Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

Palmer LTER researchers work to understand the changes occurring along the Western Antarctic Peninsula by monitoring the ecosystem. That means studying everything here, including water chemistry and currents, bacteria, phytoplankton and krill.  I bet you can't guess the largest item on the list? Whales! Dave Johnston and Zach Swaim (a former contributor to the Right Whale Research Blog!) of Duke University are guest contributors to this research expedition, studying the large marine mammals, such as whales and seals, in the Palmer LTER area. Check out Zach’s blogs as part of the New England Aquarium’s Right Whale Team.

Humpback whales feeding at surface(Photo: Dave Johnston, Taken under NOAA permit)

As a new research component under the LTER project, it is important to catalogue and study whales and seals as top predators of the Antarctic system. Studying whales is not easy. The whale team has to first obtain special permits from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that allow them to do their research. The next step was finding the whale, which I must admit is not an easy task in the open ocean! Fortunately, the whale team has lots of help. Once a whale spout is seen and the timing is right, the researchers spring into action…or more accurately into a zodiac. Then it’s off to find the whale.

Heading out in the zodiac (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Once the whale is located, it’s time to try and gather as much information as possible. Dave and Zach try to get a good picture of the underside of the whale’s fluke, or tail. Each fluke pattern is unique, like a fingerprint, so it helps to identify the whale. The photographs also help them recognize if the whale has already been documented before or if it needs to be added to the research catalogue. All of the IDs collected on this trip will be submitted to a catalogue of Antarctic whales curated by the College of the Atlantic in Maine. (FYI, the Aquarium keeps the catalogue of North Atlantic Right Whales.)

Fluke of a humpback whale (Photo: Dave Johnston, Taken under NOAA permit)

In addition to photographs, Dave and Zach try to get a biopsy, or a small tissue sample from as many whales as possible. The tissue samples can be tested for DNA and lipids, or fats. These two things tell researchers about the health of the whale like where it might have been seen before and other crucial data. The technology used to get that sample? A crossbow!

Gear ready to go in the zodiac

Combined with a small biopsy arrow, the crossbow allows the researchers to get a very small tissue sample from the whale without getting too close. After locating a whale and getting some fluke and dorsal fin photographs, Dave or Zach take aim for a spot below the dorsal fin and then shoot. The dart sails through the air, hits the whale and then falls back into the water, waiting to be retrieved by the zodiac crew.

Biopsy dart flies through the air (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Dart floating after a successful biopsy (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

If the shot was successful, the dart has a small piece of dark-colored skin tissue and lighter-colored blubber. (As Aquarium researchers report in this post, the process is minimally invasive and when done correctly elicits little or no reaction from the whale.) Once the samples are collected from the animals, it’s back to the lab to preserve the samples. The samples are removed from the dart and then prepared for the trip back to the United States. After the tests are run and the identity confirmed, the researchers will have a better understanding of the whale population that’s here in the Palmer LTER region.

Tissue sample from a humpback whale (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

The LTER area is an important feeding ground for humpback and minke whales, leopard and crabeater seals as well as other marine mammals. As sea ice declines, temperatures warm and other changes occur along the Western Antarctic Peninsula and this often times means changes to the ecosystem for these animals. It is necessary to study these top predators because scientists need to understand what their populations are like now and anticipate the impacts to the ecosystem in the future.  By joining the cruise this season, Dave and Zach are helping to complete the picture of what changes are occurring at all levels of the food web in the Palmer LTER region.

Humpback whale among the ice (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Want to learn more about Dave and Zach’s work? Check out
 Dave Johnston’s Climate Habitat and Marine Wilderness Lab page and Zach’s Conservation Biology lab.

Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

First, a quick update: After 29 straight days of calm weather, we ran into a nice 50-60 knot gale yesterday, just in time to pick up the NSF representatives at Rothera and start the mooring deployments. It has calmed down some, so we managed the first deployment at 200.140, and are moving on to the 300 line for the pair of moorings and the recovery of the two gliders.  (You can follow us by tracking the ship.)

Typical types of phytoplankton along the Western Antarctic peninsula.

While I wait for the seas to calm, I wanted to explain in a little more detail what I'm doing with all those CTD water samples. My team studies phytoplankton (algae), the tiny plants in the seawater that use sunlight as energy to make food and oxygen. While plants on land can be very large (for example, trees), the plants in the ocean for the most part are small with an average size being only around 50 microns in length.

We are studying the phytoplankton in the Antarctic because they are the base of the food web and our data suggests that the number of phytoplankton is changing as the West Antarctic peninsula is warming over the last few decades. Phytoplankton are found in the upper ocean where there is sufficient light to promote photosynthesis. Check out this sample from our 200.0.40 line on our sampling grid. Can you recognize any diatoms?

Phytoplankton sample from the 200.-040 line (Photo credit: Beth Simmons PAL/LTER)

We recently left our most southern sampling station near Charcot Island.  Here is what a water sample from the canyon looked like.

Charcot Canyon phytoplankton magnified! (Photo credit: Beth Simmons)

If you would like to learn more about Antarctic phytoplankton check out this page. How can we catch such tiny things? We take a sample of water from the CTD and extract the plankton by passing the seawater through tiny filters! It starts with water from the CTD being poured into the top of a funnel.  Then, a vacuum pulls the water through a special filter. The water ends up in a flask but the filters capture the plankton. These filters are frozen and sent back to Rutgers University for further examination when the crew returns to the states. Examining how much phytoplankton is on each filter informs scientists about what concentrations of phytoplankton are in the water in the area, where the water sample was collected from and what depth the sample was taken.

It can take a long time to filter seawater and I do it several times a day so here's a quick view of what it's like!  Check it out...






All of Jo's entries are cross posted on the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station site here. Track her progress on the R/V Gould, and learn more about the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station.

Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

The research cruise is in full swing.  The entire ship is teaming with scientists, technicians and support crew 24 hours a day, all working together to make sure the research gets done in the short time we have until we return in two weeks.

Jo concentrating (Credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER | 2013)

However, that doesn’t mean that people don’t have fun on the boat. People spend their free time watching movies, reading, participating in a ship-wide cribbage tournament and most recently decorating Styrofoam cups.




In my last post on the CTDs (and Nicole also explained during the recent webcast), I mentioned that the LTER group studies deep sea canyons. Some of those canyon areas are really deep! If you check out the graph, you’ll notice that the area we were in on January 14was close to 4000 meters! That’s over 2.5 miles deep! Did you ever think the ocean had areas that deep? At that depth the pressure is great enough to squish just about anything. Including Styrofoam cups!



Everyone on the boat got into the fun, using their creativity to make keepsakes for loved ones, souvenirs to remind them of the trip, fun mementoes in the middle of the busy research time. But my favorite gets goes to my sister—Happy Birthday, Kate! We filled them with paper towels to minimize the damage under the pressure and then placed the cups into mesh bags. Once the bags were full, we tied them to the underside of the CTD.

(Credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER | 2013)

In this particular cast, the CTD was programmed to descend to 3,710 meters.

Built out of reinforced metal, the CTD is not impacted by the pressure; however, as the CTD descended, the Styrofoam cups were slowly compressed. After the 3-hour trip to our marked depth, the CTD and cups were hauled back at the surface by the winch and we took a look… The cups came back with the same decorations and shape, just smaller!

A cup squished at depth – 3,710 meters!

On Wednesday, January 23, the Aquarium hosted a live Hangout on Air from the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research station in Antarctica. During the chat, viewers learned about the local residents—penguins!—and found out what high-tech tools the researchers are using to study the oceans and climate in this remote corner of the world. Here's the video:

Predicting Climate Change Lecture
The New England Aquarium was pleased to welcome the MIT Lorenz Center's John Carlson Lecture to the Simons The speaker is Professor Timothy Palmer of the Royal Society of Research.



 

Lunch Break with the Sea Turtles
Visit with some rescued and recovering sea turtles at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center and learn about sea turtle rescue from the Aquarium's Marine Animal Rescue Team.




Climate Change Education Activity
Join students from around the country as they learn about carbon sources and sinks. The interactive activity is designed to explain the carbon cycle and the imbalance in the carbon cycle.





Cooking Demo with Chef Barbara Lynch
Make some delicious nudi with a world renowned chef and the Aquarium's culinary partner, Barbara Lynch. It's a quick family friendly recipe that'll be ready in minutes.

Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

The LTER research area encompasses both shallow and coastal waters as well as deep, offshore canyons. Where the canyons meet the shelf break is of interest to the LTER scientists. This area tends to harbor warm, nutrient rich water that makes it’s way up from the deep. The warmer water (only several degrees warmer than freezing) hits the surface water and is cooled by the atmosphere. With longer daylight hours during the Antarctic summer season, these areas create “biological hotspots, which are characterized by rich phytoplankton blooms.  These blooms of phytoplankton fuel productivity throughout the Antarctic food web.




To help understand what’s happening through these areas, you need to study the water that comes from these different depths. How do you do that? With a CTD! The Conductivity, Temperature and Depth instrument is a cylindrical metal frame surrounding a group of sensors. The sensors measure three physical properties of seawater – salinity, temperature and depth.

CTD sensors (Photo credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Aboard the LMG, the CTD resides in a large room called the Baltic room.  Surrounding the outside frame of the CTD are 24 gray Niskin bottles that form a rosette.  The Niskin bottles are triggered to open and shut at various depths, capturing water samples within the bottle. Once the instrument is back at the surface, the researchers open the Nisken bottles and drain out specific amounts of the water to analyze the waters properties and run different experiments.

Niskin bottles, part of the CTD rosette (Photo credit: Jo Blasi/ Palmer LTER)

In order to deploy our CTD, the L.M. Gould has a massive two-story door that opens on the side of the ship. Using a huge winch, the CTD is moved out of the Baltic room until it is hovering over the water. The technicians lower the CTD using the winch until the instrument is at the appropriate depth in the water column.

Go back to the water depth graph that I sent you.  Can you tell me what depth this cast went to? Post your answer!



The sensors on the CTD are connected to a computer on board the ship.   As the CTD is sinking, the researchers can watch the computer monitor and determine what depths they need water samples.  The technicians then set the sensors on the CTD to stop at these specific depths while the CTD is being raised back up to the ship, triggering the bottles to capture the samples.

Computer read out of the CTD sensors. (Photo credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

My team of researchers study phytoplankton and we spend a lot of time using the CTD. Many of our water samples come from shallow depths, allowing us to figure out what plankton grow near the surface.   Other groups, including those that work with bacteria or ocean chemistry and nutrients also rely on the CTD to bring up water samples. Often times there are quite a few people gathered in the Baltic room when the CTD comes back to the ship because everyone is siphoning off their samples all at once and then heading back to their respective laboratories to run experiments. Once my team collects the water, it’s off to start examining what phytoplankton lives in that water!

Jo Blasi (teacher at sea) filling a bottle at the CTD. (Photo credit: Palmer LTER)

All of Jo's entries are cross posted on the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station site here. Track her progress on the R/V Gould, and learn more about the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station.

Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

The Palmer LTER has very specific areas that they study. This is to make sure that the data that is collected aligns with a grid system year after year. This helps making the data analysis more consistent and meaningful over time. This grid system starts at Palmer Station and works south along the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). Palmer LTER scientists take all kinds of samples along a predetermined set of the yellow stations as shown in the grid. We started at Palmer (green dot at the top of the grid), but we have since traveled to about the 200 line which is about half way down near the second green dot.  Can you find it?

LTER Grid system. Palmer Station is close to the top, near the 600.040 green dot (Photo credit: Palmer LTER)

The LMG is outfitted with instruments that collect information on air and water temperatures, salinity, and depth while we sail. Those are combined with the latitude and longitude of the ship. Together those generate a profile or picture of the water that we are traveling over at that particular time.

The XBT probe inside its protective covering. (Photo credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

We have also been deploying XBT (eXpendable BathyThermograph) probes as seen in the photograph above. These instruments are released overboard and measure the ocean temperature as a probe drifts through the water. They consist of a dispensable probe, a data processing/recording system and a launcher. It's really cool looking

Copper wire used to transmit data back to the ship. (Photo credit Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

A thin copper wire connects the probe to a recording system that transmits the data in real time back to the ship the moment the probe hits the water. When the probe reaches its rated depth (which is a function of how fast the ship is traveling and the amount of wire contained within the spool) the profile is complete and the system is ready for another launch.

Launching these XBTs helps scientists generate better profiles of the ocean currents and how they combine over a particular area. They also track how temperatures change over parts of the ocean.  On this particular shift I was assigned to launch these while we were crossing the Drake.

Launching XBT probe overboard. (Photo credit Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Over the course of crossing the Passage, we deployed 70 XBT probes around the clock for two days. Everyone on the ship took a shift. We worked in four-hour shifts to make sure the probes were dropped in the water every 30-35 minutes. That meant some people were up in the middle of the night! Luckily, my shift was from 8am to noon.  So, I got to sleep at a normal hour.  Thank goodness because we've put in some pretty crazy hours these last few days.

Still smiling! (Photo credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Data from the XBT. Temperature is on the x-axis and depth of water is on the y-axis.  (Photo credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Here is a water profile on the computer screen on-board the ship after the XBT probe is finished with its descent.  Can you see what depth it stopped taking measurements?



All of Jo's entries are cross posted on the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station site here. Track her progress on the R/V Gould, and learn more about the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station.

Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

After visiting the penguins on Torgersen Island, I had the opportunity to visit one more place at Palmer Station. The glider robotics lab! Dr. Oscar Schofield and his team work with many different types of technology to study the ecosystem in Antarctica. One of the coolest ones, I think, is an autonomous underwater vehicle (or AUV) glider.

A glider in action (Photo: Palmer LTER)

Dr. Schofield’s team is from Rutgers University in New Jersey. They use these battery operated AUVs to complement shipboard measurements because it’s very challenging to sample and survey this entire region by ship. That’s where the gliders come in!

Two gliders in the lab (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

These robots are programmed by the scientists to fly through the underwater canyons like a torpedo.  Scientists give them specific coordinates similar to a GPS which tell them where to go and what to sample. They are also equipped with sensors in the payload which record things like water temperature, salinity, sea ice conditions and even phytoplankton – tiny little algae, freely floating in the water. All the data is recorded on memory cards inside the glider which can be downloaded when it surfaces or checked live, via satellite if the scientists want to reprogram its direction and give it a new mission.

Inside the glider's brain (photo: Tina Haskins/Rutgers University)

The anatomy of a glider (Photo: Palmer LTER)

There were two gliders in the lab when I went to visit, and two additional gliders already out on a mission collecting data in the ocean. You wouldn’t believe this, but one of the gliders in the lab needed some repairs because it had been bitten by a leopard seal! Once it gets a new tail, it will be deployed from Palmer Station to study the area before the LMG will pick them up in a couple of weeks. I’ll be sure to capture all of that for you. It was really neat to see the gliders firsthand, and I’m excited to learn more about them on the trip.

That is one strong bite! (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

Leopard seal (Photo: Beth Simons/Palmer LTER)

After this quick visit, it was time for me to leave Palmer Station and begin the hard work of collecting data out at sea. We’ll be back to Palmer Station in about a month but for the next couple weeks I’m out to sea sampling from the LMG!

See you later, Palmer Station! (Photo: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER)

This is not the first time Aquarium scientists have used gliders to study marine animals and ecosystems. Click here to see how the right whale researchers eavesdropped on their subjects in the Northern Atlantic ocean.

All of Jo's entries are cross posted on the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station site here. Track her progress on the R/V Gould, and learn more about the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station.

Adélie penguin

Chinstrap penguin

Gentoo penguins

Adélie penguin carrying a rock to help build its nest

Adélie adult with two chicks

Out for a swim—porpoising Adélie penguin

Staring contest between a gentoo penguin and elephant seal. The seal won.

Happy!

This isn't Jo's first encounter with penguins. She rescued endangered African penguins in South Africa in 2011. If you still can't get enough penguins, check out Brian Skerry's penguin images from his trip to Antarctica in 2010.

All of Jo's entries are cross posted on the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station site here. Track her progress on the R/V Gould, and learn more about the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station.