Weekly Ocean News

Weekly Ocean News

DATASTREME OCEAN WEEK TEN: 6-10 April 2015

For Your Information

Hydrothermal vent organisms -- You are invited to read this week's Supplemental Information...In Greater Depth that describes how geoscientists have investigated the deep-sea environment in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents that form along the oceanic ridges nearly 3000 meters below the ocean surface. Interestingly, a diverse and abundant community of marine organisms has been found to live in these extreme oceanic conditions.

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- Tropical cyclone activity was limited last week to the western North Pacific basin. Typhoon Maysak intensified to become a super typhoon as it traveled toward the west-northwest toward the Philippines during the first half of the week. Maximum sustained surface winds reached 160 mph. By this past weekend Typhoon Maysak had weakened to a tropical storm before making landfall along the eastern coast of Luzon. Forecasts indicate that Maysak would travel toward the northwest across Luzon and then out of the South China Sea early this week. Additional information and satellite imagery for Typhoon Maysak are available on the NASA Hurricane Page. A digital photograph of the eye of this super typhoon obtained from an astronaut on the International Space Station shows what is known as the "stadium effect." [ NASA Earth Observatory]
Late last week a tropical depression formed near Pohnpei, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia, that eventually became Tropical Storm Haishen as it traveled toward the west-northwest. Forecasts indicate that Tropical Storm Haishen should weaken as it travels toward the northwest at the start of this new wee. The NASA Hurricane Page has additional information and satellite imagery on Tropical Storm Haishen.
New method appears to improve long-range forecasts of hurricane season activity -- A team of atmospheric scientists at the University of Arizona has developed a model that they claim improves the accuracy of long-range forecasts of the number of hurricanes over the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico by as much as 23 percent. Furthermore, these predictions would be made prior to the start of the six-month hurricane season, which would assist in emergency planning. Based upon hurricane data collected over the 20th century, this new statistical hurricane forecast model uses the state of a longer-term climate cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) to judge how much influence the El Niño-La Niña climate cycle has upon hurricane formation in a particular year. The AMO represents the cyclic oscillation in ocean temperatures in the Atlantic with a periodicity ranging from 40 to 70 years. The majority of the other seasonal hurricane models rely only on the state of the El Niño climate cycle, which has a periodicity that ranges between three and seven years. [University of Arizona News]
Satellites used to help preserve coral reefs -- Data collected from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument onboard the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite are being used by the NOAA National Environmental Satellite Data Information Service to help improve NOAA's ability to track coral reef health through the NESDIS Coral Reef Watch (CRW) effort. CRW has also been using a blend of data from other NOAA polar orbiting and geosynchronous satellites to obtain data for its Sea Surface Temperature (SST) analysis. [ NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service News]
New high-resolution projections of coral bleaching in Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to help prepare for future -- Researchers at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School and NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory have developed high resolution projections of the occurrence of coral bleaching in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea based upon downscaling of the global climate models from the Fifth Assessment IPCC Report to a 10-kilometer resolution. Although many coral reef locations in these waters would experience bleaching by 2050, some locations with lower rates of temperature increase and fewer extreme events could be "relative refugia" where reefs would have more time to adapt to climate change. [NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research News]
Studies made of flood zones along the Pacific Northwest coast -- Researchers at Oregon State University have been using the computer modeling resources at the University of Texas at Austin to study the flood zones along the Oregon coast in the Pacific Northwest. One of the findings of this research has been that coastal flooding in the Pacific Northwest primarily comes from large ocean waves that have been generated by major midlatitude storms rather than by tropical cyclones such as hurricanes as found along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Furthermore, changing climate could result in more frequent and intense storms that could result in greater devastation to coastal communities from waves, storm surge and winds. Extreme water levels for different locations in an estuarine environment were calculated for 10-year, 50-year, and 100-year periods, with the resulting water levels overlaid on a digital model of these areas to identify the zones of inundation. These findings should help in reassessing flood maps along the Oregon coast. [Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas at Austin]
An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA's National Weather Service, FAA and FEMA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAA/NWS Daily Briefing]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: Solving the Mystery of Seamount Ecosystems

The United States Commission on Ocean Policy reports that less than 5% of the ocean floor has been explored. This is beginning to change as scientists and engineers develop and apply new technologies to investigate deep ocean waters and the sea bottom (refer to Chapter 13 in your DataStreme Ocean textbook). Consider, for example, the effort to obtain a better understanding of seamount ecosystems.

A seamount is a submarine mountain of volcanic origin (now extinct) that rises more than 1000 m (3300 ft) above the ocean floor. Usually a seamount summit is 1000 to 2000 m (3300 to 6600 ft) below sea level. They occur as isolated peaks, chains (e.g., Emperor Seamounts in the North Pacific; New England chain in the North Atlantic), or clusters. The term "seamount" was first applied in 1936 to the Davidson Seamount located off the coast of Southern California. Scientists estimate that perhaps 30,000 dot the ocean floor with as many as two-thirds located on the Pacific Ocean bottom. However, fewer than one thousand seamounts have been named and only a handful of seamounts has received detailed scientific study.

In recent years, discovery of unique life forms on seamounts has spurred scientific interest in seamount ecosystems. Many nations, including the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, are supporting scientific cruises to observe and collect specimens from seamount ecosystems. Seamount ecosystems are unusually productive and are home to unique species. Some seamount surveys have found that certain seamount species are endemic, that is, they live on only one seamount or a few nearby peaks. For example, up to one-third of all species living on some seamounts off New Caledonia are endemic while up to half of the invertebrates and fish on the Nazca seamount off Chile are endemic. In the northeast Pacific, large-scale eddies may transport larval fish from coastal environments to isolated seamounts located out at sea. Furthermore, some scientists argue that seamounts may function as stepping stones that allow for migration of species over lengthy periods--perhaps over millions of years. In addition, some seamounts may serve as aids to navigation for fish that migrate over long distances. For example, hammerhead sharks may use the magnetic field surrounding seamounts to find their way.

The recent effort to survey and explore seamount ecosystems has reached new urgency with the realization of the devastating impact of commercial fish trawlers on those ecosystems. In some cases, trawling has striped off most marine life (e.g., coral gardens) from the surface of seamounts leaving behind mostly bare rock. Typically, trawled seamounts have only half the biomass and considerably fewer species than undisturbed seamounts. Scientists anticipate that a better understanding of seamount ecosystems will help make the case for their conservation and inform the most effective strategies for their protection. Australia is one of the first nations to protect seamount ecosystems, establishing the Tasmanian Seamount Marine Reserve in 1999. The reserve covers 370 square km (140 square mi) and includes more than a dozen seamounts.

Concept of the Week: Questions

Seamounts are extinct submarine volcanoes that occur primarily in the [(Atlantic) (Pacific)(Southern)] Ocean.
Commercial fish trawling has [(little if any)(a devastating)] impact on seamount ecosystems.

Historical Events:

6 April 1894...President Grover Cleveland authorized enforcement of the Paris Award concerning the preservation of fur seals in Alaska. (USCG Historian's Office)
6 April 1909...The American explorer, Commander Robert E. Peary, USN, along with assistant Matthew Henson, and four Eskimos reported reaching the geographic North Pole; however, navigational errors may have meant that they were a few miles away from the exact pole. (Naval Historical Center) (The History Channel)
6 April 1913...USRC Seneca, a derelict destroyer (whose mission was to locate and destroy abandoned wrecks that were still afloat and a menace to navigation), inaugurated the Revenue Cutter Service's participation in the International Ice Patrol. (USCG Historian's Office)
8-10 April 1958...A global 48-hr precipitation record was established at Aurere, La Reunion Island, when 97.1 in. of rain from a tropical cyclone fell on the Indian Ocean island. (The Weather Doctor)
8-14 April 1984...Intense Tropical Cyclone Kaimsy crossed and re-crossed the northern portion of Madagascar. Winds exceeding 112 mph destroyed 80 percent of Antseranana and Mahajanga. Rainfall from this system totaled 27.99 in. Eighty-two people were killed and 100,000 were made homeless. Damage was greater than 150 million US dollars. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)
9 April 1770...The English explorer Captain James Cook discovered Botany Bay on the Australian continent.
10 April 1877...The first of two great coastal storms struck the Virginia and North Carolina coasts. The Oregon Inlet was widened by three-quarters of a mile. The "entire topography of country is materially altered," according to a description of the altering of sand dunes at Cape Hatteras, NC. (Intellicast)
10 April 1998...Northeast winds at 40 mph on the 9^th and 10^th combined with high levels of Lake Erie produced waves to 14 ft along the lakeshore in Ottawa and Sandusky Counties in Ohio. Much damage resulted, along with the destruction of 10 houses. Bulldozers were needed to clear the debris from roads. Downtown Port Clinton streets were flooded. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
11 April 1803...A twin-screw propeller steamboat was patented by John Stevens of Hoboken, NJ. (Today in Science History)
11 April 1900...The U.S. Navy acquired its first submarine, a 53-foot craft designed by Irish immigrant John P. Holland that was propelled by gasoline while on the surface and by electricity when submerged. (Today in Science History)