SEAPLEX

The intensive sampling within the gyre is continuing, and all seems to be going well.  Our first blog post today comes from Matt Durham, the resident technician (ResTech) on the New Horizon.  Doing science at sea requires not only talented scientists, but a dedicated and talented crew.   Matt is part of the ship’s crew, and it is his job coordinate activities between the scientists and the ship’s crew, as well as oversee the deployment and retrieval of any oceanographic equipment that goes over the side of the ship.

Matt writes:

Nearly one thousand miles from land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the scenery is surprisingly dynamic. There are no mountains, or forests, or canyons to look at (at least not above the surface of the water), but the simple and endlessly blue backdrop of the sea really accentuates the changes in weather and the movement of the sun and the clouds. Days end with the fiery sun sinking slowly into the sea only to reveal the full red moon in the east, casting an eerie glow as it rises through the clouds. The starry nights melt brilliantly into morning as the sun quickly returns. Wind blows and waves form, constantly reshaping the water around us. The deep blue contours of the rolling ocean add an inescapable rhythm to even the most familiar activities. This is the world that we have all entered and are now living in aboard the R/V New Horizon.

My name is Matt Durham, and I am the resident marine technician, or ResTech, aboard the ship for this cruise. I have worked for Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego for just about two years and really enjoy my job. I have seen thousands of miles of open ocean around the world; in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, and also deep into the ice pack of the Bering Sea. My job on the boat is to act as a sort of liaison between the ship’s crew (the boat drivers and engineers) and the science party. I also oversee the science operations to ensure that we accomplish the goals of our current mission in a safe and efficient manner. I work closely with the chief scientist (on this cruise that is Scripps graduate student researcher Miriam Goldstein) and the ship’s captain prior to ever leaving port to ensure that the ship is prepared to meet the scientific objectives of the cruise. Then we work together to load all of the necessary science gear and secure it to the ship to withstand the constant motion of the ocean. Momentum out here can be quite a dangerous thing, especially with heavy equipment that could normally just be set on the ground back on land. Out at sea, when the boat rocks, gravity takes over and anything that is not secured can move and cause injuries or damage to the equipment. It is easy in calm weather to forget to tie things down after they are used, and this can be a problem when the seas start to pick up. We also have to pay attention to the movement of the ship as we deploy our sampling equipment. We use “tag lines” tied to the equipment to help steady the load as it is lowered into or recovered from the sea.

This has been an interesting cruise for me. I spend a good amount of my time in, on, and around the ocean. Living most of my life on the coast of Southern California I have grown up surfing, diving, kayaking, and just generally enjoying the Pacific Ocean. Now working on research vessels, I see a lot of great work being done to explore and learn more about the oceanic environment. But this is the first time that I have been a part of a cruise that is looking to quantify the problem that has arisen from plastic pollution in the ocean. Yesterday, we started our first intensive sampling station in the gyre, and I am very interested to learn what the scientists on board are able to determine from the samples that are collected.

Matt Durham, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
resident marine technician, assists in the retrieval of bongo nets.
Durham coordinates shipboard activities between the science team and
New Horizon’s crew.

Diverse biological communities including crabs, pelagic barnacles, sea
anemones, and hydroids inhabit a piece of rope debris.  Photo courtesy of Jim Leichter.

During SEAPLEX’s first gyre sampling station, crew members retrieved a
large piece of debris, thought to be remnants of a plastic bucket.

During intensive sampling, the mid-water trawl collected a variety of
interesting organisms, including this transparent squid.

Our second post of the day comes from Chelsea Rochman.  This is Chelsea’s second SEAPLEX post.

Chelsea writes:

Today is day seven of the cruise and we have officially begun our 24-hour sampling periods. We have hit our first of three gyre stations and the chaos has ensued. Sleep is needed, but energy is still high! At the end of the day… it’s running smoothly, whew!

I am Chelsea Rochman and it seems to me that as the nets come in from the surface we are consistently seeing plastic pellets. We have also brought aboard some macro-debris (large pieces of plastic) with fouling communities, composed of benthic (bottom dwelling) organisms, rafting upon them. I think that each person came onto this cruise with a different expectation of just what we might find. Regardless of what we thought previously, it has become clear that plastic debris does exist in the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. As of day five we began to see small plastic debris coming up in the manta net consistently. We have also been plastic watching, as opposed to whale watching, from the bridge and have seen a fair amount of debris of all sizes. As a graduate student whose thesis relies on plastic in the ocean, you would think that seeing plastic in the ocean might be a relief or exciting. However, I can truthfully say that was not the case. As plastics began to float by and come aboard in nets my stomach flip-flopped and I felt legitimately sad. I believed it would be there, but to see it is a different story. While on the way here I thought about how large the ocean really is and how small we actually are. Then, to see our plastic debris in the middle of this large stretch of ocean far from land offers a wake up call for the way us humans have the ability to leave our footprint on remote places on Earth. As a person concerned with the fate of the planet you really have to choose your battles. One cannot say that one issue is more important than the other, but since we are here and this is a battle I have chosen, I would like to talk about it in a little bit more detail. So, let’s talk trash!…

Trash, not only in the form of plastics, has been a problem since man’s earliest times. Since the industrial revolution the amount of debris has accumulated exponentially. Plastic in particular was invented in 1862, and since its invention it has become so widespread because it is cheap, durable, and lightweight. Plastic interestingly enough is made out of one of our most precious and controversial resources: oil. The oil is made into small pre-production pellets, a.k.a. resin pellets or nurdles, of various kinds to be melted down into any kind of plastic product. Many of our products that we purchase have a triangle on the bottom of the item with a number in it (1-7). This number is indicative of the type of resin pellets that were melted down in the form of say a bottle or butter tub. The next time you use a plastic product look for the number and you can tell what kind of plastic it is: #1-PET, #2-HDPE, #3-PVC, #4-LDPE, #5-PP, #6-PS, and #7 is a combo of many types. The purpose of this number is to provide guidance for what to do with that item when you no longer need it. None of these numbers indicate that the plastic belongs in the oceans.

There are four general things civilizations do with trash: recycle, burn, dump, and waste minimization. In terms of plastic the ideal way to handle it is waste minimization, which would include reducing and reusing. The next best step is to recycle if the city that you live in allows it. Some cities will only allow you to recycle certain types of plastics while others enforce recycling of all materials. It is important to know what your city will allow. Aside from taking proper care of your own waste there are other ways to help reduce this issue: educate others about what they can do with their trash, participate in a local cleanup, or volunteer for an organization that has a plastic debris campaign.

I heard a quote this week that I would like to share, “it does not make sense to make disposable items out of a permanent material.” Plastics do not biodegrade, they photodegrade, but the light does not degrade them away, it simply degrades them into smaller and smaller pieces. The quote “plastic is forever” had some truth to it. It is true that plastics can be really important and necessary. I am in no way arguing that plastic is evil and should be removed from this Earth. However, we have become a “throw away” society out of convenience. One of my favorite quotes to live by applies to plastics, “everything in moderation.”

Chelsea Rochman uses a dip net to collect specimens for laboratory study while at the same time keeping an eye out for any large pieces of marine debris.

SEAPLEX researchers deploy the Oozeki trawl.  They began an intensive sampling phase after arriving at the North Pacific Ocean Gyre on August 8, 2009.

Today we have a blog written by Jesse Powell, a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Jesse writes:

Hi. My name is Jesse Powell and I am a Ph.D. student starting my fourth year at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I study zooplankton and the effects that oceanic currents and fronts have on zooplankton populations. Most of my work takes place in the California Current near Point Conception just north of Santa Barbara, so traveling way out here to the Gyre is a new experience for me. Working on and in the ocean for many years now, I have grown accustomed to thinking in large scales, but this trip has broadened my perspective yet again.

Let me try to explain how absolutely enormous the ocean is. First of all, just to get to our sampling location in the gyre we will have traveled for almost five days continuously. We’ve had perfect weather, with very little swell, so when you look out from the bridge of the ship you see for six miles in all directions nothing but a featureless blue plain and wide open sky. If we had the ability to walk on water and we needed to walk back to our starting location from our current location, then we would need to walk 20 miles each day across this vast blue plain for over a month. On a percentage basis, the ocean constitutes much more than 99% of the above-ground habitable volume on earth. For example, if you consider just the water volume under the keel along our planned cruise track in a strip 500 meters to either side of the ship, then that water volume would be enough to cover the continental United States to a depth of about 1 meter. And yet this tiny strip of planned cruise track covers only about 0.003% of the Pacific Ocean. The ocean is truly, truly enormous, which is one reason studying it is such a challenge.

Another challenge is that the ocean is variable at many different space and time scales. Water properties like temperature and salinity change dramatically in the vertical direction, but sometimes very little in the horizontal direction. For example, water temperature may drop from a balmy 21°C at the surface to a bone-chilling 8°C  only a few hundred meters below the surface, while in the horizontal direction the sea surface temperature has barely changed more than a degree for the last 500 miles. These properties are variable not only over different spatial scales, but also over days, weeks, months, years, decades and longer time periods as well. And the biology of the ocean is even more variable than the physics. Locations that have dense aggregations of zooplankton (krill, for example) at one time of day, may be devoid of most zooplankton at another time. As oceanographers, one of our key challenges is to describe and measure the scales of variability, both in time and space, of key physical, chemical and biological properties of the ocean.

So, the ocean is enormous, variable and challenging to study. Why study it? Well, for one thing, it is intellectually exciting, the vistas are terrific and the people are fun! Another reason is that understanding how the ocean works is fundamentally important to the welfare of humanity and our planet in general. The ocean provides us with food, oxygen and our climate. We could not live on this planet without healthy oceans. Believe it or not, it was once believed that the ocean was so vast that puny humans couldn’t possibly affect it. Global warming, ocean acidification, overfishing and pollution have proven this thinking to be untrue.

During the last day or so, as we’ve started to enter the gyre, we have begun to see more and more plastic debris floating in the water as we steam along at 10 knots (11.5 miles per hour). Yesterday, our bird and whale observers counted hundred of floating plastic pieces during the day. Only a sustained scientific survey lasting many months would be able to quantitatively estimate the true amount of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre, whereas our expedition intends to study what we believe to be one of the most impacted areas, so we cannot yet say with statistical certainty that the plastic abundances we are observing are representative of the rest of the gyre. However, when you realize that while we are underway we can only observe a tiny portion of the plastic, and only the the less numerous larger pieces (e.g. greater than 1 cm in diameter) at that, and when you also recall that our cruise track is only covering an infinitesimal fraction of the Pacific, then you begin to understand that there is all likelihood a tremendous amount of trash in the ocean. It is trash that we humans have put there and trash that we as a species must take responsibility for if we wish to protect the health of our oceans.

A piece of plastic grating, with a pelagic crab, algae, and masses of
flying fish eggs. This piece was floating at the surface and collected
with a dip net off the side of the New Horizon.

SEAPLEX scientist Jesse Powell on the deck of the New Horizon.

Our second post comes from SEAPLEX‘s very own chief scientist, Miriam Goldstein.

Miriam writes:

Hi, I’m Miriam Goldstein, and I am the chief scientist for the SEAPLEX cruise. It is unusual for a graduate student to be chief scientist. I was the coordinator of the UC Ship Funds grant that got SEAPLEX started. I am in charge of the scientific operations aboard the New Horizon. In collaboration with the other scientists, I designed the cruise track and sampling plan, and make the day-to-day decisions about where the ship should go and what it should do.

Since I’m in charge of the New Horizon’s cruise track, I’m able to tweak it as necessary. And the other day, collecting an enormous rotting squid was definitely necessary. I got to yell, “Captain! Follow that squid!” (No following was necessary since the very deceased squid wasn’t going anywhere, but how could I resist?)

The not so fun part of being Chief Scientist is that I don’t get very much sleep. It’s myresponsibility to make sure that the scientific operations run smoothly, and so I liaise with the crew and the other scientists to make sure everyone gets the samples they need. When we’re doing round-the-clock sampling, as we did a couple days ago, I had the fun of staying up for nearly 48 hours straight making sure that everything was running smoothly.

Right now, I’m working on the best way to find and sample the plastic. Since we don’t know what it looks like – will we see lots of pieces on the surface? Will it only come up in nets? – picking the right area to sample will be an interesting challenge.

Oh, and the other perk of being chief scientist? I’m making the entire science crew and the captain listen to the “I’m On A Boat” song right now.

SEAPLEX Chief Scientist Miriam Goldstein.

Our second post today comes from Mario Aguilera, who works in the Scripps Communications office.  Mario is helping with outreach and communications for the SEAPLEX cruise.

Mario writes:

After three days at sea, life aboard the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego research vessel New Horizon has molded into shape. The day and night shifts have settled into a smooth work flow. Even for me, a novice seafarer, the time is over for bumping into walls and forgetting exactly how I get from my cabin to the galley for chow time. My highly dreaded seasickness never materialized (thank you Dramamine!). We are now in full SEAPLEX mode, well onto an expedition groove.

I’m Mario Aguilera, the Scripps Communications rep on board tasked with documenting our adventure at sea and helping communicate our experiences and lending a hand with equipment deployments when needed.

Leaving my wife, two daughters and dog behind for three weeks  is less than pleasant, but duty calls.  SEAPLEX is a unique opportunity to show the world the kind of leading scientific and academic opportunities that are possible at Scripps and through its fleet of research vessels.

Outside we’ve seen (and heard) dolphins, a mola–or ocean sunfish–and a gigantic deceased squid that had everyone on board scrambling for their cameras. We sent pictures of the massive beast back to Scripps, but no picture can adequately convey the rotten smell that permeated along with it (no calamari for me ever again!).

We are still far away from reaching our critical destination area, but the measurements we are taking now will form a baseline for comparison upon reaching the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. It’s mind-boggling for me to see the fine detail that goes into scientific sampling and measurements. In an upcoming blog you’ll hear more about how such measurements are made. Onward to the Garbage Patch.

Chelsea Rochman (left) and Josh Jones retrieve a 300-meter towed acoustic array to the research vessel New Horizon. Jones, a member of the Scripps Whale Acoustics Laboratory, is using the instrument to listen to dolphin and other marine mammal sounds during the SEAPLEX voyage.