Corals 4,000 years old can tell environmental tales

If you go where you've never gone before, what are the chances you'll see what you've never seen before?

Pretty good.

That's why, while fascinating, it's not a shock that a recent series of dives in mile-deep water off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands turned up some bizarre-looking new marine life.

(Images: Above, a new genus and species of orange bamboo coral found 5,745 feet down. It is 4 to 5 feet tall. Credit: Hawaii Deep-Sea Coral Expedition 2007/NOAA . Image below is the Pisces V submersible. Credit: NOAA.)

More information and photos in the official NOAA press release here.

Among the discoveries of a 2007 NOAA-funded mission in the depths of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument are seven new corals, never before described by scientists. And the mission found more signs of life that haven't yet been fully studied,

The coral discoveries are interesting not only for the intrinsic interest in finding new forms of life, but also because they can tell a story about conditions and long-term changes in conditions in the deep ocean.

“Deep-sea bamboo corals also produce growth rings much as trees do, and can provide a much-needed view of how deep ocean conditions change through time,” said Richard Spinrad, NOAA’s assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. “These corals may be among the first marine organisms to be affected by ocean acidification.”

Some of the corals, still alive, may be 4,000 years old—that's nearly as old as the oldest of the reputed oldest living things on Earth, the bristlecone pines.

The research team, which included University of Hawai'i scientist Christopher Kelley and NOAA researcher Frank Parrish, sought to predict where dense deep coral colonies could be found and studied growth rates of corals. Among their finds, atop a seamount, was a field of dead coral, of a species not previously found in Hawai'i, and which may have died hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The research was conducted in party by the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory, sponsored by NOAA and the University of Hawaii, with the Pisces V submersible. It worked at depths nearly a mile deep.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

Incredible shape-shifting corals, and how they make conservation tough

You can neither tell a book by its cover, nor a coral head by its appearance.

The coral, in fact, might be the stranger of the two, according to research by a team of University of Hawai'i scientists.

Not only can two corals look very different but be essentially the same genetically. But very similar-looking corals can also be very different genetically.

(Image: These two corals from Maui, Porites lobata (yellow) and Porites compressa (bluish-purple), look very different in both color and form, but genetically they are nearly the same. Is one a hybrid or is this coral just very susceptible to different forms? That's not clear. Credit: Zac Forsman.)

The team, Zac H. Forsman and Robert J. Toonen of the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology, Daniel J. Barnis of the Zoology Department and Cynthia L. Hunter of the Biology Department, wrote “Shape-shifting corals: Molecular markers show morphology is evolutionarily plastic in Porites,” which appeared in the Biomed Central open access journal Evolutionary Biology. The press release is here.

Corals are now generally identified by their appearance, but the new paper suggests that's not nearly good enough. They expanded standard genetic testing into new areas to try to better understand the corals.

With Porites lutea, which has been treated as a single species, the researchers found that genetically, it could be broken up into at least three distinct genetic groups that the authors say are “deeply genetically divergent.

In other cases, they found that different-looking corals with, say, a branching appearance or a mounding appearance, were almost impossible to tell apart at the genetic level—like the two species pictured above.

In part, this means that some corals that you'd expect to be quite distinct may actually be capable of interbreeding. And some species may just be real shape-shifters, inherently capable of taking different looks.

That has a number of impacts.

One is that you might have assumed a unique-looking coral in a given environment was endemic or unique to that locale. But in fact, it might simply be just another a natural form of that coral.

And other corals, which might look the same in different locations, might actually represent unique adaptations.

“This ‘coral species problem’ is an impediment to understanding the evolution and biodiversity of this important and threatened group of organisms,” the authors write.

In a challenging environmental age, in which coral reefs are threatened by warming oceans, by rising waters, by pollution, by alien species invasions and more, this makes it all the more difficult to develop strategies to protect the corals.

Indeed, until you can accurately tell one coral from another, or identify siblings, your reef could be experiencing change or losing things without you knowing it.

In the words of the scientists: “Species definitions based solely on evolutionarily labile, polymorphic, or phenotypically plastic traits are likely to be misleading and confound attempts to identify, understand, and conserve coral biodiversity or to recognize its loss.”

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

Reading books and newspapers on screens: prime time yet?

How do you like reading on this screen?

To me, it lacks the comforting tactile sensations of a nice magazine or newspaper, or a pocket book or, indeed, a letter. (Of course, most of our letters these days come via email. The “mail” delivers formal documents and solicitations, for the most part.)

And if we've gotten used to getting our private mail via computer, can the final collapse of paper-and-ink electronic ink be far behind?

The fits and starts are legendary of efforts to move the large-format printed word to the electronic screen.

I have read a few books on the 3.5-inch screen of my Palm T/X, and the 2.25-inch square screen of the Zire, and on the various handheld devices that preceded them, as well as on the 2-inch screen of my phone. But it's an exercise in frustration, constantly losing one's place, and spending more time scrolling up and down for where you left off than actually reading.

Try and read a newspaper on one of those, with the ads taking up most of the space on the teenie-weenie screen.

Some years ago, there was talk of something called electronic ink, e-ink. With painful slowness, the technology has crept up on us. I remember reading of big, flexible sheets of fabric you'd read like a regular newspaper. Push on a corner, and the words rearrange into the next page. It hasn't gotten there, but e-ink has been on the market for a few years, and the vehicles for it improve almost monthly.

Perhaps best known are the (6-inch screen) Amazon's Kindle reader ($359), the (6-inch screen) Sony Reader ($299 to $400), and with a much bigger screen (10.2 inches), the iRex Digital Reader (versions from $599 to $859). (The iLiad of iRex is smaller, but still bigger than Kindle and Sony readers.)

Some have wireless capabilities, some not; some have touch screens, some not; some allow you to make notes on the page, some not.

But the coolest features of these devices is the electronic ink. Unlike the LCD screens of handheld devices, these things use power to turn the page, but once the screen has arranged itself into words and sentences, it doesn't use power to keep them there. Set the reader down, come back the next day, and what you were reading is still there—you haven't lost your place, and your device battery isn't worn down.

The newspaper chain Hearst is now said to be preparing a larger-format wireless e-reader of their own.

The Hearst reader is said to have a screen the size of a sheet of paper. Presuming that's a standard 8.5x11 sheet of paper, it's a 13-inch diagonal screen, bigger, even, than iRex's product.

They're still trying to determine, stories say, whether it will be somehow foldable, and one wonders whether they're still trying to serve too many masters.

At issue is the business of portability.

Do you want something you can haul around easily like your cell phone, or do you want something that makes the reading process easy.

Are they trying to make something that will replace the book/newspaper in your living room, or are they trying to make a portable device that will let you read on the road—a place where you expect corners to be cut for convenience.

Maybe they ought to decide.

I'm primarily an old-style reader. I subscribe to three actual paper newspapers, and the house is crammed full of paper books, even though my electronic devices have a few volumes on them as well.

I'm not a technophobe. But I want the new technology to improve on the paper reading experience, not just approach it. I want it bigger, better, cheaper.

Unfortunately, none of the paper newspapers to which I subscribe is available on the e-reader format, as far as I know. And none of them has a website that makes reading as easy as picking up the paper. I'm already paying for my subscriptions, and I'd be willing to pay for an excellent e-version. But we're not yet there, so I'm not quite ready to leap.

But I'm willing. I'm close. Build it and I will come.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

Civil Unions, Climate Change and bogus arguments

The furious debate over civil union legislation in Hawaii is not the normal kind of topic for this blog, but it has interesting parallels to certain scientific issues—say climate change.

(Image: This native white hibiscus from Kaua'i, has little to do with the subject of this post, like many of the arguments on civil unions as well as climate change.)

The Hawai'i Legislature's House Bill 444 would grant to same-sex couples the rights currently associated with marriage. It is unlike the climate change debate in every way but this: some of the arguments abandon logic and honest debate.

You see this a lot in public debate. Folks who have honest disagreements begin to toss everything but the kitchen sink at the opposing side, presumably in hope that some of it scores points.

One assumes that the fundamental issue on the civil union issue is this: Should society continue to limit special recognition and certain tax and estate planning benefits to traditional male-female formalized marriages; or should those privileges also be afforded to non-traditional unions—notably same-sex ones.

Seems simple—I believe it ought to be this way; or I believe it ought to be that way.

But folks are desperately cobbling together arguments to “logically” support their positions.

My favorite—you hear this a lot in talk radio—is to say the issue has already been decided—in the 1998 constitutional amendment election. That's been a common complaint of opponents of Bill 444.

Actually, anyone who reads the constitutional amendment recognizes that it didn't decide anything.

What the amendment did was grant the Legislature the authority to restrict marriage to members of the opposite sex. It didn't resolve the issue, and it didn't mandate that the Legislature do so.

Here's the actual language of the Constitution, derived from that election: “Section 23. The legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.”

The issue at the time of the 1998 election was twofold. One, certainly, was whether the community wanted same-sex marriage in Hawai'i. The other was whether these decisions ought to be made by the courts or by the Legislature.

It was entirely possible for someone who supported same-sex unions to also have supported placing that power in the hands of the Legislature—assuming, perhaps, that a Democrat-dominated panel would take the liberal stance on same-sex unions.

(We mention this, having seen a Legislator in our district use the results of the 1998 election to justify his vote against the measure.)

So, what's this got to do with climate change? It's the issue of facts versus non-facts, and logic versus illogic. There are lots of folks out there misstating the facts, or making them up, or making contradictory assertions in support of their position on climate.

Our favorite, of course, are those who oppose any government activity in response to climate change, citing patently contradictory assertions, such as:

The world is actually cooling—there is no global warming; and anyhow, we shouldn't worry about the warming that's occurring because warming is a good thing, since it is expanding crop-growing areas.

Or this: You can't trust the scientific evidence because models are inadequate or measurements are flawed; and anyhow, this, this, and this piece of scientific evidence support our position.

Or even this, which we heard last night: There have been non-anthropogenic spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels before the Industrial Revolution, so this one isn't caused by humans, either. Which is vaguely analogous to saying: Lots of cats die of feline leukemia, so the cat, lying there under the wheel of a car, must have died of feline leukemia too.

It's often hard to know whether folks making ridiculous arguments are doing so knowingly in hopes of fooling others, or are simply parroting something they've heard because they've been fooled themselves.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

Marine noise: Moving beyond sonar and whales

The furor over Navy sonar and its impacts on marine mammals may be doing a disservice to the larger issue of ocean noise.

(Research is increasingly looking at the impacts of marine noise on a range of sea creatures. Seen here, sea life on the reef at Molokini Crater in Hawai'i. Credit: Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.)

Environmental groups and military lawyers fight over whether national security trumps environmental concerns. (It can, according to the Federal Register notice of the Navy's new authorization to conduct sonar training in Hawaii: Taking and Importing Marine Mammals; U.S. Navy Training in the Hawaii Range Complex.)

Meanwhile, there's the much larger issue of other kinds of human-caused noise on marine mammals and other kinds of marine life. Fortunately, there is increased interest in marine noise beyond the Navy and charismatic megafauna (big cuddly critters.)

One (admittedly partisan) resource for current research on this issue is the Acoustic Ecology Institute. It includes data on new studies as well as news reports, like the apparent shift in migratory routes of gray whales away from the oil fields off Russia's Sakhalin Island, and the concerns in Canada about the impact of increased tanker traffic on local nearshore whale populations.

Acoustic Ecology is also making the point that while deaths and strandings by marine mammals get big headlines, science is appropriately moving to the study of subtler effects of noise.

“Several studies released during 2008 all suggest that whales of many species may stop or reduce their feeding when moderate to loud human sounds enter their habitat, and this particular impact is likely to become a central focus of future research and regulatory consideration,” write Acoustic Ecology founder Jim Cummings, who serves as president of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology.

And then there's the impact of noise on non-mammals.

Does an angler's catch rate change in the presence of roaring jet skis? Is the rate different in the presence of paddle-powered outrigger canoes? (Thus is the issue the presence of a foreign object or its volume?)

“The possibility that noise causes stress responses in marine life is under increasing scrutiny, and could fundamentally alter the equation that is central to ocean noise regulation: if and how noise may contribute to long-term, population-level impacts,” Cummings wrote.

Scientists in and out of government are starting to look at those impacts. There are international efforts to develop technologies to quiet big ships. And increasingly, researchers are recognizing that mammals aren't the only creatures affected.

As an example, the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea, concerned about the impacts of shipping on marine life in the Mediterranean, issued a report that included this line:

“While most interest in anthropogenic noise and its mitigation has focused on marine mammals (mainly cetaceans and pinnipeds) and a few other vertebrates (such as sea turtles), there is increasing concern regarding the impact of such noise on fish, other vertebrates such as aquatic and diving birds, and marine invertebrates (including crabs and lobsters).”

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate