Category Archives: College of Earth Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences

Are Microplastics the New Fish Food?

Geologists have considered an entirely new geologic era as a result of the impact humans are having on the planet. Some plastic material in our oceans near Hawaii along are hot magma vents and is being cemented together with sand, shells, fishing nets and forming never before existing material — Plastiglomerates. This new rock is a geologic marker providing evidence of our impact that will last centuries. Although rocks seem inert, that same plastic material floating around our oceans is constantly being eaten, purposefully and accidentally, by ocean creatures from as small as plankton to as large as whales and we’re just beginning to understand the ubiquity of microplastics in our oceans and food webs that humans depend on.  

Our guest this evening is Katherine Lasdin, a Masters student in the Fisheries and Wildlife Department, and she has to go through extraordinary steps in her lab to measure the quantity and accumulation of plastics in fish. Her work focuses on the area off the coast of Oregon, where she is collecting black rockfish near Oregon Marine Reserves and far away from those protected areas. These Marine Reserves are “living laboratory” zones that do not allow any fishing or development so that long-term monitoring and research can occur to better understand natural ecosystems. Due to the protected nature of these zones, fish may be able to live longer lives compared to fish who are not accessing this reserve. The paradox is whether fish leading longer lives could also allow them to bioaccumulate more plastics in their system compared to fish outside these reserves. But why would fish be eating plastics in the first place? 

These are the locations of Oregon’s Marine Reserves. The sampling for juveniles and adult black rockfish is occurring at Cape Foulweather which is between the Cascade head and Otter Rock Reserves. PC:
Black rockfish are a common fish off the Oregon coast and due to their abundance it’s a great study species for this research.

Plastic bottles, straws, and fishing equipment all eventually degrade into smaller pieces. Either through photodegradation from the sun rays, by wave action physically ripping holes in bottles, or abrasion with rocks as they churn on our beaches. The bottle that was once your laundry detergent  is now a million tiny fragments, some you can see but many you cannot. And they’re not just in our oceans either. As the plastics degrade into even tinier pieces, they can become small enough that, just like dust off a farm field, these microplastics can become airborne where we breathe them in! Microplastics are as large as 5mm (about the height of a pencil eraser) and they are hoping to find them as small as 45 micrometers (about the width of a human hair). To a juvenile fish their first few meals is critical to their survival and growth, but with such a variety of sizes and colors of plastics floating in the water column it’s often mistaken for food and ingested. In addition to the plastic pieces we can see with our eyes there is a background level of plastics even in the air we breathe that we can’t see, but they could show up in our analytical observations so Katherine has a unique system to keep everything clean. 

In order to quantify the amount of plastics in fish, you have to digest some of the fish guts. PC: Katherine Lasdin

Katherine is co-advised by Dr. Susanne Brander who’s lab studies microplastics in marine ecosystems. In order to keep plastics out of their samples, they need to carefully monitor the air flow in the lab. A HEPA filtration laminar flow hood blows purified air towards samples they’re working with in the lab and pushes that clean air out into the rest of the lab. There is a multi-staged glassware washing procedure requiring multiple ethanol rinses, soap wash, deionized water rinses, a chemical solvents rinse, another ethanol, and a final combustion of the glass in a furnace at 350°C for 12-hours to get rid of any last bit of contamination. And everyday that someone in Dr. Brander’s lab works in the building they know exactly what they’re wearing; not to look cool, but to minimize any polyester clothing and maximize cotton clothing so there is even less daily contamination of plastic fibers. These steps are taken because plastics are everywhere, and Katherine is determined to find out just big the problem may be for Oregon’s fish.  

Katherine Lasdin working in the laminar flow hood that blows purified air towards the samples in Dr. Brander’s lab. PC: Cheyenne Pozar

Be sure to listen to the interview Sunday 7PM, either on the radio 88.7KBVR FM or live-stream, to learn how Katherine is conducting her research off the coast of Oregon to better understand our ocean ecosystems in the age of humans.

Listen to the podcast episode!

On this episode at the 16:00 mark we described how every time you wash clothing you will loose some microfibers; and how a different student was looking at this material under microscopes. That person is Sam Athey, a PhD student at the University of Toronto who also studies microplastics.

If a fault moves at the bottom of the ocean, can anyone hear it?

A few hundred miles off the coast of Oregon, and under several miles of sea water, lies the Blanco Transform Fault. It is between the Juan de Fuca and the Gorda tectonic ridges. Ocean transform faults such as this one connect seafloor ridges and are where volcanic activity creates new oceanic crust. This fault is more seismically active than many faults on land, generating over 1,600 earthquakes in a single year (between 2012 and 2013). Did you feel anything then?

Location and tectonic setting of the Blanco Transform Fault.

Vaclav Kuna, a doctoral candidate in seismology in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences working with Dr. John Nabelek, is studying this fault—how it slips and how it moves, and whether its motion is seismic (involving an earthquake) or aseismic (slow movement without an earthquake). A collection of movements is called a seismic swarm. The hypothesis is that prior to large, seismic motions, there are small, aseismic motions. Through his research, Vaclav hopes to decipher what occurs in a swarm, and discover if there is a pattern in the fault’s motions.

The model Vaclav is working to develop of the mode of slip of the Blanco Transform Fault. We believe that slow (non-seismic) creep occurs at depth in the fault beneath the Moho and loads the shallower part of the fault. The slip at depth most likely triggers the big earthquakes, that are preceded by foreshocks associated with creep.

This is different than predicting earthquakes. As a seismologist, Vaclav is trying to understand and report on the behavior of a fault, not predict when a certain magnitude earthquake will occur. However, other researchers can use findings like Vaclav’s to create prediction models which are necessary for earthquake damage mitigation and increasing public safety during and after earthquake events.

To look for patterns in the fault’s motions, Vaclav analyzes a year’s worth of data from seismometers and pressure gauges that were deployed from a ship to the fault at the ocean floor several years ago. The seismometers measure the velocity of a fault’s movement in three directions (two horizontal and one vertical), and the pressure gauges act as microphones capturing sound waves. The data can be decomposed into a series of many waves (like sine or cosine waves). Vaclav can track these waves in the sensors deployed along this fault and determine the variability of motion in both time and space. After the sensors are finished collecting the data, a remote control turns on an electrical circuit, that triggers a corrosion reaction and severs a wire holding a large weight that is keeping the sensors at the ocean floor—which seems like something taken right out of a spy movie.

Deployment of ocean bottom seimometers (yellow packets) at the Blanco Transform Fault. Every packet includes a 3-component seismometer and a differential pressure gauge (which acts as a microphone).

So why would a researcher monitor a fault that is miles underwater when there are faults on land? Ocean transform faults are less complex than faults on land, making them desirable to study in order to answer fundamental questions about fault behavior. In addition, they are extremely seismically active and generate earthquakes more frequently than faults on land. However, ocean transform faults are evidently more difficult to observe, and because the process of planning for and conducting fieldwork is time-intensive, most of the data Vaclav uses were gathered before he was enrolled at OSU. In turn, Vaclav helps deploy sensors and gather data for future students to analyze at a number of different faults around the world.

Vaclav at a station deployment at the Kazbegi mountain, Georgia (Caucasus mountain range).

Vaclav did his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Geophysics in Prague, Czech Republic. He was motivated to study Geophysics because there is a lot that is unknown about how the Earth’s tectonic plates move, and many people living near these faults. In his spare time, Vaclav likes swimming, running, skiing and kayaking. After completing his PhD, Vaclav wants to find a job working towards hazard-related mitigation to help people who are vulnerable to the damages caused by earthquake hazards.

Testing Arctic climate models: how much detail can we capture?

Many of us have heard that as a consequence of climate change, Arctic sea ice is rapidly decreasing and that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. It’s a complicated system that we don’t understand very well: few people live in the Arctic, and the data from limited study sites may not be representative of the region as a whole. How will Arctic climates change at different timescales in the coming years? What could this mean for coastal Arctic communities that rely on sea ice for preventing erosion or fishing in deep waters? How will navigation and shipping routes change? And in addition, how does a changing Arctic affect climates at lower latitudes?

Visualization of winter sea ice in the Arctic by Cindy Starr, courtesy the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.

Daniel Watkins is a fourth-year PhD student of Atmospheric Science in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science (CEOAS). Working with Dr. Jennifer Hutchings, he is analyzing climate model experiments in order to find answers to these questions. An important step in this is to evaluate the quality of climate simulations, which he does by matching up model output with real-life observations of temperature, sea ice, and cloud cover. Climate scientists have many models that predict how these factors will change in the Arctic over the next several decades. No model can take every detail into account, so how accurate can its predictions be? For example, the frigid Arctic temperatures can cause water molecules in low-lying clouds to trap heat in a very different way than they do here in the Pacific Northwest. Is it necessary to take a detail like this into account?

In cold regions like the Arctic where surface ocean temperatures are much warmer than the overlying atmosphere, the ocean transfers a lot of heat into the air. Sea ice insulates the ocean and prevents heat transfer to the atmosphere, so when there is less ice, a cycle of increasing warming can perpetuate. Because water has a higher heat capacity than air, the ocean doesn’t cool off as much as the atmosphere warms. This is particularly bad news for the Arctic, where layers of cold, dense air often sit beneath warmer air in a phenomenon called a temperature inversion. Effectively, this prevents heat from moving on to higher layers of the atmosphere, so it stays low where it could melt more sea ice. This contributes to a phenomenon called Arctic Amplification, where for every degree of warming seen in the global average, the Arctic surface temperature warms by about four degrees. While it may be tempting to build a model containing every cloud in the atmosphere or chunk of ice in the Arctic Ocean, these could make it too computationally difficult to solve. Daniel has to simplify, because his goal is not to provide a weather forecast, but to evaluate how well models match observed measurements of Arctic temperatures.

Daniel by the Skogafoss in Iceland in June 2018. If you’re lucky (and he was), you can see sea ice, turbulent boundary layer cloud layers, and the Greenland ice sheet when you fly between Portland and Iceland.

To accomplish this, Daniel uses model output data, re-analyzed data that fits models to observations, and temperature measurements from weather balloons. These sources contain terabytes of data, so he has written code and contributed to open-source software that subsets and analyzes these datasets in a meaningful way. Daniel then uses the re-analyzed and weather balloon data to test whether the model reproduces various features of the Arctic climate, such as widespread temperature inversions. Working with this vast amount of information requires some mathematical prowess. While studying as an undergraduate at BYU Idaho, Daniel decided to major in math when he heard a professor describe mathematics as “a toolbox to solve science problems with”. An internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory later suggested geophysical modeling as a worthy task to tackle.

When he’s not modeling the future of the Arctic, Daniel spends time with his children, Milo and Owen, and plays in a rock band he formed with his wife, Suzanne, called Mons La Hire. Daniel is also a DJ on KBVR and is excited to become the newest host of Inspiration Dissemination. To hear more, tune in on Sunday, December 2nd at 7 PM on KBVR 88.7 FM, live stream the show, or catch our podcast!

Exploring the disconnect between humans and the ocean

Unseen associations

We are all connected to the ocean, and organisms living in the ocean are an integral – if often unseen – part of our lives. You might be more connected to the ocean than you think. For example, fertilizer used to grow vegetables is often made from fish, and ingredients derived from fish are often added to processed foods. And amazingly, the ocean produces more than half of the oxygen on the planet, while also being responsible for storing 50 times more carbon dioxide than is found in the atmosphere.

The impact of human activity can be observed in a variety of ways. Run-off from agriculture empties into fragile marine ecosystems, and plastic accumulates in the ocean and cycles back into our food supply, for example. Consequences of human activity disturb a precarious balance that is not fully understood. Within the American mind, there is a fractured connection to the ocean, and it is this disconnect that Samm Newton is studying. As a 3rd year Master’s student in the Environmental Arts and Humanities program in the College of Liberal Arts, she is exploring multiple questions as part of her thesis. What has been the role of science and technology in how we have known the ocean? What has been the relationship between that knowledge and how we have valued and made decisions about marine systems? And, how can scholars approach the study of these relationships in new ways?

Scientific inquiry is a tangled knot: the direction of research is often decided based on narrow criteria

Scientific funding agencies have often determined the direction of research based on the priorities of a moment in time. Some priorities arose from crises, while others might have been derived from a perceived risk to lives in human or animal communities. Other priorities were influenced by what types of technology and datasets were available. Within that structure, it has been difficult for science to be innovative if it doesn’t address a problem that has been classified as relevant by funding authorities. Samm explains further, “we have taken the environment, deconstructed its components, and focused only on certain aspects that we deemed interesting at a given moment, while the rest of the pieces slid into the background.”

Samm studies the ocean using methods traditionally associated with the humanities. She describes her method as an interdisciplinary approach to unpack how we have generated knowledge about the ocean through science. Her approach includes extracting information from scientific history and papers, archives, oral histories, as well as popular literature from sources like National Geographic and the Washington Post.

Different ways to think about our connection with the ocean

How can we encourage people to recognize their connection to the ocean, and direct their attention to how their lives are impacted by ocean issues? Samm indicates how advancements in technology and media have created new ways for people to access scientific knowledge about the ocean. With outlets such as Nautilus live, people can learn about ocean ecosystems by watching videos of organisms living in the sea. They can also interact with scientists in real time (check out this one about a large number of octopus brooding near Monterey Bay, CA. Science videos on the internet have become an engaging and popular way to share knowledge of the ocean and science with a broad audience.

“The ocean is very special to me.”

Samm grew up in the “shadow of the petrochemical industry” in Freeport, Texas, where the sea is brown, and air and water pollution are an everyday reality. Observing these anthropogenic forces impacting her coast and community, and how disconnected people seem to be from the ocean, led her to question the relationship between humans and marine environments. She found that science and technology have played a dominant role in how we have known the ocean—and possibly how we have valued it. Samm also found that methods from the humanities, particularly marine environmental history, as well as science and technology studies, provide a meaningful framework to examine that relationship further.

During her undergrad, Samm studied psychology and behavioral neuroendocrinology, with a focus toward consciousness and philosophy of the mind. She spent 10 years working outside of academia before pursuing a Master’s degree at OSU. Samm credits the Environmental Arts and Humanities program at OSU with providing a flexible framework for people from different backgrounds – including art and science – to decide how they want to study a topic of interest.

After finishing her Master’s degree, Samm plans to pursue a PhD in an interdisciplinary field studying environmental issues. As a graduate student at OSU, Samm has enjoyed working in a “scholarly space, and getting the opportunity to do research.” Beyond grad school, Samm’s goal is to be involved in work that transforms the world, and to contribute to projects that strengthen interdisciplinary associations between diverse, yet interconnected, academic fields.

Check out Samm’s exhibit at Autzen House on the OSU campus:The Need to Know Comes in Waves: Paintings by Samm Newton

On view from Sept. 20th – Dec. 15th, 10 AM – 4 PM at Autzen House (811 SW Jefferson)

Reception Oct. 18th, 4 – 6 PM; mini artist talks at 4:30 and 5:30

Samm will also be the Featured Artist at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, OR in January 2019. Check out this page for more details!

The Evolving Views of Plastic Pollution

Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface and some studies suggest we still have over 91% of marine species that await discovery. Even as far back as 2010 some NASA scientists admit we knew more about the surface of Mars than we did about the bottom of our own oceans! Despite the fact we may not know everything about our oceans just yet, one thing is certain: plastics are becoming part of ecosystems that have never experienced it and we’re beginning to understand its massive impact. One estimate suggests that even if you had 100 ships towing for 10 hours a day, with 200 meters of netting and perfectly capturing every large and tiny piece of plastic, we could only clean up 2% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch every year. It would take 50 years to clean everything up, assuming we magically stopped using plastics on Earth. As one Nature research article suggests, the problems lies mostly with local municipalities; but that means with targeted local action, individuals can make a real difference and limit how much plastic makes it to our oceans. So you may be thinking “let’s tell all our friends these plastic facts and then everyone will stop using plastic, right?”. Not so fast, unfortunately a host of studies show just informing people about the scope of the problem doesn’t always make them change their behavior to ameliorate the problem in question.

Katy getting a seal kiss from Boots the harbor seal at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

Our guest this evening is Katy Nalven, a 2nd year Masters student in the Marine Resources Management program, who is using a community based social marketing approach to ask people not only IF they know about the problem of plastics in oceans, but she also seeks to understand how people think about this problem and what could be individual hurdles to decreasing plastic usage. Using a survey based approach administered at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Katy plans to examine a few specific communities of interest to identify how the views around plastic usage from Aquarium visitors and local community members may differ and hopefully where they overlap.

This community based social marketing approach has many steps, but it’s proven more effective in changing behaviors for beneficial outcomes rather than just mass media information campaigns by themselves. By identifying a target goal for a community of interest you can tailor educational material that will have the greatest chance of success. For example, if your goal is to decrease plastic usage for coastal communities in Oregon, you may find that a common behavior in the community you can target to have the greatest impact such as bringing your own mug to coffee shops for a discount, or automatically saying “no straw please” whenever going out to eat. Katy is beginning to pin down how these Oregon coast communities view plastic usage with the hope that a future student can begin implementing her recommended marketing strategies to change behaviors for a more positive ocean health outlook.

Hugs from Cleo, the Giant Pacific Octopus, at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

Katy grew up in the landlocked state of Arizona constantly curious about animals, but on a childhood visit to SeaWorld San Diego she became exposed to the wonders of the ocean and was wonderstruck by a close call with a walrus. Near the end of a Biology degree in her undergraduate years, simultaneously competing as an NAIA Soccer player for Lyons College, Katy was looking for career options and with a glimpse of her stuffed walrus she got at the San Diego Zoo, she decided to look at Alaska for jobs. After a few summers being a whale watching guide in Juneau, an animal handling internship in Florida, and then another internship in Hawaii Katy decided she wanted to formally revisit her science roots but with a public policy perspective. Oregon State University’s Marine Resource Management Program was the perfect fit. In fact, once she was able to connect with her advisor, Dr. Kerry Carlin-Morgan who is also the Education Director for the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Katy knew this was the perfect step for her career.

Meeting Jack Johnson at the 6th International Marine Debris Conference. He and his wife are the founders of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation whose mission is to “provide students with experiences that will enhance their appreciation for and understanding of their environment so they will be lifelong stewards of the earth.”

 

 

Be sure to tune in to Katy’s interview Sunday August 19th at 7PM on 88.7FM, or listen live, to learn more about her findings about how we view plastic pollution, and how we can potentially make local changes to help the global ecosystem.

Stream ecosystems and a changing climate

Examining the effect of climate change on stream ecosystems

Oak Creek near McDonald Dunn research lab. The salamander and trout in the experiments were collected along this stretch of creek.

As a first year Master’s student in the lab of Ivan Arismendi, Francisco Pickens studies how the changing, warming climate impacts animals inhabiting stream ecosystems. A major component of stream ecosystem health is rainfall. In examining and predicting the effects of climate change on rainfall, it is important to consider not only the amount of rainfall, but also the timing of rainfall. Although a stream may receive a consistent amount of rain, the duration of the rainy season is projected to shrink, leading to higher flows earlier in the year and a shift in the timing of the lowest water depth. Currently, low flow and peak summer temperature are separated by time. With the shortening and early arrival of the rainy season, it is more likely that low flow and peak summer temperature will coincide.

A curious trout in one of the experimental tanks.

Francisco is trying to determine how the convergence of these two events will impact the animals inhabiting streams. This is an important question because the animals found in streams are ectothermic, meaning that they rely on their surrounding environment to regulate their body temperature. Synchronization of the peak summer temperature with the lowest level of water flow could raise the temperature of the water, profoundly impacting the physiology of the animals living in these streams.

 

 

How to study animals in stream ecosystems?

Salamander in its terrestrial stage.

Using a simulated stream environment in a controlled lab setting, Francisco studies how temperature and low water depth impact the physiology and behavior of two abundant stream species – cutthroat trout and the pacific giant salamander. Francisco controls the water temperature and depth, with depth serving as a proxy for stream water level.

Blood glucose level serves as the experimental readout for assessing physiological stress because elevated blood glucose is an indicator of stress. Francisco also studies the animals’ behavior in response to changing conditions. Increased speed, distance traveled, and aggressiveness are all indicators of stress. Francisco analyzes their behavior by tracking their movement through video. Manual frame-by-frame video analysis is time consuming for a single researcher, but lends itself well to automation by computer. Francisco is in the process of implementing a computer vision-based tool to track the animals’ movement automatically.

The crew that assisted in helping collect the animals: From left to right: Chris Flora (undergraduate), Lauren Zatkos (Master’s student), Ivan Arismendi (PI).

Why OSU?

Originally from a small town in Washington state, Francisco grew up in a logging community near the woods. He knew he wanted to pursue a career involving wild animals and fishing, with the opportunity to work outside. Francisco came to OSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife for his undergraduate studies. As an undergrad, Francisco had the opportunity to explore research through the NSF REU program while working on a project related to algae in the lab of Brooke Penaluna. After he finishes his Master’s degree at OSU, Francisco would like to continue working as a data scientist in a federal or state agency.

Tune in on Sunday, June 24th at 7pm PST on KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM, or listen live at kbvr.com/listen.  Also, check us out on Apple Podcasts!

Crabby and Stressed Out: Ocean Acidification and the Dungeness Crab

One of the many consequences associated with climate change is ocean acidification. This process occurs when high atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean lowering ocean pH. Concern about ocean acidification has increased recently with the majority of scientific publications about ocean acidification being released in the last 5 years. Despite this uptick in attention, much is still unknown about the effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms.

Close-up of a Dungeness crab megalopae

Our guest this week, Hannah Gossner, a second year Master’s student in the Marine Resource Management Program, is investigating the physiological effects of ocean acidification on Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) with the help of advisor Francis Chan. Most folks in Oregon recognize the Dungeness crab as a critter than ends up on their plate. Dungeness crab harvest is a multimillion dollar industry because of its culinary use, but Dungeness crab also play an important role in the ocean ecosystem. Due to their prevalence and life cycle, they are important both as scavengers and as a food source to other animals.

Hannah pulling seawater samples from a CTD Carrousel on the R/V Oceanus off the coast of Oregon

To study the effect of ocean acidification on Dungeness crab, Hannah simulates a variety of ocean conditions in sealed chamber where she can control oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. Then by measuring the respiration of an individual crab she can better understand the organism’s stress response to a range of oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios. Hannah hopes that her work will provide a template for measuring the tolerance of other animals to changes in ocean chemistry. She is also interested in the interplay between science, management, and policy, and plans to share her results with local managers and decision makers.

Hannah working the night shift on the R/V Oceanus

Growing up in Connecticut, Hannah spent a lot of time on the water in her dad’s boat, and developed an interest in marine science. Hannah majored in Marine Science at Boston University where she participated in a research project which used stable isotope analysis to monitor changes in food webs involving ctenophores and forage fish. Hannah also did a SEA Semester (not to be confused with a Semester at Sea) where she worked on a boat and studied sustainability in Polynesian island cultures and ecosystems.  Hannah knew early on that she wanted to go to graduate school, and after a brief adventure monitoring coral reefs off the coast of Africa, she secured her current position at Oregon State.

Tune in Sunday June, 17 at 7 pm PST to learn more about Hannah’s research and journey to graduate school. Not a local listener? Stream the show live or catch the episode on our podcast.

Hannah enjoying her favorite past time, diving!

Ocean sediment cores provide a glimpse into deep time

Theresa on a recent cruise on the Oceanus.
Photo credit: Natasha Christman.

First year CEOAS PhD student Theresa Fritz-Endres investigates how the productivity of the ocean in the equatorial Pacific has changed in the last 20,000 years since the time of the last glacial maximum. This was the last time large ice sheets blanketed much of North America, northern Europe, and Asia. She investigates this change by examining the elemental composition of foraminifera (or ‘forams’ for short) shells obtained from sediment cores extracted from the ocean floor. Forams are single-celled protists with shells, and they serve as a proxy for ocean productivity, or organic matter, because they incorporate the elements that are present in the ocean water into their shells. Foram shell composition provides information about what the composition of the ocean was like at the point in time when the foram was alive. This is an important area of study for learning about the climate of the past, but also for understanding how the changing climate of today might transform ocean productivity. Because live forams can be found in ocean water today, it is possible to assess how the chemistry of seawater is currently being incorporated into their shells. This provides a useful comparison for how ocean chemistry has changed over time. Theresa is trying to answer the question, “was ocean productivity different than it is now?”

Examples of forams. For more pictures and information, visit the blog of Theresa’s PI, Dr. Jennifer Fehrenbacher: http://jenniferfehrenbacher.weebly.com/blog

Why study foram shells?

Foram shells are particularly useful for scientists because they preserve well and are found ubiquitously in ocean sediment, offering a consistent glimpse into the dynamic state of ocean chemistry. While living, forams float in or near the surface of the sea, and after they die, they sink to the bottom of the sea floor. The accumulating foram shells serve as an archive of how ocean conditions have changed, like how tree rings reflect the environmental conditions of the past.

Obtaining and analyzing sediment cores

Obtaining these records requires drilling cores (up to 1000 m!) into deep sea sediments, work that is carried out by an international consortium of scientists aboard large ocean research vessels. These cores span a time frame of 800 million years, which is the oldest continuous record of ocean chemistry. Each slice of the core represents a snapshot of time, with each centimeter spanning 1,000 years of sediment accumulation. Theresa is using cores that reach a depth of a few meters below the surface of the ocean floor. These cores were drilled in the 1980s by a now-retired OSU ship and are housed at OSU.

Theresa on a recent cruise on the Oceanus, deploying a net to collect live forams. Photo credit: Natasha Christman.

The process of core analysis involves sampling a slice of the core, then washing the sediment (kind of like a pour over coffee) and looking at the remainder of larger-sized sediment under a powerful microscope to select foram species. The selected shells undergo elemental analysis using mass spectrometry. Vastly diverse shell shapes and patterns result in different elements and chemistries being incorporated into the shells. Coupled to the mass spectrometer is a laser that ablates through the foram shell, providing a more detailed view of the layers within the shell. This provides a snapshot of ocean conditions for the 4 weeks-or-so that the foram was alive. It also indicates how the foram responded to light changes from day to night.

Theresa is early in her PhD program, and in the next few years plans to do field work on the Oregon coast and on Catalina island off the coast of California. She also plans to undertake culturing experiments to further study the composition of the tiny foram specimens.

Why grad school at OSU?

Theresa completed her undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Ontario, followed by completion of a Master’s degree at San Francisco State University. She was interested in pursuing paleo and climate studies after transformative classes in her undergrad. In between her undergraduate and Master’s studies she spent a year working at Mt. Evans in Colorado as part of the National Park Service and Student Conservation Association.

Theresa had already met her advisor, Dr. Jennifer Fehrenbacher, while completing her Master’s degree at SF State. Theresa knew she was interested in attending OSU for grad school for several reasons: to work with her advisor, and to have access to the core repository, research ships, and technical equipment available at OSU.

To hear more about Theresa’s research and her experience as a PhD student at OSU, tune in on Sunday, June 10th at 7pm on KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM, or listen live at kbvr.com/listen.  Also, check us out on Apple Podcasts!

Beyond doom and gloom: highlighting solutions to ocean acidification

When we hear news coverage of global environmental changes, it can easily overwhelm us. We mentally curl up into the fetal position and conclude there is nothing we can do to stave off the changes that Earth is projected to experience. One of these changes is ocean acidification–a phenomenon where carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean. As carbon dioxide levels increase in our atmosphere, more of it is able to dissolve into the ocean and lower its pH, making it more acidic. A decrease of 0.1 pH unit in the global ocean since the beginning of the 1900s may not seem like a lot, but because pH is represented on a logarithmic scale, it actually represents about a 30% increase in hydrogen ions. This makes it harder for organisms like oysters, clams, and corals to build hard shells and skeletons. It is uncertain how this phenomenon could affect the long-term fate of these organisms, as well as the fish that depend on them.

Brian flying in a hot air balloon north of Mt. Rainer, WA.

This is where Brian Erickson comes in. Brian, a masters student in Marine Resource Management in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, observed that most curricula designed to teach high school students about ocean acidification do not discuss actionable solutions that most people can take in their everyday lives to mitigate their carbon footprints. Do student attitudes change when presented with solutions like insulating homes to save on heat, swapping incandescent bulbs with LEDs, or consolidating trips to the store to minimize gas consumption?

Brian at work during his first field biology job, studying the sexual reproduction of tropical seaweeds in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands and San Blas, Panama. It’s easy to fall in love with the ocean when you snorkel on coral reefs for two summers!

A former high school science teacher himself, Brian grew up in St. Louis and received his undergraduate degree in biology from Lewis and Clark College. As an undergraduate, he first became acquainted with environmental research as a field technician in St. Croix in the Caribbean. After participating in Teach For America in New York City, he took many environmental research and education jobs before deciding to return to the ocean to bridge his interests of outdoor education and social science. As his masters draws to a close, Brian will be staying at OSU to begin a PhD in Fisheries and Wildlife working to bring multiple perspectives to marine conservation efforts in East Africa.

Helping students dissect a shark at Bronx Career & College Preparatory High School (Bronx, NY).

Taking students on their first canoe trip with Parks in Focus near Pictured Rocks, MI.

To hear more about Brian’s research and experiences in education, tune in to KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM at 7 pm on April 15th, or stream it online here. If you’re busy at that time, the show will appear on our podcast later this week.

 

Small Differences Have Big Consequences to Keep the Oceans Happy

Swimming away from the rocky shores out to sea Grace Klinges, a 2nd year PhD student in the Vega-Thurber Lab, is surrounded by short green sea grasses swaying in the waves, multi-colored brown sand and occasional dull grayish-brown corals dot the floor as she continues her research dive. However, the most interesting thing about this little island reef off the coast of Normanby Island, Papua New Guinea, is the forest of bubbles that envelopes Grace as she swims. Bubbles curiously squeak out everywhere along seafloor between sand grains and even eating their way through the corals themselves. It reminds one of how thick the fog can be in the Oregon hills, and like a passing cloud, the bubbles begin to dissipate the further away you swim from the shore, revealing an increasingly complex web of life wholly dependent on the corals that look more like color-shifting chameleons than their dull-colored cousins closer to the shore.

Grace took ~2,000 photos for each of 6 transects moving away from the carbon dioxide seeps. She is rendering these photos using a program called PhotoScan, which identifies areas of overlap between each photo to align them, and then generates a 3D model by calculating the depth of field of each image.

These bubbles emanating from the seafloor is part of a naturally occurring CO2 seep found in rare parts of the world. While seemingly harmless as they dance up the water column, they are changing ocean chemistry by decreasing pH or making the water more acidic. The balance of life in our oceans is so delicate – the entire reef ecosystem is changing in such a way that provides a grim time machine into the future of Earth’s oceans if humans continue emitting greenhouse gasses at our current rate.

Corals are the foundation of these ocean ecosystems that fish and indigenous island communities rely on for survival. In order for corals to survive they depend on a partnership with symbiotic algae; through photosynthesis, the algae provide amino acids and sugars to the corals, and in return, the coral provides a sheltered environment for the algae and the precursor molecules of photosynthesis. Algae lend corals their magnificent colors, but algae are less like colorful chameleons and more like generous Goldilocks that need specific water temperatures and a narrow range of acidity to survive. Recall those bubbles of CO2 rising from the seafloor? As the bubbles of CO2 move upward they react with water and make it slightly more acidic, too acidic in fact for the algae to survive. In an unfortunate cascade of effects, a small 0.5 pH unit change out of a 14 unit scale of pH, algae cannot help corals survive, fish lose their essential coral habitat and move elsewhere leaving these indigenous island inhabitants blaming bubbles for empty nets. On the grander scale, it’s humans to blame for our continuous emissions rapidly increasing global ocean temperatures and lowering ocean pH. The only real question is when we’ll realize the same thing the local fishermen see now, how can we limit the damage to come?

 

The lovely Tara Vessel anchored in Gizo, Solomon Islands.

Grace Klinges is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in the Microbiology Department who is using these natural CO2 seeps as a proxy for what oceans could look like in the future, and she’s on the hunt for solutions. Her research area is highly publicized and is part of an international collaboration called Tara Expeditions as a representative of the Rebecca Vega Thurber Lab here at Oregon State, known for diving across the world seeking to better understand marine microbial ecology in this rapidly changing climate. Grace’s project is studying the areas directly affected by these water-acidifying CO2 seeps and the surrounding reefs that return to normal ocean pH levels and water temperatures. By focusing her observations in this localized area, about a 60-meter distance moving away from shore, Grace is able to see a gradient of reef health that directly correlates with changing water chemistry. Through a variety of techniques (GoPro camera footage, temperature sensors, pH, and samples from coral and their native microbial communities) Grace hopes to produce a 3D model of the physical reef structures at this site to relate changing chemistry with changes in community complexity.

Tara scientists spend much of the sailing time between sites labeling tubes for sampling. Each coral sample taken will be split into multiple pieces, labeled with a unique barcode, and sent to various labs across the world, who will study everything from coral taxonomy and algal symbiont diversity to coral telomere length and reproduction rates. Photo © Tara Expeditions Foundation

One of the main ideas is that as you move further away from the CO2 seeps the number of coral species, or coral diversity, increases which often is expressed in a huge variety of physical structures and colors. As the coral diversity increases so should the diversity of their microbiomes. Using genetic and molecular biology techniques, Grace and the Vega Thurber lab will seek to better understand which corals are the most robust at lower pH levels. However, this story gets even more complicated, because it’s not just the coral and algae that depend on each other, but ocean viruses, bacterial players, and a whole host of other microorganisms that interact to keep this ecological niche functioning. This network of complicated interactions between a variety of organisms in reef systems requires balance for the system to function. Affectionately named the “coral holobiont“, similar to a human’s microbiome, we are still far from understanding the relative importance of each player which is why Grace and her labmates have written a series of bioanalytic computer scripts to efficiently analyze the massive amounts of genetic information that is becoming more available in the field.

Grace was overjoyed after taking a break from sampling to swim with some dolphins who were very curious about the boat. Photo © Tara Expeditions Foundation

With the combination of Grace’s field work taking direct observations of our changing oceans, and her computer programming that will help researchers around the world classify organisms of unknown ecosystem function, our knowledge of the oceans will get a little less murky. Be sure to listen to the interview Sunday January 14th at 7PM. You can learn more about the Vega Thurber lab here.

You can also download Grace’s iTunes Podcast Episode!