From energy to forecasting capabilities, oceans hold answers to big questions. Image Credit: NOAA
In 2016, I interviewed Dr. Rick Spinrad for IEEE Earthzine; Sprinrad was serving as chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country’s premier agency on climate science. In May of 2021, President Biden announced that he would be nominating Spinrad to lead NOAA. I thought back on this conversation, where I learned so very much, and thought it would be worth sharing again.
Dr. Richard Spinrad is a busy fellow. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) first chief scientist in 18 years, he’s a man on a mission. Spinrad attends conferences, goes to meetings on Capitol Hill, speaks with industry players, and talks to stakeholders all over the country.
Spinrad speaks passionately about ocean observations, a changing climate, and a new emerging blue economy where information potentially translates to money in the bank.
While a concrete definition of the blue economy is still emerging, it is clear that it represents a healthy marriage between the economic and the sustainable – a shift away from a solely extraction-based approach to one that considers the health of our ocean ecosystems both now and in the future.
When asked for examples of how ocean data can be transformative, the floodgates open. Spinrad and his colleagues say the ocean services community could be riding a wave to incredible opportunities for economic development, from oil spill prevention and cleanup to ocean temperature forecasts, coastal land management and pharmaceutical research.
For example, harmful algal blooms (HABs) or red tides in the Gulf Coast region produce aerosols, which cause major respiratory problems for many people. NOAA is monitoring HABs and collecting copious amounts of data. Spinrad sees this as an opportunity for the research community to develop HAB forecasts, which can be used just like weather forecasts for effective decision-making.
“Like a weather forecast, it doesn’t tell you take an umbrella today; it tells you it will rain today. It’s up to you to decide, will I take an umbrella or not?” he explained.
From there, a third party can use the HAB forecast and build a tailored product specifically for the public health sector to help clinics and hospitals know when to order extra supplies and prep for an influx of patients with severe asthma.
On the West Coast, where shellfish are part of a $260 million dollar aquaculture industry, integrated observations have helped hatcheries monitor corrosive waters caused by ocean acidification, which upwells and moves into the bays and estuaries.
Ocean acidification is the result of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere absorbed by the ocean; it is also part of natural cycles. The phenomenon negatively impacts early development of calcifying organisms like clams and oysters, and new research suggests that coral reefs are seriously endangered by corrosive waters as well.
A network of buoys, sensors, and observing tools fall under the umbrella of NOAA’s U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), which also is connected to regional networks around the globe. By working with NOAA and ocean researchers, shellfish farmers have been able to use IOOS and regional data to adapt their practices and stay in business in spite of changing ocean chemistry as a result of ocean acidification.
This image shows how a pteropod, a small ocean snail many ocean critters rely on for food, is affected by ocean acidification. Image Credit: NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
NOAA’s vastly improved forecasting was evident in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy, which wrought havoc up and down the eastern seaboard, killing 145 people and causing $50 billion in property damage. Spinrad says spot-on forecasts enabled retailers and transportation officials to redirect shipments during the hurricane, allowing goods to make it to the shelves in time for Christmas in 2012.
To Spinrad, data and predictive services like these are the currency of the realm. While government agencies and research institutions are collecting tremendous amounts of data, given limited available resources, an agency like NOAA cannot develop all these consumer products. However, the data is ready for some enterprising person to turn information into a product that people want and need.
In October 2015, at an xPrize panel on using ocean data to the fullest, Spinrad told the room full of industry leaders that NOAA collects 20 terabytes of data a day. There are, however, cultural obstacles to turning this data into services. According to Spinrad, while other research-based industries like medical, engineering, and tech have been capitalizing on the fruits of their labors for years, the ocean research community may have not fully embraced this way of thinking, yet.
“One might argue that we’re in the same place the engineering community was decades ago and it’s going to take a recognition that by commercializing, by monetizing our research, we are not giving up the posture that we have in basic research,” Spinrad said.
In the early days of engineering, research was driven by a curiosity to understand how things worked, but as that research unearthed discoveries that led to things people wanted, like automobiles and superfast computer processors, there was a public demand for those products. This demand fundamentally transformed engineering in many ways.
He added: “So the examples we’ve just talked about don’t have a lot of pull just yet. There’s not a demand and a pounding on the table for operationalized harmful algal bloom forecasts around the country.”
Spinrad laughing at the MTS/IEEE OCEANS ’15 conference in Maryland. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Of course, Spinrad understands the pull of basic or fundamental research. “There’s a romance,” he said. “I don’t have any colleagues that I can really think of who went into oceanography to make big money.” He adds that there is nothing wrong with setting out to make money, but he knows many researchers want to be on the leading edge of fundamental discoveries.
He was lured to oceanography by a failed eighth-grade science project and a fantastic New York City public school teacher. Spinrad set out to build an echo sounder, which he planned to use in the East River in New York City. His teacher put him in contact with an oceanography graduate student at Columbia University and pushed him to move forward with the project.
“Well, it failed miserably and I was hooked,” he said with a characteristic grin. “The teacher could have given me an F. He didn’t. He asked me to explain why I thought it wasn’t working. I was fascinated.”
Spinrad also recalls making his father bring home vials of water from each and every business trip. He would boil the sample down and look at the precipitate, hoping to compare one part of the country to another. Although he now suspects his busy father may have simply added salt to tap water, he was fascinated nonetheless.
It may just be this sort of patient persistence combined with his enthusiasm for science that makes Spinrad the right person to get people to see the enormous untapped potential in ocean research.With half of the anti-cancer drug discoveries coming from marine products and marine organisms, and millions of undiscovered species in our ocean, he says ocean services could see a future similar to that of his colleagues in other fields like engineering.In order to make this happen, society will need to make a substantial commitment to sustained ocean observation. This is an area where he sees dramatic room for improvement.
At an MTS/IEEE OCEANS ’15 panel, Chris Sabine, lab director for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, spoke about ocean acidification and the huge expanses of ocean for which there are few measurements. Sabine is a leader in ocean acidification research, a phenomenon that was little understood 10 years ago, but presents real concerns today. He warns that ocean acidification “is something happening right now, not something we are predicting for the future, and it will only continue as long as we continue to produce carbon dioxide.”
Sabine expressed a need for incredibly durable instruments able to detect small variations in waters out in the open ocean where pH levels are harder to understand. The coastal waters have much more variation and more detectable levels so sensors can be designed around affordability. Spinrad concurred: “We’re woefully deficient in our observations and monitoring capacity in the oceans in general.”
Without sustained observations, it may not be possible to understand processes like ocean acidification, because critical data will be missing– data that can be used for modeling what is happening in the carbon system. Spinrad says there aren’t arguments against sustaining NOAA National Weather Service’s Doplar Radar system every year, because people understand the economic impacts of weather on transportation, commerce, tourism and hospitality. Add in the cost of rebuilding communities after major disasters, and people understand why an investment is needed in weather observation satellites and sensors.
Oceans observations are not at that point yet, but Spinrad sees this emerging blue economy, based on information and predictive services, as the way to get much-needed support for ocean observations. He emphasizes that researchers have only been looking at something like ocean acidification for a few years. It’s happening everywhere, but they haven’t been able to study it in places like the Arctic, because it isn’t easy to make observations underneath the ice.
Data from more than 3,500 Argo floats are combined with satellite data to provide accurate information to guide research and decision-making. Image Credit: NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
“Imagine if we said that we were going to provide the weather forecast for the lower 48 states by having one temperature measurement every five states. That’s about the density of observations we’ve got from the Argo float system that’s drifting around the world’s oceans,” he argues. “It looks great when you’re looking at it on a map – it’s got all sorts of dots on it, but it’s really not that well-populated.”
Spinrad remains optimistic and sees positive momentum based on the number of young people who are interested and passionate about addressing problems like ocean acidification.
“I’m encouraged as an old guy,” he joked before getting serious. “I’m encouraged to see that the next generation of researchers understands this and is willing to invest in this, and that the federal government and other agencies are willing to put resources towards this as well.”
Ultimately, Spinrad would rather see a substantial investment in sustained and robust observations to address problems now, rather than leave them for future generations. And, a new blue economy may the best hope for making that happen.
A marbled murrelet in breeding plumage takes flight. Image Credit: Dan Cushing and Kim Nelson/Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project
A marbled murrelet in breeding plumage takes flight. Image Credit: Dan Cushing and Kim Nelson/Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project
Endless miles of bluffs and beaches shelter sleepy towns along the wild Pacific Coast of North America. The ocean spreads away from sand and rock in an implacable expanse. Birds float lazily beyond the breakers. Gulls wheel and scream overhead. Sandpipers and peeps dash about madly at surf’s edge, spinning in unison in the air. And, under cover of early-morning semi-darkness, marbled murrelets leave the ocean and fly to the trees.
The landscape is ruled by the stoic height and girth of trees. In the early morning fog, it is easy to miss a fast-flying bird the color of tree bark as it trades places on the nest with its partner and settles into its 24-hour egg-incubating shift.
Marbled murrelets forage for small fish in near-shore waters of the Pacific coast from Alaska to Central California. They nest in late seral forests (although a small percentage of more-northern birds nest on the ground) and, despite increased forest conservation over the last twenty years, their population continues to decline in some regions of their range.
The presumed equation: protected forest = thriving murrelets
In 2017, Oregon researchers began a telemetry study designed to learn more about marbled murrelets. They wanted to know where they feed, rest, breed, and nest. How do they use forest and ocean resources, and, by extension, how can humans better manage those resources for their continued survival? In 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented to protect coastal fir, hemlock, and cedar forests on federal lands as a means of protecting species while supporting local economic sustainability. The intent was to prevent further decline in protected species like the marbled murrelet, but just protecting the forest didn’t help these mystifying seabirds.
We rarely connect the salty realm of waves and wind with moss-muffled forests. But all seabirds must, at some point, leave their food source, and come to land to breed and raise young. Many hard-core pelagic birds, those who spend their lives on the wing over open ocean, nest in colonies on remote islands or inaccessible cliffs. Some nest in rock crevices or excavate burrows. Inexplicably, and defying all known logic of seabirds for generations of observers, marbled murrelets nest alone in the forest, laying their eggs in a mossy divot on a branch large enough to be its own old-growth tree. Partly due to this unexpected forest connection, they were the last North American bird species to have their nesting habits described – in 1974.
The availability of big trees with mossy branches large enough to hold an egg or a growing nestling can limit murrelet reproduction as old-growth forest succumbs to fire and harvesting. Image credit: Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project
More than a decade after the first nest was recorded in California, Kim Nelson was the first person to find a marbled murrelet nest in Oregon. She was conducting species-specific murrelet surveys in the Oregon Coast Range for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Today, Nelson is a senior faculty research assistant at Oregon State University working with assistant professor Jim Rivers on the Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project, a multi-year telemetry project using radio transmitter tags to track murrelets along the Oregon coast. Working as an independent university research team, Nelson says the telemetry project focuses on increasing knowledge about murrelets in order to provide land managers with the information necessary to make sound management decisions that will help sustain the birds.
The “capture crew,” a highly trained group of researchers out of California, that specialize in capturing the murrelets on the water at night. Image Credit: Oregon State University & Oregon Murrelet Project
Capturing murrelets off the Oregon coast each spring, the team attaches VHF radio tags to the birds, tracking them through the breeding season. According to Nelson, VHF batteries last only about three months, so there is no winter data, and the murrelets’ small size prevents them from carrying heavier battery packs, solar or satellite tags. Rivers believes the work will provide useful information in the context of forest management. Knowledge gained through tagging birds helps to better understand the species’ needs for survival and helps us manage for those needs.
“Tagging birds at sea, they lead us inland and give unbiased data,” Rivers says, because the birds take the researchers to their nests and foraging grounds, wherever they may be. The murrelet team has not caught as many birds as their USFS research permit allows in any of the years of the study and never as many birds as they would like. Rivers states, a bit ruefully, that this embodies the species, “Not easy to work on, on the ocean or inland.”
Kim Nelson and Matt Betts collecting murrelet data. Betts, along with Nelson, Rivers and Dan Roby are the four principle investigators for the project. Image Credit: Oregon State University & Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project
The variables
A substantive lack of information about this unique species makes it both fascinating and frustrating. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of North America marbled murrelet species account, written by Nelson, reads like a confidential case profile, “no information,” “limited information,” ”few data,” “unknown.” Lacking fundamental knowledge makes management and protection difficult.
Meanwhile, Rivers reels off a rapid-fire list of facts. For example, because male and female murrelets have identical plumage, there is no reliable way to determine sex in the field, even with the bird in your hand–blood samples can later be analyzed in a lab for sex-specific genetic markers. Murrelets can’t be aged, but, he says, based on a relationship between body size and longevity in other auk family members, murrelets are estimated to live 15 to 20 years. There is also no data on their first-year survival rate–if a nest is successful and a chick fledges, how likely is it to survive through its first year and beyond? As with age, this can only be estimated based on other auks.
Able to fly up to 100 mph, and traveling as much as 50 miles inland to nest, marbled murrelets often approach the forest in low-light conditions, making detection challenging. Within a day or two of hatching, the chick is left alone while the parents go to sea, and unlike many birds, Rivers continues, they don’t regurgitate food for their young, rather, they carry whole fish from the ocean to the nest, one fish at a time. Adult birds will sit on the water in the dark, fish in bill, waiting until the light is right before venturing to the nest. Making several roundtrips each day–a discovery Nelson and other researchers made through detailed nest observations in earlier studies–the adults feed the chick until it leaves the nest and makes its first flight directly to the ocean, regardless of the distance. Some fledglings crash land on this inaugural flight, never reaching their destination.
All of this–breeding, nesting, feeding, commuting–requires a tremendous amount of energy. Long-lived birds with low reproductive rates, a murrelet pair lays only one egg each spring. A single egg that falls from a tree or falls prey to a predator may not be replaced. For a bird that weighs less than two-thirds of your morning 12-ounce latte, flying multiple roundtrips daily, with the fattest fish you can carry, to feed a chick that needs to go from egg to flight in a month takes a toll. The physical cost of breeding and raising a chick is high for murrelets. If ocean conditions do not allow for plentiful fish, an egg, and even a chick, will be abandoned; waiting a year for better conditions is a viable evolutionary strategy.
According to Nelson, earlier nest findings in Oregon not only showed that murrelets nest in old-growth as anticipated, but also in younger trees and those deformed by dwarf mistletoe, a parasitic plant commonly called witch’s brooms. And, unexpectedly, the current telemetry project found a murrelet nest in a big leaf maple. Among 400-some nests recorded throughout the murrelets’ range prior to this study, only two were found outside of the targeted coniferous tree species, and these were both in British Columbia. This new data implies that while murrelets rarely nest in deciduous trees, they are not restricted to conifers. This means both more potential nesting sites and possibly the need for conservation of more diverse forest habitat.
Rivers says data indicate murrelets are known to return to the same forest stands where they nested previously. They don’t nest in colonies as many seabirds do; however, where there is suitable habitat, they will nest in small groups, with more than one pair in a stand. Nelson adds that as the forest becomes fragmented by timber harvest and road building, being more tightly packed into stands could compromise their nesting strategy of staying hidden and secretive. This may make them increasingly vulnerable to predators, and could potentially affect nesting success. Being able to quantify where murrelets are nesting and how they are using the forest is a valuable benefit of tagging birds and could offer important information for forest managers determining what should be cut or conserved.
Filling in the unknowns
In 2018, a remote camera monitoring a tagged murrelet’s nest near the forest edge recorded nest predation by a red-tailed hawk, a bird more typically found in open country. Additionally, corvids, a family of birds including ravens, crows, and jays, are smart, keen observers, and relentless opportunists that commonly follow roads searching for easy food. In California, where suitable habitat is mostly limited to state and national parks, a campaign called Crumb Clean reminds human visitors to the forest to remove all food and trash to help prevent corvid populations from increasing and to deter predation.
Without tracking birds to their nests, researchers and resource managers would have little insight into the shifting dynamics of predator-prey interactions relative to the changing forest structure. Understanding how forest structure affects nesting success allows managers to plan for roads, harvest, and recreation with less impact.
Rivers hypothesizes that murrelets in California, Oregon, and the Pacific coast of Washington may be less likely to breed in any given year than other murrelet populations. He believes this is partly due to living on the open ocean rather than in resource-rich and protected bays. Adding another stress factor, like reduced habitat or increased predation risk, can potentially further decrease the likelihood of murrelet nesting success.
The numbers, as Nelson laid them out, are a bit staggering. In the first year of this study, just over 60 birds were tagged; none of them nested. The following year, 2018, nearly 80 birds were tagged, eight nested and five of these nests failed. While 2019 numbers are still being compiled, all indications are that marked birds on the Oregon coast did not initiate nests in the last three years. Rivers states that knowing there are some years when few or no birds nest is an important finding and helps support the idea that not breeding in a year with poor conditions was, historically, a viable survival strategy. Nelson wonders whether this will remain a viable strategy with the modern challenges of habitat loss, climate change, and changes in prey availability.
Solving for ‘x’
Although new data can create more questions than answers, according to Nelson, tracking tagged birds leads the murrelet team into the forest and to nests, providing new insight that chips away at the mystery a little more each season. “There are a limited number of seabirds that fly inland to nest and with this unique strategy of occurring in both the terrestrial and marine environment,” Nelson said.
Rivers takes a minute to look up the name of this strategy, “I want to make sure I get this right,” he says, “it’s called habitat split strategy” and it’s important to the murrelet issue. Habitat split strategy, he continues, is relatively common among birds. We see it in action annually—birds need nesting sites and ample food for breeding and rearing young, so they move to the nutrient-rich north for the breeding season. When northern resources are frozen or dormant, they find a more suitable seasonal home somewhere south of their breeding range. These split habitats are divided both spatially and temporally.
The difference for marbled murrelets is their need for forest and ocean simultaneously. For murrelet breeding to be successful, two significantly different habitats must align both spatially and temporally and solving for ‘x’ becomes a bit more complicated.
Tamara Enz is a writer, photographer, and biologist who aspires to create images of the world, both written and photographic, that draw people into the untrammeled spaces, where she hopes they leave tiny pieces of their hearts. Follow her on Twitter @TamaraEnz
Trying to catch a Monarch butterfly near Lac La Belle, Michigan. Image Credit: Kelley Christensen
Wherever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
It always begins with a question. And as any parent of a young child knows, if you give a mouse a cookie . . . questions lead to more questions. Sometimes it can be exhausting, having just answered one inquiry to be instantly buffeted by the next.
Yet, remember the nature of questions; remember their parentage — joy and wonder. Questions are the seeds of stories, and stories, as we know, are not limited to flights of fancy, but help us understand the world around us. Science and story are partners for building understanding.
“What does a monarch butterfly eat?”
Watching a monarch caterpillar munching its way across a milkweed leaf, my son makes the connection that the caterpillar will fatten itself, spin a chrysalis, and then, as if by magic, emerge a butterfly. Out tumble the questions like the gust front of an approaching summer storm, metamorphizing from one to the next.
“Do wasps eat caterpillars?”
“How long before it becomes a butterfly?”
“How far will a monarch butterfly fly?”
“How do they find their way?”
“Can we go to Mexico to see the butterflies?”
Remember that questions are opportunities, the threads of magic carpets lifted on the winds of exploration. Instilling in a child a sense of wonder and inquiry they’ll carry with them their entire lives is a delicate matter: Provide enough information to keep the child asking questions; don’t wander too far into the weeds and induce boredom instead.
“Is this a blue jay egg?”
Yesterday, we found the egg in our garden, nestled between the broad leaves of a Hosta and a prickly phlox. The egg was a shade of green between mint and sage, dotted by olive speckles. A few weeks before we’d witnessed two blue jays building a nest in the high-up crook of a maple tree that borders our yard. The pair swooped this way and that, plucking twigs from the lilac bushes for building material. The maple is densely leafed out now, so it’s hard to see any birds in the tree, but we now have proof of blue jay progeny.
Because an eggshell is a fragile, impermanent thing, I encouraged my son to sketch the egg and write about it in his nature journal — a blank notebook we bring on outings along with his “adventure backpack”. The backpack also holds colored pencils, a rock hammer and safety glasses, a compass, and a jeweler’s magnifying loupe. My son, at age 7, is more inclined to reach for the rock hammer — smashing things is fun! — than the journal, but when he does draw and write in his journal, I see in him a deep reservoir of concentration and attention to detail. Even now his drawings are far more detailed than anything I recall drawing when I was his age.
I also bring a small notebook on our adventures and join my son in nature journaling. I enjoy the presence in the moment journaling affords, the tight focus on tiny details. Trout lilies, paper birch, and the distinct red stones against the deep blue water of Lake Superior are some of the sketches that populate my journal.
Journaling about the blue jay egg. Image Credit: Kelley Christensen
After finding the egg, we reach for the illustrated kid’s guide to Michigan birds and flip to the entry on blue jays. Indeed the egg we found matches the book’s description. Books like these are wonderful teaching tools; we also have a wildflower identification guide we frequently bring on hikes. We enjoy being nature sleuths, observation illuminating the names of things.
“What’s on the other side of the lake?”
We live just a few miles from the shores of Lake Superior; our house is perched on a peninsula that juts into what we really should call an inland sea. We humans are limited by language; why do we give such a small name — lake — to a body of water that by surface area is the largest of its kind on Earth? Better to call the lake by its Ojibwe name: Gitchigami, the “Great Sea”.
How do we, with our limited language, describe this glittering northern lake? Words fail to record her many moods and colors, her waves and stony beaches studded with white pine. Sometimes calm and glassy, lake surface and horizon indistinct, expanding the bounds of gravity by blurry the demarcation of Earth and sky. Sometimes storm-raised, slate-colored waves beat against the shore with such ferocity one wonders if Superior will ever be calm again. And sometimes, at sunset, striated with rose and the sky’s limitless blue reflected, loon calls traveling across the water.
How do we, when words fail us, pass on such beauty to our children? How do we pass on the knowledge that we are but stewards of this sacred sea? How do we inspire in our children a deep love of place and the desire to protect this vast northern lake already abused by mining and atmospheric deposition of outsourced industry pollution?
Take your child to the sacred places where you live, whether Gitchigami or the stream that runs through your community, the tree groves on the edge of town or to the pothole lakes of the prairie with their citizens crane. Show your child their place in the family of things, small, but never insignificant.
Kelley Christensen is a science writer living in northern Michigan, where she feels blessed for the opportunity to learn new things every day and call it work. When she’s not writing, gardening, hiking or skiing, you’ll find her knitting on the beach. Follow her on Twitter@kjhchristensen
The Boy’s Book of Adventure by Michele Lecreux & Celia Gallais* (*Caveat: We don’t love the title of this book because of the gendering, but it’s a neat little book once you get past that. There’s a Girl’s Book of Adventure, too, though again, there are blatant gendering issues.)
Research aboard E/V Nautilus may assist in the search for extraterrestrial life, as exploration of hydrothermal vent systems informs the design of future science-focused missions across our solar system! In 2018, the SUBSEA (Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog) team launched their first field program, supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, to explore iron-rich hydrothermal vent systems on Lō‘ihi Seamount off Hawai’i.
As the 2018 expedition wrapped up aboard E/V Nautilus, Lead Scientists Dr. Darlene Lim of NASA Ames and Dr. Christopher German of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shared their insights into the future of ocean worlds research with Lead Science Communication Fellow Jenny Woodman of Proteus Science Communication. Catch up on the team’s findings in this conversation, and learn more about the 2019 SUBSEA expedition to explore Gorda Ridge, an active hydrothermal vent system that departs from the convention of black smoker hydrothermal systems, instead emitting clear fluids from the seafloor.
Much of the ocean remains a mystery, waiting to be explored. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Much of the world’s ocean remains a mystery. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
It is cold and dark. Creatures here have adapted to live and thrive in this environment, but not us. Once you pass the threshold of the aptly-named twilight zone, around 650 feet, there isn’t enough light to fuel photosynthesis. For every 33 feet of depth gained, the pressure increases by 14.5 pounds per square inch or psi; at a certain point, most organisms with gas-filled spaces, like our human lungs, would be crushed. As you continue to travel farther down, the weight of all the water above and around you presses in, making it impossible to pass a certain point without specialized technology. Most humans will never experience these mysterious depths firsthand. With the aid of submersibles, only three people have ever ventured to the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, seven miles below the surface. The challenges of reaching this hadalpelagic zone make it one of the least studied locations on Earth.
I’ve talked to experts, visited their labs and research centers, and watched them at work–often under challenging circumstances. I’ve been to sea and shared the joys of science and discovery alongside bouts of seasickness, equipment malfunctions, and precious time away from loved ones. Few things I’ve experienced in 46 years on this planet compare to going someplace no human has ever gone before, to seeing this other world that exists right here at home.
Until we get out there and start poking around, we have no idea what we might find, but, according to NOAA, “More than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.
I’m a writer and an educator. I’m also lucky to be able to say this: I am an ocean explorer.
Having spent the last two summers at sea, observing a wildlife survey in National Marine Sanctuaries on the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada and supporting robotic exploration of the deep sea aboard Robert Ballard’s Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus, this is what I’ve learned: the Earth’s ocean is vast with many secrets waiting to be discovered.
Just a few months ago, in October, while exploring off the coast of California near Monterey, the E/V Nautilus team was moving their robotic explorer or ROV (which stands for remotely operated vehicle) down the flank of a seamount and out of nowhere they happened upon a brooding site with thousands of octopuses in shimmering water that indicated hydrothermal activity of some sort. No one has ever seen anything on this scale before. This real-life octopus garden is just one example of the discoveries waiting for us in our ocean.
To get a sense of scale of the discoveries still possible, consider the 2010 Census for Marine life. It took a decade to complete and was conducted by 2,700 scientists from over 80 countries, on 540 scientific expeditions, at a cost of $650 million dollars, U.S. They identified over 6,000 potential new species and published more than 2,600 research papers. The project shed light on a variety of ocean science research–from a white shark cafe in the open ocean to enormous microbial mats, “ranked among Earth’s largest masses of life.”
The census represents a monumental bit of discovery. Yet scientists, like Chris German from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), think we’ve only scratched the surface. While off the coast of Hawaii last summer, German pointed to the Pacific Ocean, noting that it covers half of the planet and is “woefully unexplored.” He’s been studying hydrothermal vent systems just along the mid-ocean ridge for 30 years. The mid-ocean ridge is a ribbon-like mountain range that runs through the entire global ocean; it is about ten miles wide and 37 thousand miles long.
German estimates that the oceanic community has made discoveries at a rate of one new species every two weeks during his 30-year career. Even exploring as fast as they can go, they’ve only been able to explore about 20 percent of the mid-ocean ridge in three decades. He and his colleagues see opportunities to expand our capabilities here on Earth with emerging technologies in development for future space missions. Essentially, our drive to reach outer space and other ocean worlds will unearth much in unexplored regions of our ocean.
The oceanic and space communities have a great deal to offer each other–from technology development to protocols and training for remote work in extreme environments. In fact, scientists like Julie Huber believe it is time for the oceanic community to be more like NASA. Huber is an expert in marine chemistry and geochemistry at WHOI. Her work examines microbial communities in the deep ocean and, in the not-so-distant future, on other planets.
Huber argues: if NASA can land a scientific laboratory on Mars, then we should be able to do the same here on Earth. Sending scientific vessels to sea or space is no small feat. Ship time and space launches are costly and hard to come by. However, advances in marine robotics, such as Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) environmental sample processor (ESP) make it possible to do much more with less. When loaded onto an autonomous underwater vehicle, the ESP is a lab-in-a-can, collecting samples and processing them in situ for near real-time oceanographic monitoring. Huber advocates for developing new technologies, similar to MBARI’s ESP, that would allow for analysis of microbes in extreme environments like the deep ocean.
Huber is part of a program called NASA SUBSEA, which stands for Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog. The SUBSEA team members come from NASA, NOAA, the Ocean Exploration Trust, and several academic centers, including WHOI and Idaho State University.
In August and September, I served as the lead science communication fellow on board the E/V Nautilus during the NASA SUBSEA expedition to the Lōi`hi Seamount off the coast of Hawaii. The SUBSEA team is planning for future remote deep-space exploration of Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus as well as crewed missions to Mars and our own moon.
Robotic dives at Lōi`hi offered the opportunity to practice and develop protocols for future missions because today’s ocean explorers work remotely, using tools and methods that will serve space exploration. Someday, when we reach distant ocean worlds, we will deploy robots and explore from the safety of a command center here on Earth, a spaceship, or some other location like a base on the moon or an asteroid.
In order to prepare for those future missions, NASA and their partners gathered a science team at the Inner Space Center at University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. This team remotely directed our operations on the E/V Nautilus while we were in Hawaii, serving as “mission control” for the expedition. Experiencing time-delays and technical difficulties will enable NASA and their partners to be better prepared for the challenges of deep space exploration.
Conditions at Lōi`hi, which is an active underwater volcano, are similar to what scientists believe exist on these other moons in our solar system.Lōi`hi was selected because the lower temperatures (about 390 degrees F) at these hydrothermal vent sites, called white smokers, are similar to temperatures detected by the Cassini spacecraft at Europa. Using ROVs, we collected rock and water samples so astrobiologists in Huber’s lab at WHOI and geologists from Idaho State could determine what sorts of rock and water interactions are taking place.
In places where sunlight doesn’t reach, there is no photosynthesis for food production. So, organisms like the microbes we observed and collected at Lōi`hi are make a living off of chemical reactions. Scientists are studying these reactions in order to model what could be happening on other planets.
Darlene Lim on board the E/V Nautilus in 2018. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
To Darlene Lim, NASA Geobiologist and principal investigator for the SUBSEA program, the impetus to explore is an insatiable curiosity about what might be waiting out there. Lim has spent the better part of her career running teams and research in extreme environments on Earth, using them as analogs for future exploration elsewhere in our solar system and beyond.
“We have a sample size of one,” said Lim. “We know that this planet is habitable; we know it is full of life, but what else is out there?”
She adds that we have, at our fingertips, the opportunity to go and in situ understand whether or not life is beyond this planet in our solar system. She smiles and becomes animated when she talks about exploration, making her enthusiasm highly contagious. It’s hard not to get excited about answering questions humans have been asking for all of our brief history on Earth. “What an exciting endeavor that I think we should to take the opportunity to stretch out and accomplish,” said Lim.
But what will it be like when we actually get to one of these remote, distant places in our solar system? Will we find life?
Europa Image Credit: NASA
Imagine you’re flying over an ocean world, not Earth but another. Maybe this is Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. It is cold and inhospitable. But, scientists know there is an iron core, a rocky mantle, and a salty ocean. How do they know this?
Take a look at the composite image below. There are plumes of water vapor at about 7 o’clock. To identify these plumes, scientists used Hubble’s imaging spectrograph, an instrument which acts like a prism revealing a sort of wavelength fingerprint of the object being observed; this fingerprint makes identification possible. Using this instrument, they were able to capture the silhouette of Europa as it passed in front of Jupiter and identify these plumes of water vapor, rising over 62 miles above the surface. These data aligned with previous observations from Cassini flyovers of Europa and they indicate the presence of an ocean and geologic activity worthy of exploration.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/W. Sparks (STScI)/USGS Astrogeology Science Center
When we do get to Europa, there will be no humans on the mission. In the coming years, we are going to overcome incredible engineering obstacles in order to land robotic explorers on a distant icy moon, over 390 million miles from home.
According to German, experts think we can get there by 2033. Then, once we’ve landed on the surface of Europa, it will take another two years to drill ten to fifteen miles through the ice in order to eventually make our way to the ocean floor and transmit images home to Earth–images that these scientists hope will include hydrothermal vents and microbial mats.
Lim said it generally takes 18 to 24 months to be able to draw meaningful conclusions from the fieldwork that took place at Lōi`hi, but she says everything is on track. This means I can’t really tell you exactly what was learned last summer, just yet, but I can attempt to convey why the work is so cool. While we were still at sea, I asked Lim and German why would we should travel 390 million miles to find tiny microbes.
“Any time that humanity has extended itself in that way, along comes other developments. Think social developments–the way we think about ourselves, we organize ourselves, what we think is palatable in terms of the way we treat other people,” said Lim. “It kind of comes hand-in-hand with the ability to think about what is beyond us.”
To German, 390 million miles, when considered alongside the vastness of space, isn’t really that far to travel at all.
“Rather perversely, what’s really exciting about it is only having to go 390 million miles for what we can do is ridiculously close to home,” said German. “And that’s completely new thing in the last decade.”
He goes on to explain that when we thought of looking for life elsewhere in the universe, we traditionally thought about looking for planets with liquid water on the surface and the kind of life forms that we understand from photosynthesis, the dominant form of life on our own planet.
To German, the current generation of ocean exploration work has revolutionized our view of what it takes to make planet habitable. The discovery of seafloor hot springs and cold seeps like those found along the California Borderlands have offered what German describes as a “panoply of different kinds of habitable environments that are often independent of sunlight.”
He’s quick to point out that on our own planet, we know that single-celled life was the only thing in town for the first two to three billion years of our history. “If an alien had ever come searching for life on our planet, there’s a two-to-one chance that all they would have found was an ocean full of microbial life and a barren landscape,” said German.
German believes that we could find microbial life in one or more of about half a dozen candidates in our solar system, in places with an ocean with geologic activity like Europa. German adds with zeal, “It’s closer to home than human-made robots have already been. We don’t even have to go to the limits of human ambition!”
During the 2019 expedition season, the SUBSEA team will be returning to the E/V Nautilus and diving at the Gorda Ridge in late May and early June–you can follow along from home by watching the live-streamed dives. The ridge is another volcanically active area off the coast of Southern Oregon and Northern California with temperatures and conditions similar to Lōi`hi.
The team will do much of the same science–looking at how the rock and water interactions support microbial communities–but they will also introduce communication breaks to simulate planned and unplanned communication drop offs.
It will be wonderful to see what we learn from this work and subsequent projects. To me, what is truly exciting is that ocean exploration here on Earth will eventually give us the tools to visit other ocean worlds. In return, our drive to explore the universe will allow us to better understand our home planet – to locate majestic underwater mountains, identify new medicinal resources, and discover sea creatures that defy imagination. And, after spending time with scientists like Lim, German and the SUBSEA team, I see that the opportunity to extend ourselves beyond the boundaries of what we currently understand about science, technology, engineering, and even ourselves makes a more-than-compelling case for exploration.
Until we get out there and start poking around, who knows what we will find?
Plastic washes up on the beach in Manzanita, Oregon. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Years ago, I sat on a beach in Maremma, Italy, sifting the sand through my fingers — marveling at the multitude of colors. It was ancient mountains reduced to sediment and ferried to the beach. It was terra cotta roof slates and brightly hued ceramic tiles from the Amalfi coast, transformed by salt, wind, and waves into freckles of color in the palm of my hand. I brought a small amount of sand home in a jar, but the magic was lost in transit. Today, I am not confronted with the remnants of beautiful medieval cities here on this western shore in Oregon. There is no lovely evocative name for what crunches beneath my feet: plastic. Carried by currents, it accumulates at the water’s edge.
Beyond the horizon exists a floating gyre, called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by some; others name it the Pacific Trash Vortex. It’s much larger than Texas and has cousins of similar size in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. They are composed mostly of plastic, which floats and flows with the currents, converging where they meet. Ultraviolet light and the ocean environment cause the substance to break down and infiltrate ocean creatures and habitats in ways we have yet to fully understand.
Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
The World Economic Forum says that by 2050, plastic in the ocean will outweigh fish.
I worry and wonder: where will we go when the ocean no longer offers a home and solace for even the smallest of living things? These thoughts propel me on my walk this spring morning, along my favorite beach in Oregon. Then, I spot something else.
ithThe Oregon Coast in the spring of 2016. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
From a distance, it looks as if the beach is covered in litter — like raucous partygoers retreated with the tide, leaving the cleanup for someone else. Intermingled with bits of brightly colored plastic, a closer inspection reveals that the curvy line extending for as far as I can see is a mass stranding of tiny little organisms called Velella velella.
Like the Portuguese man-of-war, but smaller, these hydroids live in large colonies out in the open ocean, drifting en masse along the surface of the water, much like those amorphous plastic gyres, but living. Protected by a deep blue pigment that acts as natural sunscreen, the critters flood the U.S. Coast Guard office with false hazard reports during those spring months when folks mistake the floating, giant blue blob heading toward the beach for an oil spill.
Velella velella or by-the-wind sailors. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
They are also called by-the-wind sailors – nicknamed for the tiny sail-like fin on top of the flat disc that forms the organism’s body. One oceanographer says that the angle of the sail is determined by where the velella grows in relation to land, so that it can tack away from shores. Out in the open water, wind gently propels the critters along the ocean’s surface, but spring and early summer winds, especially during El Niño years, blanket coastlines with millions of these wayward sailors.
Velella are always floating, for lack of a more accurate expression, face down with short, sticky tentacles that enable them to catch and feed on other pelagic organisms. When there is no food readily available, the sailors use photosynthesis to grow algae, which their jellyfish-like offspring consume.
I can’t help but think about perspective and what it might be like to have the ocean below you as your world-view – like an astronaut floating in lower Earth orbit looking down on this ever-changing terrain. It might be all right if one weren’t at the mercy of such powerful forces like wind, ocean storms, and the sort of human carelessness that chokes our ocean ecosystems with plastic.
This essay was originally published in IEEE Earthzine; it has been updated and revised.
Jenny Woodman is a writer and educator who would rather be at the Oregon Coast than just about anywhere else. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman
Sea Turtle Nest. Image Credit: Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge
Knitting sea turtles at sea on the E/V Nautilus. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Sea Turtle Nest. Image Credit: Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge
A turtle trail along a scarf. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
A blanket for Dr. Amber Hale. Image Credit: Amber Hale
There’s always one moment when a factoid emerges that endears me to a critter in some silly, but permanent way, propelling me forward on a quest to know more. Discovering otters juggle rocks fueled an ongoing obsession. Learning octopuses are notorious escape artists came with a permanent membership in the cephalopod fan club. An albatross’s roundtrip thousand-plus mile flights to feed their babies, made me a student of seabirds.
When a mamma sea turtle works her way up a beach to lay her eggs, her fins leave this wonderful squiggly pattern in the sand. It’s a straight line from the salty sea to a future where hundreds of little squirming baby sea turtles hatch and return to the ocean about 60 days after mom’s labor is done.
The fact that this squiggly pattern can be recreated with a simple series of repetitive twists and turns in some super-soft yarn is, perhaps, the ultimate bonus for science-loving knitting nerd such as myself. But, before casting on, let’s talk turtle.
Although sea turtles spend most of their lives at sea, female sea turtles come on land to lay their eggs. Image Credit: NOAA
There are seven species of sea turtles in our world ocean; six of them can be found in U.S. waters (green, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley).
All six species are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. According to US Fish and Wildlife, a species is listed as endangered if it is at risk of extinction, and it is listed as threatened if it is likely to become endangered.
Like many marine mammals and seabirds, sea turtles are at risk from ship strikes, entanglement, plastic pollution, and climate change.
These air-breathing reptiles have roamed the Earth for over 150 million years. Some species, such as leatherback sea turtles, weigh anywhere from 500 to 2000 pounds and can dive up to 4000 feet deep. Leatherbacks have been known to migrate thousands of miles for jellyfish, their preferred prey, but nibbling on squid, sea urchins, and floating seaweed will serve as a tasty meal too.
We haven’t always known much about their lives because we can only observe what we see on land. As technologies like satellite trackers and accelerometers get smaller and more cost effective, scientists are on a path to learn much more about the mammals and seabirds who spend much of their time out in and over the open ocean waters. In 2016, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) used specially engineered cameras to capture rare images and oceanographic data of leatherback sea turtles in the wild. This information will help scientists learn what the critters are eating, where they travel, and what hazards they encounter along the way.
If you’re interested in casting on and knitting some sea turtles, I really enjoyed Heather Anderson’s designs. I made her shawl and then modified the pattern to make a baby blanket for a dear friend and a scarf for my mom. She generously offered a coupon to our readers for her Turtle’s Journey Scarf, which you can find here; use PROTEUSTURTLE promo code on Ravelry (a well-known knitting site) and download the pattern for free. The coupon is valid through January 31, 2019.
Jenny Woodman is a writer and educator; she knits a lot. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman
Heather Anderson is an avid knitter who lives not too far from the ocean in New Hampshire. She teaches knitting classes and designs knitting patterns that keep her learning new things all of the time; you can view her pattern collections here.
What would your robot look like? On November 10, students were quick to respond–scissors and glue, googly eyes and glitter combined to create outlandish portraits of robots designed to transport humans to dark and unexplored corners of our planet via live-streamed video footage and high speed satellite connections.
Fueled by a never-ending stream of snacks and an absurd amount of M&Ms, 20 high school girls joined me for two days of engineering and ocean exploration from dry land.
As a writer, leading a robotics workshop seemed a daunting task. What on Earth do I know about hydraulic systems and force multipliers? The short answer is: nothing. However, digging a little deeper into my experiences over the last two summers reveals I know a bit more about robots than even I imagined–I know enough to help teenagers learn how we explore the ocean.
Regular readers know that since 2017 I’ve spent over just two months at sea on two different scientific vessels, the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada and the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus. On the Nautilus, robots or remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are the workhorses of ocean exploration. ROVs Argus and Hercules work in tandem to help scientists explore deep sea environments, paleoshorelines, and active underwater volcanoes like the Lōihi Seamount. Argus and Hercules collect data and samples while streaming video to a live audience of scientists and fans.
With these two ROVs, humans are able to explore and study places no one has ever visited before, from the safety and comfort of a ship, a classroom, or even a couch in someone’s home. ROV exploration is helping scientists accomplish a range of vital research programs from managing and protecting National Marine Sanctuaries to planning for future space exploration.
When looking for ways of connecting young girls with career pathways in ocean science, I jumped at the chance to partner with my local ChickTech chapter for their annual kickoff event, ChickTech High School. Founded in 2012, this nonprofit is working to provide a pathway into tech fields high school-aged girls.
The ChickTech conference takes place at Portland State University’s Maseeh College of Engineering. Once a year, the college, usually bustling with overworked college students, is taken over by 150 teenage girls from area high schools. The students have no prior experience with technology and engineering; they are referred by their teachers who are asked to look for students who may have some aptitude for STEM fields in spite of their limited exposure.
Each day opened with breakfast and guest speakers. Saturday’s speaker was Oregon State undergraduate Sienna Kaske who spoke about the challenges she’s experienced navigating predominantly white environments in high school and college. She encouraged the girls to find their own communities—whatever communities match and accept their many identities—and work with others to break down the barriers the will undoubtedly encounter in STEAM fields.
Then, the girls headed off into smaller groups for all-day sessions on topics ranging from writing code for video games to designing and 3-D printing jewelry. I led a workshop titled Exploring an Ocean World (with robots!).
Given my non-technical background, I’m profoundly grateful to Derek Wulff from Pathfinders Design and Technology, for donating wonderful wooden kits for our participants. On the first day, students put together cherry pickers and excavators, which helped them learn about hydraulic systems. On day two, teams worked to build robotic arms, which are similar to the Kraft Predator arm used on the ROV Hercules.
Weekend workshop participants teamed up to build robotic arms while learning about ocean exploration. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman Kaitlyn Becker gave students a tour of her robotics lab at Harvard. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
In between building with the kits, I spent time guiding workshop participants through how explorers are learning about the ocean with sea floor mapping and robotic exploration. Via Google Meetup, we spoke with Ph.D. student Kaitlyn Becker in her Harvard lab to learn about her squishy robot fingers. The next day, we spoke with Mugdha Flores and Kylie Posternack while they were on board E/V Nautilus off the coast of California.
My presentation (which you can view here) included profiles of many of the women I sailed with in 2018, partnered with information about what those women studied when they were in school. My goal was simple: highlight the many pathways to exciting work in STEAM fields while emphasizing the invaluable role women play in ocean exploration and discovery.
On Sunday evening, the workshop ended with a showcase for parents. Students decorated our classroom and walked their parents, siblings, and friends through our activities over the weekend. As they left with their completed kits and newfound enthusiasm, I answered a litany of questions from parents about more workshops and activities to help carry on with what we started here. A quick search for ROV camps in Portland turned up nothing, which left me wondering if this writer may end up running more robotics workshops in the future.
If you’re interested seeing a program like Seaperchin Portland or scheduling a classroom visit for your future ocean explorer, please email us at: editor@proteusscicomm.org
Jenny Woodman, Proteus founder and executive director, is a science writer and educator living in the Pacific Northwest. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman.
Why Does it Matter if Women Work in Technology and Engineering?
By Jenny Woodman
There is a growing mountain of research and initiatives attempting to figure out when and where young girls are being driven out of technology and engineering. The disproportionately low number of girls entering into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM fields, has generated conferences, after-school programs, summer camps, clubs, and non-profit groups like ChickTech.
Only 12 percent of engineers and 25 percent of computer professionals are women. The American Association of University Women looked at data from multiple sources and found that four out of five of the best STEM careers lie in these two disciplines. Women do have stronger representation in other STEM arenas, particularly health-related fields, but engineering and technology careers can be far more lucrative and offer a more diverse range of opportunities for employment. According to U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2016/2017 median annual income for a computer professional is $114,520 and $91,010 for an engineer.
Equal representation also saves time and money when designing new, innovative systems, and when women aren’t in the room some pretty big oversights might occur. When the first voice-recognition programs were being designed, the developers calibrated them to male voices; the unintended result was that the programs literally couldn’t recognize female voices. While this problem initially only impacted luxury car owners, these types of technologies are often brainstormed and iterated in high end products. Then, they go on to be widely used as the technology becomes more affordable and accessible in other important ways like assistive technologies for people with physical impairments.
Failures to consider diverse users isn’t just an inconvenience. Early airbags in automobiles were designed around the dimensions of adult male bodies, and women and children died as a result. Katherine Shaver, reporting for the Washington Post, notes that women and children are far more likely to suffer more serious injuries in a car accident, because smaller bodies aren’t able to withstand the tremendous forces of a crash. It wasn’t until 2003 that the federal government required manufacturers to use shorter female-sized crash dummies in some testing.
Engineering and tech are realms where job growth is projected to be exponential in the coming years. There are approximately 3.6 million computer jobs; by 2024, U.S. Department of Labor predicts 13 percent growth or an additional half million jobs. If our graduation rates continue as they are today, the U.S. may only be able to fill about 30 percent of those spots.
For those of today’s high school students who, they might be looking at unprecedented opportunities – if they possess the right stuff and barriers are removed.
(This is a revised and updated excerpt from Jenny Woodman’s master’s thesis, Stellar Works: Searching for the Lives of Women in Science)
Free public water fountains and refilling stations help reduce plastic pollution from single use plastic water bottles. Image Credit: NOAA Marine Debris Program
It’s a beautiful day. The sun is out and it’s a perfect, warm temperature outside. With a free afternoon ahead of me, I decide to open up my WeTap app and go hunting for water fountains. The map is empty for a 200 mile radius around me, which I found out last week when I opened the app for the first time since arriving in Arkansas, meaning that either there are absolutely no water fountains to be found or many water fountains and refilling stations remain unmarked in this area. The search becomes a game, like geocaching. It doesn’t take long on my walk around the historic downtown of Rogers to find a public drinking fountain–in fact, I only had to walk two blocks. I take a picture, log the quality, and voila! Now, there is one new fountain on the map.
Marine debris floating near Hawai`i. Image Credit: NOAA Marine Debris Program
WeTap is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving access to clean drinking water via public fountains while reducing dependence on single-use plastic bottles. The founders of the organization created an app for mobile devices that maps public drinking fountains around the United States. With an extensive map already in place, users are able to access the addresses of nearby fountains and map routes to them, making it easy to find free, clean, single-use plastic free water. The fountain profiles within the app include information about the water flow quality, whether there is a dog bowl available, and if there is a water bottle refill station present.
Although the greatest concentration of public water fountains are in cities, fountains exist all over the country. Users can also participate by adding fountains not yet included on the map.
The efforts of this app, and many like it, are to provide resources that make it easy for consumers to reduce their consumption of single-use plastics, a growing environmental problem.
Single use plastics include anything that is made of plastic and used only once before disposal or recycling. The lengthy list of single use items includes household staples such as plastic grocery bags, water bottles, carry-out food containers, straws, cups, utensils, plastic packaging, and plastic wrap.
One of the primary issues surrounding single-use plastics is that they commonly pollute the ocean. It is estimated that 32 percent of plastic packaging worldwide is not properly disposed of; the debris often ends up in our oceans, where much of it remains for thousands of years, slowly degrading into smaller and smaller pieces.
Plastic pollution has an immediate and lasting effect on wildlife; one million marine mammals are killed by marine debris each year. According to NOAA, “Debris ingestion may lead to loss of nutrition, internal injury, intestinal blockage, starvation, and even death.”
Oceanic features can also help trap items in debris accumulation zones, often referred to in the media and marine debris community as “garbage patches.” Image Credit: NOAA Marine Debris Program
The fight against single-use plastics is happening worldwide in the form of public education, fines, and bans.
In 2017, Kenya banned plastic bags, with a $38,000 fine or four years in jail. The U.K. established bans across the country to limit plastic Microbead use in cosmetic and personal care products in January of 2018 and have estimated that the use of plastic bags dropped nearly 9 billion after taxes were introduced in 2015. Seattle is leading the way for cities across the U.S. with bans starting July 1 of this year for both single-use plastic utensils and straws.
With actions such as these, the momentum to limit single-use plastics is increasing around the globe.
Because of the many different plastics and variety of disposal streams, there isn’t one solution to the array of different issues surrounding plastic pollution around the globe. Luckily, there are many ways of approaching the problem, and tools such as WeTap hope to help lead the way.
Malea Saul is the 2018 Science Writing Fellow forProteus. She received her degree in oceanography from the University of Washington last year and has since been exploring the intersection of science, communication, and education. She is especially interested in how film and storytelling can help transform how we see and investigate the many intricacies of our planet. Follow her on Twitter @SaulMalea.
I can’t help but think about perspective and what it might be like to have the ocean below you as your world-view – like an astronaut floating in lower Earth orbit looking down on this ever-changing terrain. It might be all right if one weren’t at the mercy of such powerful forces like wind, ocean storms, and the sort of human carelessness that chokes our ocean ecosystems with plastic.
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