Marine Biology

In 1998, an aquarium employee was handling a octopus rubescens in Puget Sound near Seattle.  Although he was gloved, the small octopus swam right up the glove, and feeling obviously threatened, bit him. He did not feel the bite immediately, as they are so small its hard to tell. But after a few minutes, the employee noticed the blood and the small hole above his ring finger. The venom was very painful and the bleeding continued. The crew headed to the closest place that could get them boiling water: a nearby espresso stand. The heat of the boiling water broke down the poisonous toxins and the pain was gone within minutes.

The bite victim went to the hospital just in case, and ironically, the hospital called the aquarium for advise. All that was suggested was ointment for the blisters from the boiling water. The next day the bite was almost gone, although the victim recorded headaches and weakness. We do not know much about the O. Rubescen; there is much to learn. Is this venom possibly strong enough to be helpful in the medical field? With little knowledge on the subject, the future looks bright, because only new possibilities and resources can come from venomous animals.

This article interested me because I didn’t know any species of octopus’ had venom in them at all. Also, it is very good to know that boiling water burns the toxins, especially because I occasionally run into octopus’ out fishing. If there is not testing going on now, there should be to learn more about octopus bites, O. Rubescen more specifically. The article also talked about the intelligence of these molluscs. One woman, who was previously bit by a O. Rubescen learned more about it as it was brought her classroom and studied. She describes the “moods” of the octopus. Depending on the body language and particular color, the teacher knew whether she felt threatened, felt shy, or was hungry. The octopus even let her pet her between the eyes while she wrapped her tentacles around her arm. Octopus are peculiar animals, almost showing character the more you get to know them. There is much to learn and discover from all molluscs in the cephalopoda phylum.

In the Gulf of Mexico, research has proven that tiger sharks prey on birds. Although, not seabird; terrestrial birds.

The research started in 2009 when a tiger shark was captured for tagging. When the shark was brought on board, it coughed up feathers. This interested Marcus Drymon, of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who had been researching fish off the coast of Alabama since 2006. Him and his team decided to turn their focus to the tiger shark’s diet of birds. After studying the coughed up feathers in the lab, he discovered they did not belong to a seabird. The next two years, the team caught 50 Tiger sharks. Over half of them had either feathers, claws, beaks, or other miscellaneous body parts. Birds such as woodpeckers, tanagers, and meadowlarks were found in the stomachs.

How does a tiger shark get its jaws on land bird?

Lights on oil rigs are often so bright they disorient and confuse migratory birds crossing the Gulf. Many collide with the rigs and crash into the water, and others just crash into the water from exhaustion. “It could just be that tiger sharks in this area have learned to take advantage of this prey resource,” Drymond said.

According to the American Bird Conservancy, more birds are killed each year by colliding into oil rigs, than in the 2010 Gulf Spill.

What can we do to prevent migratory birds, song birds, and even sea birds from flying into oil rigs?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120113-sharks-songbirds-gulf-of-mexico-animals-fish-science/

After the BP spill, a contest was born, (mostly out of frustration) called the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. A veteran oil clean up company called Elastec/American Marine, out of Carmi, Illinois, won the 1.4 million dollar competition. They were just one team out of the 350 chosen to enter the competition.

The state of the art technology plus the determined minds of spill victims came together to create a system that can suck 4,670 gallons of spilled oil per minute! The machinery is 89.5% efficient, and only 10.5% of the oily mix in the recovery tanks was water. This huge technology advance that makes the past two oil disasters in our county’s past spills look shameful. The Exxon Valdez recovery crew was only able to recover 14% of the spilled oil and the BP spill in the Gulf was able able to recover a whopping 3% of the 4.9 million barrels spilled. Now we are more prepared than ever for another disaster.

Creator of the competition, Wendy Schmidt, said the challenge was created to “challenge the status quo, and to do so in a matter of months, not years.” The XPRIZE competition was was founded in 1996, and has had many competitions through out the years encouraging scientists to “prompt research collaborations to tackle urgent world challenges in energy and environment, education, life sciences, and space and ocean exploration.”

Its acts like these that keep our world’s  innovative wheels turning. What other competitions like these do you think could come out of natural or man made disasters? What technology is important enough to try to improve with a 1.4 million dollar purse? Everything starts with just an idea.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2011/10/11/wendy-schmidts-x-prize-oil-cleanup-challenge-names-winners/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/10/pictures/111006-x-prize-oil-cleanup/#/oil-spill-x-prize-facility_41439_600x450.jpg

Large jellyfish blooms are appearing around coastal areas around the world. The influx of blooms are not only annoying to tourists and fisherman alike, but they are also affecting the food chain. The jellyfish are eating in large amounts of plankton, but they “chain” stops there, because not many other animals prey on jellies. Fish would otherwise be eating this plankton. The jellies are “restricting the transfer of energy” resulting in lost carbon energy. If this continues, and the jellies keep consumer more zooplankton, phytoplankton, then the fish will not have enough to consume. What causes these blooms: increasing climate change, over fishing, fertilizer runoff and other factors.

“Marine bacteria typically play a key role in recycling carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other by-products of organic decay back into the food web,” says Virginia Institute of Marine Science graduate, Rob Condon. “But in our study, we found that when bacteria consumed dissolved organic matter from jellyfish they shunted it toward respiration rather than growth.”

Is there any way we can prevent such large blooms?

information source: http://www.macroevolution.net/jellyfish-swarms.html

Where have our coral reefs gone? Many argue that a big factor is over fishing, but if you take a look around, coral reefs are dying everywhere, even the ones where fishing is scarce. Although over fishing is a factor and it does impact important algae-eating fish, there are many other reasons including warming ocean, acidity, coastal pollution, coral diseases, etc. “All of these factors are stressing the reefs making them less able to recover from disturbances such as hurricanes, which also seem to be occurring more frequently” said Michelle Paddock of Simon Fraser University in Canada. Reefs are fragile environments; they are networks that really emphasize the literal aphorism, “the cycle of life”.

A research team that has been collecting data from 1955 to 2007 reports a declination of fish across the Caribbean. There has been a dramatic change in fish density in the area, declining from 2.7% to 6% a year. Paddock quotes “If we want to have coral reefs in our future, we must ensure that we reduce damage to these ecosystems… we need to let lawmakers and resource managers know that we care about these ecosystems and we need to push for changes in how they are managed.”

What can you do, on a personal level, to help prevent the declination of our fragile coral reefs? Do you think, as a planet, we can reduce the carbon emissions released in our delicate ocean environments?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090319132911.htm

On October 5th, the massive cargo ship, Rena, ran aground spilling hundreds of tons of oil. The ship came to a halt on Astrolabe Reef about 14 miles off shore near the town of Tauranga. The ship, a sitting duck unable to move, has and extremely unstable list. As of the 11th, rough weather is preventing other vessels to reach it. More than 70 of the 1,200 containers have already falling into the sea. Eleven of these containers contain extremely hazardous substances. As far as we know, none of these have fallen in.

A crew of 200 have set out to the beaches. While they do the best they can to scrape off the surface oil, the oil is deceiving; a large percentage of the oil lies below the surface, as proved by the Exxon oil spill. Many birds and other animals are discovering the harmful effects, first hand. Oil takes off that waterproof layer off the feathers of birds. Without that protection, birds are vulnerable to a weaker core, resulting in hypothermia. Not only that, when the oil soaked birds try to preen themselves, they inhale and digest the oil,  destroying their insides. Thousands of birds are already dead. One species in particular, the endangered rockhoppered penguin is especially at risk.

Locals are calling the accident the “worst maritime environmental disaster”. Katherine Taylor, director of the government body of Maritime New Zealand, states, “We are at the mercy of the sea. It’s not a quick fix”.

What can we do to prevent these types of disasters? Should we stop transferring hundreds tons of oil and cargo using marine highways? What can we do instead?

From: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/01/black-reefs-when-the-ship-hits-the-reef/

When ocean diver Enric Sala visited Kingman reef (part of a group islands 2,000 km south of Hawaii) for the first time in 2005, he thought he found “Paradise”. The reef was lush with corals in every color of the rainbow, giant clams, and all other sorts of eccentric wildlife. When he returned for another adventure in 2007, all that was left was a desolate eyesore. He mentioned he thought he had “entered the dark land of Mordor”.

Confused and horrified, Sala gazed upon the sinister, murky colors, dead corals, and total lack of life. A “carpet of dark slime—filamentous algae and microbes” had consumed the former clear, pristine waters. The once prosperous and flourishing reef was dubbed the “Black Reef”.

Why? What could have possibly happened to cause such a dramatic change in such a short amount of time? Sala and his crew found the answer right away: a teak-hulled fishing vessel filled with iron-rich compressors, engines and other unidentifiable machinery had wrecked right in the heart of the reef. The intense overdose of iron in the originally iron-poor waters resulted in the death of 1 km of reef in less than three years. No one knows who or what the boat belonged to or what happened to the crew, but the wreck was recent. No one took the blame for it. No one tried to remove the harmful machinery or chemicals. No one tried to do much of anything.

Sala’s team found similar destroyed reefs in the central Pacific. What’s worse, many of these ships sank on reefs protected by the United States as Marine National Monuments, and many wrecked within 12 miles of a (US Fish and Wildlife Service) Wildlife Refuge. “The difference between the surrounding reefs and the black reefs are truly amazing. The former are some of the most beautiful in the world, whereas the black reefs areas some of the most dead and dark reefs we have ever seen” said professor and director of the marine microbiology lab at SDSU, Forest Rohwer.

Why don’t skippers report their harmful wrecks? What can we do to protect these reefs from careless tragedies such as these? And, what can we do to reverse the harmful effects of iron and other harsh chemicals on these fragile ecosystems?