EARTH Workshop 2003

Sardine Story | Back to top

• Long-term data sets are useful and can be used for other purposes beyond what was originally expected
  • Primary object of MOTO was to determine seasonal and quantify interannual (i.e., El Niño) variability
  • Has also captured episodic phenomena (i.e., hyperpycnal flows)
  • Has also provided insights into multidecadal and climate change
  • MOTO is becoming a center for ocean modeling and prediction and for multidisciplinary experiments
• Data from temperature, chlorophyll, primary production, phytoplankton, etc. indicate that this could be a global warming story
• Data from temperature and chlorophyll indicate a shift after the '97/'98 El Niño—the ocean became cooler and more productive
• Baldo Marinovic at UCSC shows that zooplankton levels are coming up as well
• First paper focused on Francisco—s home town in Peru—data was collected using a small hired fishing boat and a manual winch; he has since tried to think about ways to improve on this (MBARI is such an improvement)
• Sea surface temperature anomalies and anchoveta catch off Peru (which is typically 30-40% of the global catch) are inversely related; the low frequency variation on the bottom has been blamed on fishing, but the latest argument is that the changes are due in part to both fishing and the environment
• Kawasaki (1983) figured out some of this 20 years ago, but the data was hidden in an obscure FAO publication; figure shows the catch of Californian, Far Eastern and Chilean sardines over time (Note—CA catch is much less than the others so a different scale was used)
  • Uncanny how similar the catches are—hard to argue that fishing pressure is so similar that the populations changes are synchronized
• Each sardine fishery is now shown separately with the addition of South African
  • Atlantic fishery trend is opposite to that of the Pacific
  • Temperature data is overlaid—and it looks like Temperature may NOT be the driver (compare Japan and the others)
• Combination of various graphs that indicate that everything is on a ~50 year cycle!
  • Top is global air temperature
  • Next is the pacific decadal oscillation north of 20 N
  • The Russians developed the atmospheric circulation index which gives an indication of global flow east-west and north-south
  • CO₂ data logged from Mauna Loa
  • Fish records are next
  • Last is the Ecosystem index (created by Francisco)
• El Niño and La Niña—opposite global warming/cooling patterns
• Pacific Decadal Oscillation
• Model of what happens during regime shifts
  • Monterey data seem to indicate that we—re heading into another regime shift
  • Question—what is the rate of change? (i.e., square wave or sine wave?); fisheries seem more like a square wave
  • New names—El Viejo (the old man) and La Vieja (the old woman)
• Comparison of sea surface height, temperature and phytoplankton
  • Lower sea surface means that the thermocline is closer to the surface and productivity is high
  • Top figure shows that sea level is low in the eastern Pacific and ~30 cm higher in the western Pacific
  • This gradient changes during El Niño—the shaded graphs show that this gradient has been enhanced after the '97/'98 El Niño
• Same analysis for local area (blue) compared to global (black)
  • Trying to show that Monterey is a great place to take measurements ("pulse of the globe") as it tracks the global phenomena
• Tour of the Pacific—processes associated with El Viejo and La Vieja
• Conclusions from MOTO data
  • Phenomena with periods of 40—60 years have strong impact on climate and marine ecosystems
  • Natural variability confuses the global warming issue
  • The next 20 years might tell the story—La Vieja should be a cooling period
  • Highlights the need for a global observing system

BRIDGE—Data Tips | Back to top

• Pick a topic/subject
• Look for data
• Look for trends
• Develop content—introductory material should be engaging and informative
• Identify supporting links for the content
• Develop data tip activity
• Include directions for how to access/setup the data (usually excel)
• Provide follow-up activities
• Include supporting BRIDGE pages that provide some additional background information including National Science Education Standards

• One of the graphs is missing units
• Is it possible to superimpose the two graphs?
• Different scales can be confusing, and assign inaccurate significance to sardine catch
• Include more training/practice in graph manipulation—line, weight, color, etc.
• Include a discussion of lag time
• Begin with an Excel orientation for students

TOPP—Tagging of Pacific Pelagics | Back to top

• There is an urgent need for biological information around the world to enable the conservation of living resources
• There is an availability of new techniques and technologies that enable us to better understand the oceans
• What lives in the oceans?
  • There are a number of different projects spanning the globe—MAR-ECO, ChEss, GoMe, POST, DIWPA, and TOPP
  • TOPP is focused in the northeast Pacific although it may expand south towards the Galapagos

• To understand how diverse marine species utilize the environment
• To discern the spatial correlation between oceanographic processes and pelagic predators
• To determine migratory pathways

• People can easily tell you what life is like on an African savannah because there are documentaries and you can sit and watch them
• Can’t do the same for the ocean—we catch occasional glimpses but don’t know the details
• We can now deploy electronic tags on key apex predators; data will be merged with physical and biological oceanographic data (leatherbacks, tuna, elephant seals)
• Example data set—three days in the life of a blue fin tuna
  • Time along the x-axis/depth along the y-axis
  • Data include depth, time, light levels, internal and external temperatures
• Determining longitude involves calculating local noon
• Determining latitude requires calculating exact length of day
• Information coming back depends on the tag
  • Archival tags—permanently attached and returned by fishers or others
  • Pop-up satellite tags—float to surface and telemeter binned data back
  • Satellite position tags (SPOT)—for animals that break the surface, these work and log into satellite whenever possible
• Example data applications
  • Bluefin 779—archival tag
    • International Tuna Commission has setup arbitrary lines and setup harvests for each regime—but the population stocks are clearly not separate stocks
  • Humboldt squid—binned data
    • Spend lots of time during the night around 100 meters and go down to 200 meters during the day
  • Salmon shark—satellite tag
• TOPP animals are arranged into guilds representing ~22 different species
  • Data from 2002 (115 tags from 22 species) presented as movies showing tracks from different tags overlaying bathymetry
  • Movies can be linked to sea surface height and temperature

Content Connections | Back to top

• Integrate surface and below surface data with TOPP data
• Compare real data/results with predicted data/results and relate to MPAs

• Interdisciplinary teaching with English/language arts—topic would be buoyancy and would include both physical (science) and emotional (literature)
• Another topic would be to look at relevancy between geographic areas

• Are we currently experiencing an El Niño or La Niña (or El Viejo/La Vieja)
• How does this affect us?

• C.O.O.L. takes complex data and issues and turns it into something simple
• BRIDGE takes simple concepts and data and enables the formation of complex activities
• BRIDGE approach is better

• Build your own observatory (with capability to measure variables like temperature)

• Adopt a pelagic and correlate physio-chemical data with migration routes
• Create a show as a final product (e.g., "A year in the life of a pelagic")

• Explore adaptations (e.g., visual) and link the morphology to behavior or evolutionary lifestyles
• Identify classification, zones, habitats etc.

The Iron Story | Back to top

• CO₂ controls the radiation balance of the earth
• Atmospheric CO₂ has been increasing rapidly since the 1800s
• Biological pump moves CO₂ from the atmosphere to the ocean
• How much fossil fuel CO₂ is there in the oceans?
  • C¹⁴ and Freon can be used to date events—looking at the ratios of different compounds
• Nutrient and CO₂ concentrations are much higher in deep water
  • As the water comes to the surface in the Southern Ocean, it loses its CO₂ to the atmosphere
  • If plants grew using this deep nitrate, they would take and equivalent amount of CO₂ out of the atmosphere
  • Blue waters mean that the ocean is a desert because there isn’t any fertilizer!
• Focus—places where biological pump doesn’t seem to be working
  • If plants could utilize the unused stocks of nitrate, then more CO₂ could be taken into the ocean
  • But, there are areas where there appears to be plenty of nitrate, but no growth
  • The pump isn’t pumping—Why?
• Hypothesis—there isn’t enough iron!
  • Iron is an essential nutrient but surface concentrations are 0.05 nmol/lL (about 2 ppm of one ppm)
• The Iron Hypothesis—John Martin (MLML)
  • Southern Ocean has excess nitrate
  • Adding iron will cause plants to grow and consume CO₂
• Vostok Ice Core Data
  • Iron and CO₂ are closely linked in ice core samples
  • Dust is 5% iron!
• Hawaii measurements show that aerosol deposition can clearly increase surface ocean iron concentration
• The Big Question—Will adding iron to high nitrate, low chlorophyll (HNLC) areas increase rates of primary production and biomass accumulation?
• Eight open ocean, iron fertilization experiments have now been conducted, at least two more are planned (SEEDS, SERIES, Iron Ex I and II, SoFEx I and II, SOIREE, EISENEX0)
• Tremendous interest and controversy surrounding issue
  • PLANKTOS is trying to provide help/advice and work—for $20, they’ll seed the ocean

• Ocean will become more acidic when CO₂ is returned
• ~1 gigaton of biomass could be generated (vs. 100 GT ambient)
• Iron is the only limiting micronutrient that we know of that can be added to stimulate production
• Zinc, Manganese may also be limiting at the next level; but may be sunlight
• Carbonate from ocean floor sediments will continue buffer system
• Ocean can hold a lot of CO₂, as long as you can get it in there below the thermocline

• Phytoplankton Data Tip being developed
  • Upwelling influences phytoplankton, which influences fluorescence
  • 3 data sets included
  • No trends have been identified yet