Category: marine science

Great news from the department of marine sciences:

UGA physical oceanographer Renato Castelao and colleague Ruoying He of North Carolina State University will launch two autonomous underwater vehicles called gliders in fall 2013. UGA's Salty Dawg and NCSU's Salacia, named for the Roman goddess of salt water, will remotely collect data on the exchange of water between the coastal ocean off Georgia and the Gulf Stream.

"The oceans are chronically under-sampled, and it is difficult and expensive to deploy traditional instruments in the water to measure them," said Castelao, an assistant professor of marine sciences in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and the project's principal investigator. "Gliders provide a cost-effective way to increase the number of observations we collect by the sheer number and detailed analysis of samples they can collect over time."

Efficient and cost-saving intruments to explore the oceans. Our demand for data creates new pressures for our research scientists. Castelao and colleagues at other institutions are working together to create and implement new solutions. Congratulations and we look forward to the launch of Salty Dawg and Salacia later this year.

Image: UGA photo of Renato Castelao and the glider Salty Dawg

Associate professor of marine sciences Patricia Yager, whose research attempts to help the scientific community keep pace with how climate change is impacting our oceans, is the subject of the Focus on Faculty feature on the UGA homepage all this week. A sample:

What are your favorite courses and why?

I really enjoy teaching the Honors-level biology class (MARS 1025H) to non-science majors. Everyone seems to love marine biology even if they don't love science. I try to teach the class so that marine science is approachable to all students. Every once in a while, someone in the class even decides to change majors! 



I also enjoy teaching a graduate course (MARS 8050) on “Climate, the Ocean, and the Marine Biosphere.” It evolves every time I teach it and keeps me current on the latest research findings across the broad fields related to climate. I also expect that every current graduate student in marine science will find themselves dealing with climate change issues in the future—no matter what their research focus—so I hope to give them some tools to do that.

The UGA Marine Institute on Sapelo Island was founded in 1953 and has been at the center of ecological research on salt-marsh coastal ecoystems ever since. That work, lead by our department of marine sciences, continues apace with the renewal of an important NSF grant:

A consortium of universities headed by the University of Georgia will continue ecological field research on the marshes and estuaries of the Georgia coast following the renewal of a six-year, $5.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The award will help scientists understand how these ecosystems function, track changes over time and predict how they might be affected by future variations in climate and human activities.

"Discerning long-term trends in natural systems requires careful scientific analysis over the course of many years," said Merryl Alber, Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research project manager and professor of marine sciences at UGA.

Congratulations to all involved in the consortium, whose work will take on added urgency in the coming years, as coastal areas become the focus of increased observation on the effects of climate change. 

Image: Sapelo Island, courtesy UGA Photography.

 A collaboration between the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences division of biological sciences, Lamar Dodd School of Art and the department of marine sciences, a new “Seascape” mural in the Biological Sciences building, will be formally unveiled on Friday August 31 at 4 p.m. in the third floor hall of biological sciences.

The slowest-moving indicators can often be the most difficult to study, requiring patience and a general knowledge of many overlapping correlations. It's axiomatic that the seeming constants in life become the benchmarks and things we depend on, even though there are no true constants - with the exception of change itself. Learning from these changes also takes a great deal of patience, honed skills of observation and a diversity of knowledge that runs through many disciplines. Ecology is the study of the many systems that work together to form our natural environment, and so it follows that ecology is a kind of umbrella super-structure of study that touches many parts of the university, including of course, the Franklin College.

UGA is the home of the man who initially formulated many of the systems theories of modern ecology, Eugene Odum, widely considered the father of modern ecology. Our Odum School of Ecology is properly the base of this umbrella discipline, which has connections thoughout the Franklin College - from genetics and anthropology to marine science, statistics and elsewhere. A great example of these connections is the 97th annual meeting this week of the Ecological Society of America, where almost forty faculty and students from UGA will present their work.

The Odum School of Ecology has the most attendees from UGA with 16 presenting at the meeting. They are among 38 from UGA who will lead sessions and present papers and posters on topics such as disease ecology, biogeochemistry, aquatic ecology, woody plants and ecosystem management.

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Other UGA colleges sending scientists include the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources (13), the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences (five) and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (four).

Two, very short years ago today, high pressure methane gas from a BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico expanded into the drilling riser and was released onto the drilling rig, where it ignited and exploded, engulfing the drilling rig (wikipedia). It's no surprise that ecological issues in the Gulf persist, though the gravity of them can be unsettling:

research into the disaster's environmental effects is turning up ailing fish that bear hallmarks of diseases tied to petroleum and other pollutants.

Those illnesses don't pose an increased health threat to humans, scientists say, but the problems could be devastating to prized species such as grouper and red snapper, and to the people who make their living catching them.

There's no saying for sure what's causing the diseases in what's still a relatively small percentage of the fish, because the scientists have no baseline data on sick fish in the Gulf from before the spill to form a frame of reference. The first comprehensive research may be years from publication. And the Gulf is assaulted with all kinds of contaminants every day.

And UGA marine scientists continue to make the case that our spill responses need to be amended:

On the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, a national panel of researchers including University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye is urging the federal government to reassess how it would respond to similar oil spills that might occur in the future.

When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began to unfold in 2010, spreading agony for acquatic life, gulf-area residents and the federal government - not to mention BP - UGA scientists knew that the long-term consequences of the spill were likely the most worrisome. Now Samantha Joye and her marine science colleagues will be able to follow up on their very important initial investigations into the consequences of the spill:

University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye, who is the Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences, and UGA colleagues Patricia Medeiros and Christof Meile have received a $1.3 million grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative that will enable UGA researchers and scientists from 13 other institutions to understand more thoroughly the ecosystem impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.