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By Hannah, on February 24th, 2011
500 million tons. Can you imagine 500 million tons of anything? Well, take that image of vast tonnage in your mind and fill it with ANTARCTIC KRILL, Euphausia superba — piles, no, mountains of 2-inch crustaceans flopping around, flipping themselves into the air with their tails pulled in close beneath them, a perfect bite-sized snack if you’re interested in picking chitin out of your teeth later.
500 million tons is the amount of Antarctic Krill on the planet — greater than the mass of humans on the planet — and once a year, between January and March, they swarm in time for the breeding season.
Krill filter particles from the water with their gills. Image: Wikimedia Commons
The traditional view is that krill mate at the surface, laying their eggs there which sink to about 1000m before hatching. Then, the larvae swim upwards and reach the surface in autumn (the “developmental ascent”).
This hypothesis was presented by James Marr in 1962 and, frankly, scientists haven’t looked too far into it since. A new paper, open access in Plankton Research, describes the full Antarctic krill mating cycle and also notes that they found many krill mating at depth, an observation that hasn’t been the focus of research previously. They describe the mating process — which you can watch in this video.
The authors also created something I haven’t seen before: a Creative-Commons licensed web . . . → Read More: Deep sea sex: even krill are doing it!
By Hannah, on February 1st, 2011
Last night was my first night in NYC and, as such, it was my first experience with modern-day human foraging: the Trader Joes in Chelsea at 7:30 pm. Despite the many shelves previously stuffed with various types of bagged lettuce, there was NO LETTUCE LEFT. No granola bars. The customers were nasty, ramming their carts into me to get to the dried cranberries. While sometimes I’ve been to groceries that have been out of a particular item I wanted, I have never thought to myself, “well, maybe I’ll go somewhere else because I simply cannot feed myself properly from this store.”
Call the waaahhmbulance, why don’t you? It really is an under-appreciated fact, that living in civilized America frees us from foraging, which all other species spend most of their time doing. Every moment, non-human organisms have to balance food quality, difficulty of acquisition, competition, and distance to ensure that they are in the right place to feed themselves and their offspring. And they don’t just have other members of their species to compete with, but also the other species living nearby.
Seabirds have been used to study how organisms manage their time. I’m not talking about procrastination, but rather what are known as “time budgets:” for how long do the birds forage, how far will they go for food, will they trade off shorter distances (less time) for less nutritional food, etc. Most seabirds gather in great numbers once a year for the breeding season when they face . . . → Read More: Self-Help for Seabirds: How to manage your time and outcompete your neighbors for maximum survival
By Hannah, on December 19th, 2010
I’ve watched this 5 times in a row now: a short stop-motion film showing human tools and other metal objects living their lives in the deep sea. Skillful and lovely animation. (Click through to post for video)
Thanks to my friend Nick for sharing this with me!
By Hannah, on December 9th, 2010
A couple of researchers studying the Giant Pacific Octopus in the Puget Sound, and tracked an octopus protecting her eggs throughout the duration. The mother octopus will do nothing but guard the eggs, aerate them with her siphon, and remove fungus with her suckers until they hatch – at which point she dies.
The researchers not only witnessed the hatch, but caught the whole thing on video. Highly recommended viewing below! (You have to click through to the post to watch the video… sorry)
From King5 TV
Hat tip to James Wood, teuthologist, Associate Director of the Waikiki Aquarium, Webmaster of the Cephalopod Page, and king of the ceph listserv
By Hannah, on December 8th, 2010
 The vision of a tropical beach is something we take for granted: the white sands, crystal blue water, and colorful, diverse reefs. It’s like a playground designed just for us where everything is beautiful and comfortable (well, minus the sunburn). But we actually shouldn’t take this for granted, as the existence of coral reefs in warm tropical waters is not a give-in, but rather the result of millions of years of slow evolution and coevolution to cope with this nutrient-poor habitat.
Heaven.
Symbiotic relationships in tropical coral reefs
At first thought, it might seem like there would be more production in the warm tropical water: cells can grow faster, and the constant sunlight should lead to an abundance of photosynthetic activity. But it is not so simple. The sun warms the clear surface water, creating a thermocline where the warm water gets trapped at the surface and doesn’t mix with colder, deeper water. When organisms die, their bodies sink to the bottom, dragging a major source of nutrients with them. This lack of nutrients in surface water, and thus lack of water-mucking phytoplankton and plankton, is why tropical waters are crystal clear, but it also raises questions about how coral reefs can thrive there.
 Many species in reefs have coevolved with another . . . → Read More: How clownfish help their anemones: nutrient transfer in a triple symbiosis
By Hannah, on December 1st, 2010
 Historically, perhaps due to human interest in maximizing fishing activity, we have assumed that there is a great deal of gene flow in marine populations. This assumption allowed us to maximize fishing efforts without guilt, since a large, ocean-wide population would allow fish from other parts of the world to refill populations that we had reduced by overfishing. But you know what they say about assumptions: they make an ASS out of U and ME. Thus marine biologists have taken an interest in uncovering whether or not the genetic diversity of fished species vary globally.
While we have our various oceans labelled and divided up into 5 sections, in reality, that is just human geography: the ocean is one vast interconnected body of water. And it is this connectivity that raises questions for evolutionary biologists. In the case of sessile organisms, such as rocky tidal mollusks, how far are the fertilized eggs and larvae dispersing before “landing” upon their permanent home? If they stay close to where the eggs were laid and fertilized, we’d expect speciation to occur since populations are based locally. But if the organisms are traveling miles on ocean currents before landing, we’d expect greater interbreeding between populations, less genetic variability, and slower adaptation and evolution.
Don’t assume that this constraint breaks down amongst more mobile organisms. In many oceanic species, despite ocean-wide dispersal, huge populations will gather together yearly in one spot to breed. This would make any . . . → Read More: Coddle me, please: parallel evolution and fishery management in Atlantic cod
By Hannah, on November 8th, 2010
I was reading some old Fantastic Four comics from their original run in the early ’60s and have been finding some really great marine biology-themed episodes, especially ones that feature Prince Namor, the Submariner, into whom I plan on doing some more research shortly.
Fantastic Four #14 is an episode involving Prince Namor along with one of our favorite creatures: the OCTOPUS!
What’s interesting about these panels is that there is an incredible emphasis put upon the stupidity of the octopus. This seems ridiculous to us now, when media articles repeatedly use the word “intelligence” to describe octopuses. While I wouldn’t call them “smart,” a loaded word, they have memory, can learn from their environments, and use tools, signs at least of some level of consciousness. For more on this topic, see my old post on cephalopod consciousness, or check out the wonderful stuff from our resident teuthologist-wannabe, Mike Lisieski, at Cephalove such as his Cephalopod Consciousness Series and Do Octopuses Play?. These assumptions made by the writers gives a sense of just how far we’ve come (which is why I like digging through these old comics in the first place – it’s like archaeology.)
![]() . . . → Read More: Science in Comics: the Fantastic Four on Octopus Intelligence
By Hannah, on October 27th, 2010
In a recent email exchange with a (skeptically) wonderful blogger about why we are interested in what we are and where past/current biases lie, I wrote that I “grew up wanting to look at the planet from space.” This is true in multiple senses: my drive to seek patterns in collected studies and data, and also my interest in large-scale ecology generally.
But, of course, we can actually look at the planet from space! And collect data at the same time! Via the wonder of SATELLITES! In 1997, NASA began launching satellites into earth’s orbit as part of its Earth Observing System in its Earth Science Enterprise program. These satellites collect data on a number of global environmental factors including ice cover, cloud cover, chlorophyll concentration, and sea surface temperature mainly using radar and surface coloration.
NASA earth observatories. These are satellites in orbit
Chlorophyll concentration has been of particular interest lately because it is used as a proxy for photosynthesis, and thus carbon uptake and oxygen release. In the ocean, these data are collected by color sensors such as SeaWiFS, OCTS and MODIS. Since chlorophyll is green, the satellites essentially collect ocean color data and then remove the regional background color of the water, resulting in the amount of . . . → Read More: The grand diversity of marine phytoplankton species: focusing from space
By Hannah, on October 12th, 2010
My earliest memory of engaging with nature and science took place in my grandparents’ backyard in Roslyn, NY. It must have been the summer, and I walked up to a tree and found a weird brown thing stuck to it: a cicada exoskeleton. I still remember the feel of the little shell, the papery abdomen and the way the little hairs clung to my skin. What is it? How did it get there? Where is the insect now? How many are there? … ad infinitum in the way of a curious child.
Screw this pink dress! Baby Hannah wants to play with bugs under these rock steps
Many of us interested in nature and science have an early memory like this. It’s the child’s “sense of wonder” that Rachel Carson describes in her book by that title. I have returned to this quote over and over again throughout the years and, although it’s long, I encourage you to read it right now:
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a . . . → Read More: Donors Choose Initiative: if helping school children wasn’t incentive enough, I’ll draw you a picture!
By Hannah, on October 5th, 2010
The primary reason for studying marine ecology is for ecosystem and resource management. Over half of the human population lives in the coastal zone, and we all are dependent on the ocean, either for food resources of simply because phytoplankton are responsible for the production of nearly half of atmospheric oxygen. Add to that the great biodiversity of marine life and its sheer beauty… and we have a resource that we should all be dedicated to conserving and protecting.
Research cruises are expensive and time-consuming. Can we use observations of seabirds instead? Aboard Hatfield Marine Science Center's "Elahka," Summer 2008. Photo by Hannah Waters
The first step in ecosystem management is determining the “natural state” of the system, and accounting for whether observed variation in the abundances and distributions of organisms is from negative anthropogenic effects such as overfishing or eutrophication. But how can we keep track of all these populations? Marine ecology is notoriously difficult to study, since the organisms are all embedded in a cold mass of water. Taking yearly measurements of abiotic factors (e.g. oxygen, temperature, salinity), as well as counts of the organisms within (phytoplankton, zooplankton, forage fish, larger predatory fish, etc.) is possible, but takes an incredible amount of time and man power. Add to that the compilation and interpretation of massive sets of data and the task seems formidable at best.
This is . . . → Read More: Seabirds as indicators of marine ecosystem health: an introduction
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About Me 
I'm Hannah Waters, just a girl with a fondness for marine ecology and a passion for science education. I also blog at Culturing Science.
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