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Ocean Interactions
Ocean and Atmosphere connecting Scientists, Teachers & Students
Q & A (week 11/3/03)
Thanks very much to all of our participating schools for this week's tough questions. We are all thinking about our participating friends in the San Diego area schools and hope that the recent fires have not adversely affected you.
1. How far away from the shore can kelp forests be found?
From Brenda: Kelp is rooted into the sea floor, so it is more of a matter of depth of water than the distance from shore. One plant of kelp can grow to about 100 to 120 feet long, so the maximum depth would have to be a function of that, and thus distance from shore.
From Jeff: The Ron Brown is a deep ocean vessel, so it very rarely encounters kelp forests. As those of you who live near Monterey Bay already know, the kelp forests are a vital part of the local ecosystem (for example, just watch how the otters use that forest). I have dived in Monterey Bay (it was coooold, but great fun), and the structure of each plant from the sea floor up to the surface is really striking. My understanding of kelp forests is that they need lots of sunlight and they are rooted in the sandy bottom. This means that the depth of the water has to be shallow enough to allow sunlight to go all the way to the bottom. I would guess that this can't be much more than 100 feet or so (but this is only my speculation). Those shallow depths are only close to shore. Since I'm a meteorologist, I don't have an intimate knowledge of plant life in the ocean, but I do enjoy diving there (except when my regulator gets tugged out of my mouth by the long kelp).
2. How deep is the ocean over the traverses you are making? Does the depth vary much?
From Jeff: The depth along both the 95W and 110W buoy lines is fairly uniform....between 3000 and 4000 meters (that's about 2 to 2.5 miles). There aren't alot of changes in the depth around this area (no canyons or ridges).
3. Are the locations of the buoys monitored by satellite/GPS? If so, is this continuous?
From Jeff: The TAO buoys do have GPS receivers on them. However, back in Seattle, the position of the buoy is monitored from a daily message sent via the ARGOS satellite system. Normally, the ship can go to the position on which the buoy was placed, since the buoys are moored to the ocean bottom. Occasionally, the buoys break free from their mooring, either from a storm or from vandalism from fishing boats.
Q & A (week 10/27/03)
Thanks to Ms Nicholson's class in Monterey CA for giving us questions....the one about chemiluminescence had both Brenda and I baffled, but luckily we were able to ask the NASA scientists Mike Behrenfeld and Kirby Worthington to help us.
1. Did you take any pictures of going through the Panama Canal? We are also studying the JASON IV Project which is Rainforests at the Crossroads Panama. One of the units is about the Panama Canal and the locks systems.
We did go through the canal....we sent some photos back to Boulder for the webpage. Please visit the science photo gallery for pictures and explanations - click here.
2. Have you seen the bioluminescent animals in the water and can you explain why they do that?
From Brenda: The organisms that give off the bioluminescence are called dinoflagellates, which are a single celled organism that is both plant (algae) and animal. It contains chlorophyll but can also eat other dinoflagellates. The bioluminescence is cause by a chemical reaction inside the cell that gives off light. It is believed by scientists that these organisms bioluminesce in order to communicate with and find other dinoflagellates. There are other multicell organisms that are also bioluminescent but scientists think that it is still due to the dinoflagellates that may be in their systems. I myself have not seen any yet, but other scientists on board have observed the phenomenon.
P.S. From Jeff: I've seen it, and it is really cool. The ship has to be absolutely dark (no lights), and it is an eerie green/yellow color that flashes through the wake of water along the side of the ship.
3. Is this an El Nino or La Nina year?
I'll remind you how El Nino works. Normally, due to the way that the currents run along the west coast of North and South America, there is upwelling of cold water from the deep near the coastline. The colder water is blown west by the trade winds, it is warmed by the sun as it travels, and it arrives in a 'warm pool' region of the Earth in the western Pacific. This warm water heats the air above it, causing convection, clouds, and rain.
El Nino happens because during some years, the easterly trade winds slacken, and the warmer water that would normally be moving to the west is shifted to the east (it doesn't make it all the way across the Pacific). This causes the center of the heavy precipitating region to be shifted to the central Pacific.
Part of our studies out here in the eastern Pacific are tied to El Nino. The TAO buoys, which straddle the Equator across the Pacific, have helped to improve our ability to predict El Nino, since the buoys constantly monitor the temperature of the water. When modellers try to predict El Nino, they can compare their results to what the buoys have measured during past El Nino events to see if they can accurately reproduce those data.
By being here (currently at about 9N, 95W), we cannot tell whether or not El Nino will come next year. El Nino is a very large scale phenomena (across the entire Pacific Ocean), and our ship is only one little spot in the big ocean. However, I recall that we recently had a mild/moderate El Nino, so my GUESS is that we won't have one this year. Maybe you students can tell US if we will have an El Nino. Check out www.elnino.noaa.gov, and that website may help provide you with some more information.
4. We are located close to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. They are part of a new program called the global Census of Marine Life and are in one of the pilot projects of the Census, called "Tagging of Pacific Pelagics"(TOPP). TOPP makes use of electronic data tags to follow the migrations of top predators across the North Pacific. Are any of you involved or is there a connection between your work and theirs? (for more info on this project see Census of Marine Life at http://www.coml.org)
From Jeff: Most of us onboard the ship are physical scientists or chemists....a few of the scientists (Kirby, Jan, and Mike B. in particular) have some background with marine life, but it is typically the smallest critters (phytoplankton, etc). There aren't any marine biologists on board, so none of us are familiar with the TOPP project, but it sounds interesting.
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