Alvin

The Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin is the best known marine research vessel. It was commissioned by the United States Navy in 1964, but it calls Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution home. For its 49th birthday, it's received a refit that will increase its dive range by two kilometers and give the people inside more room and greater vision. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of its batteries, Alvin won't be able to reach its rated depth for another few years. Lithium-ion batteries are considered to be too great a fire risk at the moment.

Alvin returning to the surface carrying samples (photo Wikipedia)

Alvin sprang to fame in 1977 when scientists inside it made the first observations of hydrothermal vent communities off the Galapagos Islands. These were the first communities of multicellular organisms ever discovered that were able to survive in isolation from the sun. To marine biologists, the discovery of hydrothermal vent communities was more exciting than the moon landings less than a decade earlier. And it was Alvin, like Apollo 11, that made it possible. Unlike Apollo 11, Alvin continues to make discoveries and has contributed more to marine science than any other vehicle.

More on the iron fertilisation "experiment"

A little while ago I wrote a post on the actions of Russ George, a businessman who has been trying to sell ocean iron fertilisation as a viable method for reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His arguments about the success of such schemes are way out in front of the science required to support them. He released 100 tons of iron sulfate into the north-eastern Pacific in what he calls an experiment, but what nearly all other pundits have been calling an irresponsible and reckless action.

His supporters have rallied behind him though and have had a presence in nearly every comment thread of prominent science news sites that have covered the issue. So, I thought I would take some time to put my views on the potential dangers of large-scale fertilisation of the ocean with iron.

Phytoplankton is not only reliant on iron to survive. There are several other important nutrients that limit phytoplankton numbers in areas where iron is abundant, such as phosphorous. Large blooms of phytoplankton that are produced by the addition of iron could rapidly deplete other limiting nutrients. Once the bloom has consumed the added iron and collapsed the population may not recover back to what it was prior to the bloom because it is limited by more than iron. 

When the bloom dies and decomposes, it could reduce a molecule that is highly important to a great many marine organisms, oxygen. Areas of the ocean that become so low in oxygen that they are no longer able to support life and know as dead zones. The appearance and expansion of dead zones is often caused in areas where human inputs of important nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, increases the abundance of phytoplankton. The bacteria that consume the dead phytoplankton also consume the dissolved oxygen, depleting it to levels dangerously low for many other organisms.

The rain of dead phytoplankton could also have serious effects on the seafloor community beneath. Indeed, one of my very first posts on this blog was about how the energy balance in the deep sea was critical to maintaining a high diversity of species in an energy poor, seemingly homogenous environment. A huge input of nutrients from the detritus of a plankton bloom that reaches the seafloor is likely to upset the ecology of the communities found there.

While I think that these are all legitimate concerns, it is important to note that, to my knowledge, none of these effects have been observed in iron fertilisation experiments. Oxygen depletion is a known and well documented effect of phytoplankton blooms. But, iron fertlisation on the scale of Russ George's venture may not be large enough or persist for long enough to have this effect. And natural phytoplankton blooms on the scale of the one observed in the area that George dumped his iron are not unknown.

In fact, some researchers are claiming that the observed phytoplankton bloom was already underway before George released the iron sulfate. Many reports I have read say that that the iron fertilisation occurred in July at the time the plankton bloom was getting started. But, it seems the ship which released the iron sulfate didn't leave port until the 8th of August and probably couldn't have started fertilising until a week later. Natural blooms are known to occur regularly in the area, particularly during summer when offshore currents carry iron-rich water hundreds of kilometers out to sea. Unfortunately, the design of the experiment is so poor that it's hard to tell whether the iron sparked the bloom or how much it contributed to it.

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Rare whale washes up in New Zealand

Ed Yong is a great science writer with a blog on Discover Magazine's website. He has an interesting post on a whale so rare that has never been seen alive. In 2010 two individuals washed up on a beach in the north of New Zealand. They were misidentified as the related Gray's beaked whale, Mesoplodon grayi, until genetic analysis of samples taken from the dead whales showed they were in fact the elusive spade-toothed whale, M. traversii. The subject of Ed's post is a recently published paper the reports on the genetic analysis and provides the first morphological description of a complete animal.

Update
The Science Now site has a story on these whales too. It makes the claim that the beached whales were found alive. I don't know which version is correct.