The latest edition of the Accretionary Wedge is up and running at GoodSchist! It is a carnival highlighting some of the month’s excellent blog entries in the Geosciences. This month there is this awesome graphic that explains well the theme. Go there and read all the awesome writing!
Chris at Echinoblog has Part 1 of Xyloplax Chronicles up. For those who don’t know Xyloplax are some of the strangest wee-beasties to inhabit the deep. I could tell you more but Chris is the expert. I should note that I hesitated to link to Chris after I saw him consume several of my molluscan brethren with blatant disregard at dinner two weeks ago. But hey its hard to resist a sea creature batter dipped and deep fried.
by Peter Etnoyer
If you live in Washington DC, or plan to visit within the next 30 years, you’ll have to make time to visit the new Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It’s the most recent addition since the beloved Hall of Mammals opened five years ago. New York Times has a nice perspective piece if you’re interested, but I’m afraid all we’re good for at DSN today is a few pretty pictures.
Don’t let the brevity of this post undermine the significance of the event. The Sant Ocean Hall has been a long time coming. Many curators have come and gone since its original conception.
The bamboo coral in the lower right of the above picture is a gift from me, actually, on behalf of the 2004 Gulf of Alaska Seamount Expedition. The amazing story of the coral’s recovery by Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott is described at the bottom of the page at the NOAA-OE website here.
Images courtesy David Hall, NOAA.
As you know, one-third of Deep Sea News is out on the great wide blue that is the Gulf of Mexico. Peter has been gracious enough to share a few updates with us during his busy time at sea exploring deep coral habitats with a top notch team of deep sea biologists. Peter might have been out to sea a little long though, he starting to go crazy for catsharks! Quick someone slap him with a went giant squid tentacle!
Actually, catsharks have a fascinating intimate relationship with deep-sea coral. Click on the link above to go to a story Peter wrote yesterday for the NOAA Ocean Explorer expedition website. Peter originally reported on the role of deep-sea coral as a nursery for catshark eggs. He provide me with a hot-off-the-camera video taken just a day ago of the catshark in its habitat with its eggs tied to a coral. Check out Peter’s article for more information and pictures!
The love is in deep-sea mud. Maybe you didn’t know this. Now you do. Trust me, I’m an expert. As much as it pains me to say this, the love doesn’t reside with mollusks. The coolness does but the love doesn’t. Love doesn’t reside in the corals. They’re pretty but that only goes so far. You might think love resides in barnacles. But that’s not love, that’s just frightening.
The love resides in bacteria, archaea and the viruses. Microbes rejoice! Your day of recognition has come! This love is big… REALLY big. It’s so much love it just might make your heart explode.
Don’t try to fight it. Viruses are the most abundant biological organisms in the world’s oceans and they love you and all of life. Sure the infect you and their ‘love’ will kill you painfully but it’s love just the same. A new study finds that viruses in deep-sea prevent 80% of prokaryotic heterotrophic production. Ignore that because that is just part of the loving cycle of life. Viral-induced mortality means more organic detritus. It’s the circle of life and it’s beautiful. All that love was quantified and the authors of the study found that between 0.37-0.63 gigatonnes of carbon per year are released. This means that viruses not only have a whole lot of love to give but are major players in the carbon cycle.
Another recent study points to a group we have all ignored for way too long. It happens. You get busy, your forget to call, and then it just seems awkward after the fact. What would you say? We’ve all been there. We’ve all seen When Harry Met Sally. We know how it goes. But maybe it’s time to think about Archaea residing in the ocean buried deep, real deep, in the mud. A new study finds that Archaea dominate the mud deep below the seafloor and under all that water. Globally, the authors estimate that they represent 90 petagrams. That’s the weight of 1500 Great Pyramids or 300 world human populations. You know that’s a lot of love!
Of course all of this reminds me of $240 worth of pudding. You can watch the video below the fold while I listen to some Barry White. Craig dedicates this post to CK who will be the only one who understands.
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Julius S. Lipp, Yuki Morono, Fumio Inagaki, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs (2008). Significant contribution of Archaea to extant biomass in marine subsurface sediments Nature, 454 (7207), 991-994 DOI: 10.1038/nature07174
Roberto Danovaro, Antonio Dell’Anno, Cinzia Corinaldesi, Mirko Magagnini, Rachel Noble, Christian Tamburini, Markus Weinbauer (2008). Major viral impact on the functioning of benthic deep-sea ecosystems Nature, 454 (7208), 1084-1087 DOI: 10.1038/nature07268
The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary will be a little bigger in the near future. Speaking at the Smithsonian’s new Ocean Hall exhibit on Friday, President Bush vowed to proceed with the long-awaited expansion of the sanctuary to include Davidson Seamount.
The is a really exciting time for me as much of my recent research involves characterizing the biological communities and ecological processes at Davidson. Davidson rises 2500m off the seafloor with its summit still 1250m below the ocean’s surface. The seamount is one of the largest in U.S. territorial waters and the first topographic feature to be named a seamount.
Davidson is a wonderful place with relatively pristine communities dominated by fields of corals and groves of sponges. You can visit the MBNMS site for tons of images or read up about the research and monitoring projects occuring here (including mine). Below the fold is a Youtube video that describes Davidson Seamount further.
The trailer above was brought to my attention by Miriam. A Sea Change
"will focus public attention on this urgent but little-known crisis. It follows retired educator and concerned grandfather Sven Huseby back to stunning ancestral sites (Norway, Alaska the Pacific Northwest) where he finds cutting-edge ocean research underway. His journey of self-discovery brings adventure, surprise and revelation to the hard science of acidification.
Niijii Films aims not only to educate viewers about the science of our rapidly-changing oceans, but also to engage them on accessible terms. This film delivers both the data necessary to build credibility with skeptics and also the cultural / spiritual dimensions that will capture the attention of–and motivate–diverse global audiences."
Looking forward to this one! Hopefully it addresses the issues and is more entertaining than that other climate change movie…
By the time you read this DSN* will have reached 1,000,000 total hits. Bwahahahahaha…1 million hits. If every one of those hits were a foot long they would wrap around the Earth 7.6 times. If every one weighed a pound they would be heavier than 17 RMS Titanics. If every one was an acre of land we would could own 3 Antarcticas. Makes one want to light something on fire and sing Kumbaya.
There is only one thing left to do now. Peter, Kevin, and I want to thank you all for your continued interest and reading. Don’t be a lurker and let us know who you are in the comments.
And speaking of singing Kumbaya and setting fire to something, don’t forget to join us tomorrow night at 9pm sharp at Tonic in San Fran Cheezy. Don’t forget to bring your lighter.
*including both our current and former homes.
