Deep Sea News

Look familiar? Some of you may remember that Wes Anderson parodied this in the Life Aquatic.

No overdue paper on deep water formation in the western North Atlantic for last semester’s PhysO class is gonna stop us from having a little fun on Thanksgiving day. In about one week there should be a Christmas tree behind us. That’s Maria and Ana on the right. Clara and me on the left. Clara turned two a week ago. Happy holidays from the family.

Here in Texas we eat tamales from Christmas. Like on Mars.
They do the same thing there…

Man, I hope it snows. Good luck with final exams, everybody.

A mosaic of Monterey Bay from photos I took two weekends ago on the steam back to Moss Landing. Click on the image for the full size (warning: large file size)

Yes, it is! A cephalopod cookie cutter and helping to protect the oceans for just $35…that’s a slice of fried gold. This holiday season, Oceana is providing a unique cookie cutters to keep for yourself or give to loved ones as incentive to help protect the oceans. Supporters can virtually adopt a marine creature (Clam, Crab, Octopus, Seahorse, Penguin, Polar Bear, Seal, Snowflake*, Dolphin, Shark, Turtle, Whale, Oceana Ranger*, Salmon, Seagull and Starfish), recipients can receive up to 16 ocean themed cookie cutters, an official adoption certificate, ocean facts and a special sugar cookie recipe.


For $35, gift recipients will receive a cookie cutter shaped like their adopted creature.

For $75, gift recipients will receive a cookie cutter shaped like their adopted creature, and three additional cookie cutters within its matching theme (1. Protect Coral Reefs – Clam, Crab, Octopus and Seahorse; 2. Fight Global Warming – Penguin, Polar Bear, Seal and Snowflake; 3. Protect Sea Creatures – Dolphin, Shark, Turtle and Whale; 4. Eliminate Unsustainable Fishing – Oceana Ranger, Salmon, Seagull and Starfish)

For $100, gift recipients will receive a cookie cutter shaped like their adopted creature, three additional cookie cutters within its matching theme and an exclusive Oceana baking mitt.

For $250 or more, gift recipients will receive the complete set of 16 cookie cutters and an exclusive Oceana baking mitt.

You can damn well believe my money was out 5 minutes ago for that octopus cookie cutter!

*Not a creature per se but you can still adopt it.

In the Pose A Question post a reader asked…

What are your (research) interests? I personally tend to find some of the more exotic deep sea communities interesting– hydrothermal vent communities, whale falls, and life at the poles.

The simplest answer to this is the diversity and body size of deep-sea animals. My research often focuses on soft-bottom communities typical of most of the deep sea, but currently is moving toward seamounts. As such, my research often tends toward more general ecological and evolutionary questions that affect all organisms not just those in the deep.

What limits the maximum size an invertebrate can obtain?

What controls the number and composition of species in area?

How do these change through time and space and relate to gradients in environmental and biological factors?

As a graduate student I worked on how the environment through its control of body size and shell shape, influences biodiversity of deep-sea gastropods. In my first post-doctoral fellowship explored how large-scale deep-sea ecological/evolutionary processes mirrored those found in other systems. And in my current post-doctoral position at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, I am utilizing remote operated vehicles, combined with in situ manipulative experiments, to examine how local scale processes in food availability drive community assemblage and the effects of canyon dynamics on these processes.

You can visit my homepage for more on my research and pdf’s of my papers.

Coryphaenoides armatus arrive to feed on bait (mackerel) set by ROBIO. Photo from here

A recent study by Barry and Drazen (open access)notes that some deep-sea fishes avoid the odor of dead conspecifics. Coryphaenoides armatus, the Pacific grenadier, is a prominent scavenger and typically one of the first fish to arrive at a food fall of a carcass. However, in caging experiments to test the effects of ocean acidification on seafloor organisms, cages where C. armatus died potentially due to cage-related stress, predation, or exposure to acidic waters, did not attract C. armatus. Figure 6 (below) from the paper demonstrates this clearly showing the number of individuals that visit per time unit. At time 0 hours, C. armatus dies in the cage. For over a week (200 hours) there are no visits of C. armatus despite the appearance of other scanvengers (the octopus Bentoctopus sp. and the snubnose eelpout Pachycara bulbiceps).

Why did grenadiers avoid the cage? The authors suggest four possible hypotheses: 1) sensitivity to the acidification experiment, 2) inability to detect a weak odor plume or the odor was unappealing to scavengers, 3) quick departure from inaccessible a carcass (the dead grenadier was caged), and potentially the most interesting 4) avoidance of dead or dying individuals of the same species. 1 is unlikely as grenadiers were present at the initiation of the experiment. 2 is unlikely as other scavengers arrived at the cage. 3 is also unlikely because grenadiers were present at the cage when the original bait placed. Thus the questions is why do grenadiers avoid the dead and dying? One explanation is that the behaviour represents an adaptation to avoid potentially dangerous situations such as predation events, physiological taxing habitats, or diseased individuals.

Perhaps as no shock, oceanography is going to need some more money, about $2-3 billion to be exact. A group of international scientist called the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) says “warming seas, over-fishing and pollution are among profound concerns that must be better measured to help society respond in a well-informed, timely and cost-effective way…A system for ocean observing and forecasting that covers the world’s oceans and their major uses can reduce growing risks, protect human interests and monitor the health of our precious oceans.” So what would we spend all that cash on?

• a stable network of satellites surveying vast extents of the surface of the oceans
• fixed stations taking continuous measurements on the seafloor or as floats and buoys moored in the water column and at the surface
• small robot submarine ocean monitors, some drifting with the currents, others motoring along programmed routes
• marine animals ingeniously outfitted with electronic tags that equip them to capture and transmit data about the environments they visit
• merchant marine and research vessels, opportunistically observing along their routes

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down
The largest known arthropod is now followed by the largest known landslide. 60,000 years ago a submarine landslide off the coast of north-west Africa traveled 1,500 kilometers before dumping 225 billion metric tons of sediment. For perspective, 1,500 km is about the distance from Miami to Memphis and 225 billion tons is the weight of about 45 billion male African elephants. One of the authors, Peter Talling, of the article published in Nature stated “This mass was ten times that transported to the ocean every year by all of the Earth’s rivers. The flow was sometimes over 150 km wide, spread across the open sea floor.”

Caption below under next figure: Image from “Giant claw reveals the largest ever arthropod” (2007), Biology Letters

The arthropods we are familiar with today tend toward the small side compared to the some of the giants found in the fossil record. From the Late Palaeozoic, 2m long millipedes and dragonflies with 75cm wingspans are known. Even marine arthropods obtained large sizes with examples including Ordovician trilobites and Siluro-Devonian eurypterids (sea scorpions). In part the Late Paleozioc pattern might be explained by increased atmospheric oxygen levels. Work on extant groups like arthropods and mollusks seem to support a pattern between oxygen and body size.

A new individual of eurypterid described by Braddy et al. appearing in Biology Letters may shatter the old record of 250cm length of Acutiramus bohemicus. The new individual is a Jackelopterus rehnaniae from the Early Devonian Willwerath Lagerstatte of Germany. The description and estimated length are based on a single discovered claw (chelicera). Using chelicera/total length ratios from two closely related genera, Acutiramus and Pterygotus, the authors estimate the length (without chelicerae) to be between 233-259cm and 333-359 with the additional length of the chelicerae. The tremndous size of such an animal suggests a top predatory position pontentially feeding on other arthropods and early vertebrates (Inverts 1 Verts 0)

From the Telegraph: Markus Poschmann with the giant sea scorpion fossil

P.S. the species was not from the deep sea but rather a reef predator

&Here’s the list beginning with my thoughts. Hopefully the readers can suggest other ideas and revisions with the goal of this being a central archive for active ways to conserve our oceans.

1. Start by eating the right fish or not eating fish at all. This is probably the easiest. You yield the greatest power when you make simple decisions at the table. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch makes this easy with downloadable charts to carry with you for every region in the U.S. With respect to fishing, Conservation Magazine also lists 10 ways to save the ocean. The list is comprised of essays by leading conservationists.
2. Donate a little money to some good advocacy organizations. Oceana and Marine Conservation Biology Institute are my favorites.
3. Give a little money to education. Often overlooked but vital, education inspires and those inspired conserve. One option is to go to Donor’s Choose and pick a marine-based project. Another organization is Ocean’s Wide. It’s mission, to introduce students to marine science through technology, empowers them to learn, grow and thrive through experiential education.
4. Educate yourself. Try a copy of Carl Safina’s Song For a Blue Ocean for both a source of great information and narrative. On the more technical side, Elliot Norse, authors two excellent books, Global Marine Biological Diversity and Marine Conservation Biology. Oceana and MCBI also have several publications free to download.
5. Stop using both fertilizers and pesticides on your gardens and lawns. Whether you live along the coast or in North Dakota it will all make it eventually to the ocean. Nitrogen and phosphorous from fertilizers is likely responsible for the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone at the base of the Mississippi River (Reduce plastic consumption which is since plastics are likely to make into the ocean. Seek out foods and items that have reduced or recyclable packaging. The bonus is that you will also be cutting back on your consumption of petroleum products.
6. Participate in or organize a beach clean up day. Most coastal communities sponsor days through the year to pick up trash at local beaches. If you can’t find one in your community start one.
7. Unless things significantly change, stay off cruise ships. Reason 1, Reason 2, and Reason 3.

Please post additional ideas, revisions, suggestions in the comments below and I will modify the list.