Tag: Maribeth Gidley

Beach at Sunrise

Update to the BEACHES Study: Children Visiting Beaches with Open Wounds are More Susceptible to Bacterial Infection

A new paper appearing in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examines how the presence of children’s open wounds and abrasions during play at the beach may put them at greater risk of skin infections from marine bacteria and other pathogens they encounter. The study finds that children with existing or newly-acquired wounds while at the beach are more susceptible to infection.

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Beach at Sunrise

BEACHES Study Promotes Health & Safety for Beachgoers

Few accessible places represent Earth’s natural beauty quite like our beaches, but looks can be deceiving if there is a bacterial outbreak or contamination from offshore activities. Not being able to see these contaminants puts families at risk of exposure if they aren’t properly warned. The BEACHES project (Beach Exposure And Child Health Study), a collaboration between the University of Miami’s College of Engineering and the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies and AOML, along with the Universities of Arkansas and Texas, aims to pair child behavioral science with microbiology to address exposure risk of beachgoers.

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Coral Biopsy

Land-Based Mircobes Affecting Coral Reefs

Scientists found that microbes and their genetic material from land-based sources of pollution could be found in reef water and in tissues of corals. This could affect the genomics of the native microbial communities found in coral reefs, which can impact how corals thrive and survive. These new insights highlight an additional potential threat to corals from land-based sources of pollution in southeast Florida, where corals are already under existential threat from warming oceans and resulting coral bleaching, disease and mortality.

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King Tide

Study Focuses on Contaminants Lurking in Urban Tidal Flooding

Tidal flooding from events such as the so-called “King Tides” and “Super Tides” are flooding urban coastal communities with increasing frequency as sea levels rise. These tidal flood waters can acquire a wide range of contaminants and toxins as a result of soaking in the built environment of urbanized coastlines. A multi- institutional, interdisciplinary research team, including scientists from AOML, is examining the types of contamination picked up from the urbanized coastal landscape and transported into coastal waters through tidal flooding.

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Black-band disease on a pale coral colony of Montastraea cavernosa in the Florida Keys. Photo Credit: NOAA.

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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Scientists from FAU and AOML collect water samples at a pumping location along Indian Creek Dr. Image credit: NOAA

AOML Researchers Take Water Samples at Annual King Tide

On September 29th, researchers from AOML’s Environmental Microbiology Lab along with scientists from Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center collected water samples along Miami Beach during a king tide event, the highest astronomical tide of the year. Sample sites were located adjacent to pumps installed by the City of Miami Beach to actively pump super-tidal floodwaters out of the streets and back into Biscayne Bay. AOML’s team continuously monitored and collected water samples over a 5-hour period at locations in Maurice Gibb Memorial Park, along 14th Street, and at 27th Street and Indian Creek Drive. During sampling, physical water properties such as temperature, salinity, pH, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen content were also measured.

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AOML interns collect a water sample in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary during the 2014 Ocean Sampling Day event. Image Credit: NOAA

AOML Enlists Citizen Scientists for International Ocean Sampling Day 2015

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.

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