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Cruising for Conservation: Restoring Florida’s Water Quality

 In August 2018, a team of biological oceanographers and ecologists set sail on the R/V Walton Smith to sample the waters of Biscayne Bay & Florida Bay. AOML has conducted regular interdisciplinary observations of south Florida coastal waters since the early 1990’s. We spoke with Chris Keble, the lead scientist for AOML’s South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Research project, to learn more.

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Spotting the Seatrout: Juvenile Sportfish Monitoring in the Florida Bay

Photo Essay

 

Adjacent to Everglades National Park, Florida Bay encompasses the shallow waters, mangrove islands, and grassy banks between mainland Florida and the Keys; an area about 1,000 square miles in size. With an average depth of only 3 feet, the bay is home to a number of marine populations as well as a vital nursery ground for commercial and recreational reef fish species and pink shrimp that support one of the highest valued fisheries in Florida.

Because of its importance as a nursery, the bay also plays host to a group of NOAA researchers who are investigating how habitat changes in Florida Bay are impacting juvenile sportfish populations, with a focus on the spotted seatrout. The study aims to examine the relationship between juvenile spotted seatrout abundance, salinity, temperature, and seagrass, and use the data to quantify and predict the impacts of Everglades Restoration.

Originally Published by Hanna Payne, 2016

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NOAA Research on Microbial Communities Contributes to National Microbiome Initiative

On May 13th, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy introduced the National Microbiome Initiative, an effort to support multi-agency research to help sample and better understand communities of microorganisms that are critical to both human health and the world’s ecosystems. As the nation’s premier ocean science agency, NOAA is leading interdisciplinary research to improve observation and assessment of marine microbiomes.  To support this national initiative, NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) received nearly $2 million in funding this year to conduct a number of projects that integrate genetic sampling techniques and technologies to help advance the understanding of the ocean’s microbiomes.

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NOAA and Cuba Open Doors to Marine Science Cooperation

When Barack Obama becomes the first president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge, his visit will highlight not only a new course in international relations, but showcase on-going scientific opportunities with the country only 90 miles off the Florida coast.

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Study Provides Local-scale Projections of Coral Bleaching Over the Next 100 Years

In a new study published April 1 in Global Change Biology, NOAA oceanographers and colleagues have developed a new method to produce high-resolution projections of the range and onset of severe annual coral bleaching for reefs in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. The scientists built on a previous study that used global climate models from the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that produced projections at a very coarse resolution of about 70 miles or 100 kilometers. By using a regional oceanic model and an approach called statistical downscaling, the scientists calculated when increasingly warmer waters would cause severe bleaching on an annual basis. The resulting local-scale projections of bleaching conditions, at a resolution of about 6 miles or 10 kilometers, will help managers include climate change as a consideration in planning and conservation decisions.

Coral bleaching is a major threat to coral ecosystems and primarily occurs when ocean temperatures are warmer than has been normal in the past. Temperature stress disrupts the relationship between corals and the algae that live within their tissues; a relationship that usually benefits both parties. The algae are expelled as they cannot photosynthesize under the extreme conditions. The white limestone coral skeleton becomes visible through tissue that is now transparent since the expelled algae give corals their vibrant colors. Extensive coral bleaching events, called ‘mass bleaching’, have increased in frequency and severity over the past two decades and have contributed to overall reef loss globally.

The loss of coral reefs results in significant ecological, social and economic loss. Coral reefs provide rich habitat for valuable fisheries that people depend on for food. They also serve as protective buffers to coastlines by absorbing wave energy from storms, and they boost local economies by attracting tourists who fish, dive and explore these underwater treasures.

A main conclusion of the study is that almost all coral reef locations in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean are projected to experience bleaching conditions every yearby mid-century. This result applies to the past coarse-resolution projections as well as the new high-resolution projections. However, the high-resolution projections show there is great within-country variation in the projected timing of extreme conditions. There are locations within many countries where some reefs are projected to experience annual bleaching conditions 15 or more years later than other locations. This applies to reefs in Florida, the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, and Mexico. Reefs projected to experience bleaching conditions later are conservation priorities. These locations are a type of refuge, and are among the locations most likely to persist as the climate changes.

“At these locations, referred to in the study as ‘relative refugia’, lower rates of temperature increase and fewer extreme events mean reefs have more time to acclimate and adapt to climate change,” says study lead Dr. Ruben van Hooidonk, a coral and climate researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

Coastal and environmental managers, as well as conservation staff, throughout southern Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean can now use the projections to identify local conservation priorities. Managers may decide to preferentially protect these locations within marine protected area networks or may target a range of other actions to these relative refugia to reduce stress caused by human activities.

Bob Glazer of Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said he welcomed the new research. “Coral bleaching poses a grave threat to coral reefs and these high-resolution projections provide vitally needed spatial information about the degree of threat and inform opportunities to make better management decisions.”

The study authors also compare the two approaches they used to produce the high-resolution projections. Using the regional ocean model represents dynamical downscaling, which is state-of-art but is expensive in time, money and effort. The regional ocean model was developed by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at NOAA and has been set up for use in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean by oceanographers at AOML.

In contrast, the statistical downscaling method the authors developed uses observed relationships between historical temperatures and current conditions to modify the outputs from the global climate models. This method has the advantage of being far less resource-intensive than dynamical downscaling. The study authors found that the results from the two very different approaches were very similar. This gives the team confidence that statistical downscaling should be applied for all of the world’s coral reefs, which the team plans to undertake over the coming year.

NOAA’s Reef Manager’s Guide, which provides information on the causes and consequences of coral bleaching, outlines some of the management strategies and tools that can help reef managers address the coral bleaching threat. Find out more here.This study was funded by NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program and supported by NOAA AOML. The Open Access paper can be downloaded by clicking the thumbnail to the left.

Originally published April 1st, 2015 by Edward Pritchard

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Gulf of Mexico Marine Food Web Changes Over the Decades

New NOAA study finds natural climate cycles and

human activities are drivers of change

Scientists in the Gulf of Mexico now have a better understanding of how naturally-occurring climate cycles–as well as human activities–can trigger widespread ecosystem changes that ripple through the Gulf food web and the communities dependent on it, thanks to a new study published Saturday in the journal Global Change Biology.

A team of NOAA oceanographers spent three years reviewing over 100 indicators derived from environmental, fishery, and economic data, including sea surface temperature, currents, atmospheric patterns, fishing effort, harvest, and revenues. Through extensive analysis, they found a major ecosystem reorganization that appeared to be timed with a naturally-occurring climate shift that occurred around 1995.

The climate phenomenon is known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), a climate signal in the North Atlantic Ocean that switches between cool and warm phases, each lasting for 20-40 years at a time. The AMO, which was in a cool phase between 1965 until 1995 and has been in a warm phase since, influences global ocean and weather conditions in the northern hemisphere such as hurricane activity in the Atlantic ocean and the severity and frequency of droughts.

However, the AMO is not as extensively studied as other climate phenomena, such as El Nino, and this study is the first to investigate what scientists hope will be many future studies examining how the AMO influences ecosystem-scale change in the Gulf. Scientists hope this work will spur interest in further studying this phenomenon and its implications for the marine environment in this region.

“These major ecosystem shifts have probably gone unrecognized to date because they are not apparent when considering single species or individual components of the ecosystem,” said lead investigator Dr. Mandy Karnauskas of NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center. “Only when we put a lot of things together — including currents, hypoxia, fish abundances, fishing effort, and more — does a strong climate signal emerge.”

Additionally, scientists observed shifts in many species around the late 1970s coincident with the advent of the U.S. Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act– a policy designed to set rules for international fishing in U.S. waters, make the expansion of certain fisheries more favorable for economic development, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the nation’s fish stocks.

Other human influences that are not as pronounced–or easily distinguishable–include coastal development, agricultural runoff, oil spills, and fishing. Natural phenomena like coastal storms and hurricanes play a role as well.

The scientists expect their study to be useful to resource managers throughout the Gulf region. While managers cannot control Earth’s natural climate cycles, they may need to consider how to alter management strategies in light of them, in order to effectively meet their mandates.

Karnauskas’ team included other scientists from NOAA Fisheries as well as NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, the University of Miami, and the University of Texas.

Click on the thumbnail to the left to download the full study.

Originally Published in March 2015 by Shannon Jones

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NOAA Partners Join CalCofi to Examine the Potential of ‘Omics Research

NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory is teaming up with NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and ResearchNational Marine Fisheries Service, and Integrated Ocean Observing System, as well as the J.C. Venter Institute and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to enhance ecosystem observation programs by integrating genome-enabled techniques and technologies (i.e., ‘omics) into the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI). CalCOFI is a multi-partner, long-term ecosystem and fisheries study off the coast of California. The first quarterly CalCOFI expedition that included ‘omics recently completed at the end of November.

‘Omics is the term for a set of genome-based technologies used to examine DNA, RNA, and proteins from a variety of sample types ranging from single cells to organisms to communities in order to understand who is where, what they are doing, and how they are affected by changing environmental conditions.

The incorporation of ‘Omics into CalCOFI will help scientists better understand the diversity and functional activity of microbes in the area—enabling scientists to more accurately predict ecosystem tipping points, augment understanding of factors that enable or reduce ecosystem resiliency, and potentially unearth critical information regarding ocean response to large-scale pressures, including climate change. This project is a pilot for potential broader applications to other regions and across the NOAA fleet.

In the long term, ‘omics will ideally add to scientists’ ability to predict, monitor, and recommend responses to environmental changes and their associated effects on human health and the health of ocean and coastal ecosystems, leading to broader application to other regions and improved national efforts in ecosystem monitoring and management. Read more about other environmental microbial research in AOML features about Ocean Sampling Day and King Tide sampling on Miami Beach.

CalCOFI is a unique partnership of the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA Fisheries Service, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The organization was formed in 1949 to study the ecological aspects of the sardine population collapse off California. Today the focus has shifted to the study of the marine environment off the coast of California, the management of its living resources, and monitoring the indicators of El Nino and climate change. CalCOFI conducts quarterly cruises off southern and central California, collecting a suite of hydrographic and biological data on station and underway.

  • A CTD cast collects water samples during the CalCofi cruise.  Photo Credit: CalCofi  

     

  • The RV New Horizon is the research vessel that supported the November 2014 CalCofi cruise. Photo Credit: CalCofi

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