Front to back: SERC interns Claire Mueller and Michelle Edwards, and SERC postdoc Chuck Bangley, explore windy Fort Pierce, Fla. (Credit: Claire Mueller/SERC)
As the communications intern for the Movement of Life Initiative, I’ve had the pleasure of doing a variety of fun projects, but my favorite was accompanying our marine team this winter to Fort Pierce, Fla., to continue their work tagging sharks with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University. Our mission was to tag as many bull sharks and cownose rays that we could with acoustic transmitters, allowing us to collect location data and determine the movement patterns of these two species.
When I arrived in Florida on January 14, I first caught up with Chuck Bangley, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), and fellow SERC intern Michelle Edwards. They had been there since the previous Wednesday, and already had managed to tag four cownose rays and two bull sharks. Matt Ogburn (our fearless leader and principal investigator of SERC’s Fish & Invertebrate Ecology Lab) and Jay Fleming (the professional photographer documenting our expedition) joined the team on Monday night. Click to continue »
SERC marine biologist Brianna Tracy holds a plate with marine life pulled from a dock in San Francisco. (Photo: Kristen Minogue/SERC)
Strange things grow on the bottoms of docks: brightly colored sponges, mat-like tunicates, and wispy, flower-shaped anemones. Many of these mysterious life forms are invasive species. This spring, Smithsonian marine biologists launched Invader ID, an online citizen science project calling on anyone with an Internet connection to help detect them.
The project centers on San Francisco Bay. With over 200 non-native species, it’s the most invaded estuary in North America. “The majority of the species that we identify in the San Francisco Bay are invasive,” said Brianna Tracy, a biologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Click to continue »
A scientist tests water quality and seagrass biomass on the Susquehanna Flats, in upper Chesapeake Bay. (Cassie Gurbisz)
For a long time, it seemed the odds were never in their favor. With seagrass wasting disease, hurricanes and chronic pollution, tens of thousands of acres of Chesapeake Bay underwater plants vanished between the 1950s and 1970s, marking the largest decline in over four centuries. But now, thanks to concerted efforts to rein in harmful nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, underwater flora can celebrate a new victory: the largest underwater grass resurgence ever recorded.
A team of 14 Chesapeake scientists came out with the discovery on Monday, in a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists found that since 1984, average nitrogen levels in the Bay have dropped 23 percent, and phosphorus has dropped 8 percent. As a result, underwater plants in Chesapeake Bay have shot up more than four-fold. Click to continue »
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SERC scientist Lisa Schile in a marsh in San Francisco. (Courtesy of Lisa Schile.)
February 2 is most widely known as Groundhog Day, the day people all over the U.S. look to a rodent in Pennsylvania to predict the future. But it also marks a less famous holiday: World Wetlands Day, celebrated around the world since 1997, to mark the first international agreement to protect wetlands on Feb. 2, 1971. Curious why anyone would make a holiday for wetlands? Here are a few reasons to celebrate the unsung guardians along our shores.
A wetland by the Kenai River in Alaska (Dennis Whigham)
They protect our homes from storms and floods. Standing between us and the elements, wetlands soak up destructive energy from waves and storm surges. In an extreme example, it’s estimated during Hurricane Sandy wetlands along the East Coast prevented $625 million in property damage.
They help keep pollution out of Chesapeake Bay and other waterways. Wetlands are sometimes called the “kidneys” of the Bay, because they’re able to filter out pollution from fertilizers, sewage, pesticides and harmful toxins before it streams into the water.
Red-winged blackbird. Wetlands provide a home or resting point for many birds on their migrations. (Kristen Minogue/SERC)
They’re good for our drinking water. Most of the water we drink comes from groundwater beneath the surface. But wetlands can replenish it as some of their water seeps underground. And because of their filtering powers, the water is cleaner after passing through a wetland.
Birds and fish love them. Herons, egrets, ducks and bald eagles all pass through Chesapeake wetlands as visitors or year-round residents. Striped bass and other popular fish rely on them for spawning ground or nurseries, as do crabs and shellfish.
They store carbon. Plants soak up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, making them critical players in fighting climate change. “Blue carbon” is the official name for carbon stored in wetlands and other coastal ecosystems. At the same time, wetland soils can also emit methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, making it tricky to know how much carbon wetlands store overall. Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center are helping devise better ways to calculate this. So far they’ve found wetlands with more saltwater generally emit less methane and store more carbon.
They’re natural air conditioning. With their lush plants and high water levels, wetlands can radiate moist air, cooling down areas nearby. This makes planting wetlands especially valuable near cities in tropical or dry climates.
The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is one of the most important species in Chesapeake Bay. These shellfish filter the water, their reefs provide shelter for other marine species, and they’re an important seafood resource. But their numbers have hit a historical low due to overfishing, diseases like Dermo, and stressors such as hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen) and acidification (low pH).
Biologists with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) want to find out whether the double stresses of low oxygen and acidification can stunt oyster growth. Studies have shown that juvenile oysters grown under low oxygen are generally smaller than oysters grown under normal oxygen conditions. However, scientists still don’t know how these oysters fare over the long term. The answers could help aquaculture and oyster restoration projects all over the Chesapeake adapt to the often extreme conditions beneath the surface. Click to continue »
Low oxygen caused the death of these corals and others in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The dead crabs pictured also succumbed to the loss of dissolved oxygen. (Credit: Arcadio Castillo/Smithsonian)
In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms. To halt the decline, the world needs to rein in both climate change and nutrient pollution, an international team of scientists asserted in a new paper published Jan. 4 in Science.
“Oxygen is fundamental to life in the oceans,” said Denise Breitburg, lead author and marine ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment.”
Winter rains make Bay less salty, knocking back some invaders
by Kristen Minogue
Marine ecologist Andrew Chang tracks invasive species in California, and is discovering ways climate change and extreme weather can alter the playing field. (Credit: Julia Blum)
For many Californians, last year’s wet winter triggered a case of whiplash. After five years of drought, rain from October 2016 to February 2017 broke more than a century of records thanks to a series of “Pineapple Express” storms, referring to atmospheric rivers that ferry moisture from Hawaii to the Pacific Coast. In San Francisco Bay, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center biologists discovered a hidden side effect: All that freshwater rain can turn the tables on some of the bay’s invasive species.
“As you get wetter and wetter, there are fewer and fewer [marine] species that can tolerate those conditions,” said Andrew Chang, lead author of the new study published Dec. 7 inGlobal Change Biology.
The teachers on Alaska’s Pribilof Islands have a tradition. Every year for the last decade, they have invited scientists, educators and innovators from across the U.S. to take over their school for a week. The festival is known as Bering Sea Days. This year, marine biologist Linda McCann of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center joined a team of 22 scientists and educators, leading games and activities to teach the community about the research being done on the unique animals and environment of the Bering Sea. Read the first-hand narrative below for a glimpse inside this remote Alaskan community.
Students and educators hike through the rugged landscape of Alaska’s St. Paul Island. (Credit: Linda McCann)
SERC volunteer Steve Myers sits at the SERC seining beach, where students from all over the Chesapeake wade into the water to search for fish. (Credit: Sara Richmond)
by Sara Richmond
After Steve Myers retired from a nearly 40-year career in information technology, he decided to try something different. Over the last two years, that “something different” has included teaching students how to use seining nets and paddle canoes, measuring trees at a stream restoration site, banding ospreys, and monitoring mangroves as a citizen science and education volunteer at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).
With SERC’s education program, Steve leads field trips with visiting students. “One of my favorite parts of volunteering is seeing the reaction on the kids’ faces when they experience something they’ve never done before, especially kids who have grown up in the city,” he says. “Seeing them hold a fish or a crab for a first time—that’s kind of neat.” Occasionally, the students also spot water snakes passing by the seining beach. Steve says some of the kids are tentative about being in the water when snakes are around, but they quickly learn that the snakes won’t bother them. Last year, students named one of the frequently visiting snakes “Bob.” Click to continue »
Biologists discover endangered Isthmian goby and other elusive fish thriving around dock pilings
by Kristen Minogue
Top: Endangered Isthmian goby (Gobiosoma spilotum) found beneath a dock of Bocas del Toro, Panama. Bottom: Threatened black grouper (Mycoptera bonaci) found beneath a Belize dock. Photos: Simon Brandl & Jordan Casey/Smithsonian
The Panama Canal is home to one of the rarest fish in the world: the Isthmian goby, an endangered, brown-speckled fish less than 3 centimeters long. For years scientists thought it remained only at the locks of the canal’s Caribbean entrance, until a team of Smithsonian biologists found one nearly 200 miles away in a place no one expected.
Isthmian gobies (Gobiosoma spilotum) thrive in shallow waters like tropical tidepools. The expansion of the Panama Canal, along with other coastal development, has eaten up much of their habitat. So scientists were shocked to find the goby circling another manmade structure, a dock off the Panamanian island of Bocas del Toro. The team, from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the National Museum of Natural History, reported their discovery in a new study in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
“I didn’t even know what it was at first,” said Simon Brandl, the study’s lead author and SERC biologist. Though he knew it was a goby of some kind, he was unable to pinpoint the species. So Brandl sent the mystery photo to scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. “They were like, holy cow, this is Gobiosoma spilotum.” Click to continue »
