After 60 million years of extreme living, seabirds are crashing

Britain's seabirds are in crisis. Catastrophic breeding failures have swept along our shores and have hit many of our colonies of puffin, arctic tern, guillemot..

From The Guardian by Jeremy Hance

Every day for sixty million years, seabirds have performed mind-boggling acts of derring-do: circumnavigating the globe without rest, diving more than 200 meters in treacherous seas for a bite of lunch, braving the most unpredictable weather on the planet as if it were just another Tuesday and finding their way home in waters with few, if any, landmarks.

The Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) undertakes the longest known migration of any animal, travelling from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back each year.

The IUCN Red List considers the species as Least Concern, but its population is in decline.

Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International

But now seabirds, like so many other species, may have met their match.

Conservationists have long known that many seabird populations are in decline, but a recent paper in PLOS ONE finds the situation worse than anticipated.
According to the researchers, seabird abundance has dropped 69.7% in just 60 years – representing the deaths of some 230 million animals.

“I was very surprised with the result, it was considerably greater than I’d expected,” said Edd Hammill, co-author of the paper, with Utah State University.
“What we should take away from this is that something is serious amiss in the oceans.”

Ben Lascelles, a Senior Marine Officer with Birdlife, who was not involved in the study, said he found the research alarming because the decline appeared practically indiscriminate, hitting a “large number of species across a number of families.”

The Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) is listed as Least Concern and is found throughout the pantropical oceans.

However some populations are suspected to be in decline owing to disturbance and unsustainable levels of exploitation.

Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International

Seabirds, which include any bird that depends largely on the marine environment, comprise nearly 350 species worldwide – an astonishing variety of extreme-loving birds.
For example, the indefatigable wandering albatross, which sports the largest wingspan on the planet; the child-sized Emperor penguin, the only bird that breeds during the Antarctic winter; and the tiny storm petrel that practically capers on the water as it feeds – they are named for St. Peter after all.

But, given that seabirds inhabit both the open ocean and the shoreline, this eclectic mix of birds faces a litany of threats: overfishing, drowning in fishing lines or nets, plastic pollution, invasive species like rats in nesting areas, oil and gas development and toxic pollution moving up the food chain.
And as if these weren’t enough, the double-whammy of climate change and ocean acidification threatens to flood nesting sites and disrupt food sources.

“Seabirds are particularly good indicators of the health of marine ecosystems,” explained lead author, Michelle Paleczny with the University of British Columbia and the Sea Around Us Project.
“When we see this magnitude of seabird decline, we can see there is something wrong with marine ecosystems. It gives us an idea of the overall impact we’re having.”

Bu with such a large number of species across such a wide variety of environment one is left asking: how did the scientists count so many birds?

 The Near Threatened Black-footed Albatross (Phoebastria nigripes) is a species at risk of accidental bycatch in fisheries of the North Pacific.

However, simple mitigation measures have proved to be very effective at keeping seabirds off the hooks.

Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International

Counting Birds

First, the team of researchers scoured all the population data on seabirds available.
They found demographic data on 3,213 populations.
But they couldn’t use all of theses counts, since conservationists had surveyed many of these far-flung populations just once or twice – not enough to show a real trend

The team eventually selected 513 populations that had been counted at least five times.
In all, these populations represented about 19 percent of the world’s seabirds.

Still, Hammil said he believes the team’s findings “are an accurate representation of what is happening worldwide.”
He added, “although we did not include every population, all seabird families were included, and we included populations from every major coastline in the world.”

A gannet grabs a fish by its beak, 2014, in Shetland, Scotland.

Gannets, and other seabirds, depend on abundant fish populations to survive.

Photograph: Richard Shucksmith/BarcroftMedia/Richard Shucksmith/BarcroftMedia

Paleczny also said that when the researchers looked at the differences between monitored and unmonitored populations, they saw “no evidence that the monitored populations are declining more.”
The findings are also bolstered by past research. In 2012 a paper in Bird Conservation International found that 28 percent of seabird species are threatened with extinction with 47 percent in decline.
This meant, in all, seabirds were about twice as likely as land-based birds to be threatened with extinction.
“The trends for many seabird species have clearly been downwards for a number of years, and this paper provides further evidence of this,” Lascelles said.

Still, Paleczny and Hammil’s research arguably paints an even more alarming picture of the state of the world’s seabirds.
For example, according to them, the tern family has fallen by 85%, frigatebirds by 81%, petrels and shearwaters by 79%, and albatrosses by 69%.

Such dismal findings point to one of the study’s patterns: open ocean birds – such as albatrosses, frigatebirds, petrels and shearwaters – are generally faring worse than birds that stick near the coasts.

“[Open-ocean] seabirds are hit especially hard due to their large geographic ranges. Because these species travel so far, there is a greater chance they will encounter threats,” said Hammill who noted that coastal birds “in some cases” are doing better because of improved management of breeding areas and improved fishing gear.

But even when threats were minimized, Lacalles noted that recovery requires diligence and patience.

“Most seabirds are long-lived and slow reproducing, this means even quite small increases in mortality can lead to significant population declines, which they take a long time to recover from.”

And even some widely-dispersed coastal birds are undergoing heavy declines.
For example, the study found that cormorant and shag populations have fallen by 73%.

Laysan Albatross adult and chick on nest dwarfed by pile of marine debris collected on Midway Atoll coast by volunteers.

Plastic poses a major threat to the world’s seabirds and other marine species.

The Laysan Albatross is categorised as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List.

Photograph: Alamy

Going forward

Given all the threats facing the world’s seabirds, it’s fair to ask: where do we start when it comes to conservation?

“We already have solutions to many of the threats...it’s just they need scaling up and implementing across industries and geographies,” Lascelles said.
“Increased efforts should be made to rid seabird colonies of invasive species, reduce bycatch in fisheries or the ensnaring of birds in fish nets, and setting up conservation areas.”

Paleczny also called for the creation of international marine protected areas to cover the wide ranges of seabirds.

No other bird breeds further south than the Near Threatened Adelie Penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae). Numbers are increasing in the Ross Sea region and decreasing in the Peninsula region, with the net global population increasing overall.

But other penguin species aren’t faring so well.

Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International

Protected areas in the oceans lag far behind those on land.
Currently, only 2% of the world’s oceans are under some form of protection and less than half of those ban fishing altogether.
In contrast, nearly 15% of the world’s terrestrial landscape is protected.

With so little of the ocean theoretically closed to fisheries – less than 1% – it’s hardly shocking that many seabirds are suffering from overfishing.
Indeed, an illuminating study from 2012 found that whenever fish abundance dropped below one-third of maximum levels, seabird populations began to fall in response.

“What this is saying is that [seabirds] have evolved to exploit average to above-average feeding conditions,” co-author Ian Boyd told Mongabay in 2012.
“This isn’t really very surprising, but some things don’t become obvious until the evidence is right in front of you.”

The accidental bycatch of huge numbers of seabirds in a variety of fisheries (e.g. longline, trawl, gillnets) is one of the main threat facing seabirds and has driven the declines in many species, particularly albatross.

However a number of simple mitigation measures are available, and where they have been implemented the reduction in bycatch has been dramatic.

Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International

At the time, Boyd said their findings should result in a new campaign to save “one third for the birds” (and other marine predators) from the world’s fisheries.

But to Hammill the “most pressing issue” is plastic pollution.

Long neglected by environmentalists – perhaps due to the intractability of the problem – the issue of plastic pollution in the oceans has been slowly getting more notice.
A paper released last month found that 90% of the world’s seabirds likely have plastic in their stomachs.

“I have seen everything from cigarette lighters...to bottle caps to model cars. I’ve found toys [inside seabird guts],” co-author Denise Hardesty, with CSIRO, told the Associated Press.

 The razorbill (Alca Torda) is a member of the puffin family restricted to the North Atlantic.

They nest on rocky cliff faces in huge colonies, in some location reduction in sandeel, their main prey item, has caused reduced productivity and declines.

Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International

Seabirds continually mistake plastic for fish eggs, devouring large amounts.
Plastic in animals’ stomachs not only release deadly toxins, but can also lead to slow starvation by obstructing the animals’ bowels.
Birds even feed plastic bits to their young, killing their fledglings en masse.

In the end, large-scale actions to help seabirds could also go a long way in cleaning-up our increasingly trashed marine ecosystems.

“The oceans are still woefully under protected and fisheries need greater management and enforcement. All of these activities need investment and support of governments around the world to make them happen,” Lacalles said.
“These actions will build resilience in the seabird populations in the short term, which they need in the face of emerging threats such as climate change.”

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Seabirds 'blighted by plastic waste'

Equinox sun rises due east, sets due west

From EarthSky by Bruce McClure

The September 2015 equinox happens on September 23 at 8:21 Universal Time, which translates to 3:21 a.m. Central Daylight Time for us in the central U.S.
So as you read this, the exact moment of the equinox may have already happened for you.
It’s often said that – at each equinox – the sun rises due east and sets due west.
And that’s true.
But why?
How can you conceptualize this?

First you need to know this.
An equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator.
No matter where you are on Earth, the celestial equator intersects your horizon at due east and due west. See the diagram below to try to visualize that.
At its highest point in your sky, the celestial equator appears high or low, depending on your latitude.
The imaginary celestial equator is a great circle dividing the imaginary celestial sphere into its northern and southern hemispheres, so, from the equator, it’s directly overhead, for example, wrapping the sky directly above Earth’s equator.
For purposes of today’s visualization, though, the height of the celestial equator in your sky doesn’t matter.
What matters are these two things.
One, the sun is on the celestial equator at the equinox.
Two, the celestial equator intersects your horizon at points due east and due west. Voila.
The sun rises due east and sets due west on the day of the equinox, as seen from around the globe.

Where does the celestial equator intersect your horizon? 
The imaginary celestial sphere surrounds Earth.
Seen from Earth’s equator, the celestial equator is overhead.
Seen from Earth’s poles, the celestial poles are overhead.
But from northern mid-latitudes, for example, the north celestial pole appears at a height in your northern sky that depends on your latitude.
Likewise, the path of the celestial equator across your southern sky depends on your latitude.
Meanwhile, no matter where you are on the globe (unless you are at a pole), the celestial equator meets your horizon at points due east and due west.
Due east and due west are like the “pivot points” from which the celestial equator appears to shift to various heights in your sky, depending on your latitude.

Why does the sun rises due east and set due west at the equinoxes? 
The blue line is the celestial equator (always at your due east and due west points).
The purple line is the ecliptic, or sun’s path.
At the equinox, these two lines intersect.
The sun is on the celestial equator.
So the sun rises due east and sets due west, as seen from all points on the globe (except the poles). Illustration via JCCC Astronomy.

This fact – the sun rising and setting due east and west at every equinox – makes the day of an equinox a good day for finding due east and due west from your yard or other favorite site for watching the sky.
Just go outside around sunset or sunrise and notice the location of the sun on the horizon with respect to familiar landmarks.
If you do this, you’ll be able to use those landmarks to find those cardinal directions in the weeks and months ahead, long after Earth has moved on in its orbit around the sun, carrying the sunrise and sunset points southward or northward.

Equatorial sundial by Tom Laidlaw.

The north face of an equatorial sundial receives sunshine in spring and summer, and the south face receives it in autumn and winter.

On the equinoxes, sunshine should hit neither side of the sundial, but only the edge.

Now let’s think about what an equinox really is.
It’s an event that happens on the imaginary dome of Earth’s sky, but each equinox also represents a real point on Earth’s orbit.
What happens at every equinox is very real – as real as the sun’s passage across the sky each day and as real as the change of the seasons.
Our ancestors couldn’t have understood the equinoxes as we do.
They didn’t understand them as events that occur in the course of Earth’s yearly orbit around the sun.
But if they were observant – and some were very observant indeed – they surely marked today as being midway between the sun’s lowest path across the sky in winter and highest path across the sky in summer.
And that’s where we are, in orbit, at this equinox.
We’re midway between the two extremes of the sun’s path in your sky.

 The seasons result from the Earth's rotational axis tilting 23.5 degrees out of perpendicular to the ecliptic - or Earth's orbital plane.

An equatorial ring was used in ancient times in an attempt to determine the equinoxes.

The ring plane is set parallel to the plane of the Earth’s equator.

If the equinox happened during the daylight hours, the inside of the ring was expected to be completely in shade at the equinox.

Image via Wikipedia

Bottom line: The 2015 September equinox comes on September 23 at 8:21 Universal Time – or 3:21 a.m. Central Daylight Time for us in the central U.S.

At each equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west.

The diagrams and explanations in this post are meant to help you visualize that.

Links :

• Weather : Four Things to Know About the September Equinox 
• National Geographic : The Autumn Equinox is Here! Wait, What's the Autumn Equinox?
• BBC : Who, What, Why: What is an equinox?
• NASA : Seeing Equinoxes and Solstices from Space 

Do humans have a future in deep sea exploration?

Terry Kerby, the head of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory,

peers through the porthole of a Pisces V research submarine. 

Credit Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

From NYTimes by Chris Dixon

Entering the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory hangar is akin to stepping onto the set of a Spielberg film.
The dull metal shell, perched on the Makai pier along the Windward Coast of Oahu, is nondescript, but the inside bristles with Zodiac boats and a dizzying assortment of hoists and tools, and the walls are festooned with 30 years of snapshots.
At the center of it all, two 20-foot-long Pisces submarines sit atop skids like alien spacecraft, their robotic arms outstretched, beckoning for another mission.

The laboratory, part of the University of Hawaii and better known as HURL, has been the sole submersible-based United States deep-sea research outpost in the mid-Pacific since the 1980s.
At its helm is Terry Kerby, perhaps the most experienced submersible pilot alive.
With a crew of five, Mr. Kerby and the Pisces subs have discovered more than 140 wrecks and artifacts, recovered tens of millions of dollars in lost scientific equipment, and surveyed atolls and seamounts whose hydrothermal vents and volcanoes were unknown.

The Pisces IV and Pisces V research submarines could soon be mothballed. 

Credit Kent Nishimura for The New York Times 

“It’s very unusual to have a facility that large and well-equipped in the middle of a large ocean basin,” said Robert Dunbar, a Stanford oceanographer.
“They’ve done a remarkable thing over there, largely due to Terry’s expertise.”

But today, Mr. Kerby faces the possible mothballing of his fleet.
The forces at play are the same as in many other realms of science — dwindling budgets, of course.
And robots.

Robotic subs can stay down for days and reach extraordinary depths, instantly relaying their finds to scientists and an Internet-connected global audience.
But they cannot go everywhere, and many scientists argue that studying the deep without direct human observation yields at best an incomplete understanding.

“You can’t replace a Terry Kerby with a robot,” said Andy Bowen, principal engineer at Woods Hole. “It’s not possible.”

At 65, Mr. Kerby is tanned and fit, thanks to daily two-mile ocean swims.
He has been piloting submersibles at Makai for better than three decades, starting in the mid-1970s harvesting corals.
He shifted to the University of Hawaii and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which had bought the Makai facility to expand the nation’s deep-sea capabilities.

In 1985, Mr. Kerby found the Pisces V submersible idled in Edinburgh and persuaded the university to spend $500,000 for it.
Relatively big, it could dive to 6,500 feet.
“She cost $4 million to build in 1972,” he said. “And would cost $50 million to build today.”

Pisces V came with no instruction manual, but Mr. Kerby found it was highly maneuverable and could hover motionless, even in strong currents.
It also operated untethered from a mother ship, allowing exploration of caves and overhangs. Coupling Pisces with the University of Hawaii’s research ship, the Ka`imikai-O-Kanaloa, and a home-built submersible platform enabled Mr. Kerby to carry out missions from 60 feet down, during surface conditions too rough for any other submersible.
Mr. Kerby racked up discoveries, beginning with exploration of the Loihi seamount off Kona. Eighteen years of return missions have revealed that an area once thought dead is a vibrant world of myriad ecosystems and volcanism still shaping the Hawaiian Islands.
Along Loihi and other slopes, the team discovered living corals that predate even California’s bristlecone pines.

In part 1 of a two-episode look at the submersible operation at the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab, we meet Terry Kerby, a legend of the underwater world.
Terry has been piloting submarines for over 30 years.
He and his team recently redeployed an old technology to help them save money in times of reduced funding for scientific research. The LRT-30a is a barge that transports the sub out to its dive site.
A team of divers then takes the barge underwater with the submarine still attached and proceeds to launch the sub while it is underwater.
see part II

In 2000, Mr. Kerby acquired a sister sub, the Pisces IV, from Canada for $80,000.
Exploring in tandem made diving safer and enabled film crews to show discoveries in the context of the submersibles.
The subs have appeared in more than 20 documentaries, including National Geographic’s “Fires of Creation,” in which the oceanographer Robert Ballard, whose discoveries included the wreckage of the Titanic, descended with Mr. Kerby to the caldera of Loihi.

Besides plumbing geological and ecological mysteries, the Pisces subs have made dives that sharpened views of history.

A little more than an hour before the first bombs fell in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the American destroyer U.S.S. Ward reported that it had sunk a tiny submarine near the harbor entrance.
But in a blunder that still fuels conspiracy theories, the report never reached far enough up Navy command to initiate a mobilization of defenses.
The Ward’s claim was disputed, even in the official Pearl Harbor investigation report.
The sub thus became a holy grail for marine archaeologists and historians.

Pisces V lauched from R/V KoK

In August 2002, Mr. Kerby lay across the bench of the Pisces V, 1,200 feet down, gazing at the dark, frigid world beyond his porthole.
For hours he had been sweeping the seafloor four miles south of Pearl Harbor, hunting for the mythic sub amid three dozen potential sonar targets and fighting a rising sense of futility.
“We were chasing our tails down there,” he said.

But then, looming out of the darkness, Mr. Kerby faced a torpedo shape three times as long as the Pisces. It was a 78-foot-long submarine bearing the exact damage – a four-inch hole punched just beneath its conning tower — described by the Ward’s crew.
“We’d searched for 10 years,” Mr. Kerby said.
“I just couldn’t believe it.”

After that find, NOAA directed Mr. Kerby to further document the wreck-strewn waters off south Oahu.
In another National Geographic project, the team discovered four mammoth Japanese I-series submarines captured by the Navy at the end of World War II and scuttled to keep them out of Soviet hands.

Experience the first view of a World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, the I-400, lost since 1946 when it was intentionally scuttled by U.S. forces after its capture.

It now sits in more than 2,300 feet of water off the southwest coast of O'ahu. 

“What the Pisces program has done, mostly underfunded and unappreciated, over the years is unmatched,” said Sylvia Earle, former chief science officer for NOAA.
“It’s baffling to me that more understanding and funding hasn’t been heaped upon them.”

Five years ago, piloted deep-sea exploration appeared on the verge of a boom, funded by wealthy explorer/entrepreneurs.
In 2012, after spending $10 million building his Challenger Deep submersible, the filmmaker James Cameron became one of three humans to reach the 6.8-mile depths of the Marianas Trench, the deepest ocean spot on Earth — and the only one to do it solo.
The Virgin Airlines founder Richard Branson promised a new era of exploration with his $17 million Virgin Oceanic submarine.
And Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chairman, joined with Dr. Earle on the $40 million Deep Ocean project.

Yet all those programs have withered.
And by fiscal year 2014, the deep-sea budget for NOAA was down to $26 million.
For comparison, NASA’s exploration budget was $4 billion.
The United States Navy has abandoned piloted submersibles with the exception of Alvin, which it owns jointly with Woods Hole.
In 2013, NOAA said it would no longer fund the Pisces program, leaving the United States with no Pacific deep-sea facility.
HURL has money to last until the beginning of 2016.
After that, the university may be forced to sell the submersibles.
“There are only eight deep-diving submarines left operating in the world” that can go 6,500 feet or deeper, said John Wiltshire, director of HURL and a member of the Woods Hole submersible scientific advisory committee.
“So we’re about to lose a quarter of the world’s fleet.”

What changed?
To hear Dr. Ballard tell it, the shift began during a 1977 dive aboard Alvin off the Galápagos Islands.
About 8,000 feet down, Dr. Ballard noticed a colleague paying more attention to the camera monitor than to Alvin’s tiny windows.
“He turned his back on me to look at the screen,” Dr. Ballard said.
“I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘I can get closer.’ I said, ‘Then why the hell are you here?’ ”

Afterward, Dr. Ballard said he realized fundamental truths of piloted deep-sea exploration: It’s cold and scary, time in the deep is limited, and robotic vehicles might do the same work for less money.
He persuaded the Navy to fund two remote exploration vehicles, Argo and Jason, for use by Woods Hole.
On Sept. 1, 1985, Argo first filmed the wreckage of the Titanic.
Since then, remote deep-sea vehicles have proliferated in exploration, mining and drilling. Dr. Wiltshire estimates perhaps 10,000 are in operation.

NOAA’s deep-sea efforts are focused on two ships: its own Okeanos Explorer, based in Rhode Island, and the E/V Nautilus, a joint project with the Ocean Exploration Trust, founded by Dr. Ballard and based in Connecticut.
Nautilus has an autonomous underwater vehicle that follows a programmed route and two tethered remote submersibles.

Typically, Dr. Ballard’s ships carry just one or two senior oceanographers; engineers and technical staff deploy and monitor the submersibles, which, via satellite link, deliver real-time images across the world via the Internet.

 Terry Kerby and his Pisces subs have discovered more than 140 undersea wrecks and artifacts.

Credit Kent Nishimura for The New York Times 

Dr. Ballard described a recent Nautilus expedition that sent its submersibles two and a half miles down into the Cayman Trough.
In a piloted dive, the descent and ascent would take six hours each, leaving mere minutes for seafloor exploration.
“Now we’re going down to 20,000 feet and spending days,” he said.
“And we have the entire world participating.”

To most marine scientists, including Mr. Kerby, robots have clearly won the deep-sea war.
It’s now a question of whether lingering advantages to piloted exploration should be discarded.
Mr. Kerby described a recent robotic mission that Pisces might have done better.

In 2012, Ric Gillespie, a retired naval aviator, and Dr. Ballard announced a sonar hit off Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific that might represent the wreckage of the Lockheed Electra flown by Amelia Earhart.
Mr. Gillespie requested Mr. Kerby for the expedition, but the Pisces subs were down for maintenance, so his team instead relied on robotic technology.
The tethered sub was unable to explore the near-vertical sea walls and could not deploy over days of rough seas.
Eventually, an untethered robotic vehicle became lodged in a reef overhang and had to be rescued by a tethered robot.
The recovery nearly required the University of Hawaii’s Ka`imikai-O-Kanaloa to deploy perilously close to a reef.

“It’s a horrible way to search,” Mr. Gillespie said.
“It’s like you’ve lost your car keys at night in your backyard and you’re looking for them through a toilet paper roll with a flashlight.”

At the university, Dr. Wiltshire cited plans for bringing Alvin and the Nautilus rovers to explore newly created Pacific marine monuments.
Rates for Nautilus are in the range of $35,000 to $40,000 a day, while Alvin and its support vessel Atlantis II cost $60,000 to $70,000 a day.
HURL can deploy both Pisces subs for $48,000 a day, “and that’s not counting the transit time and expense to get there,” Dr. Wiltshire said.
“It takes us 15 days, but it takes two months to bring those ships over from the East Coast.”

Dr. Ballard countered that comparison must take into account the time his rovers can stay submerged — days at a time, as opposed to eight hours or so for Pisces or Alvin.

Dr. Bowen, who oversees the robotic and piloted programs for Woods Hole, says piloted exploration still has plenty of benefit.

Operating two of only eight deep-diving submersibles in the world, the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) at the University of Hawaii - Manoa provides science and engineering communities with safe and efficient, cutting edge submergence capability.

A regional center in the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, HURL supports proposals to conduct undersea research in offshore and nearshore waters of the main and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and waters of the central, southwestern, and western Pacific, including the new marine national monuments.

“There’s no question that the strong suit for robotics is that you can engage a larger number of people in the process of exploration and discovery,” Dr. Bowen said.
But taking in all the undersea factors — currents, sounds, land forms, interactions between animals and their environment — humans are still far better at synthesizing what’s going on in the deep sea, he said.
“We hear that all the time from researchers who have looked at the video monitors and data screens from Jason, but then also gone down in Alvin.
It’s stunning how different their perception of the environment is.”

According to Craig McLean, the assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research at NOAA, decisions about HURL’s future were mainly a matter of budget constraints and emerging technology.
HURL was funded as part of NOAA’s National Undersea Research Program.
Scientists competed for NOAA-backed studies, and the agency maintained and provided the equipment — like Pisces submarines — to the winners.
That program was phased out in favor of an unpiloted, Internet-connected virtual model that includes on-call scientists around the world.

“We realized we can’t afford to do it all,” he said.
“So we had to ask, what are we doing and how can we have it be inclusive? So scientists who can’t dive — they have a presence through telepresence.”

In addition to making headlines with discoveries of bizarre creatures, surveys with the Okeanos have, he said, had more practical applications.
A fisheries survey, for example, resulted in the recent protection of 38,000 nautical square miles of ocean off the East Coast.

Mr. McLean said that should a scientist bring a proposal before NOAA or the National Science Foundation that Pisces was well suited for, Mr. Kerby’s team could still get funding on a mission-by-mission basis.

He further agreed with a sentiment expressed by Dr. Earle, that in a time of dramatic changes in the climate and ocean itself — some 90 percent of which remains completely unexplored — he would prefer that NOAA had a wider arsenal of discovery at its disposal.
“We’re doing as much as we can,” he said.
“But we have to get into these difficult situations where we have to make our priorities.”

In the meantime, Mr. Kerby and his maintenance chief, Steve Price, have been hustling.
Mr. Price has been funded to compile a database of all Pisces discoveries for use by NOAA.
A World War II documentary project has kept Mr. Kerby busy lately, and a series of geology, undersea cable and sewer outfall surveys will keep HURL funded through year’s end.
He says he is confident more work will materialize, preventing his crew from having to follow the route of many former colleagues into oil and gas exploration.
He’d love to secure the resources not only to keep his subs running, but to add a full-time robot sub to HURL’s fleet.

“An associate of mine at Woods Hole upper management said, ‘HURL doesn’t stand a chance,’ ” Mr. Kerby said.
“ ‘They’re too far from the flagpole.’Well, we are. We’re way out here on the ocean frontier, in the prime spots, and we’re one of the most cost-effective operations around. With all the new and unexplored monuments in the western Pacific, and all the groups that need to do that exploration, we’re the only viable tool with experience in these environments.”

He paused.

“We know what we can do.”

Links :

• GeoGarage blog :Race to the bottom of the ocean: Why go down? / The last dive? Funding for human expeditions in the ocean may have run aground / Five thousand metres under the sea: my journey to another world / James Cameron completes first solo dive to deepest spot on Earth / Is the ocean the real final frontier? / The ultra-rich dive into a new obsession / Branson set to travel to ocean bottom

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After four years designing and piloting underwater drones, we've taken everything we've learned and completely re-imagined what an underwater drone could be.
Trident has a unique design that combines the versatility and control of an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) and the efficiency of an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle).
It can fly in long, straight survey lines called "transects" as well as perform delicate maneuvers in tight spaces, all while maintaining a sleek and powerful form factor.
Trident is easy to use and comes ready to go.
Most importantly, it is incredibly fun to fly.
(Flying really is the best term, because that's exactly what it feels like when you're piloting.)

Our Story

You may remember us.
We came to Kickstarter three years ago and shared our dream of building a low-cost underwater robot that would allow anyone and everyone to explore the world below the surface.
We have come a long way since that initial Kickstarter video.

We were working out of Eric's garage at the time, building the original prototype to explore a cave in Northern California with rumors of lost treasure (the full story can be heard in this TED talk).
We never found the gold, but we received messages from people all over the world who wanted to help us and improve the robot.
The Kickstarter project was the springboard. Since then, we've shipped thousands of OpenROV kits to people all over the world.

Community

The OpenROV community is the secret sauce.
We made our project open source in order to facilitate faster innovation cycles and allow others to improve on our initial designs.
Thousands of people have gotten involved.
You can see and follow along with the community expeditions on OpenExplorer.

Team

We've also assembled a small team that works from our OpenROV HQ in Berkeley, CA to manufacture, ship and support the robots.
The combination of community wisdom and the commitment of our internal R&D team (many of whom were original Kickstarter backers) have been the drivers in creating Trident.

At OpenROV, we talk openly about our desire to maximize "Return on Adventure."
We want to make sure that everyone who comes in contact with our project - community members, customers, employees, whoever - feels that their world is more interesting and more exciting because of it.
We want to give people a sense of wonder about how much out there is yet to be explored and make it possible for anyone to be a part of exploring it.
Trident is our best attempt yet to fulfill that promise.

Trident Performance


Every aspect of the Trident design has been painstakingly thought out in order to optimize performance and usability in any situation.
One of the secrets of its versatility is the unique, hydrodynamically offset thruster design.
This configuration allows you to move through the water fast and efficiently when you want to rapidly search an area or run a transect, but also allows you to maneuver very delicately when in tight quarters or while looking at a particular target.
By taking advantage of drag's exponential relationship with velocity, the off-center vertical thruster of the ROV can cause it to pitch at high speeds but also hover or change depth without pitching while operating at low speeds - similar to the way a traditional ROV works.

 We've designed Trident to be ultra portable and ultra durable.
The form factor is small enough to fit in a backpack or fit under an airplane seat.
The side panels are overmolded with a strong, rubber coating, which gives it protection from underwater obstacles as well as rough handling when being transported.

Depth: Capable of 100m (will ship with a 25m  tether - longer tethers will be sold separately)
Mass: 2.9 kg
Top Speed: 2 m/s
Run Time: 3 hours

The data connection to Trident is a major evolution from the connection set up of the original OpenROV kit.
It uses a neutrally buoyant tether to communicate to a towable buoy on the surface (radio waves don't travel well in water) and the buoy connects to the pilot using a long range WiFi signal.
Using a wireless towable buoy greatly increases the practical range of the vehicle while doing transects and search patterns since a physical connection between the vehicle and the pilot doesn't need to be maintained.
You can connect to the buoy and control Trident using a tablet or laptop from a boat or from the shore.

Software

Our goal is to make the easiest, most intuitive telerobotic control system possible.
We have embraced the latest emerging internet standards from HTML5 and webRTC to WebVR and WebGL to deliver a rich piloting experience through just a browser that runs on laptops, tablets, and modern mobile devices.

The software that drives Trident is a living open-source project (https://github.com/openrov/openrov-software).
The same software that drives our previous ROV has been continually updated by both the community and our software team. Some of those changes included:

• Software plugins that allow any ROV enthusiast to deliver improved ROV capabilities to the whole OpenROV community via small Internet delivered update packages. 
• UI Themes so that you can change the look and feel of the piloting experience. 
• Depth and Heading hold. Until recently, only a feature on high end industrial ROVs, now available to everyone.

With Trident we are focused on an amazing out-of-the-box experience.
We are reviewing every bit of the user experience regarding our software to ensure the most simple and intuitive experience possible.

What's included

In each of the reward levels for a Trident, the basic package will include:

• Trident. The actual drone, ready-to-dive.
• A 25m (82 ft) tether. There's a lot to see in the first 25m of depth. For many people, that will be enough. Tethers will be removable and upgradeable if you need to go deeper.
• A wifi topside buoy. The tether connects to a wifi topside buoy. You can use this to control the ROV remotely by setting it on the water or just leaving it on the boat or dock. 
• Batteries. Trident comes with onboard LiFePO4 batteries, providing a run time of over 3 hours.

ADVENTURE SET ADD ON* (add $350 to any pledge level):
*You can always get this later if you're not sure. Or only add for either the hard case or longer tether.

• Hard Case. ($100 Add On) Trident will come in a sturdy package/box, but the Adventure Set will have a hard case for travel and shipment.
  AND/OR
• 100m Tether. ($250 Add On) Know you want to go deep? Get the 100m tether right out of the gate.

Use cases

We built Trident to be the ultimate tool for explorers.
But we also wanted to make sure that it was useful for a whole host of utilities.
One of the most interesting new features - something that sets Trident in a class of its own - is its ability to conduct long transects, meaning it can run lawn mower patterns over large areas.
The benefit of this type of coverage is that you can create visualizations of what the seafloor looks like using photogrammetry software to create a 3D model of the work area.
Here's an example from the Fiskardo Greece Expedition run by our friends at OCTOPUS Foundation and Novalta:

Mission Fiskardo 2015 (Greece)
In the Northern part of Kefalonia island in the Ionian sea, Ocean71, Novalta and Fiskardo Divers

When overlaid on top of aerial drone footage, these visualizations create a "window on the sea."

 

It's also a great tool for boat owners and fishermen.
Whether you want to inspect an anchor line or look for shipwrecks, Trident gives you eyes underwater and adds a whole new dynamic to the experience of being on the water.

Sponsor a High School
"The OpenROV project was a winner -- igniting my inner city students' enthusiasm for exploration, taking on academic and technical challenges and developing resilience to over-come set-backs."
-Katie Noonan, Oakland High School

One of the most exciting parts of the OpenROV project has been the number of high school classes and students that have taken part.
The project provides an incredibly well-rounded education experience: mechanical and electrical engineering, programming, physics, biology, ecology, contributing to an open source community, and just getting outside into nature.
The OpenROV kit (not Trident - the previous model of kit) is still an excellent tool for education (and other uses that require the hack-ability).
We have a long list of well-deserving classrooms that can do wonders with a donated OpenROV kit. The reward pledge at the $1,000 level will further our efforts here.
It will allow us to send a kit and build materials to one of these schools.
If you're a resource-constrained teacher who'd like to be added to this list, please email info@openrov.com with the subject "I'm a teacher!"

Where We're At

We have spent the last two years developing the Trident, engineering dozens of prototypes to get to what you see today.
We are currently working on refining the final design and tuning it for manufacturing with veteran mechanical engineers and industrial designers.
We have developed relationships with manufacturing partners for the components and subsystems of Trident and now we need your support to help make it a reality!

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : OpenROV will change exploration of last true frontier /

Nissos Rodos ship of Hellenic Seaways in the port of Chios

The Hellenic Seaways Ro-Ro Nissos Rodos moors stern to in the port of Chios, a Greek island located in the Aegean Sea.

 Chios harbor in the GeoGarage platform (NGA chart)

Human : storm

Full movie

Finding hidden shoals on the North Slope

NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Caption by Laura Rocchio, NASA Landsat Communication and Public Engagement Team.

From NASA

On a recent nautical chart of the Beaufort Sea, in a place where the long, narrow Tapkaluk Islands separate the sea from the shallow Elson Lagoon, a massive underwater shoal appears just west of the entrance to the lagoon.
On the chart it looks like a massive blue thumb jutting into the sea from Alaska’s North Slope.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) identified this potential 6-mile-long, 2-mile-wide navigation hazard using Landsat satellite data.

Looking at natural-color Landsat imagery of this area, no shoal jumps out to the naked eye.
The image above was acquired by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 on September 6, 2014, and it captures the swirling sediments typical of the North Slope and Elson Lagoon.
Those suspended sediments block most of the light that would normally be reflected by the seafloor.

 NOAA 16081 chart in the GeoGarage platform overlayed on Google imagery

Seafloor reflectance is what typically enables researchers to estimate water depth, a technique known as satellite-derived-bathymetry (SDB).
In regions like the North Slope—where the waters are turbid and access to hydrographic survey vessels is limited—scientists are developing ways to derive the bathymetry from multiple satellite images taken on different dates.
They employ traditional SDB techniques, examining the seafloor reflectance on different dates; they also analyze those images for differences in the swirl of suspended sediment in the water column. From these two approaches, they can detect signs of underwater shoals, gas plumes, or other seafloor formations.

The approach is experimental, and it is only used for reconnaissance now.
Until a survey vessel is dispatched to the North Slope, the exact depths around this potential shoal cannot be known.
But the potential for a large, shallow shoal provoked NOAA to add it to the chart and alert mariners to the potential danger.

It was around 1950 that a hydrographic survey ship last took depth measurements in these waters.
At the time, surveyors built their maps from a single-beam echo sounder and visual navigation.
The data points were laboriously merged with shoreline and hazard information to create a chart.
Given the low ship traffic in the region for many years afterward, updating the chart was a low priority compared to other high-traffic areas.

But things change.
Fishing and water-commuting traffic have increased in the area, as has marine tourism.
But that’s not all: Bottom depths have changed as currents, erosion, and sediments have sculpted the seafloor.
The Marine Chart Division of NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey is responsible for updating more than 1,000 nautical charts that keep mariners safe in U.S. waters.
Charged with providing accurate charts, NOAA cartographers need to know when existing charts are out-of-date.
They monitor navigation hazard reports submitted by mariners.
They watch ship traffic patterns via vessel positioning information (the Automatic Identification System).
And more-and-more they are turning to satellite imagery, especially Landsat data.
“NOAA is now been using Landsat imagery for chart adequacy assessment and mission planning,” said Shachak Pe’eri, a professor from the Joint Hydrographic Center at the University of New Hampshire. Pe’eri and Lieutenant Anthony Klemm, a NOAA Corps Officer in the Marine Chart Division, have developed new NOAA policies for prioritizing ship-based hydrographic surveys based in part on assessments from satellite-derived-bathymetry.
“These charts are considered intermediary, but they can be made publicly available and used until a proper hydrographic survey can be performed,” Pe’eri explains.
Such was the case with nautical chart 16081; NOAA is now warning mariners of the massive shoal suggested by the Landsat data.
“We’re making charts safer up there,” Klemm says, “and that’s so exciting.”

Links :

• Klemm, A., et al. (2015) “Nautical Chart Adequacy Evaluation using Publicly-Available Data.” Conference Proceedings, US Hydrographic Conference.
• GeoGarage blog : Avoiding rock bottom: How Landsat aids nautical charting / GeoGarage: Keeping false pass true

Chinese Navy ships came within 12 Nautical Miles of U.S. Coast

From WSJ by Jeremy Page

Chinese navy ships off Alaska in recent days weren’t just operating in the area for the first time: They also came within 12 nautical miles of the coast, making a rare foray into U.S. territorial waters, according to the Pentagon.

Chinese navy ships off the coast of Alaska came within 12 nautical miles of the U.S. coast, making a rare foray into U.S. territorial waters. WSJ's Gordon Lubold reports.

Photo: Zuma Press

Pentagon officials said late Thursday that the five Chinese navy ships had passed through U.S. territorial waters as they transited the Aleutian Islands, but said they had complied with international law and didn’t do anything threatening.

“This was a legal transit of U.S. territorial seas conducted in accordance with the Law of the Sea Convention,” said Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban.
U.S. officials said there was no known official communication to the U.S. from the ships.
The passage was seen as significant as Beijing has long objected to U.S. Navy vessels transiting its territorial waters or operating in international waters just outside.

 The US confirmed 5 Chinese vessels recently passed with about 12 NM of the Aleutian islands after a joint military exercise with Russia.

The exact location was unclear.

NOAA nautical chart in the GeoGarage platform

China’s Defense Ministry confirmed that its navy ships had sailed to the Bering Sea for training after joint exercises with Russia in late August, but said the activity was routine and not aimed at any particular country.

U.S. officials said earlier that they were tracking the five ships in the area, where they hadn’t seen the Chinese navy operating before, but they didn’t say how close the ships had come to U.S. territory.

The foray, just as President Barack Obama was visiting Alaska, threw a fresh spotlight on China’s expanding naval power and ambitions on the eve of a lavish military parade in Beijing.
It also came just three weeks before China’s President, Xi Jinping, begins a state visit to the U.S. already clouded by tensions over alleged cyberattacks on the U.S. and China’s island-building in the South China Sea.

The flotilla apparently traveled east from somewhere near Russia and entered the Bering Sea, navigating north of the Aleutian Islands before transiting south, where they undertook the “innocent passage” through U.S. waters between two islands, a defense official said.

That principle allows military ships to transit foreign territorial waters if they don’t conduct threatening activity.
The Chinese didn’t give prior notification to the U.S. before doing so, but under international law, they don’t need to.
The Chinese don’t always acknowledge those laws, however, according to U.S. defense reports.
For example, Beijing claims that U.S. warships should request permission before making their own “innocent passage” in Chinese territorial waters.

During fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the Pentagon challenged this notion, deploying U.S. naval ships through Chinese territorial waters without notifying Beijing first.
According to those reports, the U.S. did not make the same challenge during fiscal 2014.
There is no data available for the current fiscal year.

U.S. officials believe China is building a “blue-water” navy capable of operating far from its shores, while also developing missiles and other capabilities designed to prevent the U.S. Navy from intervening in a conflict in Asia.
Many of those capabilities, including a new antiship ballistic missile, were put on display for the first time on Thursday during the parade to mark the surrender of Japanese forces at the end of World War II.

Some U.S. military experts saw the Chinese transit through the Aleutians as a positive step, in that they had adhered to the “innocent passage” principle.
“As a matter of fairness and equity, these operations are a big step forward for U.S. interests in that Beijing now has no basis to object to similar passage through China’s territorial sea by the U.S., for instance in vicinity of China’s islands in the South China Sea,” said Peter Dutton, director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.
China took another step in that direction last year during the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, joint naval drills in Hawaii.

U.S. officials said then that an uninvited Chinese spy ship had observed the drills from international waters.
China’s Defense Ministry said that its operations complied with international law.
Still, Mr. Dutton and other experts said it was doubtful that China would suddenly stop objecting to U.S. naval ships passing through its waters or conducting surveillance nearby.

 Potentila new runway presents new headaches

source : AMTI CSIS

Pentagon officials said in May they were drawing up plans to send U.S. Navy ships or aircraft within 12 nautical miles of artificial islands that China has been building in the disputed South China Sea.
Later that month, China expressed “strong dissatisfaction” and accused the U.S. of irresponsible and dangerous action after a U.S. Navy surveillance jet flew close to the islands, but not within 12 nautical miles.
China has also repeatedly demanded that the U.S. cease surveillance operations within its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, which under international law extends 200 nautical miles from the coast.

 Exclusive Ecnomic Zones (EEZ) in the East China Sea

source : Global Security

For that reason, Beijing would likely say its ships off Alaska weren't conducting surveillance, although they probably were, said Taylor Fravel, an expert on China’s military at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“China faces contradictory impulses to limit the activities of foreign navies within its own EEZ and to operate within the EEZs of others,” he said.
“Over time, especially as China’s military becomes even more capable, it could downplay objections to the activities of foreign navies in its EEZ as it seeks to operate more frequently out of the region.”
China’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to questions about which ships were in the flotilla near Alaska or how close they came to U.S. territory.

The joint exercises with Russia ran from Aug. 20-28 off the Russian Pacific coast—about 2,000 miles west of the Bering Sea—according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Seven Chinese ships took part, including two destroyers, two frigates, two landing ships and one supply ship, Xinhua said.
U.S. officials said the five ships near the Aleutians included three Chinese combat ships, a supply vessel and an amphibious landing ship.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Troubled waters: why China's navy makes Asia nervous / China's navy breaks out to the high seas / Troubled waters: the South China Sea dispute / US: China failed to clarify 9-dash line with law / Battle of the South China Sea charts / New map boosts China's maritime claims / China's lawful position on the South China Sea /
• The Diplomat : The Nine Ironies of the South China Sea Mess

Tuna and mackerel populations suffer catastrophic 74% decline, research shows

ocean.panda.org/#report

From The Guardian by Fiona Harvey 

WWF says we risk losing species critical to human food security unless action is taken to halt overfishing and other threats to marine life

 Yellowtail and albacore tuna are becoming increasingly rare, as well as bluefin.

Photograph: Brian Skerry/WWF

Tuna and mackerel populations have suffered a “catastrophic” decline of nearly three quarters in the last 40% years, according to new research.
WWF and the Zoological Society of London found that numbers of the scombridae family of fish, which also includes bonito, fell by 74% between 1970 and 2012, outstripping a decline of 49% for 1,234 ocean species over the same period.

 Father and son fishermen in dugout canoe bringing in net at sunset, 

Ohoidertutu Village, Kei Islands, Moluccas, Indonesia.

©Juergen Freund / WWF

The conservation charity warned that we face losing species critical to human food security, unless drastic action is taken to halt overfishing and other threats to marine life.
Louise Heaps, chief advisor on marine policy at WWF UK, said: “This is catastrophic. We are destroying vital food sources, and the ecology of our oceans.”
Attention in recent years has focused on species such as bluefin tuna, now on the verge of extinction, but other close relatives commonly found on restaurant menus or in tins, such as yellowtail tuna and albacore, are now also becoming increasingly scarce. Only skipjack, also often tinned, is showing “a surprising degree of resilience”, according to Heaps, one of the authors of the Living Blue Planet report, published on Wednesday.

 Sea cucumbers, a luxury food in Asia, have fallen 98%.

Photograph: Cat Holloway/WWF

Other species suffering major declines include sea cucumbers, a luxury food in Asia, which have fallen 98% in number in the Galapagos and 94% in in the Egyptian Red Sea.
Populations of endangered leatherback turtles, which can be seen in UK waters, have plummeted.
Overfishing is not the only culprit behind a halving of marine species since 1970.
Pollution, including plastic detritus which can build up in the digestive systems of fish; the loss of key habitats such as coastal mangrove swamps; and climate change are also taking a heavy toll, with the oceans becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide we are pouring into the atmosphere.

Half of marine life wiped out in just 40 years, says WWF

 “I am terrified about acidification,” Heaps told the Guardian.
“That situation is looking very bleak. We were taught in the 1980s that the solution to pollution is dilution, but that suggests the oceans have an infinite capacity to absorb our pollution. That is not true, and we have reached the capacity now.”
She predicts that all of the world’s coral reefs could be effectively lost by 2050, if current trends are allowed to continue unchecked, and said that evidence of the effects of acidification – which damages tiny marine animals that rely on calcium to make their shells and other organs - could be found from the Antarctic to the US west coast.

 Tubbataha reef in the Philippines appears bleached due to an infestation of crown-of-thorn starfish. Photograph: Juergen Freund/WWF 

Although overfishing is a global problem, the Pacific is of particular concern, as the Chinese, Japanese and Korean fleets are among the world’s biggest, greater in size and fishing capacity than Europe’s.
Chinese fishermen are also increasingly fishing in other waters, expanding their reach. Shark-finning, the practice of removing only the fins from sharks and throwing the bodies back, to make the Asian delicacy shark-fin soup, has taken a severe toll on stocks, with a quarter of shark species predicted to become extinct in a decade if nothing is done.
However, Heaps said there were solutions.
“It’s not all doom-and-gloom. There are choices we can make. But it is urgent.”
Overfishing can be managed with better governance – Heaps points to the recovery in North Sea cod stocks as an example of how management can work.
She also urged governments to adopt the sustainable development goals, proposed by the United Nations and including provisions for protecting marine life, at the UN general assembly later this month.

 A silvertip shark swimming in Beqa lagoon, near Suva, the capital of Fiji.

Photograph: Brent Stirton/WWF

Heaps urged people only to eat fish certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which examines fisheries against a range of criteria to ensure that they are being properly managed.
An increasing number of fisheries have been accredited by the MSC, and at present about half of global white fish stocks are certified, including many in the North Sea.
She called for more partnerships between private sector fishing fleets and governments, in order to conserve stocks.
“We need to keep [fishermen] on board, because they must see that good governance is in their interests,” she said.

Links :

• Le Marin (in French) : Oceans, la voix des invisibles