President Obama fires a marshmallow gun and lets robots roam his White House at the White House Science Fair.

Three-year-old Danielle Fairchild probably can’t grasp the magnitude of what she’s enabled. The little girl adopted by Fred and Dale Fairchild in Duluth, Georgia was born with half a thumb and no fingers on her right hand. Half-way across the country a smart teenager and five other girl scouts were looking for a science and technology project to complete.

Danielle Fairchild Writes with Help of Prosthetic Hand

Dale Fairchild contacted Kate Murray and the troop of The Flying Monkeys and a partnership was born. 13-year old Murray was born with a thumb but no fingers on her left hand. Despite this digital abnormality she took up the violin five years ago using a device that clips to the bow and wraps around her left palm. And she thought she could help someone else learn to write.

Upon hearing about little Danielle The Flying Monkeys flew into action, learning all they could about prosthetic limbs, talking to doctors and learning how to build one from scratch.

Fast forward to February 7 as Kate Murray, Gaby Dempsey and Mackenzie Gewell present their prosthetic hand device to President Obama in the White House at the second White House Science Fair.

As the President held the BOB-1.2 plastic device in his hand, he said, “This is outstanding.”

President Obama Pumps Air Cannon at White House Science Fair

The Flying Monkeys won a $20,000 Innovation award from For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Lego League. FIRST is the non-profit organization started by inventor Dean Kamen, who famously brought us the Segway. And for Murray a trip to the White House is “super exciting.”

She says, “I want to be a mechanical engineer when I grow up. I want to design cars to be more fuel efficient and/or rely entirely on wind or solar energy.”

14-year old Joey Hudy unwittingly stole the show providing spectacular photo opportunities as President Obama listened the story about how the Phoenix teen built his marshmallow air gun from PVC pipe with the help of employees at his local Home Depot. Then he asked if the device was operational and decided on the spot that the two should fire it together.

The President asked that everyone in the line of fire move back because this was an improvised activity while strolling through the student exhibits and talking to the winners of over 40 science fairs and competitions.

Joey Hudy with President Obama Impressed by Power to Shoot a Marshmallow Missile

When the gun popped, press cameras clicked wildly and they caught the child-like wonderment in the eyes of the President, which encapsulated the entire White House science fair.

Clearly, the President was impressed by the caliber of projects presented and the students themselves. He said, “Now, as I was walking around the science fair, I was thinking back to when I was your age. And basically, you guys put me to shame.”

President Obama lauded the whip smart students and their clever projects. But he was struck by something more.

He said, “It’s the fact that you recognize that you’ve got a responsibility to use your talents in service to something bigger than yourselves.”

He said some students will develop new products that change the way we live. He pointed out Hayley Hoverter, the winner of the 2011 Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s National Challenge. The 16-year-old Los Angeles resident invented a flavorless, colorless sugar packet that dissolves in hot water.

About her invention the President said, “It could potentially save up to two million pounds of trash each year — and that’s just at Starbucks.” Mastercard gave the teen $10,000 to turn her concept into a working business.

Next the President said that some students will see a problem in their town or city and do something about it. After 14-year old Benjamin Hylak was worried that seniors in nursing homes would get lonely he built a robot attached to a computer monitor. His telepresence robot which moves around the center and allows seniors to connect via Skype with their family and friends qualified him as a BROADCOM Masters Competition 2011 finalist.

Angela Zhang Explains Her Nanoparticle Cancer Treatment

President Obama said, “Inventions like Benjamin’s could make life better for millions of families.”

The same holds for the three representatives from California.

Angela Zhang of Cupertino, who has proposed a potential cure for cancer. This year, she won a $100,000 grand prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for her nanoparticle cancer treatment. She says, “I keep saying 60 years from now I will probably be telling my grandkids everything that happened when I was 17.”

Hayley Hoverter of Los Angeles, who developed sugar packets that dissolve in hot drinks is the now the 16-year old CEO of Sweet (dis)SOLVE. She spoke at TEDx SoCal last year.

Neil de Grasse Tyson with Braeden Benedict at White House Science Fair

Braeden Benedict of Ranchos Palos Verdes designed a device to detect concussions in athletes after one of his football teammates experienced prolonged concussion symptoms and had to stop playing contact sports. The 15-year old designed a helmet-mounted sensory detector that turns red when an athlete is hit hard enough to cause a concussion.

He took the top prize in America’s 2011 Top Young Scientist competition at the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge where he won $25,000 for his efforts.

The President spoke of the adversity several groups of students overcame just to be at the science fair. A rocketry team from Presidio, Texas came from the 4th poorest school district in the nation where most students speak English as a second language. Parents raised money to help the students make the trip to Washington D.C. Mr. Obama said they even sold a goat to make the journey to the White House.

He applauded the winners of the Michigan Regional Contest of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition. Three Detroit students imagined a clean energy future for their city and while they were doing so their school burned down, forcing them to merge with another school while they completed their project. The team said, “(Future City) helps me make a better city to live in.” They designed there vision around a city following the theme of “Fuel Your Future: Imagine New Ways to Meet Our Energy Needs and Maintain a Healthy Planet.”

Samantha Garvey Tells President Obama about Mussels

The President also acknowledged 18-year old Samantha Garvey, who has spent a lot of time with the President lately. The high school senior from New York made headlines after winning a spot in the semi-finals of the Intel science talent search. But more than her ingenious project studying mussel predation on Long Island she captured the attention of America because when she found out she was a semi-finalist she was homeless.

Since then she has appeared on television and sat in the First Lady’s box at the State of the Union Address last month. At the White House science fair the President announced that the teen would like to work for NOAA or EPA some day. Pointing at them he said, “This is Dr. Lubchenco. She is the head of NOAA. Lisa Jackson, right there, head of EPA. You might, you know, just want to hook up with them before you leave.”

The President said that all the students who participated in the science fair inspired him. He said, “It’s young people like you who make me so confident that America’s best days are still to come.”

President Obama Tells Science Fair Students They Are Paving the Way to the Future

Dale Fairchild says that before The Flying Monkey’s created BOB-1 for little Danielle to use as she learns to write the toddler used her right hand like a flipper. But after the molded plastic device arrived, complete with a Vel-cro(TM) strap to attached a plastic pencil holder, the girl began using her fingerless hand to pick things up.

The teen engineers have never met Danielle Fairchild but their prosthetic hand device is going through the expensive and lengthy patent process, placing the teen inventors on track to help many more people besides the little girl in Georgia.

C-SPAN coverage of President Obama’s speech to the White House Science Fair, Feb. 7, 2012. (15:13)

When legendary marine biologist Sylvia Earle started exploring the ocean 50 years she couldn’t fathom anything people could do to hurt the pristine blue waters that dominate the globe. In her 2009 TED Prize talk she says, “Then, not Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cousteau or Rachel Carson could imagine we could do anything to harm the ocean by what we put into it or what we took out of it.”

Back then, she says the leading oceanographic minds considered the world’s ocean to be a sea of Eden. But now she says, “We are facing a paradise lost.”

As the recipient of a TED Prize, she called upon the world to recognize that we have fished 90 percent of the big fish in the last 50 years. We are losing sharks, squid, blue fin tuna and other species at a rapid rate. There are dead zones appearing in the oceans that affect not just the animals and plants that call it home but all of us.

She says, “I hope for you help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and in so doing secure hope for human kind. Health to the ocean means health for us. And I hope Jill Tarter’s wish to engage Earthlings like us includes dolphins, whales and other sea creatures in this quest to look for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And I hope Jill that we will find evidence one day that there is intelligent life among humans on this planet.”

She says, “Nothing else will matter if we fail to protect the ocean. Our fate and the ocean are one.”

As the winner of a TED Prize, Dr. Earle received $100,000 and a wish to change the world.

Young Sea Turtle Swims in Sea of Plastic

After her inspiring talk the work to fulfill her wish began immediately. VeriSign (the web encryption software) founder Addison Fischer gave $1 million to fund a project which grew into Mission Blue Voyage. The TED Prize team worked with Fischer and other offers to build on Earle’s wish.

Then just 14 months after she made her wish Sylvia Earle led a four-day Galapagos sea-voyage of 100 peopleLeonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, Steve Case, Ted Waitt, Bill Joy, Jackson Browne, Damien Rice, Chevy Chase, Jean-Michel Cousteau and 30 of the world’s leading marine scientists.

That’s where Jackson Browne began thinking about the role of the ocean in our lives and that connection to Sylvia Earle and her TED wish prompted him to go on to write his song, If I Could Be Anywhere.

Browne says he started the song on the Galapagos trip but finished it the night before presenting at TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch in November 2010.

His song grew out of a talk that Jeremy Jackson gave on the trip. Browne says, “When he said we need to change who we are I really got that.” He says we are going to have to eat differently, consume differently and travel differently because business as usual is hurting the planet and the ocean in particular.

Since that trip Browne, who has long been a supporter of the environment and social movements (including Occupy Wall Street) has begun touring on a bus powered by biodiesel and he has banned all disposable plastic backstage at his concerts.

He says, “I’m committed to carry as much of what I’ve learned here and heard here back into my everyday life and my work.”

Huffington Post Interview with Jackson Browne aboard the National Geographic Endeavor, April 2010.

Plastic in the Ocean

In 2010 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute published a 22-year study that found a huge amount of plastic accumulation in the western North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea in addition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch we’ve been hearing about for years. In this study, the researchers examined their haul of 6136 surface plankton net tows between 1986 and 2008. During that time they found over 60 percent of them contained some plastic. Students sifted through and hand-picked the millimeter-sized fragments with tweezers. They collected over 64,000 pieces in total.

So plastic does break down in the ocean. Generally it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces until plastic particles resemble jellyfish food, plankton or even grains of sand. And over 400 years the material does degrade fully. But in the meantime it is contributing to the deaths of albatrosses on low-lying atolls. It is killing turtles and other surface-dwelling creatures who get tangled or just slurp up some plastic with a fish they are eating. Larger plastic gets lodged in animal throats while babies often get fed plastic by their mothers which leads them to starve since there is no nutritional value in plastic.

Five Ocean Gyres and Home of Five Global Garbage Patches

After learning about the gyres and the vast amount of plastic pollution, Jackson Browne was moved to sing about the dire straits of the ocean.

If I Could Be Anywhere

Music and Lyrics by: Jackson Browne

Sliding through the shimmering surface between two worlds
Standing at the centre of time as it uncurls
Cutting through a veil of illusion
Moving beyond past conclusions
Wondering if all my doubt and confusion will clear

If I could be anywhere,
If I could be anywhere
If I could be anywhere right now, I would want to be here

Searching for the future among the things we’re throwing away
Trying to see the world through the junk we produce every day
They say nothing lasts forever,
But all the plastic ever made is still here
No amount of closing our eyes will make it disappear

If I could be anywhere,
If I could be anywhere
If I could be anywhere in history, I would want to be here

The Romans, the Spanish, the British, the Dutch
American exceptionalism, so out of touch
The folly of empire, repeating its course
Imposing its will and ruling by force
On and on through time

But the world can’t take it, very much longer
We’re not gonna make it, unless we’re smarter and stronger
The world is gonna shake itself free of our greed somehow

If I could be anywhere,
If I could be anywhere in time
If I could be anywhere and change things, it would have to be now.

They say nothing lasts forever,
but all the plastic ever made is still here
No amount of closing our eyes will make it disappear

And the world can’t take it, very much longer
It’s not gonna make it, ‘less we’re smarter and stronger
The world is gonna shake itself free of our greed somehow

And the world can’t take it, that you can see
If the oceans don’t make it, neither will we
The world is gonna shake itself all the way free somehow

If I could be anywhere, If I could be anywhere in time
If I could be anywhere and change the outcome, it would have to be now.

Beaches along the coasts of Washington and Oregon are treasure troves of flotsam for avid beachcombers. But one scientist says that what’s on its way to the west coast is unprecedented and those areas are totally unprepared.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer is a self-proclaimed expert on manmade stuff that floats the ocean blue. He even wrote the book on it, called Flotsametrics and the Floating World.

Now he says the first evidence of what could be 20 million tons of debris from coastal Japan is beginning to arrive. After the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastated the eastern coast of Japan last March, cars, houses, people and their belongings were swept out to sea. Still over 20,000 people are dead or reported missing.

Ebbesmeyer says, “We are not prepared for this. Nobody is prepared. Nobody has even thought through the dimensions.”

And prepared or not, the floating field of debris is on its way. A buoy that landed on a beach in northwest Washington may be the first evidence of the flotsam storm that’s brewing at sea.

3 Japanese Buoy Types Washing Ashore from Oregon to Alaska, Photo by John Ingraham

He estimates that 25 percent will sink as it floats along ocean currents. Another 25 percent could reach the west coast of the U.S. and Canada. Probably another 25 percent will enter into the Pacific Gyre and return to Japan but not for about six years. The rest will likely pass by Hawaii on the way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where it will join plastic refuse from all over the world.

The Path of Japan's Earthquake and Tsunami Debris As It Moves from Japan towards the U.S. West Coast. Click on the image to see the animation.

He says, “There’s never been a devastation on one continent that has moved off to the other continent and actually recorded.”

Because of the nuclear accident that followed the earthquake and tsunami, Ebbesmeyer is concerned that some of the Japanese flotsam could carry radioactive material.

Nir Barnea from NOAA says there is little cause for alarm. He expects most of what washes up on Washington and Oregon beaches to be lumber and some household items. He says, “We don’t expect any debris items that are exotic or unusual.”

But beachcombers are always looking for those unusual items. Frequently Japanese fishing floats wash ashore in Washington after a big storm. If and when beachcombers find any Japanese items they can report the finds to Ebbesmeyer who is tracking the arrivals online.

The big west coast arrival wasn’t expected for about two years. In October a Russian cargo ship spotted boats, refrigerators and large pieces of homes near the Midway Islands about 1,700 miles from Hawaii and about 300 miles further east than expected.

NASA Projects Debris Field Track

That sighting forced scientists to revise their estimates down from five years to two. The Japanese flotsam patch is roughly twice the size of Texas and heading on a direct course with the Washington and Oregon coast traveling at about 7 miles per hour.

Ebbesmeyer says get ready because lighter weight items like the black buoy that washed ashore near Neah Bay, WA will get to the U.S. faster. He says that if the items ride high in the water, are lightweight and have a lot of area exposed to wind, they can travel up to 20 miles per hour. That means some items from Japan could begin landing on beaches as early as next year.

Ebbesmeyer believes the debris landing area will be more spread out than predicted. He thinks beaches from southern Alaska to California will see personal items from broken Japanese lives.

And at a December 13 meeting he said, “All debris should be treated with a great reverence and respect.”

He adds, “As of December 30, 2011, beachcombers reported more than 23 buoys from 17 locations scattered between central Oregon to Kodiak Alaska. He even says that a woman named Jody Godoy traced the writing on one buoy to an oyster farm along the tsunami-ravaged coast.

Ebbesmeyer is a retired oceanographer who has tracked ice bergs, oil from the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and sewage outflow into Washington state’s Puget Sound. But he is known as the founder of Beachcombers Alert where he and his team track things that float, including tennis shoes, rubber duckies and messages in bottles.

Samantha Garvey wants to be a marine biologist and the science-focused 17 year old is now one of 61 finalists from Long Island in the Intel Science & Engineering Fair for her pioneering work with mussels.

But the real story of this scientist-in-training is that she is able to excel in the classroom as an honor’s student without all the creature comforts of home. In fact, the teen and her family are homeless and living in a shelter on Long Island, New York.

Both of her parents were unable to work following a car accident. As a result of falling behind on their rent, the family was evicted from their apartment on December 31. After advancing to the Intel finals, this science rags to riches story garnered national attention and a community banded together to get the family a house.

Samantha Garvey, Intel Science Fair Finalist

Now the science. The enterprising Samantha has been studying inedible marsh mussels for the last two years. But a nagging question kept eating at her and prompted her investigation, which she entered into the Intel science competition. She was studying how mussels settle in salt marshes and noticed mussel concentrations appeared to be higher in areas where there were more crabs, one of the mussels’ primary predators.

She tells Good Day New York, “I thought this was weird. How are they surviving in areas where they are being preyed upon?”

Thinking that observation runs counter to what she would expect she did a little experiment, studying mussels in areas of low and high crab predation. She discovered that that mussel shells were actually thicker in super crabby areas and a bit thinner in less crabby waters.

So she tested her theory by putting crabs and mussels together to see what would happen. She discovered that the mussels adapted to the threat by increasing the thickness of their shells.

Garvey says, “I discovered when you expose a crab to a mussel, they grew thicker, heavier shells to defend themselves.”

Hoping to be selected from 1,500 finalists from 65 countries as a $100,000 scholarship winner of the Intel science competition, Garvey intends to study marine biology at either Brown or Yale, her top two picks for her undergraduate studies. From there she would like to continue studying invasive species.

Full interview (6:54) with Samantha Garvey on Good Day New York. Greg finds out why there are holes in mussels at restaurants.

Recently scientists in Australia discovered that two species of sharks are interbreeding. The common black-tip shark and the Australian black-tip shark have started producing hybrid sharks. Marine biologists in Queensland say they’ve found 57 sharks so far.

The common black-tip shark is found around the world in subtropical and temperate ocean waters while the smaller Australian black-tip shark is more suited to warmer, tropical waters. The combination of the two species — which is extremely unusual — could be a response to climate change.

Lead researcher Jess Morgan of the University of Queensland says, “If it [the Australian black-tip species] hybridizes with the common species it can effectively shift its range further south into cooler waters, so the effect of this hybridizing is a range expansion. It’s enabled a species restricted to the tropics to move into temperate waters.”

The team confirmed the cross-breeding through DNA analysis. The team found the 57 hybrid sharks along 1,250 miles of coastline on the east coast of Australia.

Jennifer Ovenden, one of the co-authors on the paper, which appears in the journal Conservation Genetics says, Hybridization could enable the sharks to adapt to environmental change as the smaller Australian black tip currently favors tropical waters in the north while the larger common black tip is more abundant in sub-tropical and temperate waters along the south-eastern Australian coastline.”

Morgan says, “You’re seeing evolution in action.” Mixing two species of animals like this increases its chance of survival. Animals start interbreeding when their existence is threatened. By combining genetics, these sharks become stronger, making them more able to withstand changes to their environment.

In 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began monitoring the Arctic region, creating an annual report card to mark rapid change occurring there. Five years in and the news isn’t good.

The 2011 Arctic Report Card shows that the entire region is changing dramatically. Ice, both on land and at sea, is melting at record pace. That is upsetting the Earth’s albedo, allowing more of the sun’s energy to be absorbed by dark, open water and not be reflected back to space as it bounces off snow and ice.

2011 Arctic Sea Ice Extent, courtesy of NOAA Arctic Report Card

According to the report card, “The 2011 minimum is the second lowest, only 0.16 million km2 greater than the 2007 record minimum.” Overall, the 2011 minimum reached on September 9 was 31% (2.08 million km2) smaller than the 1979-2000 average. The report says, “The last five summers (2007-2011) have experienced the five lowest minima in the satellite record, and the past decade (2002-2011) has experienced nine of the ten lowest minima.”

All of the newly exposed water is allowing atmospheric carbon dioxide to sink into the Arctic waters and it is changing the chemical makeup of the ocean. As a result, the Chukchi and Beaufort seas have lower pH values. In other words the waters are becoming more acidic, which makes it difficult for tiny sea animals that rely on calcium carbonate shells to survive. The higher acid level makes shell formation more difficult.

The report card says, “The increased amount of open water enhanced the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere and the freshening of the upper ocean decreased alkalinity, inorganic carbon and calcium ion concentrations.” The melting sea ice exposed more water to the open air, allowing more atmospheric carbon dioxide to sink in the ocean, making the ocean more acidic. The report notes, “Although CO2 concentration in surface waters in 2010 and 2011 was not as high as in 2008, these waters have continued to be undersaturated with respect to aragonite.” By monitoring the aragonite levels scientists can determine if phytoplankton is having trouble forming shells.

In addition to watching the ocean and the atmosphere change, NOAA also monitors shorter term weather patterns and tracks the impact they have on the Arctic region as a whole. And the last few years, pressure over the North Pole shifted, pushing the coldest Arctic air far south to the United States and Europe while warmer air filtered over Greenland, rapidly speeding up the melt rate of glaciers there.

For the first time, the 2011 Arctic Report Card measured changes in Greenland. As a result of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) switching from positive to negative, caused unusually warm weather during Winter 2010-2011 and last summer. Those weather conditions in turn sped up the melt rate from the Greenland ice sheet.

The report says, “The area and duration of melting at the surface of the ice sheet in summer 2011 were the third highest since 1979.” According to satellite data, the Greenland ice sheet melted to its third lowest point since 1979 when record keeping began. Only 2010 and 2007 exceeded that ice loss.

NOAA principal deputy under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere Monica Medina says, “This report, by a team of 121 scientists from around the globe, concludes that the Arctic region continues to warm, with less sea ice and greater green vegetation.”

Using a familiar image of a stoplight, NOAA classified the five chapters of the report card according to level of change. The findings show that Atmosphere, Sea Ice & Ocean, Hydrology & Terrestrial Cryosphere have experienced significant change while Marine Ecosystems and Terrestrial Ecosystems have experienced some change. No coverage area received a greenlight, meaning little or no change.

The Report Card tracks the Arctic atmosphere, sea ice, biology, ocean, land, and Greenland. This year, new sections were added, including, greenhouse gases, ozone and ultraviolet radiation, ocean acidification, Arctic Ocean primary productivity, and lake ice.

It concludes, “Sea ice and ocean observations over the past decade (2001-2011) suggest that the Arctic Ocean climate has reached a new state, with characteristics different than those observed previously.”

And, “In 2011 there was continued widespread warming in the Arctic, where deviations from historical air temperatures are amplified by a factor of two or more relative to lower latitudes. This phenomenon, called Arctic Amplification, is primarily a consequence of increased summer sea ice loss and northward transport of heat by the atmosphere and ocean.”

For seven million years at least 80 ancient whale skeletons have been preserved in the high desert of Chile. Now a road project threatens the ancient burial ground. But developers of the new highway project have given scientists another month to remove and study as much of the area as they can.

Whale Fossils Lie Exposed Next to Pan American Highway

3D modelers and paleontologists from the Smithsonian have been on site in Chile trying to gather as much data as they can before the highway expansion project resumes in Copiapo near the city of Caldera in the northern part of Chile.

Site manager John Vega says, “In 15 days, we have had almost 15 whales. It really was a surprise. We didn’t expect to find so many fossils in one place.”

Overlapping Whale Fossils

Palaeontologist Sol Squire says, “The whale discovery is a discovery of global importance. There has never been a find of this size or diversity anywhere in the world, which is one of the very special parts of Atacama region.”

Smithsonian Team Stands Over Whale Fossil

Other groups of prehistoric whales have been found together in Peru and Egypt, but the Chilean fossils stand out for their staggering number and beautifully preserved bones. Over 20 of the 80 skeletons are nearly intact, something that is crucial for new research and to determine how the animals all ended up in the same area.

That is the top question on the mind of Suarez, the director of the local Paleontological Museum in nearby Caldera. He is focused on how the this group of aquatic animals which died between two and seven million years ago wound up over 1,200 feet above sea level on top of a desert hill, about 40 miles from the nearest beach.

In addition to ancient whales, the team found an extinct aquatic sloth, an ancient seabird with a wingspan of over 17 feet, and the fossil remains of an unusual tusked dolphin that had previously been unearthed only in Peru.

First Whale Fossil Unearthed in August 2010

A vertebrate paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia told the Associate Press that the well-preserved and relatively complete fossil bed provides a “rare combination in paleontology and one that will likely shed light on many facets of the ecology and evolution of these extinct species.”

It turns out the Dead Sea isn’t so dead after all. Microscopic life is thriving in the super salty environment, according to new findings by a German and Israeli team of scientists. They found new species of life in freshwater fissures in the seafloor.

Fresh, bubbling water containing the ingredients to support life in harsh environments has revealed new types of microorganisms never before seen. Scientists aren’t sure if the organisms have adapted to the salty environment or to the freshwater. Their research in that area is just beginning.

Danny Lonescu from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany led a team of ten researchers who camped along the shores of the Dead Sea and did daily dives to locate the source of freshwater discharge.

They noticed ripples near shore indicating that something was bubbling up. When they dove to investigate they found a set of springs. After analyzing the water in a makeshift lab, they found micro bits of life, which was thought to be impossible in the Dead Sea. Even during the dives, the high salt content in the water burned the divers and forced them to take extra precautions. Prevailing scientific wisdom says that no life can thrive in this harsh, salty environment.

Since the 1930s scientists knew about freshwater springs and algae in the Dead Sea but the conditions made it almost impossible for scientific divers. So few have been able to see what lurks below the surface until now.

Christian Lott, a biologist and underwater photographer on the team says, “The interesting thing is normally the Dead Sea is thought to be dead… but here we have a huge variety of life forms that can exist in [these] adverse conditions.”

He marvels at hardiness of the extremophiles that inhabit the Dead Sea.

Dr. Lott says, “After a week of diving we get burns, we get bruises, our skin is getting bad and these bugs just live right there – they love it, it’s heaven for them.”

Just as the scientists have made this discovery, they are worried that evaporation of the land-locked sea will spoil their find. Every year the Dead Sea recedes by about 3.3 feet.

Dive with Christian Lott into the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth.

Surfers are a group of ocean super users. They spend a great deal of time in the water and on top of the waves. They notice slight variations. And they depend on a clean, safe environment to catch a wave and hang ten. As a result they are first responders when it comes to anything encroaching on their territory.

In Hawaii, development stands in the way of surfers chilling in the swells near the Kewalo Basin. Now a group of surfers that has failed to stop a big development project are going to measure the health of the water before construction so there will be a scientific baseline for them to compare. For the Friends of Kewalos, it’s a way to say “I told you so” in advance.

Working with Bob Richmond at the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory, the group bought a $2,000 instrument to measure temperature, salinity, acidity, oxygen levels and dissolved solids. They will continue to take readings regularly to monitor any changes that occur as a result of planned construction to increase the size of the marina.

Dr. Richmond says, “This is all information that really matters for the life in the ocean and also the people who are surfing in the ocean as well.”

Some surfers are worried that a bunch of “stuff” will get dredged up when construction begins and that will foul the crystal blue water where they like to surf. Ron Iwami says, “We figure during construction all the nasty things at the bottom will flow out and go out where we surf.”

Dr. Richmond sees the surfers as a valuable asset and one that has a vested interest in the outcome of this data collection.

Hawaii surfers aren’t the only ones monitoring the world’s waters.

The Surfrider Foundation tracks more than 60 campaigns surfers have going in the U.S. and Canada to make sure the ocean stays surf safe.

Ranging from water monitoring projects in Hawaii to fighting against plastic pollution, surfers are taking an active role in watching out for their waves.

Since 2006 the organization claims 172 victories. While some of those “victories” are to stop utilities from dumping waste or banning oil drilling in surfing waters, many wins involve getting local laws passed to ban plastic bags at grocery stores or to ban Styrofoam food containers.

The organization says it is trying to raise awareness about single-use plastics and clean water.

Ask any surfer and he will tell you the ocean is undergoing a seismic shift. Jellyfish swarms are becoming more common. Algal blooms are turning clear waters murky and choking the oxygen from the water when they die. Oceans are heating up and animal habitats are shifting. There is so much going on in the oceans and just not enough scientists to monitor all the changes.

U.S. surf champion Mary Setterholm says, “Surfing is being in harmony with the ocean.”

With such an intimate relationship with the water, surfers are among the best positioned to watch for significant changes in their surf spots. Perhaps it’s time they start documenting those changes as part of a global ocean change surfer network.

Surf’s up. Now let’s help keep it that way.

A couple of years ago San Diego surfers faced a fouling problem. But theirs was from garbage not construction. Surfers were offered free hepatitis A vaccines because runoff from Mexico and other waste from north of the border was making surfing downright dangerous. Doctors in 2009 warned that the hepatitis levels were high enough to make surfers sick.

Tropical Storm Lee pushed high surf into Gulf of Mexico beaches but not messy oil from the British Petroleum spill last year. And it also put predictions to the test. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill last year oil looming offshore has hardened and sunk to the seafloor where it has formed giant tar mats, which have been difficult to locate.

During tropical weather pieces of those mats break off and get churned in the surf and formed into balls. Those tar balls roll ashore and collect on the white sand beaches of Alabama and Mississippi and Florida.

In Gulf Shores, Alabama tar balls are just part of the beach flotsam and jetsam. Tourists and locals alike don’t appear bothered by them, many not even realizing they are washing ashore.

Local authorities say that they have been a constant presence on Alabama beaches since the oil spill in April 2010.

At Orange Beach however, the tar balls are as big as baseballs and litter the pristine looking sand. Again, authorities say it’s not as bad as it could be.

They know that the tar mats are out there but BP hasn’t been able to find them. Instead, they opt for tropical storms and hurricanes to break up the offshore oil and send it to the beaches where clean up crews can manage the removal more easily.

The black and brown tar balls are being sent to Auburn University for testing to see if they are indeed from the BP oil spill. So far the company isn’t taking responsibility for them but they are helping to clean up the beaches along Lee’s path.

Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon says most of the tar balls there were very small, the size of a fingernail. Still a few people walking barefoot on the beach found their feet covered in sticky crude oil when they returned to hotels and condos nearby.

The Associated Press talked to Connie Harris of Alabaster, Ala. who was staying at a Gulf Shores condominium over Labor Day weekend. She says, “When we walked on the beach, we had tar on our feet.”

A spokesman for the City of Gulf Shores says that this year isn’t as bad a last when oil and tar covered gulf coast beaches. But he says, “It confirms our fear that there are tar mats just offshore and that we may have more tar coming in whenever there’s a storm.”

At the end of July city spokesman Grant Brown says a 1,500-foot by 30-foot tar mat as much as 18-inches thick exposed itself just west of Little Lagoon Pass just off the water’s edge in Gulf Shores.

So far Brown says that between 3 and 3.5 miles of tar mats have been recovered and cleaned up. But because there are daily tar ball sightings he presumes there is still a lot of oil just offshore.

BP has 250 people working in the field along Alabama beaches in strike teams who respond when tar mats reveal themselves or tar balls wash ashore. Generally the big balls start rolling on shore about three days after a big storm.

Federal cleanup authorities claim there is a plan for handling oil-stained debris if tropical storm surge pushes gloppy oil onto local shores. But officials in Alabama’s coastal communities say they haven’t yet been briefed on the details of that plan.

Philip West, the Orange Beach Coastal Resource Manager says, “We have to expect that there could be significant amounts of tar that will create issues and complicate the debris cleanup effort if we have a storm. We hope we don’t have one, but you have to plan for it.”

Tropical Storm Lee didn’t kick up the environmental crisis some had thought but it did remind gulf coast residents that though the beaches look clear again the BP spill isn’t over yet.

It’s not your average Top 10 list. In fact there are a lot more killer creatures on adventurer Steve Backshall’s World’s 60 Deadliest Animals list. And he is traveling the world in search of the creative ways critters kill each other.

The Nat Geo Wild channel airs the show, which follows Backshall around the world. He gets nipped by stellar sea lions before a pod of killer whales comes to interrupt the party. He gets punched by a mountain gorilla and pokes an alligator. Obviously, he doesn’t recommend trying anything he does at home.

But some of the cousins to the creatures he examines can be found right in our own backyards including, skunks and killer bees.

As he says, “If you are a small animal then yeah everything else wants to eat you.” He decided to go head to head with the top predators to show the purity and majesty of nature. But it’s likely the many close encounters he has had with some of the deadliest that inspired the show in the first place.

Steve Backshall with Jessica the Hippo in South Africa

Steve took a video camera and moved to the jungle of Colombia where he wrangled snakes and ultimately became National Geographic’s Adventurer in Residence after selling his video to them. From there he began traveling the world on expeditions which led to a couple of other wild animal shows, including a stint at the BBC.

Some of his career highlights — sharing a beach with 75,000 nesting olive ridley turtles, having a baby mountain gorilla take him by the hand, and having a red-eyed tree frog leap into his face on camera. He has scaled jungle mountains only to explore giant sinkholes and he has discovered never-before-seen creatures high atop a craggy Venezuelan mountain. The list goes on an on and on.

According to the his Deadliest 60 bio, “He’s been squirted with ink by Humboldt squid, flirted with by tarantula, assaulted by giant arapaima fish, stared out by thresher and great hammerhead sharks, mugged by pink river dolphins, and charged by elephants, but still maintains that wild animals pose no threat to people.”

But he started out as an English and Theatre (he’s British) major who moved to Japan to become a black belt in Karate, teach English and work as a model. Soon after he began writing for the Rough Guides travel book series before finding his niche as a television adventurer.

For those not looking for more than arm-chair danger this weekend, there is a World’s 60 Deadliest marathon on Labor Day on Nat Geo Wild.

Hurricane Irene was never a wind maker. Just ask any meteorologist tracking the storm since it began developing. But it was big, even for a hurricane. At one point Irene stretched over 610 miles across and hovered over half of the eastern seaboard as it roared up the U.S. Atlantic coast Saturday and Sunday. But the storm never developed a strong eye-wall so dangerous winds didn’t cause the widespread damage they could have.

Hurricane Irene was all about the water. The widespread flooding from New Jersey to Vermont places Irene in the hurricane history books. Vermont is still assessing the damage but is already blaming Tropical Storm Irene for the worst flooding in over a century. Roads in one town washed away turning the the town into an island. Babbling brooks turned into raging torrents that ripped through quaint New England villages, wiping out historic covered bridges and carrying cars, buildings and other debris away in the rapids.

Supersoaker

Rain totals are still coming in but this storm was a soaker. And soggy ground made it easier for the strong winds to knock down big trees. So far 30 people lost their lives in seven states, mostly from being crushed by trees. Dozens are still missing.

As the hurricane tracked north from the Bahamas, forecasters warned the largest number of people in U.S. history to prepare for the tropical onslaught. In all 65 million people lay in the path of the mammoth storm. Major populations centers, including Washington D.C., New York, Philadelphia and Boston were all put on high alert and evacuations began days ahead of the storm’s arrival.

In the end, the worst case scenario didn’t bear out in Washington D.C. or New York where fears of coastal flooding and damaging winds prompted airports to close and trains to suspend service. The subways were halted in case storm surge pushed rivers over their banks and into the transit systems. Though Irene wasn’t as bad as she could have been, five million people are still without power.

While forecasters accurately predicted the storm’s track and even figured out its timing it missed when it came to determining Irene’s intensity. For as much as scientists know about hurricanes that is the biggest remaining scientific uncertainty. In the last 20 years the ability to track a storm’s path has improved greatly but that doesn’t mean forecasters know ahead of the hurricane making landfall what it will do.

Hurricane Irene was no different. The storm came ashore in the outer banks of North Carolina as predicted as a strong Category 1 storm, giving all indications that it would stay organized and pick up intensity as it returned to sea before making landfall a second time in Virginia and Maryland.

But somewhere in North Carolina it hit a dry patch of air which sucked some of the power from the hurricane, which was then downgraded to a weaker Category 1 as it set its sights on Washington D.C. It tore flags on federal buildings to shreds, downed trees and powerlines but left the U.S. capital relatively unscathed.

Then Irene began to bear down on New York City. A direct hit from a hurricane poses big problems for the 9 million people who live in the low-lying city surrounded by water. Storm surge from a storm like Irene is enough to push rivers over their banks, flooding large sections of lower Manhattan. To make matters worse, Irene was on track to hit New York about high tide.

But the real fear though was high winds. As it churned in the warm Caribbean it grew into a strong Category 3 hurricane. If Irene had roared into Manhattan that strong officials predicted that skyscraper windows would shatter and litter the streets with glass. Fortunately, the wind wasn’t the problem in New York but water was, even though it wasn’t even as wet as it could have been.

The Battery Park and East Village neighborhoods of Manhattan saw significant flooding as did parts of Brooklyn and Queens. So Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to evacuate 300,000 New Yorkers from coastal areas appears to have been the right one.

Across the swollen river, New Jersey also experienced significant flooding. Some towns there may not get power for at least a week.

After Irene left the New York area as a tropical storm, the east coast seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief. And then reports of people stranded upstate began to filter in as Irene made her way through New England.

By far Vermont fared the worst, getting the lion’s share of the flooding. Partly because of a wet summer, the ground was already saturated, leaving the inches of rain that Irene dropped with nowhere to go. It pooled and poured into brooks and streams, turning them into raging rivers.

Here are some of the rain totals.
Bunyan, North Carolina–15.66 inches
New Bern, Williamston, Washington and Greenville, North Carolina–12+ inches
Suffolk and Newland, Virginia–11 inches.
Maryland cities of Plum Point–12.96 inches, Easton–11.34 inches and Hickman–10.5 inches
Tuxedo Park, New York–12 inches
Ellendale and Adamsville, Delaware–10+ inches each
Stockton and Wayne, New Jersey–10+ inches
Berlin, Vermont–10 inches
Savoy, Massachusetts–9+ inches
Lakewood, New Jersey–8.27 inches
Burlington and East Hartford, Connecticut–8+ inches
Philadelphia–6 inches (on top of 13 inches for the month of August where 3 inches is average)

Even before Irene dropped any rain on the mid-Atlantic states, August had already been a record-setting soggy month.

Here are the rainfall totals for the month following the storm, according to AccuWeather.com. New York City (18.95 inches), Newark (18.79 inches), Trenton (14.85 inches) and Philadelphia (19.31 inches), all have set new records for the wettest month on record, thanks in part to Irene.

Some hurricane dynamics

Hurricanes start as tropical depressions, generally blown off the northwest coast of Africa as a tropical wave of low pressure. When a line of squalls along the West African Disturbance Line move offshore the ocean begins to pick up moisture. Meteorologists get a glimpse of what’s coming down the pipeline weeks in advance of a hurricane forming.

Currently, tropical weather forecasters are watching Tropical Depression 12 spin away from Africa toward the Caribbean. By later this week, the depression could work it’s way into Hurricane Katia.

Once a tropical depression forms the coriolis effect helps it begin to rotate. Think of it like the spinning of a buzz saw blade. The storm begins to turn as it sucks up moisture from the warm ocean surface. When it pulls in that moisture it pulls down cooler air from above which gets trapped under the warm, wet and rising air. that continuous feedback loop makes the storm rotate and strengthen.

To turn into a hurricane a tropical depression needs energy. The way it derives that is also from the ocean surface. The warmer the water, the more energy is created, which leads to bigger storms. That is why the hurricane season stretches from June to December. Those are months when the ocean is warmest.

For the most part, hurricanes need ocean surface temperatures of at least 80 degrees to grow. When water temperatures are below 80 degrees hurricanes tend to lose energy and intensity.

Kevin Trenberth is a senior scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He told Grist, “Owing to higher SSTs [sea surface temperatures] from human activities, the increased water vapor in the atmosphere leads to 5 to 10 percent more rainfall and increases the risk of flooding. He says that water vapor in addition to ocean surface temperature makes hurricanes more ferocious. He adds, “However, because water vapor and higher ocean temperatures help fuel the storm, it is likely to be more intense and bigger as well.”

Meteorologist Jeff Masters says the range of the warm sea surface temperatures have a wider range this August, which gave Irene more power. Before she made landfall in the U.S. Masters said, “This year sea surface temperatures one to three degrees warmer than average extend along the East Coast from North Carolina to New York. Waters of at least 78 degrees F extend all the way to southern New Jersey, which will make it easier for Irene to maintain its strength much farther to the north than a hurricane usually can.”

As the storm hit land and cooler waters Irene lost her punch. By the time she hit New England the wind and rain had effectively separated into two storms. The rain submerged much of Vermont while powerful winds raked north, exploding windows in Montreal office buildings, 300 miles north of New York where that was part of the forecast worst case scenario.

Once the tropical characteristics were gone, Irene became a fast-moving mid-latitude storm racing its way toward the Canadian maritime provinces and out to sea where cold northern waters will suck any remaining strength from her.

But she’ll be remembered as a wet and wild dry run for a major hurricane making landfall on the eastern seaboard and will likely inspire a disaster movie or two.

Is Hurricane Irene a Product of Global Warming?

While emergency managers are feeling lucky to have avoided the worst, they are still concerned that more storms like Irene could rear their damaging heads in densely populated areas. And everyone is remembering that this hurricane came one day shy of the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans.

As scientists watch sea levels rise, storm surge from hurricanes becomes the biggest threat. The sea has risen 13 inches around New York, turning moderate storm surges associated with tropical storms into major flooding events.

MIT Atmospheric science professor Kerry Emanuel thinks that we are beginning to see a climate signal form in the Atlantic, meaning that after decades of prediction, evidence is emerging that climate is changing and the effects are starting to be felt. Extreme weather seems to be on the rise, including massive hail storms, tornado outbreaks and strong hurricanes.

He says, “One begins to wonder, if you add all those up, maybe you are seeing a global warming effect.”

But science writer Michael Lemonick says asking if Hurricane Irene is a direct result of climate change is actually the wrong question.

He believes we should be asking is climate change making Hurricane Irene worse than it would have been otherwise? To that he says a definitive, Yes.

He says, “For one thing, sea-surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are higher now than they used to be, thanks to global warming, and ocean heat is what gives hurricanes their power. All other things being equal, a warmer ocean means a more powerful storm. It’s hard to say that all other things are exactly equal here, but it’s certainly plausible that Irene would have been a little weaker if precisely the same storm had come through, say, 50 years ago.”

According to a new study it could take 1,200 years, 300,000 researchers and $364 billion to identify and catalog all the species on Earth.

New research in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science uses a new way of calculating just how many plants and animals inhabit Earth. So far of the estimated 8.8 million we have discovered just 1.9 million.

Recent discoveries have been small and weird. They include a psychedelic frogfish, a dime-sized lizard and a blind, hairy lobster found on the ocean floor near Antarctica. Some scientists are actively searching for species to fill in the big gaps on the species pyramid. Others just happen across new species.

Describing the wild world in which we live biologist and study co-author Boris Worm from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia says, “We are fairly ignorant of the complexity and colorfulness of this amazing planet.”

Scientists from the U.S. and Canada who are part of the Census of Marine Life released the study this week. It found the previous estimate of global species a bit too difficult to pin down. The range of 3 million to 100 million didn’t sit well and researchers have been trying to narrow the number.

Using a new computer modeling method Dr. Worm and Camilo Mora from the University of Hawaii now believe the number to be somewhere between 7.5 million and 10.1 million. Even with the more improved method for counting the study admits it could be off by as much as 1.3 million.

In 1758 Carl Linnaeus built the system that is still used today to name, describe and catalog species. In the 253 years since, about 1.25 million species — roughly 1 million on land and 250,000 in the oceans — have been described and entered into central databases. But there are about 700,000 more species that have yet to reach the central databases. They are sitting in limbo between discovery and classification, many waiting patiently in backroom of major museums like the Smithsonian.

Based on the new way of estimating the number of species on Earth, the biologists estimate there are 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million or 25 percent living in the ocean depths. They suggest that about 86 percent of all species on land and 91 percent of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.

According to the Associated Press, evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges from Penn State University says the new study isn’t good enough and could be off by millions. He thinks there are many tiny species lurking in corners of the unexplored Earth. And he should know. In 2001 while rooting around in dead leaves in the Dominican Republic in 2001 he found the world’s smallest lizard, a half-inch long Caribbean gecko. And then in 2008 he discovered a four-inch snake in Barbados that lays a very long egg.

Who Cares?

Scientists don’t want to classify every living creature on Earth just for the sake of saying they did it. They are trying to identify new species which could potentially have benefits for humans, ranging from medicine to climate adaptation.

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson says undiscovered species need to be found before they disappear taking possible cures with them. He says, “We won’t know the benefits to humanity from these species, which potentially are enormous.”

In order to advance medical and other science he says we need to know what’s in the environment.

Dr. Mora says, “Many species may vanish before we even know of their existence, of their unique niche and function in ecosystems, and of their potential contribution to improved human well-being.”

Lord Robert May, a past president of the British Royal Society praised the new system for estimating species numbers. He says, “It is a remarkable testament to humanity’s narcissism that we know the number of books in the U.S. Library of Congress on 1 February 2011 was 22,194,656, but cannot tell you — to within an order-of-magnitude — how many distinct species of plants and animals we share our world with.”

But fledgling projects like the Census of Marine Life and the Encyclopedia of Life are trying to speed the process given that human activity appears to be hastening the demise of habitats that could contain undiscovered species.

If the 8.8 million number is right, Erick Mata says, “Those are brutal numbers.” The executive director for the Encyclopedia of Life says even with an accelerated rate of discovery, “We could spend the next 400-500 years trying to document the species that actually inhabit our planet.”

Do Something that Counts

The International Union for Conservation of Nature monitors 59,508 species and classifies 19,625 as somehow threatened. Right now this is the most sophisticated system for monitoring known species and it is only looking at about one percent of the entire list.

That’s where citizen scientists come in. Scientists believe that some of the yet-to-be-discovered species could be found in our own backyards.

What will you do to help find, describe and catalog species that scientists discover?

What started out as an educational lesson turned into real-world adventure for five high school students from Sagniaw, Michigan. The students from Arthur Hill High School, near Michigan’s Shipwreck Alley on Lake Huron located two missing ships at the bottom of the lake.

In a science outreach collaboration called Project Shiphunt, Sony and Intel partnered with NOAA’s Dr. Mark Delgado, the chief scientist responsible for mapping the Titanic wreck and invited the students to map the lake bottom in an effort to locate the Merrick and the Laurentian, both of which sank in the late 1800s.

Much to their surprise the students were able to find the exact location of the shipwrecks after creating millions of sonar data points and mapping the bottom of Lake Huron. They then directed divers and a submersible robot with a camera to go inspect the wreckage.

Tiesha Anderson researched historic shipping lanes on Lake Huron and the other Great Lakes before embarking on their ship hunt. The students learned how to plot possible shipwreck locations. James Willett helped plot possible wreck locations with the help of Stan Stock, a local shipwreck hunter.

After eliminating several locations to narrow the search, the students worked with a hydrographer to learn about tracking coordinates before hitting the water to look for the ships.

The teen team consisted of James Willett, Cody Frost, Tiesha Anderson, Yer Vang and Tirrea Billings.

17-year-old sophomore James Willett dabbles with guitar when he isn’t searching for shipwrecks. In school he likes math and is going to try out for the football team this year. He wants to be a video game designer.

A Junior at Arthur Hill, Cody Frost helps out his dad at the family-run auto body shop when he’s not busy looking for 100 year old ships. He describes himself as a laid back, glass half-full kind of guy. Rather than worrying about not having enough he focuses on what he can do with what he has.

Tiesha Anderson is a 15 year old sophomore who has been playing basketball since she was in 3rd Grade. That instilled a competitive drive in her that has motivated her to be a straight-A student. She likes science because she is a curious person with a big imagination. She is hoping that finding ships will help her decide what she wants to do in life. She just knows it will be in the sciences.

Yer Vang struggled her first year of high school because she was quiet. But her sophomore year she helped find two ships and discovered that high school can be pretty fun. She’s not sure if she wants to be an astronaut but she definitely wants to ride a rocket into space some day.

Tirrea Billings is a 16 year old junior who loves math and science. She is interested in how the environment is being destroyed by pollution and forest degradation. Until Project Ship Hunt she had never been on a ship and says she really had no intention of going on one.

The rest of their story will be told in a one-hour documentary about the project on August 30 on Current TV.

We all know that dolphins are smart. And we know they have more senses than people, adding echolocation to the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Now scientists have tested and confirmed a seventh sense in at least one species of dolphins.

The Guiana dolphins, which live in the muddy coastal and river waters of South and Central America, have the ability to sense electrical fields. Sharks possess the same bioelectric capability but theirs is much stronger than dolphins.

Scientists made this discovery after ten years of study. When the studied little pits around the dolphin beaks where whiskers used to grow, they discovered they were not useless vestigial features but contained nerves. Eventually, researchers found that the vibrissal crypts are key sensing organs.

German biologist Wolfe Hanke from University of Rostock led the team that made the sensory discovery. He says, “We were really surprised to find this in the dolphin. Nobody had expected it.”

To test the theory, marine biologists trained a dolphin to place its head on a rest station where electrodes delivered a tiny electrical signal in the water. If the signal was present the dolphin would receive a reward for swimming away and if there was no signal the dolphin would be rewarded for staying at the rest station.

When researchers covered the vibrissal crypts to block the signal, the dolphin could no longer perform the task accurately, leaving scientists to conclude that the little snout craters are keen bioelectrical sensors that help Guiana dolphins find prey by mapping out the weak electrical signal given off by fish.

This discovery makes dolphins the first mammals to have this special sense, called electroreception.

Few people have ever heard of the cookiecutter shark. They are prevalent in the deep, tropical ocean but they are not very large predators. In fact, the fish measures just a couple of feet long. But don’t be fooled by its size. This is a saw-toothed fish that bites dolphins, whales, nuclear submarine seals and now at least one person.

Maui man Mike Spalding becomes the first documented case of a human being bitten by the cookiecutter shark. He was swimming in deep water at night between the big island of Hawaii and Maui when he felt a pin prick in this chest followed by searing pain in his leg.

The tiny shark took a sizable chunk out of his calf muscle and the injury took months to heal. That was in 2009. Now several years later, scientists are taking a closer look at this small, ferocious shark.

The Florida Museum of Natural History houses a cookiecutter shark specimen but few people have ever heard of the species. the museum’s shark attack expert George Burgess says, “They have the biggest teeth of any shark in relation to the size of their jaws.”

As one of the co-authors of the new study that appears in the journal Pacific Science (PDF), Burgess wants people to know that humans entering deep ocean waters away from shore at twilight and nighttime hours should do so knowing that cookiecutter sharks are a potential danger, particularly during periods of strong moonlight, in areas of manmade illumination, or in the presence of bioluminescent organisms such as glowing squid.

Spalding’s attack happened around sunset during a 30-mile long distance swim. He says he began seeing the bright bioluminescence of squid before the shark attacked. These sharks hide among glowing squid because they have glowing spots on their skin. When a larger animal feeds on the squid, the shark goes in for a wounding bite.

Spalding was swimming through a group of cuttlefish when he was probably mistaken for a dolphin or whale.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s curator of field operations John O’Sullivan says, “These animals are very small and very aggressive in behavior. People say, ‘Thank God these things don’t get big.’” He’s been trying capture a live cookiecutter shark for several years because he is fascinated by the small shark’s interesting behavior. But he says it’s “turning out to be more difficult than our white shark program.”

The study was led by Randy Honebrink of the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources and co-authors include Robert Buch of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service, and physician Peter Galpin of Maui Memorial Hospital.

Biologists from the California Academy of Sciences and its counterpart in the Philippines have found over 300 new species of animal life, both on land and in the sea.

Ranging from a starfish that only eats sunken driftwood to an inflatable shark, scientists say that over 90% of the world species have yet to be discovered.

But the purpose of this expedition of discovery to the Philippine island of Luzon was to find unique habitats and species in an effort to preserve land that is being rapidly developed and to expand protected marine sanctuaries.

Using sophisticated DNA sequencing and old-fashioned looking under a microscope, scientists will compare the new candidate species to vast databases of existing species to see just how many are really new to science.

Terrence Gosliner, the head of research collections at California Academy of Sciences says, “The Philippines is one of the hottest of the hotspots for diverse and threatened life on Earth.”

On a six-week expedition this spring, biologists hiked through the land and dove beneath the waves in search of new species. Despite being known for its rich biodiversity, the area is relatively unstudied. The Philippines is one point of the Coral Triangle, an area rich is sea life biodiversity stretching from Indonesia to New Guinea.

For all the scientists involved in the project, the most shocking revelation was the amount of garbage the teams found. They repeatedly said they found more trash than life. Divers even found barnacles that had apparently adapted to an underwater plastic environment. Even in 6,000 feet of water, they found plastic coating the ocean floor.

According to MSNBC.com’s Alan Boyle, “Among the suspected new species are dozens of types of insects and spiders, deep-sea corals, sea pens, sea urchins and more than 50 kinds of sea slugs.”

Scientists say they also came across a new kind of cicada that makes a distinctive “laughing” call.

In addition to protecting as yet undiscovered species from extinction before their existence is recognized, many species, including several sea slugs have been identified as key ingredients in future commercial drugs. Other species hold unknown solutions to problems we can only just imagine, which makes protecting biodiversity a key goal of this project.

Poisonous Sea Urchin in Philippines, photo by Terry Gosliner

When Alex de Voogt couldn’t get a crumbling sheath to release an early 20th Century Egyptian knife, he turned to a cutting-edge, high resolution, computed tomography (CT) scanner for help. Using the advanced x-ray technology he was able to see inside the knife covering and reveal writing on the knife blade without disturbing the artifact.

Museum scientists around the world are continually studying parasites, people, or planets. And to learn more about their subject of choice, they routinely use cutting-edge imaging technologies such as infrared photography, scanning electron microscopes, and CT scanners to make it possible to examine details that were previously unobservable.

Now the American Natural History Museum in New York City is offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of science as told through the pictures scientists capture in pursuit of their science.

This exhibition, called Picturing Science was the brain child of Mark Siddall, curator in the museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology. He gathered more than 20 sets of large-format images that showcase the wide range of research across many different scientific disciplines being conducted at the Museum. The exhibit also showcases how various optical tools are used in scientific studies.

Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies is on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History from June 25, 2011 – June 24, 2012 and is free with Museum admission.

“Very rarely do you find a scientific paper that doesn’t have a picture in it, a scientific figure of some sort. But there’s this wonderful aesthetic that goes with some of these pictures that are just beautiful to look at.” — Mark Siddall, Invertebrate Zoology Division Curator, American Natural History Museum.

This video from May 2010 tells the tale of a gray whale lost, half a world away from home. Biologists immediately thought it was a hoax but after studying the 43-foot whale more closely they discovered that it must have gotten off it’s north-south Pacific Ocean migration track thanks to an ice-free Arctic a couple of summers ago.

Now, new research stemming from this historic sighting off the coast of Israel in the eastern Mediterranean has scientists suggesting that climate change is opening up the fabled Northwest Passage — not just to boaters and geo-political interest — but to animals and plants.

According to seabed core samples, plankton previously not spotted in the Atlantic for 800,000 first re-appeared in the Labrador Sea in 1999 and then in the Gulf of St. Lawrence two years later. Now it has taken root and spread as far south as New York.

Scientists see this one example of a wayward whale and the proliferation of ocean greenery as a clear sign that something is changing in the Arctic.

In a new report which is part of the larger CLAMER project about oceans and climate change, researchers say the lone gray whale’s presence in the Mediterranean “coincides with a shrinking of Arctic Sea ice due to climate change and suggests that climate change may allow gray whales to re-colonize the North Atlantic.”

During the 1800s the Atlantic population of gray whales was hunted to extinction. Only two populations of the endangered species exist, a small pod in the western Pacific and a larger group in the eastern Pacific, from which the whale in Israel was believed to be a member.

The Northwest Passage is a route through the freezing northern Canadian archipelago and has been sought after for explorers for over 500 years. Until recently it was considered the “fabled Northwest Passage” because it was locked in ice year-round. But in 1998 and again in 2007 the passage was ice-free for a brief time during the summer from end to end. That’s when marine biologists expect the whale went through.

Phillip Reid, a senior plankton research fellow at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England told the Associated Press, “The implications are enormous. It’s a threshold that has been crossed.”

Since the North Pacific and the North Atlantic have been virtually shut off to one another, each has developed its own biosystem. Reid says the last time there was a major incursion from the Pacific to the Atlantic was about 2 million years ago. That had a huge impact on the Atlantic, driving some species to extinction as the new arrivals dominated and won in the competition for food.

Reid’s study on plankton and the gray whale are part of almost 300 papers written over the last 13 years that are being synthesized and published as a book and documentary this year by the CLAMER project.

Right now the migration of one gray whale and two species of plankton is not much of a concern to Reid. But he says, “It’s the potential for further ones to come through if the Arctic opens. That’s the key message.”

Plankton is at the bottom of the food chain and is a major source of nutrients for many fish species. Scientists have studied the relationship between plankton and fish stocks for many years and they note that changes in plankton often coincide with big swings in fish stocks.

In the North Sea, studies have blamed changes in plankton for threats to fish-eating birds and the collapse of some fish stocks.

Katja Philippart from the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research says changes in the ocean’s chemistry and temperature have grave impacts on fisheries, especially as species move northward searching for cooler waters.

Philippart heads the European Union-funded CLAMER project. She says, “We try to put the information on the table for people who have to make decisions.” She told the AP, “We don’t say whether it’s bad or good. We say there is a high potential for change.”

Even though since the mid-1990s intrepid adventurer sailors have tried to penetrate the treacherous trail through the Northwest Passage just a handful of people have successfully navigated their way from end to end when the sea ice retreats enough to allow safe passage. It stands to reason that if people are able to do this with some effort, then animals and plants are too.

After swimming off the coast of Israel for a few weeks, the gray whale who appeared malnourished and “not in good shape” according to researchers, was spotted near Spain 23 days later. But that’s the last report. No one has seen the whale 2010.

For years scientists and politicians have been saying the sea is rising. And it is. But because the amount of sea level rise each year is measured in millimeters for many it seems insignificant and for some it seems downright laughable.

But new research this week confirms that sea levels have risen faster in the last century than they have in the last 2,000 years. By sifting through North Carolina sediment deposits and studying microfossil evidence and then comparing that data with detailed maps of sea levels and coastlines scientists are making the strongest case yet that sea level rise is something we should all think about.

Scientists link the rapid increase in rate of sea level rise to climate change. As the global average temperature inches up the ocean’s temperature also increases. When water heats up it expands. This thermal expansion explains a good chunk of the sea level rise we’ve witnessed in the last 100 years.

But the actual amount the seas have risen in the last century doesn’t amount to much — around 7 inches. That’s about two millimeters a year.

Geologist Benjamin Horton, one of the authors and director of University of Pennsylvania’s Sea Level Research Laboratory says, “Where the temperature goes up, sea level goes up. Where the temperature stabilizes, so does sea level. Where the temperature picks up in the 20th century, so does sea level.”

In the most detailed look yet at sea-level change along the east coast of the U.S., scientists have discovered that waters have risen far faster over the last century than at any time in the previous 2,000 years.

By studying fossils, they found that temperature and sea level rise were in lock step during that time.

The team found that sea level was relatively stable from 200 BC to 950 AD. But beginning in the 11th century, sea level rose by about half a millimeter each year for 400 years during a warm climate period known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Then sea level was stable again during a period, called the Little Ice Age, that persisted until the late 19th century. However since then, sea level has risen more than 2 millimeters per year on average, the steepest rate for more than 2,100 years.

Horton says, “Sea-level rise is a potentially disastrous outcome of climate change, as rising temperatures melt land-based ice and warm ocean waters.”

But are Al Gore’s predictions about an inundated Florida and climate refugees in coastal areas true? The short answer is maybe. And it all depends on several unpredictable factors — the rate of land ice melting and contributing to sea-level rise and catastrophic ice sheet collapse either in Greenland or Antarctica.

From studying the past Horton can’t predict the future but he says, “So for the 21st century when temperatures will rise, so will sea level.”

But as sea levels rise so does the volume of water the ocean can hold. Most scientists consider the glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) to be insignificant. GIA explains the slight continental rebound that is ongoing since the weight of the ice during the last ice age has diminished. This land rise is about .3 millimeters per year.

Scientists add this to sea level measurements in order to calculate the true rise or adjusted rise. Steve Nerem the director of the Ice told FoxNews, “We have to account for the fact that the ocean basins are actually getting slightly bigger.” That means the water volume is actually expanding.

However a lawyer for the conservative think tank the Heartland Institute decided to make that tiny measurement into a big deal, calling all the science about climate change into question, saying, “There really is no reason to do this other than to advance a political agenda.”

It begs the question, if most people don’t seem concerned that sea level has risen 7 inches in 100 years, why are a few non-scientists quibbling over .3 millimeters (which can be scientifically explained)?

While Al Gore’s picture of a water-world future entices his detractors to call him an alarmist, history has shown that failure to adapt to the climate spells trouble for people. Take the Vikings.

They inhabited a warmer Greenland during a period of climate anomaly when the temperature was much warmer. They failed to prepare for a cold reality and were forced to flee during the Little Ice Age.

Unless a large land-based chunk of ice collapses and melts, adding immediate increase to global sea levels — which would swamp low-lying islands and nations like Bangladesh — those of us around now probably won’t live to see the harsh presence of major sea level rise.

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. Future generations will either look back and thank us or curse us for the action we take now.

While scientists can’t foresee the exact amount of sea level rise, many are saying to prepare for about 36 inches this century. That is five times more than was measured in the 20th Century.

The FoxNews story ends with a snarky statement from the lawyer Taylor, who calls Gore’s suggestion of a flooded New York tomfoolery. “If it were going to happen, he wouldn’t have bought his multi-million dollar mansion along the coast in California.”

I’m sure the Vikings said the same thing.

Though the average sea level rise over the last 100 years was about 2 millimeters each year, since 1993 that rate has increased to 3 millimeters per year, caused largely by thermal expansion and increased melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.

For decades fishermen have been saying there’s no future in fishing. Environmentalists have been warning about overfishing and pollution harming the ocean’s delicate ecosystem. But so far the ocean has been able to absorb everything humans have thrown at it.

The summary of a new international report(PDF) says that we may be quickly reaching the limit of what the ocean will tolerate. The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) convened the first-ever interdisciplinary meeting of ocean scientists. Their report, which has not been released in full, paints a grave picture of the future of the ocean if something doesn’t change.

The report identified three key stressors to the ocean — overfishing, pollution and climate change. They cause ocean acidification, anoxic areas or oxygen-free marine dead zones and ocean warming which have been associated with mass extinctions in the past.

Many nations are trying to improve their fishing practices so as to not wipe out entire fish species. And pollution standards are changing so that the ocean doesn’t have to take in so much run off that creates dead zones where no fish can live.

It is the third area — climate change — where the scientists unanimously say something needs to be done before an entire oceanic mass extinction begins.

Scientists say we are potentially looking at a mass extinction of marine life, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago.

Chris Reid, Professor as the Marine Institute, University of Plymouth and co-author of the report says, “We are seeing levels of pH inthe oceans now that probably haven’t been experienced for 55 million years.”

The speed at which the ocean is changing is what has scientists concerned. They say that ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history. And that those changes will be evident in 20-50 years, not hundreds of years in the future as previously thought.

IPSO Scientific Director Alex Rogers, who is also a Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford is struck by the rapid changes the ocean is experiencing.

He says coral reef ecosystems will likely be lost by the end of the century. And to him that qualifies as a mass extinction. Marine biologists believe there are about 9 million species of animals and plants associated with coral reefs.

Already scientists are seeing fish move north and south of their regular habitats. The fish in the tropics and at the polar extremes of the ocean have no place to go. So Dr. Rogers predicts there will be a large loss of fish in low and high latitudes just because of temperature change.

“If the ocean goes down. It’s game over.” — Dr. Alex Rogers, Scientific Director of IPSO

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/06/22/ocean-under-siege/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/06/13/elusive-shark-behavior-caught-on-camera/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/06/13/elusive-shark-behavior-caught-on-camera/#comments Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:58:05 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4376

For all the shark movies and popular interest in the big predatory fish, science really knows surprisingly little. When large numbers of tiger sharks began populating waters off of Kona on the island of Hawaii, they began planning just how to get a glimpse at what drives them.

After more than a year of research scientists are learning that these sharks move very quickly in a yo-yo type fashion, from the deep, dark depths to the shallow water to catch prey.

For years, scientists have been unable to follow deep-diving open ocean sharks to see how they behave. Until now, marine biologists had a number of theories to explain the sharks yo-yo movement, including energy conservation, navigation while sampling electromagnetic fields, and thermal regulation.

But Carl Meyer at the University of Hawaii has resolved that question by attaching accelerometers to sharks and watching where they go. He found that sharks are hunting when they move from the bottom of the ocean quickly toward the surface. By attaching a digital camera to the dorsal fin, he discovered there were always schools of fish just at the edge of the image area.

Now for real shark fans, Discovery’s Shark Week is just months away. To kick off the annual fish fest, Discovery Channel is holding a video challenge. Now through July 1, submit your 30-second video about how you celebrate Shark Week.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/06/13/elusive-shark-behavior-caught-on-camera/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/05/04/how-to-reduce-exposure-to-mercury-in-fish/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/05/04/how-to-reduce-exposure-to-mercury-in-fish/#comments Wed, 04 May 2011 17:33:44 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4226
 
Mary Ann Hitt, Beyond Coal Campaign Director with the Sierra Club with information on toxic mercury in fish. Emission from coal-fired power plants is the leading cause of mercury pollution and subsequent bio-accumulation in seafood. The heavy metals spew into the air and then settle in the ocean where they collect in the fatty tissues of our favorite fish.

The EPA warns pregnant women or women looking to become pregnant about the dangers of mercury on unborn children. The agency says stay away from big, predator fish like Swordfish, Orange Ruffie and even Ahi tuna. They tend to have the highest mercury concentrations because they feed on smaller fish that are also exposed to mercury.

But it’s not just women. In men, mercury can increase the risk of heart disease.

Trout, Salmon and other fish, including Tilapia contain far less mercury and won’t pose as much risk to seafood lovers.

The Sierra Club has more information about mercury pollution and finding safe fish to eat.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/05/04/how-to-reduce-exposure-to-mercury-in-fish/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/21/fish-ear-bones-hear-chemical-secrets-of-water/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/21/fish-ear-bones-hear-chemical-secrets-of-water/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:19:14 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4190

Fish ear bones are just like tree rings. The otolith bone inside a fish’s ear records the creature’s growth. Micro slices of sliver-sized ear bones can give scientists clues to the chemistry of the water in which fish swim. They can measure carbon dioxide levels and one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, researchers at University of South Florida are inspecting the tiny ear bones of different species of fish for signs of oil.

The answers they find may hold keys to restoring the Gulf of Mexico after the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Dr. Ernst Peeble’s research team is looking to see if the growth rates of fish changed after coming into contact with oil in the gulf. They can also measure which species of fish were most affected by the spill and which are relatively unharmed.

BP promised $500 million over the next 10 years for research to study the effects of the oil spill that sent 4.9 million barrels of oil spewing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico from April 20-July 15, 2010. So far, the ear bone science team has only seen $10 million of the $50 million it was promised.

A BP spokesman says that because the research is new, there are some growing pains associated with the projects. The oil company says it will fulfill its promise to fund research but it’s not clear on the time line.

For now, the researchers are in limbo, waiting for more funding to complete their work.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/21/fish-ear-bones-hear-chemical-secrets-of-water/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/18/bp-oil-spill-the-gulf-of-mexico-one-year-later/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/18/bp-oil-spill-the-gulf-of-mexico-one-year-later/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:51:36 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4168

One year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill scientists believe the health of the Gulf of Mexico is back to where it was before the massive environmental disaster.

In a recent survey, most scientists agreed that the health of the Gulf is about 68 out of 100. That is almost in line with the pre-spill number of 71.

One marine scientist who runs an association who has BP as a client says that relative to the size of the Gulf of Mexico the oil spill and well blow out affected a rather small area.

Quentin Dokken from the Gulf of Mexico Association says the Macondo blow out was not the environmental disaster many say that it was.

He accompanied Associated Press reporter Rich Mathews on a dive to examine the artificial reef system attached to the submerged portion of oil rigs near the spill site. A year later, corals and other marine life seemed to have rebounded.

But not everyone agrees.

Paul Sammarco is pleased that it appears that life is returning to the disaster area. But he notes that the absence of large fish could mean that they were wiped out by the oil spill and subsequent use of an oil dispersant. He believes the evidence of small fish and coral returning to the area is a bit misleading.

Dr. Sammarco says, “What we don’t know right now are the sub-lethal effects.” He says scientists don’t have a clear picture of the bio-accumulation of petroleum hydrocarbons in sea life and don’t yet understand the complexity that will have on reproduction and other longer term consequences.

Several dozen scientists rated the health of the Gulf of Mexico to be a 68 on a scale of 1 to 100. Last summer the scientists placed the pre-spill health level at 71. Last fall they measured the health at 65.

While the overall health level is trending toward normal, scientists are still very worried about specific health indicators, including dolphins, oysters and the seafloor.

Throughout the first part of the year, reports of baby dolphins washing ashore dominated headlines about the continued environmental legacy of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Since February over 400 baby dolphins have been found all along the northern Gulf Coast. While scientists are not clear about the cause of this unusual mortality event, some of the dolphins tested did have oil on their carcasses or in their tissue.

Stillborn and dolphins just days old began washing ashore this winter. But scientists can’t definitively say that it was as a result of the BP oil spill.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/18/bp-oil-spill-the-gulf-of-mexico-one-year-later/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/08/radioactive-water-poses-no-seafood-risk-to-people/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/08/radioactive-water-poses-no-seafood-risk-to-people/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:40:48 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4107

Workers in Japan have started dumping more than three million gallons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo Electric officials spent about two days dumping out all that water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, following the devastating March 11 earthquake. That water contains unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium but it is a necessary move to make room to store more radioactive water used to cool superheated fuel rods after the quake.

The water will disperse in the ocean and become less radioactive as it decays. Since the most common form of radioactive iodine loses half of its potency in just eight days radioactive water heading toward Hawaii and the U.S. mainland will be so diluted by the time it reaches the shores it likely won’t pose any risk.

Some concerned residents in Hawaii have stopped eating seafood and stopped drinking bottled water. Scientists say that is unnecessary at this point because it will take weeks or months — depending on ocean currents — for any radioactive water to reach detectable levels near the islands.

A physicist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has already begun monitoring water off Waikiki Beach for any signs of radioactivity. So far, nothing has been observed. Henrieta Dulaiova expects some radioactive material to be detectable in Hawaiian waters in the coming weeks but she is not concerned about seafood or water contamination.

The three million gallons of water dumped from the Fukushima Daichi power plant is about enough to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools. The Pacific Ocean holds enough water to fill about three trillion of those same pools. In other words, the size of the ocean will make radioactive water less of a threat to fish and people.

The Food and Drug Administration is carefully watching all fish and food imported to the U.S. from Japan, looking for any signs of radioactivity.

In Japan, radioactive food is unfortunately inevitable, but very manageable.

James Acton says the first radioactive fish has been found with unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium. But he says radioactive contamination is a manageable problem because strict monitoring will keep dangerous food off of people’s tables.

The Carnegie Endowment nuclear physicist says that radioactive material released into the water and atmosphere is becoming so diluted already that even twenty miles away from the nuclear power plant, radiation levels are undetectable.

For those of us part way around the world, the risk of radioactive contamination is very low. On the west coast of the U.S. iodine-131 has been detected in milk but experts and public health officials haven’t raised any warnings that those amounts present any risk whatsoever. Several experts have been equating the amount of radiation in the air and in food to being about the same dose any airline passenger receives when going on a trip.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/08/radioactive-water-poses-no-seafood-risk-to-people/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/06/billionaire-branson-heads-for-murky-depths/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/06/billionaire-branson-heads-for-murky-depths/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:51:47 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4100

Billionaire adventurer Richard Branson announced plans to travel to the deepest parts of the world’s oceans in a single-person submarine this week.

Sir Richard will pilot the one-manned Virgin Oceanic sub as he dives the Puerto Rico trench, located just off the coast of Puerto Rico, sometime in the next 24 months.

Fellow adventurer Chris Welch will act as his back up pilot and be the first human in 50 years to plumb the depths of the Marianas Trench, which plunges 36,000 feet below the surface of the South Pacific.

To date, no manned submersible vehicle has traveled more than 21,000 feet. Branson’s new sub, which was unveiled in Newport Beach, California this week can safely dive to 37,000 feet and operate unaided for up to 24 hours, according to the Virgin Oceanic website.

While Branson is hot to help commercialize space and is probably already planning tours to the bottom of the planet, there is a lot of science that this pioneering effort will generate.

He is working with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego to collect water and animal samples associated with the deep dives. Scripps Institution department professor Doug Bartlett is an expert on microbial life in extreme environments and his knowledge will guide Branson’s team to collect samples during their five deep ocean dives.

Landers that will accompany Branson on his dive will be outfitted with science equipment to collect water and bottom sediment as well as film the deepwater submarine as it passes by. A day after the dives the sub will rendezvous with the landers and gather the data for analysis.

The Scripps team will then study all the samples brought back from the depths and look for any novel organisms as well as potentially beneficial enzymes or genes.

Scientists from University of Southern California, the University of Hawaii and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are also partnering with Virgin Oceanic on this unprecedented expedition of science and adventure.

Branson says that the sub will be pressure tested over the course of the next three months before the mission begins later this year. The sub is specially designed to withstand the 1,000 atmospheres of pressure found at the bottom of the deepest places on Earth, approximately 1,500 times the pressure of an airplane.

5 Dives 5 Oceans
1. Chris Welch dives the Marianas Trench — 7 miles down and the deepest spot on Earth.
2. Sir Richard Branson dives the Puerto Rico Trench — 5 miles down and the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean
3. Human pilot to the Molloy Deep — 3.5 miles down and the deepest spot in the Arctic Ocean
4. Human pilot to the Diamantina Deep– 5 miles down and the deepest spot in the Indian Ocean
5. Human pilot to the South Sandwich Trench — 4 miles down and the deepest spot in the Southern Ocean

“We will unlock the wonders of the oceans still unknown to humankind or science.” — Sir Richard Branson

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/04/06/billionaire-branson-heads-for-murky-depths/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/03/30/nasa-mission-to-study-polar-climate-change/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/03/30/nasa-mission-to-study-polar-climate-change/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:59:02 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=4071

The earth’s climate is getting a checkup thanks to NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge. It’s a six year mission to study the earth’s polar region from on board an airplane. NASA scientist Tom Wagner explains the mission from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

While the space agency is known for it’s work in outer space, in recent years it has used satellites and other tools to monitor what is happening here on Earth. After Earth-pointing satellites first noticed a major shift at the poles, NASA has been tracking those changes.

Now, planes outfitted with a number of scientific instruments and sensors will begin measuring the height of ice to determine its thickness in the polar regions. Radar will be used to measure the seabed under the ice to see how fast it’s flowing into the ocean.

A gravimeter will measure the shape of seawater-filled cavities at the edge of some major fast-moving major glaciers while a
magetometer will help to see the shape of Earth’s crust and how oceans interact with the ice.

This six-year study will monitor the dramatic changes occurring at the poles, which are also causing changes and affecting climate around the world.

“We’re having an interesting experiment happen on Earth as these places melt.” — Dr. Tom Wagner, NASA Goddard Flight Center

Climate Fact: Greenland is able to grow broccoli for the first time.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/03/30/nasa-mission-to-study-polar-climate-change/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/14/sea-urchins-help-rescue-hawaiian-reef/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/14/sea-urchins-help-rescue-hawaiian-reef/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:45:18 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3922

A fast-growing seaweed-like algae is smothering Hawaiian reefs, especially in Kaneohe Bay, near Honolulu. In an effort to slow the spread of the invasive plant, scientists have been raising baby sea urchins in a hatchery, getting them ready to battle the algae.

Raising urchins in captivity is very difficult because the larvae are microscopic and must remain suspended in the water column until they are big enough to settle on side or bottom of a container.

After three or four months the little urchins are ready to be planted on the reef, where they will happily gorge themselves on the algae. During the following six months they will double or triple in size as the much their way across the reef, cleaning off the algae and helping to restore balance to the delicate ecosystem.

For years Hawaiian pest controllers have used a special super-sucker to mop the algae off the reef but in 2009 they discovered that sea urchins can keep the invasive seaweed at bay. The first batch of 1,000 baby collector urchins was released recently. The goal is to ramp up urchin production so scientists can release another 20,000 baby urchins in April.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/14/sea-urchins-help-rescue-hawaiian-reef/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/09/sailors-notice-sea-change-in-the-ocean/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/09/sailors-notice-sea-change-in-the-ocean/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:15:50 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3910

Experienced sailors and seasoned meteorologists have the same nagging feeling — that something drastic is changing oceans around the world.

A Canadian sailing in a solo around-the-world race says he is disturbed by the horrendous conditions he has encountered in the southern oceans, including the near absence of large sea life.

During a harrowing leg from the tip of South Africa to New Zealand, Derek Hatfield says he saw only one dolphin and no whales. That area of the world should be teeming with sea life this time of year. He also reported battering winds and 25-foot waves which are unusual.

But ocean in that area has warmed about a half a degree in the last ten years. That is creating more fuel to power bigger storms and turning the unpredictable ocean unrecognizable.

In order to reduce his impact on the planet Hatfield is using solar, wind and hydro power instead of fossil fuels during the race.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/09/sailors-notice-sea-change-in-the-ocean/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/03/la-nina-powers-big-storms/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/03/la-nina-powers-big-storms/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:43:25 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3885

Cyclone Yasi barreled ashore on the Northeast edge of Queensland, Australia this week, where 190 mile-per-hour winds damaged towns guarding the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. The category 5 cyclone — akin to a hurricane in the U.S. and a typhoon in Asia — was the biggest Australia has seen in over a century. Australian national troops are still trying assess the damage, which includes millions of dollars to sugar cane and banana plantations.

While the summer occurrence of a cyclone like this in Australia is not unusual, the perfect storm set up due to a strong La Nina ocean pattern and very high surface sea temperature, which helped to give the cyclone its energy.

Cyclone Yasi formed near the island of Fiji and blew west into the very warm Coral Sea, where the average sea surface temperature was well above 80 degrees, which is ideal for fueling a big tropical storm.

Just as Yasi was forcing people in northeastern Australia to hunker down, people across two-thirds of the U.S. were feeling the full force of the same La Nina but in a different way.

In the middle of winter, La Nina comes roaring across the U.S. like an icy freight train, delivering a frigid punch. This storm, which extended from New Mexico to Maine dumped over two feet of snow in many places, snarling airports and dragging snow-prone cities like Chicago to its knees.

But is this related to global warming?

Cyclone Yasi is not a direct piece of climate change evidence. But the higher than average sea surface temperatures are likely related to climate change. La Nina events historically bring floods and an increase in cyclones during the Australian storm season from November to April.

Alan Sharp, national manager, tropical cyclone warning services, of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology told Reuters, “We can’t say any particular cyclone is caused by climate change. There has been a slight trend towards more intense storms around the world.”

Scientists agree that there is a likely climate change link to the current La Nina in the form of higher sea surface temperatures. As the world’s oceans have warmed over recent decades that heating is giving monsoons and storms a little extra kick.

Now the naughty La Nina is being blamed for the Blizzard of 2011, which blanketed a large swath of the U.S. in feet of snow, inches of ice and brought major cities to a halt for several days.

Louis Uccellini, director of the government’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction told the Associated Press that this big snow event followed the classic La Nina pattern — moving from the Midwest to the Northeast and redeveloping off the eastern seaboard.

La Nina is a periodic cooling of the surface temperatures of the tropical Pacific Ocean, the opposite of the more well-known El Nino warming.

Both El Nino and La Nina patterns can have major impacts on weather around the world by changing the movement of winds and high and low pressure systems.

Meteorologists knew last fall that a sizable La Nina weather pattern was forming and that it was likely to be a harsh winter in much of the U.S.

Director Uccellini says that while the size and impact on populated areas the storm hit was significant the storm is not unlike other storms that have developed during similar winter weather patterns. He says the Blizzard of 2011 is not a product of climate change.

Mike Halpert, deputy director of the federal Climate Prediction Center says, “The storm is going where we would expect it, according to La Nina.”

The La Nina ocean pattern has peaked and is weakening but meteorologists warn that the little girl will likely stick around for another few months before oceans return to a neutral pattern.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/02/03/la-nina-powers-big-storms/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/31/10-most-popular-scientific-misconceptions/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/31/10-most-popular-scientific-misconceptions/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:43:30 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3891

10 scientific facts you thought you knew…that most people don’t.

Is there gravity in space?
How long can a goldfish hold a memory?
How much of our brains do we really use?
Does lightning ever strike twice?
How long does it take to digest chewing gum?
Does a microwave cook food from the inside out or outside in?
Did humans and dinosaurs ever coexist?

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/31/10-most-popular-scientific-misconceptions/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/28/science-tourists-explore-new-ways-to-travel/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/28/science-tourists-explore-new-ways-to-travel/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:21:15 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3763

If Jonas Salk and Carl Sagan are your celebrities, we have a trip for you. From researching global warming in Antarctica to monitoring space flight, Bloomberg Businessweek explores the growing tourism niche of science travel.

It’s a marriage of ecotravel and scientific research.

Here are some leading Science Travel companies.

Abercrombie & Kent
American Museum of Natural History — Explorers Program
Habitat Adventures
Wildland Adventures
Explorers Club
National Park Service
Earthwatch Institute

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/28/science-tourists-explore-new-ways-to-travel/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/20/copycat-dolphins/ http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/20/copycat-dolphins/#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:09:56 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3820

A study done at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys says although imitation is rare in the animal kingdom, dolphins can imitate one another while blindfolded by using sound.

Like bats, dolphins use a form of sonar called echolocation to see sound patterns. It’s their keenest sense.

The purpose of this research is conservation. biologists believe that the more intelligent dolphins appear, the more people will care about them. That will prompt conservation efforts.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2011/01/20/copycat-dolphins/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/31/2010-science-roundup/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/31/2010-science-roundup/#comments Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:11:56 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3715 On the last day of 2010, the final day of the last year in the first decade of the 21st Century, we bid farewell to another year. Let’s take a look back over the last 12 months through the eyes of science.

First, physicist Dr. Michio Kaku looks back over the natural disasters that rocked the world and does some future disaster forecasting as well.

2010 started with a major earthquake that killed 200,000 and 3 million homeless in Haiti. Then later in the year a gigantic quake in Chile knocked the Earth off its axis and shortened our 24-hour day by one micro-second. Dr. Kaku insists that the planet is not trying to seek revenge on the human species, which has also been very busy this year.

Top Bio Stories

According to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News 2010 was a big year for biology. Last year third-generation gene sequencers came to market which opened the door to generate DNA sequences as well as epigenetic information with single-molecule sensitivity in real time. This was also the year that synthetic biology became mainstream. J. Craig Venter created a bacteria from scratch, making Synthia the first fully synthetic, self-replicating cell.

2010 Also saw the gene patent wars heat up. In the Spring a New York court declared the patent on the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and 2 invalid. This case will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court before it’s finished but the Justice Department now supports the lower court’s ruling, saying that naturally occurring phenomena such as genes should not be subject to intellectual property laws.

Stem cells, aging and cancer rounded out a full year for biotech. After President Obama repealed former President Bush’s ban on research involving embryonic stem cells this year a federal court judge placed the future of embryonic stem cell research in limbo again.

After all the excitement about the anti-aging benefits of sirtuins, the chemical found in red wine, is still not well understood. A couple of drug candidates involving the activator and inhibitor are in clinical trials but haven’t made the medical strides they promised last year.

A cancer vaccine called Provenge made it to market this year to help treat prostate cancer. Several other treatments are in late stage clinical trials and could be ready next year.

Top Physics and Space stories

One of the most inspiring space endeavors to finish a rocky trip in 2010 was the Japanese Hayabusa mission. It rendezvoused with asteroid Itokawa in 2005 after being pummeled by a large solar flare in 2003. The goal was to gather dust from the asteroid and bring it back to Earth.

After all the technical mishaps Japanese researchers didn’t hold much faith that the probe would return with any dust. But after a triumphant return to Earth in June, a few specks of the asteroid were identified. Now scientists have another tool to understand the beginnings of our solar system.

But 2010 was all about space water. Remember water on Mars? That was so last year. This year confirmed water on the moon and on one of Saturn’s moons.

Saturn's Moon Enceladus, as viewed from NASA's Cassini Spacecraft

The ever-impressive NASA Cassini Equinox mission continues to blow us away with amazing imagery from the Saturnian system, including what appears to be liquid water shooting from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The spacecraft has been orbiting the ringed gas giant since 2004, buzzing past its many moons and delivering some of the most detailed observations of this iconic planet we have ever seen.

But closer to home, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter found that the moon not only has water ice stored in the shadows of its deepest and darkest craters, but there appears to be a lot of water just below the surface.

Discovery News asks how much water is there.

Writer Ian O’Neill says, “Bucketloads. 600 million gallons stashed away in 40 craters as measured by a NASA instrument that flew on board the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission. But how much water is 600 million gallons? That’s enough water to fulfill Seattle’s water needs for a whole year… or enough water to manufacture 588 billion bags of Cool Ranch Doritos (according to one commenter who obviously has way too much time on his hands).”

(Artist rendering of moon landing...not a real picture)

2010 was the year that President Obama canceled the Constellation manned space program and scrapped plans to go to the moon. But it was also the year that commercial space flight became a reality. Leading the way into space is Virgin Galactic. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are helping to privatize the space industry and will be fulfilling space services for NASA once the shuttle program is retired in early 2011.

But the biggest space story of the year was happening right here on Earth. Or rather under the Earth at the European nuclear science lab CERN. There particle physicists in search of the elusive Higgs Boson or God particle have successfully trapped antimatter for the first time.

Physicists capture antihydrogen for the first time in 2010

Capturing antihydrogen will allow physicists to study the beginning of the universe and try to figure out why if both matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts during the Big Bang that matter is all that mattered for its formation.

Top Stories by Accident

Science makes some its greatest discoveries through accidental encounters and without looking. A few stories found their way to us that way this year, mostly from the animal kingdom.

The most distressing story resulted from pictures of oil covered seabirds struggling in the slimy Gulf of Mexico after the BP Horizon Deepwater oil rig explosion and disaster. Months later, clean up efforts are still underway and scientists are looking at long term consequences of the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

But across the world, a two-foot long isopod — that looks like something Hollywood cooked up for a sci-fi movie — hitched a ride to the surface aboard a deep sea submarine, giving the world a glimpse of this rare giant creature.

Deep Ocean Submarine Finds Giant Hitchiking Isopod

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/31/2010-science-roundup/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/03/marine-life-moves-deeper-to-escape-threats/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/03/marine-life-moves-deeper-to-escape-threats/#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:48:09 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3596

New findings spark hope that endangered species are more abundant than previously thought.

Until recently scientists have been limited in their exploration of the ocean by depths SCUBA divers can safely travel. And deep water submersible vehicles tend to focus on the deep ocean, below 500 feet. So the in between areas of 200-500 feet remain largely unknown.

But recent advances in technical diving and rebreathers is allowing a new glimpse at low-light reefs, where much to scientists surprise life is thriving. In fact, rare and endangered species are doing well deeper down than those in shallow waters.

Scientists caution that the excitement of this discovery is tempered by looming threats of pollution, overfishing and climate change that could begin hurting this healthy ecosystem. They say that fish may be retreating to deeper depths as their habitats become inhospitable.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/12/03/marine-life-moves-deeper-to-escape-threats/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/27/scientists-plan-3-d-map-of-titanic/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/27/scientists-plan-3-d-map-of-titanic/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:52:55 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3450

A team of scientists is on a mission to provide 3D maps and models of the wreckage of the Titanic before it disappears. The nearly 100 year old shipwreck is falling apart. To preserve the famous ship as it is the Waitt Institute is using side-sensing autonomous underwater vehicles to map the Titanic.

Oceanographers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution join the expedition along with Waitt Institute and RMS Titanic, Inc. to create the most comprehensive map of the site to date.

The Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg in 1912. The wreck was discovered on September 1, 1985.

Follow the expedition on Facebook and follow the action on Twitter

Visit the official website: ExpeditionTitanic.com

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/27/scientists-plan-3-d-map-of-titanic/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/19/scientists-say-toxic-bp-oil-mix-sits-on-gulf-floor-and-floats-below-the-surface/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/19/scientists-say-toxic-bp-oil-mix-sits-on-gulf-floor-and-floats-below-the-surface/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:57:36 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3436

After one of their research vessels returned from the Gulf, University of South Florida scientists say they found significant amounts of toxic oil sitting on the Gulf floor – and it is killing sea life.

Small oil droplets speckle the Gulf floor and are hard to detect. Best seen under ultraviolet light these droplets were broken apart by the chemical dispersant BP used during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

A new government report recently declared that 75 percent of the oil is gone but USF scientists think it’s just more difficult to find because the dispersant has broken it apart and the oil has drifted farther east.

The report, which was released earlier this month, says 25 percent of oil was burned, skimmed or recovered. Twenty five percent evaporated. Another 24 percent dispersed naturally or by using chemicals. And the remaining 26 percent remains in the environment.

That residual oil at the 26 percent level represents five Exxon-Valdez quantities of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico and still there these many months later.” — Ian MacDonald, USF oceanographer.

An USF report discovered that microscopic sealife contains oil. Marine geochemist David Hollander says oil found in phytoplankton could affect the entire ecosystem of the Gulf.

A report by University of Georgia scientists also refutes the government report that most of the oil is gone. They analyzed the government data and believe up to 90 percent of the released oil remains in the environment, most of it in deep underwater in plumes.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/19/scientists-say-toxic-bp-oil-mix-sits-on-gulf-floor-and-floats-below-the-surface/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/12/10-indicators-point-to-warming-world/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/12/10-indicators-point-to-warming-world/#comments Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:01:02 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3379

A joint report put out by NOAA and the UK Met Office have looked at the atmospheric and ocean research of 300 scientists around the world and concludes global warming is a fact.

Scientists from 48 countries say 10 indicators that are related to surface temperatures all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.

For at least the last 50 years, the world has been heating up and the last decade was officially the hottest on record.

The 10 Indicators:
1. Ocean Heat Content, increasing
2. Temperature Over Land, increasing
3. Sea Level, increasing
4. Sea Surface Temperature, increasing
5. Temperature Over Oceans, increasing
6. Humidity, increasing
7. Air Temperature Near the Surface, increasing
8. Sea Ice, decreasing
9. Snow Cover, decreasing
10. Glaciers, decreasing

“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” — Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/08/12/10-indicators-point-to-warming-world/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/29/marine-biologists-find-new-species/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/29/marine-biologists-find-new-species/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:28:16 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3339

Marine biologists believe they have discovered several new species of underwater creatures, including sponges, corals and sea stars

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/29/marine-biologists-find-new-species/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/15/scientists-simulate-bp-oil-spill-day-360/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/15/scientists-simulate-bp-oil-spill-day-360/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:16:24 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3305

Simulation of BP Oil Spill, Day 360, courtesy of University of Hawaii

University of Hawaii scientists Researchers Axel Timmermann and Fabian Schloesser have been trying to answer a question that few will even dare to ask. They want to how not if but when the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will round the tip of Florida and race up the east coast, polluting beaches and destroying fisheries along the Atlantic seaboard.

Their answer may frighten many. After some serious number crunching and based on historical ocean current movement, they determined that the entire eastern shoreline of the U.S. will see signs of the BP oil spill within the next three months. And a year from he accident — April 20, 2011 — the oil will stretch across the Gulf of Mexico, up the Atlantic and be half way to Europe.

“After one year, about 20 percent of the particles initially released at the Deepwater Horizon location have been transported through the Straits of Florida and into the open Atlantic.” — Axel Timmermann, University of Hawaii at Manoa oceanographer

The School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology Computer Simulation

Disclaimer: The dispersal of the particles does not capture such effects as oil coagulation, formation of tar balls, chemical and microbial degradation. Computed surface concentrations relative to the actual spill may therefore be overestimated. The animation, thus, is not a detailed, specific prediction, but rather a scenario that could help guide research and mitigation efforts.

This simulation is also based on the estimated flow of oil from the spill of 50,000 barrels a day for 150 days.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/15/scientists-simulate-bp-oil-spill-day-360/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/14/scientists-study-gulf-oil-spill-impact-on-marine-life/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/14/scientists-study-gulf-oil-spill-impact-on-marine-life/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:35:35 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3295

University of Florida’s Neil Hammerschlag is studying whether sharks along the Gulf Coast of Florida can sense oil and move away from it.

Hurley the hammerhead shark disappeared from satellite tracking two days after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as researchers were studying migration patterns of these misunderstood fish.

Now when the sharks for this study are caught and tagged, a tissue and blood sample is also taken and tested for hydrocarbons to see if they are absorbing any oil from the ongoing BP oil disaster.

There is likely to be enough work keeping researchers busy studying the effects of oil on sharks for decades.

A marine biologist from the National Aquarium in Baltimore is heading to Florida to study the potential impact of the BP oil spill near Sarasota.

National Aquarium’s Erik Rifkin wants to study the ecological disaster that the BP oil spill caused. He’s joined forces with scientists from Johns Hopkins and the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida.

The team will be deploying 100 devices to detect water pollution near Sarasota, Florida, an area that has not been affected by the oil spill yet. He says positioning the collectors there will help establish a baseline before the oil reaches that area. That way they can measure the impact if and when the oil does flow that way.

Even NASA is getting in on the animal cleanup action. Besides providing satellite images to help contain surface oil as it nears barrier islands near Louisiana, the first sea turtle hatchlings whose eggs were evacuated from the Gulf Coast oil spill to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center have been released into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Virginia Aquarium has been sending its staff down to New Orleans to help clean oil off stranded sea turtles. The aquarium’s stranding team is getting a first-hand look at the effects of oil on the keystone species of sea turtles.

For now members of the team are going to the turtles but soon the turtles may go to the Virginia Aquarium for rehabilitation.

“We expect to be dealing with the after effects of this for well over a year.” — Mark Swingle, Virginia Aquarium director of research and conservation

But it’s not just scientists and citizen scientists who are concerned about the effects of oil on marine life.

Even Federal Express is helping out.

The shipping company will work with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to ship up to 70,000 loggerhead sea turtle eggs from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic coast this summer, in an effort to move the eggs to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/14/scientists-study-gulf-oil-spill-impact-on-marine-life/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/13/bp-replaces-oil-cap-and-runs-pressure-tests-to-stop-oil-leak/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/13/bp-replaces-oil-cap-and-runs-pressure-tests-to-stop-oil-leak/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:03:59 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3290

With a tight new cap freshly installed on its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, BP planned gradual tests starting Tuesday to see if the device can stop oil from pouring into the sea for the first time in nearly three months.

The next step will be to slowly close the valves on that cap to see if it can withstand the pressure of the oil pushing out of the seabed.

“The goal is to slowly close that down and understand the changes in pressure.” — National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen

Some scientists, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Geological Survey’s Marcia McNutt are worried that when the new cap is tightly fitted, the pressure of oil trying to escape will cause tiny ruptures in the pipeline and cause oil to leak through rock formations in the seabed.

Update

A pivotal moment in the Gulf oil crisis hit an unexpected snag Tuesday evening when officials announced they needed more time before they could begin choking off the geyser of crude at the bottom of the sea.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/13/bp-replaces-oil-cap-and-runs-pressure-tests-to-stop-oil-leak/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/12/oil-gushes-freely-for-two-days/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/12/oil-gushes-freely-for-two-days/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:47:36 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3286

Robotic submarines removed the cap from the gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, beginning a period of at least two days when oil will flow freely into the sea.

And BP isn’t convinced that putting the new Top Hat Number 10 cap on the leaking wellhead will solve the problem. If the new cap fails, the company is prepared to go to Plan B — placing a Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) cap on the damaged riser.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told the Associated Press that he cap was pulled off Saturday so workers could begin clamping on a dome that can capture more of the oil and funnel it up to collection ships on the surface.

This move makes the worst oil spill in U.S. history even worse — at least until the new containment dome can be fitted, sometime early this week.

But BP is confident by removing the leaking cap and replacing it with a one that fits more tightly, less oil will leak into the Gulf as drilling on the relief well continues.

“Over the next two weeks or so we’ll get to about 60,000-80,000 barrels a day of containment.”– BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/12/oil-gushes-freely-for-two-days/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/09/capping-the-bp-oil-leak-on-the-horizon/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/09/capping-the-bp-oil-leak-on-the-horizon/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:11:14 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3279

The BP oil leak could be completely contained as early as Monday if a new, tighter cap can be fitted over the blown-out well, the government official in charge of the crisis said Friday in some of the most encouraging news to come out of the Gulf in the two and half months since the disaster struck.

After several failures to cap the leaking oil gusher 5,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico, BP is going to install a new cap, known as Top Hat Number 10 this weekend, in an effort to contain the oil spewing into the gulf.

Since the spill on April 20, underwater robots have done most of the heavy lifting at these depths. They will cut the damaged cap and replace it with the new 75-ton solution. While this will contain most of the oil, it will not stop the leak. The leak will stop when the oil company completes drilling of a relief well, sometime in early August.

A 175-foot low-flying blimp also joined the fight this week. It will seek out oily hotspots from the air so a new ship with actor Kevin Costner’s oil from water separation device can start cleaning up the surface of the Gulf.

Still 1.5-2.5 million gallons per day continue leaking leaking from the Horizon Deepwater oil disaster. When the robots uncap the well the oil and gas will rush into the gulf at full force –which scientists estimate at around 3.4 million gallons per day — until the new cap can be placed, hopefully by July 12.

“Everything done at that site is very much harder than anyone expects,” he said. Overton said putting on the new cap carries risks: “Is replacing the cap going to do more damage than leaving it in place, or are you going to cause problems that you can’t take care of?” — Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/07/09/capping-the-bp-oil-leak-on-the-horizon/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/29/bp-spins-kevin-costners-oil-separating-centrifuge-into-action/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/29/bp-spins-kevin-costners-oil-separating-centrifuge-into-action/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:44:25 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3226

“I’ve been to all the oil spill conferences around he country and all I see are booms and the latest helicopter. But I’ve never seen one machine that deals with getting the oil out. That’s me.” — Kevin Costner

Actor Kevin Costner was visibly frustrated when he testified before Congress earlier this month about the lack of ingenuity he was seeing when it comes to cleaning up the Horizon Deepwater oil spill which began on April 20. His $24 million idea uses a centrifuge to suck in polluted water and separate the oil then spit out the cleaned seawater.

And this week BP has signed on to use 32 of Costner’s devices — which can unmix oil and water at a rate of up to 200 gallons per machine per minute — to help clean up some of the oil that is polluting the Gulf of Mexico.

“It may seem an unlikely scenario that I’m the one delivering this technology at this moment in time. but from where I’m sitting it’s equally inconceivable that these machines are not already in place.” — Kevin Costner

Costner has been developing his centrifuge technology over the past 15 years, after watchingthe devastation following the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989.

Physicist Michio Kaku talked to CBS News about Costner’s solution and other innovations in late May.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

“In chemistry class we learned that oil and water don’t mix. Everybody knows that. But that’s not really true.” — Physicist Michio Kaku

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/29/bp-spins-kevin-costners-oil-separating-centrifuge-into-action/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/23/bp-flow-rate-technical-panelist-says-scientists-need-data-not-speculation/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/23/bp-flow-rate-technical-panelist-says-scientists-need-data-not-speculation/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:27:12 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3207

Over the last few weeks, scientists — including those on the government’s Flow Rate Technical Panel — have been unable to pinpoint how many gallons of oil are flooding the Gulf of Mexico.

Ira Leifer who is part of a 12-scientist panel guiding the Obama administration as it tries to get a handle on how much oil is flowing from the ruptured well 5,000 feet below the surface in the nation’s worst environmental disaster.

For several weeks BP estimated that about 1,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Then that number started to rise as the days wore on. In the last several weeks, the official number has been raised to 40,000 barrels a day. But the estimate does have a higher range — of 100,000 barrels a day, which Dr. Leifer says is BP’s worst case scenario. And he sees no reason to doubt those numbers.

Unfortunately scientists do not have all the data they need to take good measurements. So far BP has supplied the technical panel with 45 minutes of video and a few other documents but not enough data to determine how much oil is really flowing.

“We do not know what was happening five minutes before. We do not know what was happening five minutes afterwards.” — Ira Leifer, UC Santa Barbara

Add to that the complication that this is not a standard well. Besides the pressure differentials at this great depth, this well consists of a pipe punched into a geologic formation, which means the flow rate can fluctuate over time.

This resevoir is massive. It could easily flow that kind of oil for the next 20 or 30 years if it was left to go unattended. — Ira Leifer

100,000 barrels of oil is the equivalent of 4.2 million gallons.

Dr. Leifer is quick to point out that there is no way to say for sure that is how much oil is dumping into the Gulf but that is because he and other scientists need more data.

Even as scientists been creating and revising flow rate estimates for weeks, a new undated BP internal document was released this week showing that the company placed its worst case scenario at 100,000 barrels of oil a day.

PBS has created a Leak Meter to monitor the flow of oil but it needs to start with the right data to be accurate (numbers below are gross estimate)

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/23/bp-flow-rate-technical-panelist-says-scientists-need-data-not-speculation/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/17/ocean-watch-returns-after-circumnavigating-the-americas/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/17/ocean-watch-returns-after-circumnavigating-the-americas/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:17:21 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3174

pacsci on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

After a 13-month journey around North and South America the crew of Ocean Watch is returning to Seattle today. They have sailed around the Americas raising awareness about ocean health and conducting a few science experiments along the way.

Join the conversation here tomorrow as the crew of Ocean Watch participates the Marine Health Symposium at University of Washington in Seattle. Much of the symposium will be live-streamed from 1:00-5:30 p.m. PDT.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/17/ocean-watch-returns-after-circumnavigating-the-americas/feed/ 0 http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/14/health-concerns-rise-over-use-of-oil-dispersant-corexit/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/14/health-concerns-rise-over-use-of-oil-dispersant-corexit/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:56:55 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3162

Seven Louisiana fishermen reported getting sick after exposure to the oil dispersant that is being used to thin the oil slick on the Gulf of Mexico.

Nalco, the company that makes Corexit, the dispersant used after the April 20 Horizon Deepwater oil spill, says it has faith in its product. It insists that the product is biodegradable and that when it breaks down into tiny droplets, microscopic organisms then eat the oil and dispersant, cleaning the ocean in the process.

“The use of COREXIT dispersants to break up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has been widely acknowledged by government officials as a safe, effective and proven response. Its ingredients rapidly biodegrade, do not bio-accumulate and are commonly found in popular household products. And because the dispersant works by spreading oil particles evenly through the water column, it is extremely unlikely that individuals along the Gulf Coast would come into contact with it.” — Nalco Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Manian Ramesh

But after health concerns began emerging the EPA is trying to curb the use of Corexit. To date, BP has sprayed more than one million gallons of the dispersant to prevent a massive oil slick from reaching the shorelines of the gulf states.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/14/health-concerns-rise-over-use-of-oil-dispersant-corexit/feed/ 1 http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/11/scientists-struggle-to-narrow-oil-leak-estimate/ http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/11/scientists-struggle-to-narrow-oil-leak-estimate/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:10:37 +0000 Michael Bradbury http://www.realscience.us/?p=3157

British Petroleum’s oil leak is dumping an Exxon Valdez worth of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every 8-10 days, according to new estimates by scientists who are watching the black geyser a mile beneath the surface very closely.
New estimates show the damaged well leaking twice as much oil as previously estimated but no one knows for sure.

Even scientists disagree–ranging from 12,000-50,000 barrels of oil a day. The one thing they do agree on is that BP has been grossly underestimating the damage so far.

On June 3, University of Washington scientists as part of a federal panel of experts placed the leak at 12,000-19,000 barrels a day before BP cut the riser pipe and capped it. Other scientists think those estimates are too conservative, placing the leak at between 25,000 and 50,000 barrels a day. But the new official estimate from the U.S. Geological Survey is somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil, much higher than BP’s original estimate of 5,000 barrels of oil a day.

The Washington Post has a story today about the varied estimates and explains why it is important to find out how much oil has polluted the Gulf of Mexico.

Reuters has the story as Jon Decker reports.

]]> http://www.realscience.us/2010/06/11/scientists-struggle-to-narrow-oil-leak-estimate/feed/ 0
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