Author: Andrew Thaler

Marine science and conservation. Deep-sea ecology. Population genetics. Underwater robots. Open-source instrumentation. The deep sea is Earth's last great wilderness.

VentBase – securing the conservation of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 3 Comments on VentBase – securing the conservation of deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems
Conservation, Science

As a marine biologists just beginning my deep-sea education, conservation as a priority was an alien concept. The deep sea was the last true wilderness, distant and alien, impossibly difficult to access. We knew that exploitation was coming, companies had been exploring the potential of deep-sea mining for decades, but they always seemed to be generation away. Conservation was a question for my scientific descendants. For my peers and me, we still had a few good decades left in the golden age of exploration that began in the 1970’s with the first discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. That age is about to end.

The reality of deep-sea exploitation is imminent. The first hydrothermal vent mining lease has been issued in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea. The International Seabed Authority, which regulates seafloor extraction in international waters, has approved the first two mining exploration permits for seafloor massive sulfides in international waters. Manganese nodule extraction, once quashed by a global decline in metal prices, has recently reappeared. Crustal metal deposits are fast becoming a viable resource. The isolation of rare earth elements from the seafloor, a newcomer in deep-sea exploitation, could open up new, massive deposit for critical electronic components. All of these are likely to occur within the next few decades.

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I sing the praise of my robot underlings, the workhorses of deep sea exploration

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 5 Comments on I sing the praise of my robot underlings, the workhorses of deep sea exploration
Science
Building the Remote Lee. Photo by Andrew Thaler

James Cameron’s triumphant dive and (equally important) return from the Challenger Deep is a landmark achievement. In 62 years, only 3 people have ever visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench. While budgets for scientific exploration have been cut across the board, Cameron ponied up tens of millions to build only the second human-occupied submersible capable of reaching those depths. But the Deepsea Challenger is not the only visitor to Challenger Deep in the last few decades. In May, 2009 the ROV Nereus plumbed the depths of Challenger Deep. More than a decade before that, Kaikō, a Japanese ROV, became the first unmanned vehicle to reach into the Mariana Trench and return with video, sediment, and biological samples during several return trips.

And, while Alvin is in drydocks and human-occupied submersibles are tragically being mothballed across the country, more remote operated vehicles are exploring the ocean than ever before. They are being built and run by scientific institutions, private firms, public universities, high schools, industrial corporations, and individual citizens. My lab mate and I built one last winter, for fun. And while I agree with Al and Craig at Deep Sea News that ROV’s are not as “sexy” as human occupied submersibles, that is a marketing problem, because, like it or not, ROV’s are the real masters of deep sea exploration. If your goal is to learn as much as possible about the deep ocean, if you want the biggest return on your investment, if you want to involve a huge and diverse exploratory team, the ROV is king.

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Three Stories of Shipwrecked Sailors

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Uncategorized

Last week I flew out to Salt Lake City for the bi-annual Ocean Sciences meeting, bringing together 4300 scientists from around the world to discuss the current state of the ocean and present their latest findings. To mark the occasion and pass the time on a series of long flights, I loaded my kindle with my latest addiction, Amazon singles – short form ebooks, longer than a standard article, but shorter than a full book (and really convenient for an hour layover). In honor of the Oceans meeting, the flavor of the downloaded books was disaster and survival at sea.

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The Ocean Question: What ocean issues would you like to see discussed more this year?

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 11 Comments on The Ocean Question: What ocean issues would you like to see discussed more this year?
Conservation, Science

This year, during Science Online 2012 I asked 8 marine scientists and ocean advocates the following question: What issues in marine science and conservation would you like to see discussed more in the coming year? The responses ranged from protecting coral reefs to developing better bioinformatic tools. Watch their answers below. httpv://youtu.be/2AhPV5L3LnU

If fish evolved on land, where did they all go? Evolution and Biodiversity in the Ocean

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 9 Comments on If fish evolved on land, where did they all go? Evolution and Biodiversity in the Ocean
Science

This ray-finned fish was my dinner last night. Photo by Andrew David Thaler

When Carl Sagan described our planet as a “pale blue dot” he was invoking the fact that, despite being called Earth, our world is mostly Ocean. The surface of the Earth is a little more than 70% water and the ocean accounts for 98-99% of our total biosphere–the volume of the planet that can support life. Most contemporary theories point to ocean ecosystems–like deep-sea hydrothermal vents–as the launching point for the emergence and evolution of life. Ocean processes dominate biological interactions, even among unwitting terrestrial actors. A new paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, revisits an old debate about the ocean biodiversity and challenges the notion the ray-finned fishes have a marine origin.

In Why are there so few fish in the sea? the authors begin with the seemingly innocuous question–why are there so many more species in terrestrial environments than in marine environments?  From there, they look at species counts, phylogenetic relationships, and diversification rates to determine the ancestral state of the most recent common ancestor of one fish class, Actinopterygii, the ray-finned fish. What they found was that, despite the vastly smaller habitat available for freshwater fish, the number of actinopterygian species found those ecosystems was roughly equivalent to the number of species found in marine systems. In both systems, the dominant groups are relative newcomers on the evolutionary stage, with superorder-level radiations happening between 111 – 150 million years ago.  Most surprising, the authors discovered that the most recent common ancestor of actinopterygians may have been a freshwater, not marine, fish. Ray-finned fishes may have invaded the ocean from lakes and rivers.

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This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 2 Comments on This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.
Popular Culture, Science

The last few weeks have seen a groundswell of support for Kevin Zelnio’s #IamScience movement, what began as a single, incredibly heartfelt post and twitter hashtag evolved into a series of personal reflections, a somber music video, and a tumbler and Facebook page, all with the unifying message that there is no traditional path through science, only … Read More “This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.” »