bands are displaced north of the equator across much of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. As a result, lush rain forests cover Central America while the Pacific coast of Peru is desert.

“It is a great pleasure to welcome such a serious and productive scholar to the Scripps community,” said Scripps Director Tony Haymet. “I am sure he and his students will thrive.”

Xie is currently a professor of meteorology at the University of Hawaii. Born in Quzhou, China in 1963, he received a bachelor of science degree in 1984 from the Ocean University of China in Qingdao. He received his master’s degree and doctorate in physical oceanography from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

“I hope to develop new science filling the gap between global-mean temperature rise and regional rainfall change, say in California. Our recent work shows that atmospheric convection change is sensitive to the spatial unevenness in ocean warming,” said Xie. “To the extent that tropical convection drives important changes in climate around the globe, this result puts the ocean and its interaction with the atmosphere on the center stage of regional climate change research. Dynamics of regional climate change is a new line of research. Like any new developing science, there is a lot we need to figure out.”

– Robert Monroe

In the past 60 years, California has experienced two heatwaves – in 1955 and 2006 – in which temperatures in its urban centers were greater than 37.8 degrees C (100 degrees F) for three or more consecutive days.

The latter [...]]]>
Scripps researchers brief utilities, resource managers on climate’s potential impact on their operations

In the past 60 years, California has experienced two heatwaves – in 1955 and 2006 – in which temperatures in its urban centers were greater than 37.8 degrees C (100 degrees F) for three or more consecutive days.

The latter episode, studied extensively by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego climate researcher Alexander Gershunov, led directly to the deaths of an estimated 400-600 people and cost the state $5.4 billion just in costs related to the health impacts the event caused.

A new analysis prepared by other Scripps researchers indicates that by century’s end, those kinds of heatwaves will be the norm. Scripps climate researcher David Pierce said the new data will be assimilated into a major climate report scheduled for release in 2013. But on April 30, Pierce and fellow Scripps climate researcher Dan Cayan gave the California energy community a preview.

“We’ll start getting these kinds of heatwaves more frequently by 2020 and by 2070, they’ll become common,” Pierce said.

Pierce emphasized that all models have uncertainty. For example, the effect of climate change on California’s coastal marine layer is not well resolved by the current crop of global models.

“That matters because the marine layer makes a big difference to energy use, since so many people live near the coast,” he said, “but the new models are the best look we have yet at what the future climate is likely to hold.”

Pierce downscaled several global models to the California region, and looked at temperatures weighted by where people in California live. In all scenarios, not only do episodes of 100-degree-plus temperatures happen more frequently, but events in which temperatures top 100 for seven or more days begin happening at least once a decade by 2060 in all the models.

Pierce said the data will be submitted for possible inclusion in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will be issued in four parts in 2013 and 2014. The United Nations-sponsored entity, which provides a periodic synthesis of international climate research, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore after releasing its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

Cayan and Pierce have been delivering the long-view message represented by Pierce’s heatwave analysis to utility managers conditioned to prepare for short-term weather trends, but Cayan said that over several years of such meetings, the perspective of scientists and resource managers has steadily converged.

“One of the important aspects of this is that (utilities) educate us on what are the critical climate and environmental factors that influence how they operate,” said Cayan. “This is not a one-way broadcast but a two-way conversation.”

The workshop hosted by the California Energy Commission addressed other climate-change issues of growing concern to cities and utilities such as sea-level rise and decreases in hydropower and water availability.

“A lot of these changes are not going to reverse, they’re only going to compound,” Cayan said.

– Robert Monroe

After he took the stage he stood for a minute to watch the opening musicians as he [...]]]> Editor’s Note: Sarah Gordon, a UCSD research safety specialist, was among the crowd of people who packed RIMAC to listen to the Dalai Lama. Here she recounts the experience of putting a question to the spiritual leader:

After he took the stage he stood for a minute to watch the opening musicians as he tapped his fingers on his knees to the rhythm.  One of my most touching memories from the day was witnessing him truly embrace the moment with joy and awe as he watched the percussionists.  When he later inspired us to laugh, we began to feel the energy he radiates:  joyful, calm and humorous, full of child-like laughter mixed with the wisdom of an old man.

Although the distinguished professors that shared the stage first looked tense, with intellectually-dignified body language, as the discussion proceeded I could see them melting into the moment, feeding off of the energy in the room.  The expressions on their faces relaxed, at one point appearing as if they were having a hard time NOT smiling.  Sometimes the Dalai Lama would pause to speak with his translator who appears to be able to finish his sentences.  It was palpable how strong their relationship appears to be.

As I recognized an audience question being read aloud by the translator, I was stunned. He had selected mine to ask.

It read “How does he suggest we maintain patience and calm when we engage in an argument with those who disbelieve in the realities of climate change?”

Nobody around me knew it was my question. I bit my lip in excitement.  I knew that his answer would be guidance for all of humanity, but I felt like he was speaking directly to me. As he spoke, my chin trembled with the emotional impact of the moment.

“We have to listen with respect…if necessary some pleasant argument (with) no negative feeling…also…there might be times where you cannot do really much at all, in such situations, remember the advice of 8th century Buddhist master who said, with respect to a problem: if there is a solution, there’s no need to be overwhelmed or worried about it. And if there is no solution, then there is no point in worrying about it.”

It took two days to come down from the emotional high, and I’ve felt passionately invigorated by his wisdom ever since.

Climate change might affect the Dalai Lama’s home country of Tibet more catastrophically than just about any other country, but the spiritual leader delivered a message of “Compassion without Borders” during an April 18 visit to UC San Diego.

The man who is the [...]]]> Importance of compassion, research stressed by Dalai Lama at RIMAC

Climate change might affect the Dalai Lama’s home country of Tibet more catastrophically than just about any other country, but the spiritual leader delivered a message of “Compassion without Borders” during an April 18 visit to UC San Diego.

The man who is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and a Nobel Peace Prize winner revered by millions more non-Buddhists worldwide said that national interests must yield to global interests in a dialogue with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego climate researchers. More than 4,200 people  jammed RIMAC Arena to take in the message.

During negotiations with the Dalai Lama’s delegation, university organizers chose climate change and neuroscience as conversation topics during his UCSD visit. For the public event at RIMAC, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Science Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Richard Somerville offered their perspectives on the state of global warming research and the challenges standing in the way of action to slow dangerous trends in climate. Among those are the accelerated melt of glaciers in the Himalayas, which provide drinking water to billions of people in Tibet and several other Asian countries.

The scientists and the spiritual leader considered the human activities that have led to climate change and the ethical imperative to modify those activities for the health of the planet.  Ramanathan, who is also a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said the academy’s preparation of a report last year revealed to him the power that spiritual and religious leaders have in effecting change. He opened the dialogue with a request for the Dalai Lama’s opinion on how spiritual leaders can best exert their moral authority to spur climate change solutions among their followers. In response, the Dalai Lama cited the need for spiritual leaders to promote education as a vehicle for awareness and compassion.

“This small blue planet is our only home…for now,” said the Dalai Lama, noting the quest of scientists to find life-supporting planets elsewhere in the universe. “We must take care.”

The three speakers found several points of agreement. The inaction of countries to control emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming agents is often done in the name of protecting national economic interest. The scientists and the Buddhist leader, however, regarded the conflict between such concerns and concerns for global welfare to be a false one. A country protects its own interests when it acts for the general good.

Ramanathan has recently reported his finding that the pace of global warming can be significantly slowed in coming decades even if the chief global warming gas, carbon dioxide, is not controlled. Emissions of other greenhouse agents such as black carbon soot, halocarbons and methane can be reduced if technologies used in the developed world can be spread to poorer countries, he said, adding that such efforts would have the added benefit of saving millions of lives of people forced to damage their lungs using wood-burning cookstoves. The concept gained traction this February when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the formation of an international coalition to control so-called “short-lived climate forcers.”

Ramanathan also added that the different contributions to global warming coming from wealthier nations and the developing world need to be acknowledged as equitable solutions are engineered.

“We have left 2.7 billion people (in the developing world) behind,” Ramanathan told the audience. “Many people don’t even know what fossil fuels are.”

UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox escorted the Dalai Lama onstage for the public dialogue and at other campus events, including a brief press conference before the event. Afterward, the Dalai Lama extended an impromptu invitation to Ramanathan and Somerville to a lunch of Tibetan stews and dumplings prepared by members of San Diego’s Tibetan community, which was doing the cooking for the Dalai Lama during his time in the city.

Born Tenzin Gyatso in 1935 in northeastern Tibet, he was recognized as the reincarnation of the 13^th Dalai Lama when he was two years old. After the Chinese government suppressed a Tibetan national uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama has lived in exile in Dharmsala, India. During his extensive travels since, he has visited more than 60 countries, engaging in dialogues with national and spiritual leaders.

Somerville expressed delight afterward at the spiritual leader’s personable nature and humor.

“This was a thrilling experience and a real privilege,” Somerville said. “He’s a trusted messenger and his opinions matter to millions of people.”

The Dalai Lama visited all three major San Diego universities even though he admitted at RIMAC that he was no expert on higher education, having had no experience of it himself. After his UCSD event, he moved on to the University of San Diego where he provided his insights on the topic of cultivating peace and justice. On Thursday morning, he addressed a San Diego State University audience in a talk entitled “Upholding Universal Ethics and Compassion in Challenging Times.” In all, an estimated 20,000 people attended the three events.

A discussion of another UCSD specialty, neuroscience, took place April 19  at the Robert Paine Scripps Forum for Science, Society and the Environment at Scripps.  Speakers V.S. Ramachandran from UCSD, Lawrence Hinman from USD and Jennifer Thomas of San Diego State joined the Dalai Lama for a discussion about the science of human consciousness and the origins of compassion.

During the public address at UCSD, the Dalai Lama, Somerville and Ramanathan expressed a shared optimism that the world could stop the problem of climate change.  Somerville noted that France weaned itself off fossil fuel as a primary energy source within one generation. Ramanathan quipped that when he began his career in the 1970s, the only person who would attend his lectures was his wife. Now, he said, he was in front of an audience of thousands pondering the problem with one of the world’s foremost spiritual leaders.

“Change happens when people want it,” said Somerville, who suggested to an audience questioner that politicians react to the demands of their constituents and wouldn’t be able to ignore climate change if they perceived it as important to the voting public.

The Dalai Lama pointed out that in Buddhist tradition, new scientific evidence must be allowed to overrule religious beliefs if the beliefs are shown to be false. Scientists like Ramanathan and Somerville are rightly considered teachers and gurus who lead others to understand reality, he said.

To those wishing to effect change in the world, the Dalai Lama said “Your efforts must be realistic. We must not rely on appearances. We must do research to determine what is real. With no research, you can’t find reality.”

— Robert Monroe

For more on the Dalai Lama’s visit to San Diego, read a first-person account of putting a question to the spiritual leader.

Dalai Lama photo gallery: