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October
19 - 26, 2001 vol. 38 no. 42 Monday, October 22 CAS SEMINAR - Professor Varanasi, Laboratory for Planetary Atmospheres Research, will present "Infrared Spectroscopy of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases" in 101 Nierenberg Hall Conference Room at 1 p.m. (Janice Bordner, x 48815) Wednesday, October 24 ECOLOGY LUNCHEON SEMINAR - George Hunt, UC Irvine, will present "Connections between Climate and Ecosystem Control in the Eastern Bering Sea: The Oscillating Control Hypothesis" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12:15 p.m. (Tonya Huff, tonya_h6@yahoo.com) Thursday, October 25 AOS SEMINAR - Mike Buckingham will present "Airborne Sound Sources, Ocean Receivers, and Seabed Inversions?" and Thomas Berger will present "Ultra-high-energy Neutrino Detection: Underwater Acoustics and Particle Physics" in 330 NTV at 4 p.m. (amber@mpl.ucsd.edu) Friday, October 26 MARINE BIOLOGY SEMINAR - John Wares, University of New Mexico, will present "Comparative Phylogeography and Historical Ecology of the North Atlantic" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12 noon. (Kthamatr@ucsd.edu) GHOULS AND BUOYS, BEWARE! The Birch Aquarium at Scripps will be transformed into a Haunted Aquarium this Halloween and will extend its hours on Friday, October 26 (9 a.m. -9 p.m.) and Saturday, October 27 (9 a.m. -9 p.m.) This will be an event the whole family will enjoy, featuring crafts and spooky science exhibits, with creatures that glow, creeps from the deep, the ghost forest, and more! Other fun activities include a slime lab, pirate stories, and trick-or-treating. Bring a pumpkin to carve and enter it in our pumpkin carving contest. Be sure to wear your costume and hope to win some spook-tacular prizes! All ages are encouraged to come! Children under 16 should be accompanied by an adult. Pre-registration is HIGHLY recommended, as this event may sell out. Please call 858/534-7336 to register. Members $8, Non members $10. *All SIO staff, faculty & students receive member price! www.aquarium.ucsd.edu Notices VAUGHAN HALL DEDICATION - Everyone is invited to attend the dedication of T. Wayland Vaughan Hall (formerly Endurance Hall) on Thursday, November 8, at 3 p.m. We will be fortunate to have Vaughan's granddaughter, Delia Laitin, as our guest and hope you all will join us that day. If the weather is nice, the event will be held at the north end of the building across from the Old Director's House (Sea Grant). If the weather turns cool, the festivities will be held in the atrium of the building. As always, yummy reception to follow! (Jill Hammons, x43948) TRICK OR TREAT! - Creep on over to 100 Endurance Hall (NOTE NEW LOCATION), Tuesday, October 30 at 4 p.m. for the third annual SIO Kids' Halloween Party. There will be goblin goodies, frightful favors, and bewitching prizes for the best kids' costumes. (Sharon Franks, sfranks@ucsd.edu) UNDERWATER SD CLASS & FIELD TRIP - Underwater San Diego Class and field trip with Hans Bertsch, Ph.D. Classes: Tuesday, October 30; Thursday, November 1; Tuesday, November 6; AND Thursday, November 8; 7-9 p.m. Field trips: Saturday, November 3; 2-5 p.m. AND Saturday, November 10; 9-11 a.m. Learn about the intertidal and shallow subtidal creatures off our coastline with a combination of lectures and field trips. Four evening class sessions will include discussions of the natural history and biodiversity of the Southern California marine habitat, and tips on how to look for creatures and their biological interrelationships. Also spend two Saturdays in the field, one in the intertidal region of Point Loma, the other snorkeling in the La Jolla Cove region. Price includes the book, Pacific Coast Invertebrates. Prices: SDNHM Members $72; Nonmembers $82 TO REGISTER FOR PROGRAMS, OR FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CALL (619) 232-3821 ext. 203 OR VISIT WWW.SDNHM.ORG. ATTENTION: MEMBERS OF THE SIO STAFF COUNCIL - The Fall 2001 meeting of the SIO Staff Council is scheduled for Friday, November 16, at 12 noon (lunch at 11:30 a.m.) in Sumner Auditorium. An election will be held for three positions: Staff Council Vice Chair and and 2 members of the Committee on Committees. Please look for the ballots in your mail within the next 10 days. Your prompt replies will be appreciated. If you have items for the agenda, please send them to areisner@ucsd.edu. TEGNER RESEARCH GRANTS AWARDED - In the face of increasing evidence that the world's oceans are in trouble, Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) announced the first winners of "Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants in Marine Environmental History and Historical Marine Ecology." These grants are among the first in the world awarded specifically to help scientists document the composition and abundance of ocean life before humans altered marine ecosystems. This information is crucial for helping lawmakers, regulators, managers and activists set appropriate targets for marine conservation efforts. The Tegner grants are going to scientists or teams of scientists at universities in Australia, Canada, and the United States whose proposals were judged the best among 61 submitted by scientists from 16 countries in Asia, Oceania, North America, South America, Europe and Africa. Recipeients are: Brian Wysor and Dr. Suzanne Fredericq, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Susanna Fuller and Susan Gass, Dalhousie University; Peter Auster and Ivar Babb, University of Connecticut-Avery Point; Les Watling, University of Maine; Joseph Roman, Harvard University; Catherine R. Samson and Graham J. Edgar, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia; Angela M. Arnold, Johns Hopkins University; and Lance E. Morgan, MCBI. Ship News The work on Leg 14 of Cook Expedition would be impossible without the help of a number of people here and at Scripps. First and foremost, however, I wish to express my great appreciation for the unqualified and enthusiastic support of Captain David Murline and his crew and the resident and computer technicians. Their assistance to the scientific program is truly extraordinary. We departed Suva, Fiji on October 6 at 1600. The first station was in the southern most portion of the Lau Basin where we recovered animals in a free vehicle trap. Four additional free vehicle traps were deployed into the Tonga Trench in the vicinity of the Horizon Deep. GPS and SeaBeam allow an incredibly precise deployment of free vehicle traps. Amphipods were recovered in all of the trench deployments to depths between 8,582 and 10,787 meters. Most of amphipods were much smaller than H. gigas caught in the trenches of the North Pacific. At least two amphipod species were trapped on an elevated, rugged ridge in the trench. Temperature recorders deployed with the free vehicles provided temperature profiles from the sea surface to the sea floor (and back, so far). The temperature (in situ) on the sea floor of the trench varied significantly over short distances and was 1.91 C in the Horizon Deep at 10,787 meters. This temperature data will be useful in our subsequent efforts to interpret the physiological behavior of microorganisms cultivated from the samples collected. The multicorer was deployed and successfully recovered at a depth of 6,205 meters and temperature of 1.18. Twenty pressure vessels contain samples from the above catches for cultivation of microorganisms. Sixteen net tows were completed for studies of the population biology and molecular phylogeny of copepods. We are headed for the sill separating the Tonga and Kermadec Trenches. From there we will head for the Osbourn Seamount and then to the axis of the Kermadec Trench for collection of animals. The weather is nearly perfect. (Art Yayanos, Chief Scientist) FLIP - Week II of the HOME Farfield FLIP cruise is passing by. Our program of intensive CTD and sonar profiling is progressing well. During the neap tides, the internal ocean has calmed to typical pelagic levels. We anticipate a new parade of tidal phenomena radiating out from the Kauai Channel with the coming spring tide. We're enjoying some of the unique experiences that come with being moored in the deep sea.Shortly after our arrival, we accumulated quite a school of Mahi Mahi.At any time, there are 10-30 of these fish under the boat.They irridesce beautifully under the ships lights at night. Chuck Colgan has provided us with a high quality video camera to document the trip. Hopefully, we'll get some good footage of these incredible creatures. With the passage of time, more of the smaller fish species are arriving. We should have quite a community here by the end of the month. We've also been accreting Boobies at a steady rate. A few pioneers landed just after we flipped. Now we have a roost of over 30 birds. The squabbling for prime real estate is getting pretty intense.While the Boobies are a constant source of entertainment, there is a significant downside. Let's just say that with the iron fertilization experiments proving so enlightening, we're moving on ( regressing, actually) to nitrate fertilization. (Rob Pinkel, MPL) Revelle Weekly Scientific Report - During our first full week on station we have established two seafloor geodetic sites offshore Lima, Peru that in subsequent years should permit us to measure crustal deformation of the continental shelf of the South American plate as the Nazca plate is subducted beneath. The first site is 20 km from the trench and in 3300-m-deep water while the second site is about 50 km from the trench and at 2100 m depth. At each site we have deployed three of our seafloor transponders to form a triangular array with sides on the scale of the water depth. To measure the depth of each transponder we have used a recallable package deployed with each transponder and the MPL Deep Tow Control Vehicle to place a camera/tilt/pressure gauge on the seafloor about three meters from each transponder to sight and observe the transponder depth. In subsequent years, we plan to use this approach to measure relative depth changes among the transponders that may be associated with crustal deformation. Next, we completed a tow of our interrogation package 300 m above the seafloor throughout the transponder array collecting acoustic range data to the seafloor units. This data should permit us to determine the relative horizontal locations of the transponders to within a few centimeters. Today, we started collecting ship-board GPS and acoustic range data from the ship to the seafloor transponders. We will combine these data with GPS data collected ashore in Peru, by our colleagues at Instituto Geofisico Del Peru (IGP), to determine the centimeter-level horizontal location of our sites on the submerged portion of the South America plate relative to the plate interior several hundred kms inland. During the next week we plan to complete our deep tow seafloor operations at the deeper site and continue with GPS-Acoustic observations at both sites. Thanks to Captain Curl and crew and the MPL administration office for their many efforts. (Dave Chadwell, MPL) CRUISE MAP INDEX/AREA/ CH SCI/INSTITUTION/ PORTS DAYS/AGENCY/ R/V Melville R/V New Horizon R/V Robert Gordon Sproul David Starr Jordan
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