wood falls – Southern Fried Science

Fog Horn (A Call to Action)

The EPA is seeking public input on the new administrations approach to environmental regulations. They are required to seek public input. They are required to respond to public input. Go tell them how you feel. Public comments close May 15. Here’s the docket with instructions on how to comment: Evaluation of Existing Regulations.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

Titanic Tourism. Like this article: To Visit Titanic Firsthand, New York Banker Dives Deep Into Wallet. I have thoughts. Oh so many thoughts.

Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)

Deep-sea mining meets alternative energy: Renewables’ deep-sea mining conundrum. I once calculated that all the copper in Solwara 1 could make 800 1-megawatt wind turbines [note: I am not good at math].
Two really cool expeditions coming out of Louisiana this year: Exploring Changes on the Gulf Coast and Ecology of Shallow Wood Falls. Neat!
Begun, the crab wars have. Svalbard’s Snow Crabs: a Pincered Proxy for Arctic Oil.
A wonderful piece on field notes and what they mean to past a future fisheries biologists from our friends at the Fisheries Blog.
A tiny Iowa paper just won a Pulitzer Prize for tackling farm pollution. This mouse roars.
Farm-raised superbugs find their way into kids’ noses somehow. This is fine. Every thing is fine.

New and noteworthy publications in deep-sea science for the week of December 31st, 2012.

PLoS One: How Deep-Sea Wood Falls Sustain Chemosynthetic Life

Large organic food falls to the deep sea – such as whale carcasses and wood logs – are known to serve as stepping stones for the dispersal of highly adapted chemosynthetic organisms inhabiting hot vents and cold seeps. Here we investigated the biogeochemical and microbiological processes leading to the development of sulfidic niches by deploying wood colonization experiments at a depth of 1690 m in the Eastern Mediterranean for one year. Wood-boring bivalves of the genus Xylophaga played a key role in the degradation of the wood logs, facilitating the development of anoxic zones and anaerobic microbial processes such as sulfate reduction. Fauna and bacteria associated with the wood included types reported from other deep-sea habitats including chemosynthetic ecosystems, confirming the potential role of large organic food falls as biodiversity hot spots and stepping stones for vent and seep communities. Specific bacterial communities developed on and around the wood falls within one year and were distinct from freshly submerged wood and background sediments. These included sulfate-reducing and cellulolytic bacterial taxa, which are likely to play an important role in the utilization of wood by chemosynthetic life and other deep-sea animals

Read More “This Week in the Deep” »

Tag: wood falls

Titanic tourists, nodule mining, right whales, and more! The Monday Morning Salvage: April 17, 2017

This Week in the Deep