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Exploring Ocean Worlds

Exploring with Robots

Weekend workshop participants teamed up to build robotic arms while learning about ocean exploration. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Image Credit: Jenny Woodman Image Credit: Jenny Woodman Image Credit: Jenny Woodman

Imagine a robot for exploring an ocean world.

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 Seaperch in 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.

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The Current State of Women in Computer Science

Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics by American Association of University Women

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)

Categories
Exploring Ocean Worlds

What’s in the Water?

Deep sea coral in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live

Nicknamed the Dragon’s Cave, this hydrothermal vent site on the Lōihi Seamount was covered in microbial mats. Using remotely operated vehicles, scientists on board the E/V Nautilus collected eDNA samples near these mats for NOAA scientists working to develop technologies to better know our ocean. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live

All organisms shed cells. Just as you constantly slough skin cells, creatures in the ocean also leave traces behind, from enormous blue whales to deep sea corals to tiny microbes living at hydrothermal vents. These cells contain DNA, the molecule responsible for carrying genetic information for all living things.

Remains of an organism’s genetic material can tell scientists about the overall health of the ecosystem and the inhabitants. Environmental DNA or eDNA is an emerging area of study that may help researchers to better know the ocean and its inhabitants. eDNA is a DNA sample collected via an environmental medium such as soil or water; by examining the genetic traces left behind in that medium, scientists can study creatures without direct contact. This has been extremely useful for studying species that are particularly difficult to collect samples from such as Orcas and deep sea corals.

In the ocean, eDNA collection relies on water sampling in close proximity to specimens of interest. The sloughed cells from a species like a deep sea coral are pulled in with water samples, and those cells contain small amounts of DNA from the corals nearby. By amplifying sets of specific DNA sequences, coral biologists can use the small amount of eDNA captured in the water sample to identify the coral by its genetic fingerprint. This non-invasive technique could replace physical sampling for any species for which this technique is validated.

Coral sclerites imaged with a scanning electron microscope. Image Credit: NOAA NW Fisheries Science Center

Deep sea coral biologists have long been limited by the fact that physical specimens must be collected to make a species-level identification and taking coral samples, even prudently, is somewhat invasive. To make a species-level identification, the ultrastructure of the coral skeleton, specifically the sclerites, must be visualized by a scanning electron microscope. To minimize sampling, coral biologists have been searching for a new way to accurately identify corals to the species level.

Carol Stepien on board the Reseach Vessel Tatoosh deploying a device for sampling water for eDNA in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Image Credit: NOAA/Kim Andrews

Today, eDNA sampling is changing the way corals and other sea life are identified, and this technology may prove invaluable in future research. With only five percent of the world’s ocean explored, to some it is a race against time to learn as much as we can before some biodiversity is lost forever.

Carol Stepien is the Ocean Environment Research Division leader at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. Her Genetics and Genome Group is working to develop technologies that will help researchers in the future to assess oceanic communities and how, or if, they are being impacted by changes in the ocean using eDNA.

“We know almost nothing about creatures in the ocean,” said Stepien, adding that whole groups of species are being discovered, sometimes daily. “What we know is a drop in the bucket about who is in the ocean, especially when you get into the deep sea.”

To help expand that limited knowledge, she envisions building large DNA databases for species identification.

Stepien’s lab is collecting eDNA samples from Axial Seamount, an active underwater volcano in the NE Pacific Ocean, and from methane seeps along the Oregon and Washington Coast. They are focused on invertebrate communities such as clams and chemosynthetic organisms; her team is collaborating with other researchers who are looking at microbes. Ultimately Stepien hopes to develop genetic markers for DNA sequences that would aid identification through a massive collaboration between government, academia, and scientific institutions.

“We’re in the beginning of a scientific revolution of how to do this,” said Stepien. “It’s going to take a lot of different researchers working together — communicating, publishing, and developing these applications. We’re looking at developing highly diagnostic, fast and inexpensive tools for the future.”

Stepien thinks within ten years we will see something similar to Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s environmental sample processor (ESP), but with the capacity for eDNA monitoring, using drones and satellite transmission. The ESP instrument is basically a high-tech lab in a can that can be loaded onto an autonomous vehicle and deployed to collect and process samples without returning to land.

We need better records of creatures and organisms in the ocean and eDNA is an exciting tool because you don’t need to disturb the habitats or the sea life, according to Stepien. She sees a future where technology and scientific ingenuity are going to allow us to understand what is happening in the ocean in real time — problems like ocean acidification and hypoxia could be studied in situ without disturbing the ecosystem.

Her enthusiasm for the subject is contagious when she starts to talk about what is possible today and what we’ll be able to to in the future. “You’re able to start to focus and solve problems I never even dreamed of when I was in grad school,” Stepien said. “It is very fun and exciting as a scientist — I’m having such a good time working on this.”

Jenny Woodman, Proteus founder and executive director, is a science writer and educator living in the Pacific Northwest; she is a 2018 lead science communication fellow for the Exploration Vessel Nautilus. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman.

Dr. Amber Hale is an assistant professor of biology at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She uses molecular biology techniques in non-traditional model organisms. She is passionate about STEM education and science communication in her community.

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Environmental DNA – An emerging tool in conservation for monitoring past and present biodiversity by Philip Francis Thomsen and Eske  Willerslev

Self-driving robots collect water samples to create snapshots of ocean microbes by University of Hawai‘i and MBARI

The Power of ‘Environmental DNA’ For Monitoring Whales by GrrlScientist

Why We Need to Protect Deep Sea Corals Now by Sandra Brooke

Deep-Sea Coral Habitat by NOAA FIsheries

Deep-Sea Coral Protections Storymap by NOAA Deep Sea Coral Research & Technology Program Data Portal

Deep Sea Corals 101

Deep sea corals are colonial organisms made up of many individual organisms called polyps, working in concert to survive. Each individual has a job to perform in order for the entire colony to grow and thrive. While most people are familiar with colorful warm water corals found in shallow, tropical waters, these only represent about 15 percent of the world’s corals, according to the California Academy of Sciences’ Curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, Gary Williams.

California Academy of Sciences’ Curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology Gary Williams, holding a coral sample in the E/V Nautilus wet lab. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live

The other 85 percent of corals are deep sea or cold water corals, which are hard to study because it isn’t easy to get to the deep ocean with any frequency. Cold water corals differ from their shallow water counterparts in many ways, but one major distinction is that they do not rely on a symbiotic relationship with the photosynthetic algae, zooxanthellae (pronounced zoo-uh-zan-thella), that live inside warm water corals.

In the upper layers of the water column where the sun’s rays penetrate, most organisms like zooxanthellae rely on photosynthesis for food production. The algae barters food for rent in the relationship with their coral homes.

The sun’s light cannot reach the deep waters where cold water corals live, so these corals must eat nutrients found in debris that falls from the shallower layers of the ocean – this mixed debris is often called marine snow. Due to the limited amount of marine snow reaching the seafloor and the harsh environment of the deep sea, these corals are slow growing, but can be extremely long-lived. Bamboo corals have been aged to be more than 450 years old!

ROV Hercules hovers over a deep sea coral in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live
Deep sea coral in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live
ROV Hercules collecting coral sample. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live
Deep sea coral in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live

Environmental or eDNA is a DNA sample collected via an environmental medium such as soil or water; by examining the genetic traces left behind in that medium, scientists can study creatures without direct contact. During the 2016 and 2017 E/V Nautilus expedition seasons, water samples were taken in close proximity to deep sea coral species of interest in Cordell Bank and Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries. Corresponding physical samples were taken as well. With both the eDNA sample and the physical specimen, coral biologists worked to validate coral-specific eDNA protocols.

Biologists first amplify and sequence a set of DNA regions of interest from the eDNA sample, then these sequences are compared to corresponding sequences from the physical specimen. This creates a species-specific “DNA fingerprint.” Repeating this process for many species allows scientists to build a library of coral DNA fingerprints, enabling future biologists to confidently use eDNA samples to identify corals without the need for physical sampling.

 

 

Categories
Arctic Change

Summertime and the Sea Ice is Leaving

MODIS satellite images from early spring show openings in the sea ice. Credit: University of Alaska Fairbanks

 

Video Credit: George Divoky

In mid-May, George Divoky spent a few days in Utqiaġvik preparing for his upcoming and 44th field season on Cooper Island. Unable to visit the actual island during his short trip, Search and Rescue pilots flew over Cooper and snapped a photo of George’s summer home — a one room, 8-by-16-foot cabin stuffed with gear and survival rations (stay tuned for field recipes this summer).

Currently, his Arctic abode is surrounded by snow drifts and still standing. In previous years, polar bears have broken into the cabin, hungry for the supplies stored here over the long Arctic winter.

Back in the Pacific Northwest where George lives, irises and peonies bloomed fuchia and deep purple, splashing unruly splotches of color across a lush green canvas. The temperatures hit 90 as stories about disappearing sea ice made ominous headlines in the New York Times, Scientific American, and many more outlets.

Experts predict that there will be no sea ice in the summer by mid-century, but record breaking ice trends may shift this timeline forward. Based on sea floor sediments, fossil records, and ice core samples, there may have been summers with minimal or no ice in the Arctic, but these periods are thought to have occurred about 8000 years ago. So, how will ice-free Arctic summers impact the region and the world beyond?

Arctic Sea Ice Extent
Image Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

According the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), unlike glaciers, icebergs, and ice shelves that form on land, sea ice is frozen ocean water, floating with a covering of snow for much of the year.

Sea ice plays a vital role in regulating Earth’s climate and reflecting solar energy.

The bright reflective surface provided by sea ice bounces 80 percent of the sun’s light back into space. “As sea ice melts in the summer, it exposes the dark ocean surface. Instead of reflecting 80 percent of the sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90 percent of the sunlight,” according to NSIDC. “The oceans heat up, and Arctic temperatures rise further.”

Sea ice is measured by looking at the area of ocean covered by ice; by looking at the times of year when maximum and minimum areas of coverage occur, scientists are able to see trends emerge — trends like warming temperatures and unprecedented loss of sea ice.

Claire Parkinson is a senior scientist and climatologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She explains in video below, as temperatures rise over time, a feedback loop occurs wherein more heat is absorbed by the ocean, causing more ice to melt, and generating more warming.

Video credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio

While disappearing sea ice may hold benefits for some species such as algae and the organisms that feed on algae because they thrive in warmer environments, the overall impacts are likely to be dramatic.

Most people will never visit the Arctic circle (unless of course they can afford the $21,000 to $120,000 USD cost of sailing through the Northwest Passage on a luxury cruise ship), so disappearing sea ice may seem far removed from the many problems to prioritize in 2018. However, polar sea ice is crucial for the inhabitants of Arctic ecosystems — from polar bears, walruses, and seabirds like Divoky’s guillemots, down to the fish and tiny krill that feed these creatures.

More importantly, sea ice loss impacts the human communities living on the front lines of climate change — people who have survived for generations in the harshest of environments by living off the land. Alaska Department of Fish and Game note, “For most rural Alaska residents, subsistence hunting is critical to their nutrition, food security, and economic stability.”

This story is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island.

Read More

Cooper Island Research Part of SENSEI: Sentinels of the Sea Ice by George Divoky (2017)

In the Arctic, the Old Ice Is Disappearing by Jeremy White and Kendra Pierre-Louis (2018)

Sea Ice by Michon Scott and Kathryn Hansen for NASA Earth Observatory

Scenes from the End of the World by Eva Holland (2016)

Trying to stay optimistic in a seabird colony that is half full – when it is really half empty by George Divoky (2016)