If you like what they did (or even if you don’t) consider donating through them or directly to one of the marine conservation groups they support (my personal favorites include The Coral Reef Alliance and Shark Savers)

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Open Water and Advanced/Technical/Science Dive Log Sheets - offered under Creative Commons By-NC-SA license. Please refer others to this page to share this version of the sheet.

• a header with cumulative dive number, date and location information
• A checkbox list of major dive types/activities
• Exposure protection & Weight
• Dive depth, duration, pressure group
• Start and end tank pressure
• Air, surface water and depth water temp
• Visibility, weather and REEF.org fish count information
• A generous comments section
• Buddies
• Cumulative dive times

The Open Water Log Sheets also offer:

• a small comment section to record dive boat, boat captain, dive master or similar information
• An instructor / buddy signature block

The Advanced Log Sheets also offer:

• Dive gas mode block to record dive gases used including size of tank and mix used
• Tally blocks to track cumulative stats (# dives and hours) for rebreather, the year, and science.

For those that own their own rebreather and want to track cumulative hours on that rebreather unit or cumulative hours since last major service I have a version that replaces dives for the year and sciece dives with cumulative unit rebreather dives and hours.

Both log sheet files print out 2 double sides log sheets per 8.5×11″ page (4 dives per page). The open water file prints 6 open water training dive logs then an additional 14 log sheets for normal dives, though more sheets can be printed easily. Please feel free to use these files for your own diving or diving program. I do ask that if you do use them, please leave a comment here, and if you find them really useful put a donation in the tip jar. I am willing to modify these files for special purposes, and as the files are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA license you may modify the files yourself as long as you share the resulting file yourself.

After working a bit from home, I got ready to bike in to campus and walked out the door at 10:40am for a 45 minute commute, taking the cyclocross route along the coast that I like best. I felt well rested and my legs were ticking over really well, but as I got down to Noank, which is about 5km in, I had a sinking feeling. Had I remembered my dive computer? A quick check of the panniers confirmed that I had not.

Longer, but more scenic commute to school

I decided I really wanted the computer, so I turned around and added an extra 15 minutes to the commute. Now I would, at best, be 10-15 minutes late. The rest of the commute was great, with a new personal best for the route, minus the false start. It was a bit late to see much wildlife on the route, but I did see several herons and one scrambling woodchuck.

Joe was waiting in the dive locker when I arrived 10 minutes late. The tanks were already filled, so as I verified the blend and fill of my tank, we talked about the amazing women’s world cup game from the day before. Before heading off to get some lunch, we went up to see our dive safety officer (DSO) who had just gotten back from vacation. While he was away we had several dives and on one of them I flooded one of the locker’s canister lights. I wanted to tell him in person and find out what needed to be done to get it fixed.

Unfortunately, it was not just any light. It was his favorite light from Salvo (now Light Monkey) with a custom made cable so it would fit his rebreather rig perfectly. Ouch.

WLIS MySound Data Buoy

After taking my ass-chewing for flooding the light, I called Light Monkey, who set up a repair for us. They told me they could turn the lights around in one day. No way we could get them back in time for the WLIS dive, but we should still have them back by the end of the week. I boxed up the flooded light and a second light with a shorter cable that also needed some routine attention. Dive lockers are notoriously hard on gear! After almost 3 hours we managed to get everything taken care of and the lights off to Florida with express service.

Finally, we could get back to the dive. Instead of our original noon start time, we crawled over the seawall by the dive locker (that’s a real joy in doubles, mind you!) and into the water at 3:04pm. It was a great dive too. Visibility in the cove was about 5′ and filamentous algae covered the bottom. But as soon as we got out of the shallows, vis opened up to maybe 10′ and the filamentous algae disappeared, revealing a thick carpet of macro algae and sea grasses. It seems to be an especially good year for the sea grasses and kelp, denser and much larger patches than I remember any year before.

Beach to beach swim - Dive Locker on right side, sail boat launch beach on left.

The fish count went great. We saw fluke (a.k.a. summer flounder) (Paralichthys dentatus), cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus), grubby sculpin (Myoxocephalus aeneus) and tautog (Tautoga onitis), as well as blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus), spider crabs (Libinia emarginata), and three horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus), including a very large male. There were many young of the year winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus), from a half an inch to 2 inches long.

As we were finishing our surface swim into the beach (too shallow to dive with the surge, too deep and rocky to walk), we noticed the DSO’s pickup truck parked right at the sea wall. As it was a bit late, we knew he was waiting for us. As we climbed up on the beach, he asked after the dive, what we saw etc., then casually asked who the lead diver was. Joe and I had never really settled who the lead diver was. He has ten times my experience, but I had suggested doing the dive, so I took the responsibility (knowing the other shoe was about to drop, most likely on my gluteus maximus). Sure enough, in all the confusion about the lights, I had forgotten to fill out the dive plan log on the marine operations bulletin board. We had fully briefed the DSO, but someone asked the marine operations manager if the divers off the Point were university divers. He didn’t know, but went down to the marine operations bulletin board to see. Ooops! Lesson learned and reinforced well.

Ass-chewings, by the way, do obey the laws of gravity, picking up momentum as they go downhill.

Grubby Sculpin

• Sergeant Major (Abudefduf saxatilis) – A post at Larval Images about one of my favorite ecosystems and one of the great juvenile fish that are commonly found there.
• Budget Hacking – A post here about the importance of NOAA for the myriad jobs they do, many of which are important for public safetly and economic security in addition to research. A post that I feel is a very important read, especially as the 2012 budget fight may still cut NOAA deeply, including the satellite’s needed to track and predict severe weather events as well as we do. Without NOAA’s work I think it is safe to say the Alabama death toll would have definitely  been significantly higher.
• Gulf of Mexico Dolphin Mortality Event – Posted as Scientist in Residence at Deep Sea News – in which I use the data from NOAA to take a more slightly more detailed look at deaths of dolphins since the oil spill in the Gulf, and explain the box and whisker plot.
• Dolphin Whiskers – now only Babies – published a few days later here, to address the concern that there is a higher that normal number of babies washing ashore, but the graph, as presented by NOAA and in the MSM, does not really support that claim. So again come out the box and whisker plots.
• My ‘Seascape of Fear’ – A second posting as  Deep Sea News Scientist in Residence, I discuss my recent trip to Belize as a teaching assistant for a coral reef fish ecology class and the arrival in Belize of the highly invasive Lionfish.
• How does a floating plastic duckie end up where it does? – A guest Blog post at Scientific American Part of a four post series on drifting junk in the oceans and how, sometimes, they can help us explore and learn more about the ocean currents. Other posts in the series include a review by Lindsey Hoshaw of the book Moby Duck (I’ll post my own review here later, I liked the book quite a bit more than Lindsey), an interview by David Manly with Moby Duck author Donovan Hohn, and a Matthew Garcia review of Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer’s bookFlotsametrics and the Floating World about tracing accidental drifters and the information they can give us.
• Is It Time to Relax Fishing Regulations? – Another Scientist in Residence post at DSN, this was a response to fisheries biologist Ray Hilborn’s recent op-ed in the New York Times advocating a relaxation of the current fishing regulations. (Enric Sala, Peter Singer, Daniel Pauly and Mark Kurlansky all replied to the paper.)
• Finally, Reflections, posted here, in which I examine where I have been, where I am and the options going forward.

Hopefully in the next few days we will have a guest posting or two here by Johann. Discussing some of his recent adventures and science from his point of view.

In addition to the postings there are several new YouTube videos I uploaded in the past weeks, mostly of the underwater variety.

One of the things I have to keep coming back to is “What do I want to be when I grow up”

But that has never been a simple question. When I was young I wanted to be a scientist and an explorer. I was excited and my imagination ignited by archeology, marine biology and the space program. I devoured national geographic magazines, Wild Kingdom and Jaques Cousteau’s specials. I remember reading and re-reading the articles by Dr. Eugenie Scott on the amazing fish of the Red Sea and sharks in general. I remember reading about Dr. Sylvia Earle’s descent to 1250m in a hard suit and her Tektite mission. I know it may sound crazy, but one of the highlights of my brief science career so far was to dive on the Aquarius site as a science diver… the descendant of Tektite, it was, part way to an old dream come true – to live and work in an underwater habitat studying the seas for hours and hours at a time. One day I still hope to make that dream come true.

Science diver approaching the NOAA/UNCW Aquarius Habitat off Key Largo, Florida

But my path took a strange turn and instead of going to Woods Hole or Scripts or Harbor Branch, I ended up in the Army working as an advanced communications specialist using, trouble shooting and fixing just about every type of communication technology in the Army, but specializing in satellite systems. It could be a challenging job, especially in remote combat deployments, but it really didn’t make me stretch. I spent my spare time reading and improving my animation skills as a form of entertainment. In Central America I learned to scuba dive and spent as much time on Roatan Island as I could, doing 3-4 dives a day. The more I dove, the more I needed to learn about the fish and invertebrates I was seeing. I subscribed to several diving magazines and bought every marine biology book my scuba instructor could get from the States. I invited my future wife to meet me in Roatan, unfortunately she declined.

Sunset on the Meso-American Reef. Copyright E. Heupel

After the army I worked in the computer industry in engineering and eventually web development until the bubble burst. When that happened I returned to school, studying computer systems and graphic design. Unfortunately returning to school also revealed that I had a memory issue. Tammy knew before, but I denied it of course. Unfortunately the tricks I had learned to use on the job, didn’t translate well to the academic environment. I struggled to find a new way of learning and studying, while my grades sank, eventually forcing me to admit defeat temporarily as I withdrew from school.

Fast forward to five years ago when I took advantage of an opportunity to again return to school. This time in Oceanography. I had since learned to deal with my memory issues with new strategies. I started slow, with only two classes, but soon took on a full course load completing the four year degree in three and a half years with a job, a family and still managed a 3.5 GPA. My old skills in electronics, optics, video production and web design all served me well working in labs and earning me opportunities to work with Remotely Operated Vehicles. At the end of undergraduate I knew I needed to take this further, I needed to revisit my old dream of being a scientist working in, on and under the ocean.

The motley crew of the SHRMP 2010 habitat monitoring program mission. Copyright E. Heupel

I was accepted to the graduate program and began learning more about sustainable fisheries and GIS than I thought was possible to learn (and yet I have still only learned a spall portion) . It has been a good run, but now it is almost over. I want to go on further, but I know I need a change in direction. My interests lay more with larval and juvenile marine organisms and their ecosystem roles (besides the stock answer I get from many: “as food” – too damn easy), or in the ecology of deep sea and mangroves and with invasive species in connection to any of the previous. I have at least a hundred questions banging around in my head, and I am loathe to even try to pick only one and say -> This is it.

One of my favorite fish of the mangroves is the juvenile sergeant major. Very cute, shy and nervous - darting constantly around the patch of mangrove they call home. Copyright E. Heupel

More than that there is the question of what good is a PhD, and is the cost too high to justify. I have put my family through a lot already. It has been financially very hard, and we have done without a lot. I have been fortunate that this program knows me, and knows the type of contribution I can make, and also understands that my family is the most important thing in my life. I will never be one of those scientists (or PhD students) so driven by the research that I sacrifice my family (which I have seem too much of in the past 5 years). Driven yes. If I had a spare $10,000 right now I would be on a plane to Belize to chase down one of my burning questions on invasive species and My Seascape of Fear (actually budgeted with no salary it a hair over 10,000). But I’m not going to throw my family under the bus to get there.

Which brings it once again back to what I want to do with the degree. I would like to be able to design and conduct my own research, which I would need a PhD for. I enjoy teaching small to medium size classes, as long as there is at least one or two kids turned on to learning. At a University or college a PhD is generally the ticket for admission to that. At community colleges, a PhD can be required, or a hinderance.

As for the most singlehandedly enjoyable thing I have done in the past 5 years – it would be the outreach efforts at Aquarius. Doing the science, putting on a live show, broadcasting it to kids in their classrooms and online – both doing science and helping to communicate it to a larger audience. That was for me a real rush. Many of the people involved in that team effort did not have PhD’s, but then again many did. I enjoyed the fact that we were communicating conservation, physics and biology directly and passionately to an audience eager to learn.

The marvelous crew of the Aquarius 2010 If Reefs Could Talk mission. Copyright E. Heupel

If I stopped right now, my ideal job, would be either as a freelance science communicator specializing in video and online production or it would be with one of the NURC centers or a similar scientific research organization or NGO where I can put my myriad skills to work – oceanography, diver, science outreach, video, animation, web, database, photography (normal and U/W) and ROV pilot (in training right now). But… likely I would not be able to do my own research, which is important to me.

If I were 23 and single, the answer for me would be easy – go for the PhD and study larval and juvenile ecology issues, especially in the mangroves and deep sea. But I’m not 23, or single. And I wouldn’t trade my family for anything, but it does mean I need to figure the 4-6 years of making (if I’m lucky) $30,000/yr while working very long hours into the equation.

A pair of undergraduate science divers from UCONN working with NOAA and UCONN scientists in the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary. Copyright E. Heupel

In short:

NOAA is a pretty lean organization operating on a budget that has been essentially flat for the past 5 years (minus two new joint NASA, NOAA and DoD programs to build and launch new weather satellite systems to replace the aging fleet currently in use). Most of the NOAA departments provide either significant public safety services, economic and food sustainability, or both. They also provide significant direct and indirect educational and outreach opportunities to children, educators, and the public. Cutting NOAA by the ~10% proposed will have direct short term and long term negative impacts on every American.

Maybe it would help people who are unfamiliar with NOAA to understand why this is such a big deal, if I explain what NOAA is.

NOAA is a relatively small organization, approximately 7,000 people, nestled under the Department of Commerce (but some argue it should be its own department). It was started in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, but it was formed from many extant government organizations that date back to 1807. NOAA was created to better protect American life and property, for as President Nixon put it:

The oceans and atmosphere are interacting parts of the total environmental system upon which we depend, not only for the quality of our lives, but for life itself.

We face immediate and compelling needs for better protection of life and property from natural hazards, and for a better understanding of the total environment — an understanding which will enable us more effectively to monitor and predict its actions, and ultimately, perhaps to exercise some degree of control over them.

We also face a compelling need for exploration and development leading to the intelligent use of our marine resources. We must understand the nature of these resources, and assure their development without either contaminating the marine environment or upsetting its balance.

Establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — NOAA — within the Department of Commerce would enable us to approach these tasks in a coordinated way.

Much of NOAA’s job is directly related to either protecting American lives and property or protecting American long term economic interests (National Marine Fisheries Service). It’s the responsibility of NOAA to report on and predict all the weather on land or sea and the contents of the seas out to our Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ (the area of ocean from the US coastline to 200 nautical miles out to sea). For years now (essentially since they were founded in 1970), they have been surviving on a pretty trim budget for what they do. For the 2012 fiscal year the President’s budget has NOAA at $5.5 billion, a bit less that we spend on the Federal Prison System ($6.8B) and roughly equivalent to NASA’s Science budget ($5B), the Army’s Training and Recruiting Budget ($5B) or… a hair less than the Budget for the Legislative Branch ($5.6B).

Two NOAA/UNCW Aquarius working divers prepare to splash to recover saturation divers in the habitat. Image J. Brugger

So what do we (meaning the general public) get for $5.5B?

Let’s start with the oldest branches of NOAA – The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) and the Office of Coast Survey (OCS). Both arise from the Survey of the Coast agency created by President Thomas Jefferson to create the essential charts of the new nation’s navigable waters to ensure safe commerce and defense. Today the OCS continues this mission and is responsible for charting the 3.5 million square miles of our Exclusive Economic Zone. This is an ongoing process as storms and other natural processes continue to shape the sea floor topography. In addition, shipwrecks happen and containers fall overboard, all creating new topography and obstacles to safe navigation, etc. Even if topography didn’t change, our technology continues to improve, allowing more accurate and finer resolution maps to be produced. NOAA data from the NGS also provides us with the spatial reference systems that appear on almost every map produced in the U.S. They are responsible for the Continuously Operating Reference System which augments the GPS system to provide sub-meter 3D spatial position accuracy. Possibly one of the most important tasks of NGS, at least for anyone who ever flies, is the extremely high resolution and accuracy information the NGS collects around all airports and provides to the FAA so they can develop safe instrument augmented and instrument only take-off and landing approaches and help determine maximum take off loads. These are clear public safety and economic benefit that we shouldn’t do without.

National Weather Service (NWS), anyone?

I have had the pleasure of living in many states across our beautiful country. Everywhere I’ve lived three things have held true:

• “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes….”
• There is some form of extreme weather event that is common enough to be on everyone’s mind when the proper season hits
• and finally, in large part because of the first two… many people rely on the national and regional forecasts and warnings provided by the NWS to safely plan their (select (m)any) day, weekend, week, planting, major event, flights, boating, diving (personal favorite), and, in many cases, work.

I’ve personally lived through hurricanes, tornados, horrendous hail storms, desert flash floods, severe coastal flooding, Nor-Easters with gale force winds, 117 degree F summer droughts and extreme cold snaps. In large part I survived them all because I could prepare or take immediate shelter thanks to the advanced warnings provided by the NWS. Many people in this nation, whether they realize it or not, are in the same debt for life and for property to the NWS.

NOAA WP-3D Hurrican Hunters taking off to fly into the eye of another hurricane.

Now to the controversial part of NOAA, or at least historically the most controversial, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). They are responsible for the stewardship of our nation’s marine species and the habitats on which those species depend. NMFS is an old agency originating in the 1870s, with the first fisheries lab in Woods Hole established by the first Fish Commissioner Spencer F. Baird and his left hand man, Vinal Edwards (Employee number 1). Their first task was to try and determine the fate of coastal fish along southern Massachusetts – small boat hand line fishermen and sport fishermen blamed pound net fishermen (erecting nets from the shore) for the disappearance of once plentiful coastal species such as tautog, scup, striped bass, and sea bass.

Today the main job of NMFS remains the monitoring of commercially important fish stocks, predicting the future stock levels and protecting both the future viability of those stocks and the habitats on which they depend. From an economic and societal perspective, all those stocks belong to every American. They are considered a natural resource, which belong to all the people, just as much as the federal forests or fresh waters do. Theirs is not an easy task, and especially here in New England, they are little loved, even though they are doing their best to use the best science available to walk a narrow line – providing enough protections for the fish, a national resource, while not causing undue harm to the fishing community, a limited group of private parties which pay few to no rents for the access to the resources. Already short-handed, the folks at NMFS ensure future food security and economic sustainability.

The NOAA ship Nancy Foster, part of the East Coast NOAA fleet of research and fisheries survey vessels.

The Rest of NOAA

NOAA also conducts extensive research on climate change, ocean acidification, and marine invasive species impacts. They maintain a fleet of 19 research ships and a dozen aircraft. The ships are a mix of oceanography and fisheries research vessels with a Pacific and an Atlantic fleet. The aircraft are mostly used for weather data gathering, including hurricane hunters that take their planes for a wild bronco ride straight through hurricanes and into the eye in order to measure the maximum eyewall winds and eye pressure, essential measurements for predicting the current storm track and helping model future storm behaviors. A professional uniformed corp of sailors, science technicians and airmen operate and maintain these vessels, many of which spent extended time in the Gulf responding to the oil spill.

Did I mention the National Marine Sanctuaries program? Think of it as the National Parks but on - and under - the sea. I have had the privilege of working in three of the sanctuaries, and hope to eventually visit them all. Each sanctuary has its own goals and rules, but in general it is to preserve a culturally, historically, or biologically important area of the sea set aside as a marine protected area. “Marine protected area” is a very loose term. Through much of Stellwagen Bank NMS commercial fishing is allowed exactly as it is throughout the rest of the Gulf of Maine. Other sanctuaries, Like Gray’s Reef NMS and the Florida Keys NMS have varying levels of prohibitions on commercial fishing, or gear types allowed within their boundaries. Each sanctuary employs a small (10-12 full time staff) but very dedicated team of scientists, NOAA Corps, administrators and educators to coordinate and conduct research and reach out to the local and regional communities. Gray’s Reef sponsors a Marine Film Fest every year, along with excellent online educational materials. The Florida Keys now sponsor Lionfish Derbies to catch as many lionfish as possible.

After the evening debriefing, the crew of scientists, educators and outreach specialists continue to discuss the highs and lows of the day and how to make tomorrow even better.

I have been privileged to work with NOAA using their assets for our own research, collaborating with their scientists, helping them undertake a series of interactive broadcast from under the sea to thousands of kids across the nation, linking kids thousands of miles from the sea directly to active ocean research, and giving them the chance to directly ask questions of the researchers and divers.

So where would you cut?

Each part of NOAA directly affects either public safety, current and future food and economic security, or both. If you cut the NWS, you risk putting American lives and property at risk. Cut NMFS and you endanger the sustainability of our fish stocks and risk our future food supplies. Cut the satellites or the uniformed service or reduce the fleet and the other NOAA departments are all reduced in their ability to do their jobs. Cut the outreach and education and you are not just taking away the ability to share the oceans with millions of kids across the nation and significantly reducing the number of teachers’ learning resources, you are dangerously reducing the number of people who will do all these vitally important jobs in the future. Any organization that focuses on science education is important in the 21st Century. We can’t afford to fall even further behind the rest of the world. The price we pay is saving a dollar today at the cost of tens of thousands in lost opportunities tomorrow.

How short-sighted can the people who want to axe NOAA be? The NOAA budget is a scant $5.5 billion and their true operating budget has been essentially flat since 2006. Is this really where you want to cut the budget? To me it smells of self-serving climate change denialism vengeance more than realistic budgetary considerations.

Edit: Dan Satterfield at The AGU Blog has an excellent article highlighting exactly what the loss of the new satellite programs will mean.

STRONGHOLDS; Hope for wild pacific salmon from iLCP on Vimeo.

One of the major concerns with climate change relates to habitat changes for the plants and animals. Will aspen survive anywhere in the United States? What trees will be able to survive in Connecticut in 2050? 2100? Where will elk be able to survive in 2100?

Of course these aren’t easy predictions to make since each species has distinct environmental requirements. Even more troubling though is that many have complex relationships with other organisms, both beneficial and detrimental. Then there are the often complex food webs that each species is a member. some webs are resilient to loss of several species but others collapse with the loss of only one.

While sea temperatures are generally more stable than air temps in terrestrial systems, many of the marine animals have even tighter requirements for temperature. Even a change in just a few °C can prevent reproduction, reduce lifespans, or even cause death. That is the case with the Icelandic Scallop. In some recent experiments it was found that the scallops had a significantly higher mortality in temperatures above 12°C. Average summer sea surface temperatures off Iceland’s southern coast have been in excess of 10°C in recent years and have been rising. A +2°C change over the previous decades has brought the average summer sea surface temperature very near the scallop’s maximum threshold. While the scallops are still able to survive, there has been a marked increase in adult mortality.

Icelandic Scallop - Image from http://www.osl.gc.ca/guide_sp/en/invert/sp/c-islandica.html

Increasing temperature may not directly be the primary cause of the recent increases in mortality of the scallops, though it has been strongly implicated. In recent years, a protozoan parasite has affected much of the stock of C. islandica around Iceland. As with the scallop itself, many protozoan parasites have been found to have temperature thresholds and ideal temperature ranges. For instance Perkinsus atlanticus populations under controlled experiments did not grow, in temperatures of 5°C, grew slowly at 16°C, and grew quickly at 20°C and 26°C. It also failed to grow and died out after 4 days at an experimental temperature of 37°C. Similarly, two other protozoan parasites of interest on the Atlantic Coast are also temperature controlled: Parkinsus marinus, the cause of the disease dermo in oysters, requires temperatures above 25°C to thrive, Haplosporidium nelsoni, which causes MSX in oysters (although it can survive and multiply at temperatures of 5°C-25°C) requires temperatures above 20°C to infect a new oyster. Temperature is likely also a controlling factor in the spread of the protozoan infecting C. islandica.

While the Iceland Scallop is what instigated this post, the topic of climate change and its effect on marine animals, particularly fish, is one I have been thinking of a lot lately. In much the same way that the scallops are temperature limited, fish have ideal and survivable temperature ranges, and temperature can play a significant role on growth and reproductive success. Complicating the issue is that many of the fish have very specific habitat preferences or needs as well.

Atlantic Wolffish - Photo copyright Peter Auster from http://www.nurc.uconn.edu/bigmouthfishes/photos/SBNMS/content/neg7_large.html

Take for instance the Atlantic Wolffish (Anarhichas lupus) a species of increasing concern in the Gulf of Maine, if fact they are likely to be soon added to the Endangered Species Act. They are a wonderful (dare I say beautiful) fish with some great characteristics and a face only a mother, or a crazy marine biologist, could love! They feed mainly on molluscs, crustaceans and echinoderms using their huge canines. They are a large benthic fish, growing up to 5 feet and weighing up to 40 pounds.

They are also a slow growing and late maturing species. Growth and maturity varies with temperature fluctuations, but generally they are reproductively mature by 6 years or about 16 inches total length. Spawning pairs of male and female form in the spring with actual spawning period varying, possibly as a function of temperature. As with many species, reproductive success increases as females grow larger and older, producing both more eggs and more viable eggs (ranges from 5,000 to 12,000 eggs per season). The female lays her eggs in holes and around boulder reefs. The male then begins a fast, loses his teeth, and guards the eggs for four to nine months of egg incubation (again a function of temperature). Four to nine month fasting and guarding the eggs. Think about that one guys!

wolffish pair from CLF (credit: Jonathan Bird) on Vimeo.

One of the cool things about wolffish is the presence of anti-freeze in their body, which allows them to survive, even thrive, in extremely cold waters. In the wild they have been caught in trawl surveys in waters from -1.9°C to 14°C. In the laboratory they survived temperatures as high as 17°C, but feeding was strongly negatively correlated with the higher temperatures.

So temperature is a major factor on the wolffish, but so is habitat. Wolffish are most often found in rocky reefs or seaweed beds on hard substrate from 80m to 180m depths, but range as deep as 650m and can, on occasion, be found in coastal shallows. My most memorable dive in New England remains being about 3 feet away from a 4 foot wolffish in the cove just off Avery Point in late November.

Young wolffish keep to the deeper, colder part of their range where temperatures remain -1°C to 4°C. Only mature fish are found in shallower ranges and higher temperatures with an upper temperature limit of 10°C.

My thoughts recently have related mainly to mapping the current and potential future ranges of some of these animals using habitat suitability modeling techniques in geographic information systems (GIS), including especially ecological niche factor analysis (ENFA). Using what we know of their habitat requirements (for the wolffish: -1°C-10°C, boulder reefs for spawning, 80m-200m depth, and abundance of lobster, crab, urchin or molluscs) we can map the current optimal and sub-optimal ranges. It doesn’t mean they’ll be there, but it is where the potential for finding them should be highest, based on our understanding of their requirements. By altering the temperature and depth components to match forecasts based on climate change models, we can look ahead to forecast the likely range of the animals, and even the decade by decade march or retreat of suitable habitat.

An example of using mulitple habitat factors with multipliers to determine ecological niche. From http://www2.unil.ch/biomapper/

For some animals the outlook is pretty bleak. The combination of habitat requirements and temperature requirements will drive them completely out of the Gulf of Maine and potentially out of the Western Atlantic entirely. There are many fish that are at their breeding temperature limits in the Gulf of Maine already, including many commercially important species. Some marine animals are existing in virtual islands of suitable habitat formed by complexities of depth, substrate type and complexity, currents and temperature, among many other factors.

The challenge is to identify, for each species or community, which of these factors are most important for both the organism’s survival and our modeling efforts. Unfortunately, especially in the marine realm, there is still so much we don’t know about the ecological requirements of may of the animals and communities. Even mapping the seafloor at resolutions comparable to our maps of terrestrial areas continues to be challenge. It often surprises many people I talk to when they find out that almost all our knowledge of marine animal populations and habitat characteristics comes from commercial fisheries and from sample trawls by the NMFS. Most species that are not targets of fisheries or considered commercially important have not been studied extensively, if at all.

Trawler bringin up it's haul - from http://en.wikivisual.com/images/f/fb/Fish_on_Trawler.jpg

In the marine environment it is very challenging to accurately predict how communities will respond to warming waters and how individual species ranges will change, simply from lack of direct observation. We are getting better at using the important data we do have, and have identified proxies for the data we simply do not have, but we need more time in the water with ROV’s and DSV’s for direct observations, especially of the continental shelf and deep sea ecosystems.

Wolffish eating a sea urchin from CLF (credit: Jonathan Bird) on Vimeo.

References

Burreson, E., & Ford, S. (2004). A review of recent information on the Haplosporidia, with special reference
to Haplosporidium nelsoni (MSX disease) Aquating Living Resources, 17 (4), 499-517 DOI: 10.1051/alr:2004056

Hagen, N., & Mann, K.H. (1992). Functional response of the predators American lobster Homarus americanus (Milne-Edwards) and Atlantic wolffish Anarhichas lupus (L.) to increasing numbers of the green sea urchin Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis (Müller) Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 159 (1), 89-112 DOI: 10.1016/0022-0981(92)90260-H

Jonasson, J., Thorarinsdottir, G., Eiriksson, H., & Marteinsdottir, G. (2004). Temperature tolerance of Iceland scallop, Chlamys islandica (O.F. Muller) under controlled experimental conditions Aquaculture Research, 35 (15), 1405-1414 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2109.2004.01159.x

King, M.J., Kao, M.H., Brown, J.A, & Fletcher, G.L. (1989). Lethal freezing temperatures of fish:
limitations to seapen culture in Atlantic Canada. Proc Ann Aquacult Assoc Can., 89 (3), 47-49

Ordás, M., & Figueras, A. (1998). In vitro culture of Perkinsus atlanticus, a parasite of the carpet shell clam Ruditapes decussatus Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, 33, 129-136 DOI: 10.3354/dao033129

One last awesome video of a wolffish!

Wolffish devouring a crab from CLF (credit: Jonathan Bird) on Vimeo.

Croak! Says the Sea Robin
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.

Searobin

     by Johann Heupel

All my life I have struggled to overcome negative exposure to sharks. I think I have won, but it has been a long haul.

My earliest memory of sharks is from 1975. I was spending the night at a friend’s house. Across the street from his building was the base movie theater. All that Friday night we were scared witless by the constant screams we heard coming out of that theater during the three showings. We had seen the posters on the movie theater billboard and our imaginations filled in all the rest, which is not too hard for imaginative 7–year–olds. It would be years later before I actually saw the movie, which only reinforced my abject fear of sharks.

Fortunately, my folks exposed me to National Geographic and the Cousteau Society, so I was also exposed to sharks as amazing animals and important parts of the ecosystem. Yet, whenever we’d visit the coast and go swimming, in the back of my mind I would worry about the sharks. As an adult in the Caribbean, I was revisited by that fear when I began diving. I have to admit my greatest concern when I began diving was that I was entering their realm. I slowly got over that fear (mostly) as I got more dives under my belt, including several dives with reef and nurse sharks. Then came Somalia.

In Somalia there was a strict order not to swim in the beautiful waters around Mogadishu. I have to tell you it is VERY tempting to take a small dip in the water to escape the equatorial heat, especially when you’ve been riding convoys in full battle gear and are caked in sweat, dust, and dirt. A moment of wading in cool salt water to escape it all was very inviting. I wanted nothing more, but the order was there for a reason. In a little over a year 6 UNOSOM workers were bit by sharks in Mogadishu. Three died of their injuries. I knew Mogadishu was a unique place for the sharks. The area had become a rich hunting ground for them, thanks in part to a history of townspeople throwing carrion and refuse into the waters nearby. Eventually the UN installed a shark fence around the beaches at the airport. I wonder if it’s still there.

To the south in Kismayo, I did a couple dives with several sharks in the area. My job was to keep an eye out for sharks while the underwater specialists carried out their jobs. I was pretty scared, but I was young and dumb and diving with a bunch of seriously gung–ho types, so I wasn’t about to admit it. The funny thing is the sharks were there, but their behavior was very non-threatening, even the largest of them. They occasionally came into view, swam lazily at a distance, then receded back into the blue. They were not terribly interested in us or our activities.

I continue to dive, even in the “dive by touch” conditions that the locals call “high visibility” in Long Island Sound. I have studied sharks a bit more and the critical part that many sharks play as part of their ecosystem. Intellectually, I know that even as a diver and someone who works in the marine environment, I am less likely to be bitten by a shark than I am to be struck by lighting or electrocuted by my toaster. Yet, in the back of my mind, there is still a little kernel of concern. When I see the replica of the great white in the cafe on campus (caught just outside of Long Island Sound), or I hear of the juvenile great white found in the estuary near here, I find myself having to shake off that fear and refocus my thoughts.

I have been fortunate to see sharks up close in the wild and I realize that they are not the killing machines that the media often portrays them as. Even the Discovery Channel uses sensationalism and fear to sell their Shark Week. I haven’t watched Shark Week for several years, since I was disgusted by their inaccurate and sensationalistic portrayal of sharks the last time I did watch. Shark Week then was about 80% fear and sensationalism, 15% interesting factoids, and 5% conservation, proactive education, and recent science. The shame is that Shark Week could be a force for genuine education about shark conservation and the importance of sharks in the ecosystem.

I certainly hope that they have changed their portrayal of sharks, especially since the sharks are in desperate need of our help. Even Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws, expressed his deep regret over having written Jaws after the damage it caused.

“Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today,” said Benchley, who also co-wrote the screenplay for “Jaws.” “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges.”

Unfortunately, with shows such as “Deadly Waters” and “Sharkbite Summer” in the lineup, it doesn’t look likely. I could take a very optimistic view and hope that “Deadly Waters” is describing the terrible daily massacre of sharks for shark fin soup. Maybe “Sharkbite Summer” is about us putting the figurative bite on sharks. But as far as the Shark Week advertising and show titles go on the Discovery Channel website, the message is still all about fear.

I mean really, how far have we come in 34 years??

The 1975 film poster for Jaws

and 34 years later, the 'Web Poster' for Shark Week 2009