Blog Archives

Each year, NOAA AOML welcomes a group of talented students from across the country to join our team by way of summer internships. Seventeen highly motivated students have traveled to our laboratory in Miami to work alongside leading oceanic and atmospheric research scientists. NOAA internships, scholarships, and fellowships provide students with an unparalleled opportunity to develop and fine tune their research and field skills, giving them a glimpse of what it takes to establish a professional career in a federal research laboratory. Each student works side by side with a AOML mentor, who help to advise the students along their chosen scientific career paths and various research projects. Here at AOML, these career opportunities include jobs in physical oceanography, ocean chemistry and ecosystems, hurricane research, engineering, computer science and communications.

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.

A new study published in the journal Nature Microbiology highlights how emerging, devastating outbreaks of Vibrio infection in Latin America might be linked to El Niño, a climate pattern that periodically causes surface temperatures to warm throughout the equatorial Pacific Ocean. A researcher with the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute of Marine & Atmospheric Studies at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Lab was part of an international research team that used microbiological, genomic, and bioinformatic tools to demonstrate how El Niño provides a mechanism for the transport of disease from Asia into the Americas. 

For the third time in recorded history, a massive coral bleaching event is unfolding throughout the world’s oceans, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean. Above average sea surface temperatures exacerbated by a strong El Niño could result in the planet losing up to 4,500 square miles of coral this year alone, according to NOAA. The global event is predicted to continue to impact reefs into the spring of 2016.

This summer, AOML will be diving into a new outreach initiative with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute, a coral reef research organization based in the Cayman Islands. From June through August, NOAA oceanographers from AOML will give a series of talks on various oceanographic topics to the institute’s staff and students participating in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at the institute’s Little Cayman Research Centre (LCRC).

Central Caribbean Marine Institute is a non-profit organization whose mission is to conduct and facilitate research, education, outreach and conservation programs that will sustain marine diversity. They support key research into addressing global issues such as climate change, marine protection, fisheries management and coral reef impacts. Every summer, the institute hosts undergraduate students at the LCRC as part of the NSF funded research program. Students work with mentors to design, implement, and present research projects within the institute’s research themes of coral reef stress, climate change, ocean acidification, and coral reef resilience and restoration.

This lecture series provides students with an opportunity to gain insight into current coral reef research programs in order to help them refine their summer projects. The series also offers networking opportunities for students and staff and fosters relationships with the AOML research community. Topics will range from ocean-reef interactions, microbiology, ecosystem-based management, and impacts to coral health. Funding for the lecture series is being provided by CCMI.

“I always get bored with minute-detail subjects like molecular studies, but Dr. Chris Kelble’s lecture on the science to inform ecosystem-based management was all about the bigger picture. It’s a topic that I would love to get into,” said Brian Griffiths, an REU student from the University of Delaware. “Dr. Kelble was the first scientist I’ve encountered so far that thinks like I do. He was a great role model to have met!”

In addition to providing lectures, NOAA oceanographers will be teaming up with CCMI scientists and the National Centers for Environmental Information to examine variations of temperature and light at the local scale over the coral reefs surrounding Little Cayman Island. Collecting and analyzing this important data will enhance NOAA’s coral reef ecological forecasting tools and help evaluate the adequacy of regional-scale observations in monitoring for environmental threats to the reefs. This data will also assist other research projects being carried out by various research groups on the Little Cayman reefs including projects focused on constructing a global climate record using coral core samples, connecting water conditions to algal growth on the reefs, and investigating why some reefs are more resilient than others over small distances.

Located on Little Cayman Island, the LCRC is situated next to some of the most biologically diverse reef systems on earth. These reefs are particularly important to coral reef scientists as they are largely unaffected by local human and development impacts. This isn’t the first time NOAA oceanographers will collaborate with the Little Cayman-based research center. NOAA’s Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) established a monitoring station on the reef adjacent to the research center in 2009. CREWS stations are scattered across the Caribbean and contain a suite of oceanographic and atmospheric sensors that monitor environmental conditions in an effort to provide scientists with early warning of climate-related events such as coral bleaching.

See below for a complete schedule of the lecture series:

June 23 – 29

– “Synergistic Effects of Eutrophication and Elevated SST in the Early Life Stages of Two Caribbean Corals”

July 30 – August 3

– “Molecular Microbiology in the Marine Environment:  Biocomplexity, Microbial Source Tracking, and Metagenomic Observations”

– “Interactions Between Ocean Health and Human Health”

– “Coral Research at NOAA/AOML’s Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division”

– “Supporting NOAA Coral Reef Research:  the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies”

August 3 – August 7

– “Spatial Gradients in Carbonate Chemistry and Their Influence on Ecosystem Processes”

– “Science to Inform Ecosystem-Based Management”

– “Sloshing and Mixing Between Reef and Ocean: Physical Processes Impacting Connectivity and Thermal and Biogeochemical Variability for Cayman Corals”

Researchers with AOML’s Environmental Microbiology Lab joined a global effort to sample the smallest members of the ocean ecosystem on June 21 during International Ocean Sampling Day. Organized and led by the European Union’s MicroB3 organization and the Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) is a simultaneous sampling campaign of the world’s oceans and coastal waters. These cumulative samples, related in time, space and environmental parameters, contribute to determine a baseline of global marine biodiversity and functions on the molecular level.

What are scientists looking for?

The organisms of scientific interest for the OSD campaign include microscopic Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi, Protists and viruses, collectively known as microbes. Microbes make up 98 percent of the biomass in Earth’s oceans and are responsible for most of the biological activity that takes place within it. Microbes are found everywhere, from the ocean surface to deep within rocks beneath the ocean floor. They are pervasive and can evolve rapidly in response to changes in the environment. In fact, many scientists consider microbes to be a “canary in the coal mine”, signaling local and global changes in the oceans. It is, therefore, important to acquire information from across the globe on this vast community of organisms, against which future changes can be observed and measured.

2014: The first global OSD effort

During the 2014 Ocean Sampling Day event, over 180 scientific teams participated from all continents ranging from subtropical waters in the Caribbean to extreme environments in the Antarctic Ocean. On this day, more than 600 people all around the world took water samples from the ocean in order to identify the microbes within. Scientists used the data collected to support projects focusing on environmental microbiology parameters that describe the relationship between marine microbes and human health and the health of our local marine ecosystems. This data will also provide insights to the ocean economy through the identification of novel, ocean-derived biotechnologies.

Researchers with AOML’s Environmental Microbiology Lab joined a global effort to sample the smallest members of the ocean ecosystem on June 21 during International Ocean Sampling Day. Organized and led by the European Union’s MicroB3 organization and the Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) is a simultaneous sampling campaign of the world’s oceans and coastal waters. These cumulative samples, related in time, space and environmental parameters, contribute to determine a baseline of global marine biodiversity and functions on the molecular level.

What are scientists looking for?

The organisms of scientific interest for the OSD campaign include microscopic Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi, Protists and viruses, collectively known as microbes. Microbes make up 98 percent of the biomass in Earth’s oceans and are responsible for most of the biological activity that takes place within it. Microbes are found everywhere, from the ocean surface to deep within rocks beneath the ocean floor. They are pervasive and can evolve rapidly in response to changes in the environment. In fact, many scientists consider microbes to be a “canary in the coal mine”, signaling local and global changes in the oceans. It is, therefore, important to acquire information from across the globe on this vast community of organisms, against which future changes can be observed and measured.

2014: The first global OSD effort

During the 2014 Ocean Sampling Day event, over 180 scientific teams participated from all continents ranging from subtropical waters in the Caribbean to extreme environments in the Antarctic Ocean. On this day, more than 600 people all around the world took water samples from the ocean in order to identify the microbes within. Scientists used the data collected to support projects focusing on environmental microbiology parameters that describe the relationship between marine microbes and human health and the health of our local marine ecosystems. This data will also provide insights to the ocean economy through the identification of novel, ocean-derived biotechnologies.

Where are AOML scientists sampling?

This year, AOML will coordinate and sample ten OSD sites across the country. In addition to the 2014 sites in the Florida Keys, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa Bay, La Jolla, California, and Horn Island, Mississippi, AOML will coordinate five new sites spread across the Florida peninsula from Pensacola to Miami. Sampling sites are expected to be monitored long-term as part of the international Genomic Observatories Network and the resulting database will be accessible to the public.

MyOSD: The citizen scientist component

 OSD organizers have amended the citizen science component for this year’s event, allowing individuals from all over the globe to collect samples in their backyard using handy sampling kits. This component, called MyOSD, gives individuals the chance to help scientists unravel the mysteries of the marine microbial world by collecting important environmental data such as latitude, longitude, temperature, salinity, pH and wind speed.

A citizen scientist from MAST Academy samples a site on Key Biscayne with a MyOSD kit. Image Credit: NOAA

Originally Published by Edward Pritchard, 2015