Science Corner - Exciting New Collaborations
By Erik Zettler, Science Coordinator and Sarah Piwinski (C-174), Assistant Science Coordinator
Students and crew performing pre-launch diagnostics on an Argo float deployed during S-202.
SEA has a long tradition of collaboration with outside researchers, resulting in more than 40 scientific publications in professional journals since 1974. With major improvements to scientific instrumentation and computers on SEA vessels in the last 5 years, the interest of outside scientists in SEA and our data has increased significantly. Both vessels are now able to provide high-quality data along with numerous ancillary measurements that are logged every minute aboard the vessels. Our CTD archive going back to 1988 is now being submitted to the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC), an on-line archive available to students or any outside researcher.
Neuston net tow, half in and half out of the water to catch surface dwellers in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
Currently SEA is contributing to several projects including Census of Marine Life, described on their website as, “a growing global network of researchers in more than 70 nations engaged in a ten-year initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life in the oceans.” SEA is collecting plankton samples for two Ocean Realm projects in the Census, ICOMM (International Census of Marine Microbes) and CMarZ (Census of Marine Zooplankton). Plankton samples aboard both vessels are preserved in formalin for identification, and alcohol for subsequent DNA extraction at laboratories at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
Dr. Glen Gawarkiewicz at WHOI is using ADCP current data collected by the Corwith Cramer from the Middle Atlantic Bight shelfbreak front. Gravity cores of sediment collected aboard the Corwith Cramer in the Florida Strait and Caribbean passages are being used by paleo-oceanographers to recreate past climate and ocean current conditions.
marine insect Halobates
Students and crew aboard the Robert C. Seamans are launching Argo floats in the Pacific. These floats have a lifetime of about 4 years and are designed to drift at a depth of approximately 2000 meters. About every 10 days, the float automatically ascends to the surface while measuring temperature and salinity. At the surface it broadcasts its position and the data to a satellite, and then descends for another 10 days. The data provides information about deep ocean circulation and the structure of the water column. Dr. Gregory Johnson, an Oceanographer with NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), writes, “As happy as I am to have SEA’s help in deploying floats, I am even happier that SEA students are involved in these deployments. SEA faculty are very enthusiastic about the deployments, noting that they give students a hands-on experience with an element of a global ocean observing system. This personal stake can be used to motivate study of the oceans and their role in climate.”
Both the Seamans and the Cramer are also using new SSBT, solid-state bathyphotometers, designed by Ocean Engineer Paul Fucile of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to measure bioluminescence at different depths in the ocean.
Rindy Osterman (W-36), WHOI researcher, processes a sediment core.
Scientists collaborating directly with SEA include Dr. Michelle Wood, a professor on sabbatical from University of Oregon, and Dr. Lanna Cheng, from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, who will be a visiting scientist at SEA during April. Dr. Wood is a biological oceanographer working with SEA’s Dr. Kara Lavender during the shore and sea components of C203. She is interested in microbial ecology and evolution, particularly using techniques referred to as “optical oceanography” that include fluorescence microscopy and remote sensing. She helped develop some new student projects during the shore component and is now at sea with Dr. Lavender and students in the Caribbean helping with the science program and learning more about SEA’s sampling capabilities.
Dr. Cheng is a world expert on the marine insect Halobates, a water strider often collected in SEA neuston nets and used for student projects. She will be on the SEA campus for a week in April as a Visiting Scientist, and will be giving seminars and a workshop to teach SEA scientists to identify the various species and life-stages of Halobates. SEA oceanographer Dr. Chuck Lea and Assistant Science Coordinator Sarah Piwinski are organizing and analyzing SEA’s archived Halobates samples and, with Dr. Cheng’s help, hope to publish the results of their work.