Oncoming El Niño likely to continue species shakeup in Pacific

Crews from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center caught two large ocean sunfish far to the north of where the species usually occurs. Photo credit: AFSC.

 One-two punch of El Niño and “warm blob” could boost coastal temperatures and supercharge storms

Contributed by Michael Milstein

The emerging El Niño climate pattern that is warming the tropical Pacific Ocean is likely to continue–and could even increase–the appearance of marine species in unfamiliar places along the West Coast. This trend started with a vast “warm blob” of high temperature waters that has dominated the Northeast Pacific since 2014.

Previous El Niños coincided with large-scale redistribution of some West Coast marine mammals, fish and sea turtles. The combination of an anticipated strong El Niño and the blob may do the same, possibly in new and different ways, NOAA Fisheries researchers say.

“One of our big questions right now is, how can we best link observed changes in species distributions to changing environmental conditions?” said Dave Weller of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. Weller is chief scientist for the ongoing Collaborative Large Whale Survey, a joint survey for whales off the West Coast and Southeast Alaska by the SWFSC and Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

“We need to be clever about it in terms of using a range of observations and having eyes on the water in the form of ship surveys like this can really help,” Weller said.

NOAA Fisheries scientists have been tracking the blob since last year and are cooperatively following continued changes in ocean conditions through at-sea surveys, remote sensing and automated monitoring to understand how the changes are affecting marine ecosystems.

The blob has already driven temperatures in the North Pacific some 3 to 4 degrees C (about 5 to 7 degrees F) above average. Not since records began around 1900 have temperatures in the region been so warm for so long.

Temperature changes shift marine life

Already in the last month the survey spotted about 25 pilot whales around 50 miles off the Central California Coast. Pilot whales were once common off Southern California but largely disappeared following a strong El Niño pattern in the early 1980s. In the last few years pilot whales have begun to trickle back into the area, a sign they may be starting to reoccupy former habitat.

“This recent uptick in pilot whale sightings may be related to the warm blob’s influence,” Weller said. “If we pay close attention to the animals, they’re telling us something about changes in their environment. We now need to connect the puzzle pieces.” Scientists are also investigating connections between the blob and a harmful algal bloom along the West Coast that may be a factor in an unusual number of whale deaths in Alaska.

Rockfish surveys conducted by the SWFSC in May and June already showed the likely influence of warm water from the blob, turning up large catches of species typically seen during strong El Niño periods, and some never before seen in the survey. They included record high catches of pelagic red crabs and California spiny lobster, and the survey’s first-ever catches of warm-water species including greater Argonaut (a swimming octopus with a shell), slender snipefish and subtropical krill.

Offshore surveys by the AFSC pulled in warmer-water species including two large ocean sunfish and market squid, species which have not been seen in the prior 18 years of sampling, said Joe Orsi of the AFSC’s Auke Bay Laboratories. Other warm-water species reported from Alaska recently include albacore, bonito and yellowtail.

“This El Niño is liable to bring some really strange changes in ocean conditions because the widespread warming of the North Pacific we saw with the blob was so far outside of our experience,” said Northwest Fisheries Science Center oceanographer Bill Peterson. “When you put an El Niño on top of that it is anyone’s guess as to how this will affect marine organisms.” He tracks types of plankton off the Central Oregon Coast for insight into ocean conditions. He expects a new surge of warm-water plankton as the tropical El Niño begins to influence Oregon waters this fall.

Salmon and other species that thrive in cold water often do poorly in warm years, especially strong El Niño years, he noted, while species such as sardines that favor warmer water could do better.

El Nino vs. the blob

Now another key question is how the tropical El Niño and the blob may interact as El Niño gains strength and begins to affect the West Coast this fall and winter. In terms of size, El Niño far exceeds the blob and is expected to pummel the blob with storms that will likely break up the blob and push its warm water up along much of the West Coast, said Nate Mantua, leader of the SWFSC’s Landscape Ecology Team.

That will likely make this the third winter in a row with record-high coastal temperatures that affect both marine ecosystems and the coastal climate. El Niño typically shifts the jet stream in a way that redirects storms from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California instead.

“Because we’re starting from an exceptionally high baseline temperature this could take us further into uncharted territory in terms of effects,” Mantua said.

He said there is potential for the warm coastal temperatures to “supercharge” storms spawned by El Niño. Since warmer air holds more moisture storms may carry greater precipitation ashore, which could lead to more intense deluges on land. That could multiply the impacts of this summer’s large wildfires by pouring water on recently burned slopes.

“If you put heavy rains on that, you can get mudslides, debris flows, rapid runoff and other serious impacts,” Mantua said.

California sea lions will likely continue to struggle as the warm water temperatures lead to shifts in prey, he said. Record numbers of starving sea lion pups stranded on Southern California beaches last winter and spring as their mothers had a harder time finding food near their rookeries in the Channel Islands.

Investigations of the sea lion strandings by AFSC researcher Sharon Melin and others found that adult females could not maintain enough lactation to support normal pup growth. In July 2015 AFSC biologists recorded declines in the number of sea lion pups born on San Miguel and San Nicholas islands, another sign of nutritional stress in the population.

Mantua noted that El Niño effects extend far beyond the West Coast of North America. Dry conditions in Central America have already led to restrictions on the size of ships that can transit the Panama Canal because of lack of water, for instance. Meanwhile heavy rains are falling in the Peruvian desert.

“This El Niño will likely cause extreme climate events in different parts of the world for the next six to nine months,” Mantua said.

How science tracks conditions

The way that El Niño interacts with the warm blob may depend on the depth and extent of the blob’s warm water, which remains something of a mystery, said Toby Garfield, director of the SWFSC’s Environmental Research Division. If it’s shallow, it should dissipate quickly. But if it’s deeper, the larger volume of water may hang on longer.

“How much heat does it hold and how that volume of hot water out there may or may not change things, those are the questions everyone’s asking right now,” Garfield said. “This is going to be a very interesting winter coming up and many scientists and communities will be working hard to anticipate and prepare for changes in the ocean and atmosphere.”

Marine scientist are mobilizing partnerships to make the most of ocean monitoring instruments along the West Coast. New instruments such as autonomous gliders that survey ocean conditions may offer opportunities to gather marine data that was not available during previous El Niños, Garfield said.

Read the original post: http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/

Rare Giant Squid Found Off the Coast of Hawaii

A rare giant squid was caught off the coast of Hawaii this week. It will be sent to Washington for further research. Mathew Fowler

Global Fisheries Scientists set up ‘Truth Squad’ to Counter Inaccurate Scientific Claims in Media

— Posted with permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM. Please do not republish without their permission. —

Copyright © 2015 Seafoodnews.com

Their media partners lap up stories of doom and collapse, often uncritically.  For that reason, a group of  International experts in fisheries management have come together as part of a new initiative, called CFOOD (Collaborative for Food from Our Oceans Data.) The coalition will gather data from around the world and maintain fisheries databases while ensuring seafood sustainability discussions in the media reflect ground-truth science.

The scientists behind the project have long pushed for accurate and clean data sources on the world’s fisheries.

The CFOOD project, headquartered at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS), is made up of a network of scientists whose mission stemmed from a frustration with erroneous and agenda-driven stories about fisheries sustainability in the media. The CFOOD project will maintain a website and social media channels that provide a forum for immediate feedback on new seafood sustainability reports and studies.

“The CFOOD website allows us to offer independent scientific commentary to debunk false claims, support responsible science, or introduce new issues based on recent research,” said Dr. Ray Hilborn, Professor at University of Washington’s SAFS and founder of the CFOOD initiative.

“The ocean is a remarkably abundant source of healthy protein,” said Hilborn. “And while sustainability challenges exist, particularly in areas lacking sufficient fishery management infrastructure, many fisheries around the world are well-managed and sustainable. The message doesn’t always seem to resonate with consumers because of misinformation they continue to hear in the media.”

By reviewing and providing scientific analysis on relevant studies, papers, and media reports the CFOOD network hopes to use science to set the record straight for consumers, so they can have confidence the seafood they purchase is harvested in an environmentally responsible fashion.

Other scientists on the editorial board for CFOOD include Robert Arlinghaus, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and Humboldt at Universität zu Berlin; Kevern Cochrane, FAO Retired, Cape Town, South Africa; Stephen Hall, World Fish Center, Penang, Malaysia; Olaf Jensen, Rutgers University; Michel Kaiser, Bangor University, UK; Ana Parma, CONICET Puerto Madryn, Argentina; Tony Smith, Hobart, Australia; Nobuyuki Yagi, Tokyo University.

“Exaggerated claims of impending ecological disaster might grab attention, but they risk distorting effort and resources away from more critical issues.  I hope this initiative will help provide the balance we need,” said Dr. Stephen Hall, Director General, World Fish Center, based in Malaysia.

The first set of comments on the CFOOD website debunks a WWF paper claiming a 74% decline in global mackerel and tuna species.  The scientists point out that the data used to support that conclusion is out of date, having not been updated since 2004, and that more robust data sources, such as the actual stock assessments of tuna and mackerel stocks around the world were not used by the WWF in creating their estimate.  We explore the comments in depth in our related story.

To connect with the scientists, you can use twitter, facebook, or their website.

Website:  Twitter:  Facebook:

John Sackton, Editor and Publisher

Copyright © 2015 Seafoodnews.com

Dolphins, Pelagic Red Crab, Sun Fish Point to El Nino Coming to Northern California

The subjects of science are often witnessed through microscopes, tiny squiggly things writhing in a petri dish. But last week as a large research boat drifted through the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, science was getting scrutinized through binoculars and even the naked eye.

For the 12th year in a row, researchers from Point Blue Conservation Science, the Gulf of Farallones and Cordell Bank Marine Sanctuaries were spending 10 days on the ocean outside the Golden Gate Bridge taking a scientific snapshot of ocean life.

“Our goal is to understand how ocean conditions affect food for birds and whales,” said Jaime Jahncke of Point Blue.

Over several days the team collected krill samples, tested for signs of ocean acidification and attempted to lay eyes on as many critters as possible.

“Our sampling effort looks at birds, mammals, krills, boat activity ,” said Jan Roletto, research coordinator for Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

A researcher scans the ocean for seabirds during a recent scientific cruise in the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
Photo credit: Joe Rosato Jr.

But this year’s gathering turned-up some unusual phenomenon, which scientists believe are signs of an El Nino year – which draws unusually warm waters to Northern California. For the first time in decades, scientists saw schools of hundreds of common dolphins which aren’t common to the Bay Area, but rather the typically warm waters of Southern California.

“It’s a sign the water is more warm than we normally see,” Roletto said. “And that’s a sign of El Nino.”

Scientists have recorded large pockets of warm water along the West Coast over the last two years – which they’ve affectionally nicknamed “the blob.”

“This year has been particularly interesting,” Jahncke said. “The ocean has been really warm because of ‘the blob.’ ”

During an expedition earlier this summer, the scientists noted fewer krill in the ocean which in turn was driving humpback whales closer to shore near Half Moon Bay and Monterey to seek out fish.

“There are more whales visible from the mainland,” Roletto said. “That’s because that’s where the fish are being concentrated.”

A small fish sits among a sampling of krill collected by researchers during their scientific cruise.
Photo credit: Joe Rosato Jr.

In addition to dolphins, Roletto said the group spotted other typically warm water creatures venturing north. Sleepy-looking sun fish were seen basking in the waters. And the researchers’ nets pulled up a curious traveler — a small red pelagic crab that normally makes its home near Baja.

“The last time I personally saw in this region red pelagic crabs was in the 1983, 1984 El Nino,” Roletto said.

Roletto said the lack of krill and juvenile rockfish which are normally abundant along the coast was posing hardships on common murres which have been recently turning-up starving and dead on Northern California beaches. Roletto said the young birds count on juvenile rockfish to survive. She pointed out similar die-offs occurred in past El Nino years.

“That’s pretty extreme,” Roletto said, “pretty significant indicator that something is missing in the eco system.”

As part of the research, observers armed with binoculars lined the boat’s upper deck, calling out every bird and mammal along a set swath of ocean near the Farallon Islands. Sea lions, whales and even plain old seagulls became part of a moving record of the area’s life. The results are compared to previous years’ records to help paint a picture of the changing conditions.

A research team hauls in nets designed to collect krill and other small sea creatures in the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
Photo credit: Joe Rosato Jr.

“It’s really interesting because things change from day to day,” said Danielle Lipski of Cordell Bank Marine Sanctuary. “Sometimes we’ll see lots of whales and seabirds and in other areas we won’t.”

Jahncke stared off across the churning waters as the boat bobbed and jibed across rolling swells — when something suddenly caught his eye. In the distance came the telltale blowhole spout of a whale.

“Do you see it?” he said enthusiastically, quickly tapping record of the sighting into his computer. Then he leaned back to appreciate the view, watching as the ocean swallowed the meandering giant.

View the original post: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/

NEW SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD REPORTING APPLICATION AVAILABLE FOR BUSINESSES

September 28, 2015 — FORT COLLINS, Colorado — The following was released by FishChoice:

New Sustainable Seafood Reporting Application Available for Businesses

Online Application Enables Businesses to Self-Assess the Sustainability of their Seafood

Powered by FishChoice.com, in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch^® program and Seattle Fish Co., the new Sustainable Seafood Calculator application enables businesses to self-assess and track the sustainability of their seafood.

“We partnered with FishChoice.com to create the Seafood Calculator to allow our customers to easily and accurately rate the sustainability of their seafood,” says Derek Figueroa, COO of Seattle Fish Co. “The Seafood Calculator is a valuable and straightforward tool that makes it easy for Seattle Fish Co. to deliver up-to-date information to our customers and allow them to drive real change.”

Chefs, retailers, distributors, and others register for a free account and can immediately start creating one or more lists of their seafood inventory. At any time, users can calculate sustainability where they will be directed to a dashboard with a table of their seafood inventory matched with corresponding up-to-date sustainability information. The dashboard also includes a collection of charts summarizing their seafood categories by overall sustainability and by individual sustainability categories. Additionally, users of the application receive email notifications when there are updates to the sustainability of any of their items.

Currently, over 500 companies have tested the application and use it to track and report the sustainability of their seafood. Chefs are some of the main businesses benefiting from the application. According to Sheila Lucero, Executive Chef, Jax Fish House and Oyster Bar, “We are committed to our sustainability practices and being able to utilize the Seafood Calculator has been a beneficial tool to our chefs.” The sustainable seafood calculator can be found at http://www.fishchoice.com/sustainableseafoodcalculator/. 

Read the original post www.savingseafood.org/

Read the PDF of the release here

Estero Bay, Pismo Beach are hotspots for shark bites on otters, study finds

 

White sharks are taking a heavy toll on California’s sea otter population.

A recent article for the journal Marine Mammal Science concluded that the Estero Bay and Pismo Beach areas are hotspots for shark bites on sea otters. The article written by four sea otter biologists noted an eightfold increase in shark bites along the sea otters’ southern range, which stretches from Cayucos to Point Conception.

“Over the past 10 to 15 years the number of shark-bitten sea otters in California has increased with shark-related injuries becoming the most frequently identified primary cause of death in the assemblage of beach-cast carcasses,” the article concluded.

White shark bites now are found on more than 50 percent of recovered otter carcasses, the study said.

The trend is puzzling because sea otters are not considered a prey species for white sharks. The biologists concluded that the bites, while fatal, were exploratory only and the sharks did not intend to eat the otters.

The trend is also troubling because it threatens to stop the recovery of sea otters in California, said Mike Harris, a sea otter biologist in Morro Bay with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, who co-wrote the article.

“It’s happening in the part of the otters’ range in the north and south where we need population growth,” he said. “Shark-bite mortality is essentially keeping the otter population from expanding into new habitat.”

The trend shows no sign of letting up. On Monday, Harris recovered a shark-bitten sea otter carcass from Morro Strand State Beach, not far from where a shark bit a chunk out of a woman’s surfboard on Saturday.

California sea otters range from Pigeon Point south of San Francisco in the north to Point Conception in the south. A census in 2014 put the otter population at 2,944, up five animals from the previous year.

Sea otters are making a slow recovery after being hunted to near extinction for their luxurious fur during the 18th and 19th centuries. A small colony survived in Big Sur.

In addition to shark bites, sea otters suffer from many other causes of death, including microbial toxins from polluted runoff and brain infections contracted from the feces of wild and domestic cats.

The animals have been listed since 1977 as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. Their population would have to exceed 3,090 for three consecutive years to have them removed from the list.

In the heart of their range, from Monterey to Cayucos, the otter population is stable and at the carrying capacity of their habitat. However, otter populations in the southern extent of their range have dropped by 3.3 percent in the past five years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, which conducts an annual sea otter population count.

The cause of this increased shark-bite mortality is unclear, Harris said. The most common explanation is that the population of white sharks is increasing, although there is little data to corroborate that.

White sharks have been fully protected in California since 1994. The sharks feed primarily on seals, which are thriving. Northern elephant seals, sea lions and harbor seals have all experienced population increases in recent decades.

“Their main prey base is very robust and growing,” Harris said.

A 2014 study put the shark population at 2,400.

The authors of the article studied the reports on 1,870 otter carcasses collected since 1985. A sharp increase in shark bites on otters began in 2003.

Read the original post: www.sanluisobispo.com

Climate change will irreversibly force key ocean bacteria into overdrive

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary counts its victories.

Nature shows so often follow the same script: The earth is amazing, but we humans are ruining it.

Big Blue Live, a PBS/BBC production, flips that script. It toasts Monterey Bay as a conservation success, a case study of how science-based ocean management is allowing a highly degraded ocean habitat to rebound.

That resilience will be on full, high-definition display when the show airs real-time footage of Monterey Bay sea life in the U.S. Aug. 31-Sept. 2.

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS), which is co-hosting with Monterey Bay Aquarium, is taking the occasion to count its victories since its 1992 designation, which brought with it a host of federal protections.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest status report on MBNMS includes some encouraging news, announced in a press release today. Among the highlights:

– Populations of elephant seals, blue whales and gray whales are stable or increasing. The sanctuary now counts more than 30,000 resident elephant seals, which were once close to extinction. Humpback whale numbers have bounced back so well, the local sub-population is proposed for removal from the endangered species list.

– Sea-floor habitats in and near the Davidson Seamount, an underwater mountain about 75 miles southwest of Monterey, are almost “pristine.”

– The kelp forests that shelter and feed many of Monterey Bay’s marine creatures are “generally abundant and stable.”

– Abundant forage species are feeding both marine animals and people. Fishermen have landed more than a billion pounds of sardines, anchovies and squid since the sanctuary was designated 23 years ago. That includes a local squid harvest of 90 million pounds last year alone.

– Brown pelicans made it off the federal endangered species list in 2009, rebounding from a low of less than 1,000 breeding pairs in the 1970s to almost 11,700 regional pairs in 2006.

– Southern sea otters have bounced back from about 1,800 to 2,900 within the sanctuary since 1992. That’s great for other kelp-forest species, since otters eat the sea urchins that mow down kelp.

– Local beaches are cleaner, thanks to sewer system improvements and reduced stormwater runoff.

The report, however, is not entirely rosy. Sewage spills and high coliform counts still occasionally pollute local beaches. Regulators are still finding contaminants in local waters. Marine animals are getting tangled in fishing gear and eating plastic litter, while sand mining continues to erode the Monterey Bay shoreline.

And climate change continues to threaten the sea—especially ocean acidification, which happens when elevated CO2 levels from fossil fuel burning cause the ocean’s pH to decline. That chemical shift is affecting the ability of some creatures to form or maintain their shells, which has ripple effects through the food web.

The full report, according to NOAA, will be available online this fall.

Read the original post: http://m.montereycountyweekly.com

How Many Fish in the Sea? Genetic Testing Could Answer That

Advances in genetic testing have revolutionized everything from health care decisions to crime forensics. Now, the technology may help protect marine life off the California coast.

In the waters of Monterey Bay, DNA sequencing is allowing biologists to study fish and whales without ever having seen them.

Just a sample of seawater, the volume of a water bottle, is enough to reveal what marine life has been swimming through that part of the ocean. The technique could improve marine monitoring, where scientists track an ecosystem year after year to gauge how it’s doing.

One Fish, Two Fish

Taking a marine census today requires hours of field time, either with scuba diving or boat trips.

“It gets a little challenging because you’re floating, you’re swimming, you’re looking, you’re counting,” says diver Dan Abbott, unloading his scuba gear on a beach in Monterey.

He’s holding a waterproof clipboard, on which he’s tallied all the fish and marine life he saw in a kelp forest just offshore.

“About 150 fish in all. Pile perch, black perch, blue rockfish, kelp rockfish,” he says, just for a start. He’s diving with a team from Reef Check California, a group of volunteers that surveys this site twice a year.

The group’s data help answer a question that’s key to California’s conservation efforts: are there more fish here now than there were eight years ago?

That’s when this kelp forest became part of a massive experiment to restore marine life in California. It was set aside as a marine protected area, where there’s little or no fishing allowed.

There are now more than a hundred protected areas up and down the coast, covering 16 percent of state waters. The idea is that marine life will slowly recover there, improving the ecosystem both inside and outside the boundaries of each area.

The only way to know if these areas are working is through underwater surveys, repeated year after year. In 2013, biologists reported encouraging results in the protected areas off the Central Coast.

Field surveys are expensive. The state supplied $16 million for monitoring studies, and the funding has already run out in some regions of the coast. Monitoring has continued, thanks to universities, foundations and volunteer groups.

Studying the Ocean Without Getting Wet

“It’s been amazing what we can detect in just a liter of seawater,” says Jesse Port, an environmental genomicist at the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University.

He points to a rack of one-liter Nalgene water bottles that he uses to take seawater samples from the kelp forests in Monterey Bay. The rest of the work happens in the lab with a technique known as “environmental DNA” or eDNA.

“So all organisms shed their DNA,” he says. “Their skin, their scales, their waste – all of this gets into the water. You can think of it as a soup of genetic information.”

Port filters the seawater to collect all the cells. Then, he weeds out the algae and plankton and sequences the DNA of all the vertebrates, like whales, seals, and fish.

“We get, with the machine we’re using, 150 million sequence reads for a given sequence run,” he says, “and that’s a lot of information.”

Those gigabytes of results require heavy data-crunching, but eventually, he ends up with a spreadsheet that tells him what organisms were found.

The approach is possible because DNA sequencing has gotten so much cheaper. One sample costs just $1,500.

“This was just not possible five, ten years ago,” Port says. “And sequencing technology is just going to get better, so this will probably get even cheaper.”

Finding Turkey Underwater

Port first ran DNA tests in one of the large tanks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which provided an easy test case because he knew exactly what was swimming there.

But he got back results he didn’t quite believe. “Things like turkey,” he says. “We picked up chicken DNA in these tanks.”

Turns out, poultry was in the feed some of the fish were getting. But it raised some big questions. How do you know whether the DNA comes from a fish or from something it ate miles away? Or how do you know the DNA didn’t float in on a current?

Port is still working on the answers to these questions and he’s doing studies to ground truth his results, checking them against what scuba divers find. But if the technology proves itself in the ocean, it could revolutionize how marine monitoring is done.

“You can cover such a larger area by taking water samples,” he says, “rather than having divers do that all themselves.”

Paul Michel, the superintendent of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, says they’re already using eDNA testing to help assess species diversity in the sanctuary.

“Absolutely, we did DNA testing on a research cruise in May,” Michel says, “and at each stop on the way, we were taking water samples. We can compare the DNA results to other types of samples over time.”

Eventually, it doesn’t even have to be humans taking those water samples.

DNA Lab at Sea

“What this is, is a microbiology lab that exists out in the ocean,” says Jim Birch of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, pointing to a 10-foot yellow tube. It’s called a long-range AUV, or autonomous underwater vehicle.

It looks like a torpedo, but it’s actually a robot, containing a miniature DNA lab called an Environmental Sample Processor.

The robot cruises along underwater, taking samples and analyzing them onboard. Birch recently sent it out for a test run in Monterey Bay.

“I was sitting in my living room with my computer open and there in front of me was the control panel for the AUV,” he says. “And I could direct it to go to a new place and it was just this surreal feeling.”

When the AUV finds an organism it’s looking for, it surfaces and calls home, pinging a satellite or cell phone network with the data, and giving scientists an almost real-time snapshot of the ocean.

Currently, it only tests for one thing at a time, like algae or plankton, and Birch says there’s more engineering work to be done before the AUV gains widespread use.

“This is going to be transformative in oceanography,” he says. “You don’t have to be out there on a boat with a huge crew, spending all this money.”

A change that could help the state’s conservation funding go farther, ensuring California’s marine protected areas are working.

Read/Listen the original post: http://ww2.kqed.org

NASA: Rising Seas About to Catch Up With the West Coast

NASA Animation shows the wide variance in sea level rise in recent years. The pale coloration along the West Coast illustrates a lower rate of rise. (NASA Scientific Visualization Studio)

Rising Seas are about to become a bigger issue for the West Coast, according to scientists.

Using satellite and other data, NASA scientists have been tracking rising sea levels around the world. They say that natural cycles in the Pacific have been masking effects of sea rise for about the last 20 years. But that’s changing.

“In the next five or ten years, I think the west coast of the United States is going to catch up,” says Josh Willis, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. He says a major ocean phase known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is in the midst of a big shift.

For about the past two decades, the PDO, which Willis describes as “El Niño’s bigger, slower, brother,” was “piling up” warmer water on the far side of the ocean, exacerbating sea rise there. When water warms, it expands.

“So we’ve actually seen a slight drop in sea levels off of our coastline  because of the rearrangement of heat within the oceans,” Willis explains.

That rearrangement could mean an acceleration in the rate that seas rise long the West Coast, eventually overtaking the pace of sea level rise on the East Coast and elsewhere.

“We could be looking at rates in the eastern Pacific two or three times as high as the global rates in the coming years,” says Willis. “So we could be in for wild ride over the next 20 years or so.”

As KQED and San Francisco Public Press have reported recently, billions in shoreline development in the Bay Area are in the planning stages or already begun, despite scientists’ warnings about rising seas.

Scientists say the brewing El Niño will also pile up warm water along California, making coastal flooding that much more likely, very soon. The warm water along the Equator that largely defines El Niño is expected to rival or surpass the legendary “Godzilla” El Niño of 1997-98 in strength.

NASA says global sea levels have risen about eight inches since the beginning of the 20^th century and more than two inches in the last 20 years. Though simple thermal expansion of the water accounts for about a third of the rise so far, climate scientists expect melting glaciers and ice sheets to play a much larger role in coming years.

Video: https://youtu.be/rkCzae-FCek

Read the original post: http://ww2.kqed.org