Author: Bluegrass Blue Crab

Why mercury and PCBs?

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Science

A while back I reviewed the many seafood guides and the various ways they rank seafood choices.  They do share one thing in common, however, and that’s the special denotation of certain species as hazardous to human health because of toxin load. Specifically, high levels of mercury and PCBs as found by an Environmental Defense study.

First, kudos to EDF for making their data have immediate impact. Other studies of toxins in fish have sat around for literally decades before becoming part of the mainstream discourse about fisheries. But it does beg the question, what makes mercury and PCBs so important among the myriad toxins  in our oceans and our seafood?

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Fieldwork Feasibilities

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Uncategorized

readying the CTD for water collection and profile measurements

Two weeks at sea is all some oceanographers get to do all of their fieldwork for the year.  Two weeks, give or take a grace day, including whatever Mother Nature has to throw at the ship. Granted, it’s work 24 hours a day, likely running several experiments at a time. But compared to some brands of science, two weeks is barely enough to say you know what system you’re working in, let alone describe ecological processes at work. To me, someone who employs anthropological methods just as often as ecological ones, anything less than a year doesn’t count as fieldwork. I’m not judging; it’s just a difference in philosophy and feasibility. After participating in one of these two week cruises, I am no less in awe that our understanding of the ocean comes from such a philosophy. Achieving solid results requires such a carefully orchestrated dance in order to work, I’m shocked that we got as much out of the cruise as we did.

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Uncertainty at Sea

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab 1 Comment on Uncertainty at Sea
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watching the experiment go overboard

I began my maritime adventure with the statement “I have absolutely no reason to be at sea”.  That isn’t entirely true.  I decided to join the cruise as a helping hand mostly in order to be able to say that I had been out on the high seas.  During the first day or two on board, when people were still learning each other’s names and expertise, I received the initial raised eyebrow as to why a grad student in environmental policy was on the ship.  The almost unanimous next response was ‘it’s so good to see a future policymaker understanding what it’s like out here’.

Even though I’m not sure that I will ever be in the position of writing legislation (as opposed to analyzing policies and broader governance structures), it’s nice to know that my two weeks on the Atlantic gained me some professional legitimacy.  And since I’m in the business of studying how the creation of scientific knowledge turns into conservation policy, I think it was an important experience to have. One of the biggest issues in environmental policy is how to deal with uncertainty. And a trip at sea certainly yields enough uncertainty to stymie and army of policymakers for decades.

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Second to last day of experiments

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Science

At this point we’re running on autopilot a bit.  As one of the Georgia students pointed out earlier today, we’ve become incredibly efficient at the protocols, just in time to start heading home tomorrow.

People have also had time to start analyzing their data from the first round of experiments.  Interestingly, the phytoplankton community has changed significantly in our little patch of ocean over just the short time we’ve been here.  Brian commented “I always assume, incorrectly, that the system will be static throughout the cruise. But it’s not, it’s surprisingly dynamic every year”.

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Second Friday at Sea

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab 1 Comment on Second Friday at Sea
Science

the go-flow bouy

My day began with a balancing contest on the stern deck – who could stand on one foot the longest? It was an official welcoming to the world of those with sea legs. The rest of the day blended in with yesterday, when we ran our second diel experiment – nothing new there from the science end.

We pulled up our incubation/grazing experiment to look at the effect of grazers.  We had dropped 96 bottles, each a different manipulated community, overboard.  Turns out something got hungry and took a bite of the net bag that was holding the bottles underwater. We’d like to think shark, but that’s entirely our imaginations run wild. We spent the entirety of the day after lunch filling up large plastic carboys with water from the Sargasso – a prized medium for phytoplankton researchers.  The water out here, though a classic mix of sea elements is very “clean”, meaning it has extremely low levels of organic matter, trace metals, or really any nutrients at all.  It’s what makes the waters out here such a beautiful blue and is the reason we haven’t seen much life outside of the phytoplankton in our tubes the entire trip.

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One week left: time to get to work!

Posted on By Bluegrass Blue Crab
Science
Same boat, different cruise. Recovery of the CTD

A stormy beginning makes for a busy end. We spent the day prepping for a couple of experiments that will happen tomorrow while we’re all awake for the second round of the diel experiment. We sent a go-flow, typically used to collect data on trace minerals in the water, overboard to gracefully collect and filter seawater to be used for growth medium in an incubation experiment. It’s hard to think about treating seawater nicely, but apparently the go-flow apparatus is designed to not split any cells upon entry or exit. This ensures that the phytoplankton we’re trying to grow and measure will have the most realistic experience in their little containers as possible tomorrow.

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