The deep sea, areas of the ocean below 200 meters, is the largest biome on Earth‐‐vast, remote, and inhospitable. These conditions create unique challenges for deep‐sea life and the scientists who study it. The challenge of studying this expansive and extreme ecosystem also makes it ripe for new discoveries and allows us as scientists to challenge the paradigms of life on Earth and beyond.
Giant Isopod (Isopoda)
You can be part of this discovery and learn about the deep oceans until your heart and soul are content. The course will apply concepts from biology, biochemistry, ecology, and conservation sciences to the study of the deep‐sea. The undergraduate- and graduate-level course (3‐credit) is June 7‐26, 2020 at LUMCON’s DeFelice Marine Center in beautiful Cocodrie, Louisiana. Students will experience aspects of both field and laboratory settings including:
Working aboard research vessels for both shallow‐ and deep‐water sampling
Collecting and identifying invertebrates
Engaging with both historical and modern views of the deep ocean
Using large databases to test ecological hypotheses
Utilizing analytical software
Measuring community structure using diversity metrics
Managing a project from the generation of hypotheses through to a final product
Constructing a strong social media campaign to engage general audiences in deep‐sea science
The great news is that the course is relatively expensive and there is a lot of scholarship funds available. For more course details, course application, or scholarship application visit https://lumcon.edu/2020-summer-courses/
from Deep Sea News https://ift.tt/2VD49ys https://ift.tt/2rm9pVd
Connecting the oceans to land are numerous carbon highways. These conduits bring food from land to the ocean, supporting an abundance of life. Our group explores these carbon chains and explores some potential methods of carbon delivery to the deep. Thus, alligators on the abyss.
At first it may seem fanciful that an alligator carcass might find its way to the deep. However, dozens of species of alligators and crocodiles are found across the globe, in high numbers, and often in coastal areas. Through either their normal migrating or foraging activities, or during flooding events, individuals may be found offshore in the ocean. If one of those individuals meets an unfortunate end, it may fall to the seafloor.
A crocodile swimming in the open sea. Crocodilian species have been utilizing marine habitats more in recent years.
In prehistoric times, the impact to the deep oceans could have been even larger, as large reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs dominated the sea. Deploying a reptile in the deep sea today may reveal the animals that specialized on the carcasses of long-extinct ancient emperors of the sea.
Ancient marine reptiles such as this one dominated prehistoric oceans. Studying alligator falls today may give us insight into what happened when these large predators of the past died and sunk to the seafloor.
Earlier this year, our research group placed three alligator carcasses 1.5 miles deep on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico in the first-ever alligator fall experiment. Each of the three alligators met a different fate.
The first alligator had been on the bottom of the ocean for less than 24 hours. Despite the tough hide of the alligator, scavengers quickly got through and began to gorge themselves on the flesh of the alligator. Football-sized animals called giant isopods, relatives of rolly pollys or pillbugs, penetrated the hide in this short time-frame. This demonstrates the speed and precision with which deep-sea scavengers can utilize any carbon source, even food from land and freshwater systems.
Giant isopods made it through the tough hide of the alligator in less than 24 hours. These scavengers opportunistically gorge themselves and then can go years without eating another meal!
A little over 60 miles to the east of the first alligator, the second alligator had been sitting on the seafloor for a little over a month and a half. All the soft tissue of the alligator had been removed by scavengers. A small animal called an amphipod was still darting around looking for scraps, but the only thing that remained was a skeleton. All of the soft tissue had been consumed. The spine curved just as it had been left. A depression in the sediments indicated where the full body once laid. The skull was turned over, likely by scavengers while picking at the flesh on the skull.
The second alligator had been reduced to a skeleton in only a month and a half.
A fuzzy carpet covering the bones of the second alligator represented a brand-new species, previously unknown to science. These zombie worms, or Osedax, colonize the bones of many types of vertebrates and consume the lipids within. This was the first time zombie worms had ever been observed in the Gulf of Mexico or from an alligator fall. They also demonstrate yet another pathway in which carbon from land makes its way into deep-sea food webs.
The fuzzy carpet covering the skull is a brand-new species of zombie worms, or Osedax, previously unknown to science!
Another 60 miles east lay the third alligator. It had only been eight days since it was laid on the seafloor. As the camera panned to the marking device, a floating bucket lid attached to a rope like an underwater flag, it became clear that the alligator was missing. All that remained where it had been dropped was an alligator-shaped depression in the sediments. Drag marks in the sediment paved a path to what remained of the alligator fall. An animal dragged this alligator 30 feet and left only the 45-pound weight and rope. The rope had been bitten completely through. To consume an alligator, and create this disturbance, the animal must have been of great size. We hypothesize that most likely a large shark, like a Greenland shark or sixgill shark, consumed this alligator whole.
The third alligator was missing after eight days! The depression shown here was where the carcass had once laid.
Three alligator falls in the abyss met three very different ends, from being consumed by football-sized cousins of rolly polys, to zombie worms eating their bones, to a large shark dragging it away and consuming it whole. This research has given us a glimpse into what impact large reptiles had in past oceans, as well as the role they play today. It is clear that deep-ocean scavengers have no qualms about successfully and quickly consuming food that originated on land or freshwater.
Earlier this year I warned that The Ocean Cleanup would catch and kill floating marine life. This week they announced they’re collecting plastic, and their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals trapped with plastic (red circles). We need to talk about this.
I’ve been raising the call on twitter, but recently I noticed that the image resolution of the image in question, downloaded from The Ocean Cleanup’s website, has changed. The image I downloaded yesterday was a higher resolution than the image I downloaded this morning. To help people better understand the issue, below I have provided the original high res image from The Ocean Cleanup (note it was not originally a PDF, but that’s the only file format I could export it to that wouldn’t be automatically compressed by WordPress. Happy to email the original jpg to anyone interested).
