Relative to searches for Justin Bieber, et al., the number of searches for biodiversity is essentially zero. Even if we take Britney Spears, whose star is fading, searches for her name during 2011 outnumber those of biodiversity by about 23 to 1. That is, for every person who searches for biodiversity, 23 are looking for information about Britney Spears.

Pretty disheartening result, I must say, at least on the face of it. Roger is a bit concerned about the result as well.

But what does it mean? Do people care more about one rather mediocre pop singer than they do about the dwindling variety of life on the planet?

I think it’s a an interesting exercise, and the results fit what we might expect, but on thinking about it, I would not give the results much weight in answering any questions save “What term is searched more?”

I was a little concerned about the biodiversity search term as a representative of “conservation”, and the acceptance of this search as, shall we say, a positive interest equal across all possible search terms. How many people do we expect to search for “biodiversity” compared to searching for “Britney Spears” and how do people search for those two conceptually very different terms?

Since he started with the argument of people caring more about pop culture more than conservation issues, I would have liked to see a comparison using more than just the term “biodiversity”. Biodiversity may be the heart of conservation, but I think it may not be the first term to come to most peoples’ minds when thinking about conservation. It is a relatively recent term, and while widespread in science, conservation and management communities now, is it as widespread in the public? And perhaps more to the point, is it understood by the public that biodiversity is the core of conservation? Perhaps it would be more representative of the spirit of the comparison to use a series of conservation oriented terms such as “biodiversity”, “endangered species”, “wildlife conservation”, etc., instead of just the term “biodiversity”.

The graph above (and all to follow) begin at January 2010 and extend to March 2012. The results are normalized to the highest data point (which becomes 100). Pop culture again has far more searches than a collection of conservation related terms.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think the primary group of searchers for “biodiversity” are likely students. Someone looking for an answer for a homework question for 6th grade science class or studying for their finals in Bio101 in college. What would a student search for? To me the most logical searches would be “biodiversity definition”, “biodiversity examples”, “measuring biodiversity” and plain old “biodiversity”. Other people besides students would surely search for biodiversity, but I think that it’s a term that you really only search for once or twice. For most people it has an answer. “Biodiversity is …”, “Biodiversity is measured by ….”, etc. Sure, there are a small group of people, most likely people in ecology or conservation, that may search biodiversity heavily as a keyword for news items, etc., but I believe this would be a very small group.

Using Google Insights again, we can check the context of the searches for biodiversity:

Using Google Insights to check the context of the searches for (ulp!) Justin Bieber:

Google has equated a search as being equivalent to interest in the search term. I think it is logical to use interest defined this way to compare terms from similar categories. Comparing a pop star to a politician and a public scientist is a fair comparison. Comparing philosophies such as capitalism and socialism is a fair use of interest through Google searches. In the case of biodiversity, comparing a similar idea, such as ecosystem, would be a logical use. Just for fun I ran a few Google Insights comparisons keeping the search terms from similar categories:

Compare “Capitalism” and “Socialism”

How about comparing “biodiversity”, “ecosystem”, “genetic diversity”, “species diversity”

Notice the cycle for both “biodiversity” and “ecosystem”? I think this supports my hypothesis about the major search groups for biodiversity being students. There appears to be a strong periodicity that correlates to the school year. Low “interest” July and August, then sharply higher September through the end of November. December break? Sharp but short decline. January to April high again. May? Even higher (finals anyone?) then trailing off for June as the trimester and K-12 schools taper on out. Fits my hypothesis, but really need to look through a longer time series, and compare the pattern to other searches that should and should not be correlated with school activity. Is there a general decline in Google searches in the summer and Christmas holidays because of people spending more time away from the computer? Does that alone explain timing and magnitude of the pattern seen.

Finally comparing “Bieber” : “Obama” : “Santorum” : “Hawking” : “Darwin”

While I think comparing the number of searches for terms of similar category (e.g. concept, person, activity, place etc.) is a valid way to compare some level of interest, I think it’s getting on shaky ground to compare interest in an idea such as biodiversity, with a pop star, using the number of searches conducted on Google. It’s a situation of comparing apples and broccoli. It seems to me that the underlying assumption that the number of searches for a term is an equivalent measure of interest for any possible search term, allowing comparisons across broad categories is flawed. But then, that is often a tricky issue with proxies—understanding the assumptions and what they mean for where the proxies do and do not work.

Where I do think this is an interesting and potentially useful tool is sort of at the interface of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and outreach. For an outreach organization understanding how people search for the concepts you provide outreach for is important. Often the terminology used by people who are experts on a subject is very different from terminology used by those who are familiar with the subject, which is very different from the terminology used by those who are entirely unfamiliar with the subject. Understanding what terms are often used by the different groups and how they search for them allows an outreach group to craft their outreach so that it is more discoverable for their target audience and allows better communication (& hopefully positive impacts) with that group. This is the type of work we used to do with large focus groups and surveys when I worked in industry. While I think it’s still a good idea to use either a small focus group or survey to get seed data, with Google Insights online the same results could potentially be accomplished with carefully planned Google Insights mining alone.

Another science alphabet doodle. Maybe this will be turning into an Invertebrate Alphabet series. They are fun to do, even though they are a grand procrastination. I enjoy the hand lettering, exploring bits of my past.

As for the infra order Brachyura – these are the true crabs, with short tails folded under their bodies (Brachyura comes from the Greek brachys oura or “Short Tail”). There are over 6000 species of brachyura. Most are marine but there are about 1000 species that live all or a significant part of their lives in either freshwater or on land. They range in size from a few millimeters across to a leg span of 4 meters!

Brachyurans eat just about anything: detritus, seaweeds and sea grasses, mussels, fish, fresh carrion and each other. In turn they are eaten by pretty everyone as well: mainly other crustaceans and fish, but also birds, starfish, sea turtles and of course mammals including us. True crabs are a delicious and economically important food source—1.3 tons of true crabs were commercially captured in 2010.

The Aplacophora are a very interesting group of exclusively marine molluscs. These worm-like creature were once considered to be holothurians (sea cucumbers) but they were later identified as molluscs from their mantle and primitive radula (two key features of molluscs). Most have been found in very deep waters (as in 5km+ deep). Most of the discovered species live their life buried in the mud feeding on detritus and microscopic organisms in the mud. Some prey on cnidarians. Most are tiny (as in a few mm in length) but some tip the tapes in excess of 30cm long. All have no internal or external shell, though they do have calcareous spicules in their mantle. So far ~300 species have been documented. In the Mollusc Diversity Playing Cards the 2 of Spades is the large Aplacaphoran, Neomenia yamamotoi.

Going to visit my folks for the holidays is going to be great, don’t get me wrong, but going away for the holidays is also making like more complicated than it needs to be. Or is it that my normal levels of procrastination doing that? Or is it both?

As we get ready to head to Texas and celebrate Christmas with family, I am also in the process of:

• writing up 2 manuscripts,
• trying to put together a grant proposal
• finishing my plan of study
• studying for the General Exams (that will be coming as soon as I submit my plan of study)
• doing quality assurance on the video analysis that my interns did on the Crepidula project
• beginning work on the next set of ScienceDecks.com playing cards

Obviously this will be a working vacation. Gotta make sure that I have all the data files and GIS layers I need on the laptop, on an external drive and uploaded to Dropbox. All of the relevant reference papers are also going up to both Dropbox and Mendeley as well as being on the laptop.

Part of me is screaming to leave it all behind and just enjoy the next week or so with my family, but the realities of deadlines dictate otherwise. Still, I will be limiting myself to only 2-3 hours of focused work per day. 1-2 hours or so right after coffee and the balance right before bed. Maybe a bit of small task type editing during the inevitable downtime during the day when we’re between doing other things.

Edit: See SciCurius’ post on similar issue – Do you love Science? Well, that depends, do you like sleep?

The obvious question is, “How?” We barely get by right now. We were forced to live off of our savings and house downpayment a long time ago. The first thought that came to my mind was a bake sale. Why not? Other people have done it. Eric was skeptical and laughed, thinking I was joking. I was dead serious. You don’t know if something will work until you try and regular channels aren’t working. We have to get creative to get what we want.

So I suggested my idea about CafePress again. He’s had an account set up there, but never did much with it. When I was brainstorming for ideas on how to make money to cover our bills if the PhD offer doesn’t come through, I thought of printing our leaf art onto T-shirts to sell. Eric read about other scientists who have turned to the online community for help and thought, “Well, maybe we CAN do it.” And so, Science Bake Sale was born.

Diver on Gray's Reef - Leaf art inspired by research dives on Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary

Please go take a look and see if you like what we have so far. We have plans for more CafePress designs and some marine biology and ocean themed original artwork and dyed clothing that will go up on an Etsy Store as well. Our first goal is to buy a replacement scooter, so Eric is sure to be able to complete his research dives.

• 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.

…dolphin deaths are not that rare to start with and that this is the time of year for it (i.e. it’s not actually “unusual”, it’s “seasonally-appropriate”). Secondly, it means that it’s not much worse in magnitude than last year, albeit peaking a little earlier.

and

But in these cases, the devil IS so often in the details. I am not saying oil wasn’t involved; I’m just saying we can’t infer causality from correlation without a closer examination of the data.

Running the raw data through excel (to subtotal & clean) and R and I could see more of the information Para-sight warned was needed to get a better feel for the situation. And sure enough I was able to add to his observations that:

the pattern of the event does strongly suggest that the oil spill is related, but looking at the prior events, it is not outside the realm of possibility that this is not directly related to the oil spill. The best evidence to determine the involvement (or lack thereof) of the oil spill is going to be found in necropsy and toxicology reports of the stranded animals.

In the meantime however several people commenting on the original post pointed out that the biggest issue was with the a specific age class of dolphins. As “Dr. Ed Cake” commented:

…In the meantime, this year’s neonates continue to wash ashore dead in the BP spill zone and all potential mortality factors can be dismissed except the impacts of BP’s oil and Nalso’s Corexit dispersants.

and “Don” stated:

NOAA provides data specifically for “baby dolphins.” It shows a five-fold increase in mortalities in 2011 compared to 2010.

So that last bit especially really made me wonder. The more detailed data showed there was an unusual mortality event (UME) happening with cetaceans in general, though it is not clearly linked to the spill. But a five fold increase for one key age class??

So tonight I journeyed forth again to the NOAA website, and found on scanning down to the bottom of the page, there is a table of “baby dolphin” deaths as Don phrased it. It is more accurately “premature, stillborn, or neonatal dolphins”. NOAA used the cutoff of 115cm total length to split out these deaths and presented them as both a table and graph:

neonatal, stillborn and premature dolphin deaths

Graph of all neonatal, stillborn and premature bottlenose dolphins

However, here again we are given historic numbers solely as the average. As Para-sight warned, and we saw with the complete cetacean data set, that is a dangerous way to look at data like this.

But what about the “baby dolphin” data?

From the truncated graph NOAA presented it appears there may be a seasonal pattern (not unexpected) but it is hard to tell with out the complete year graphed. It is also not possible (again) to tell what the range of values is for each month. The numbers 100 and 2 average out to the exact same value as 52 and 50 do, but the range of values, and the story it tells, is quite different! Back to the data set, with definition in hand I extracted all bottlenose dolphin records with lengths of 115cm or less and duplicated the analysis I did on the full set over at DSN. The resulting table:

Gulf Coast Strandings of Bottlenose Dolphin <115cm

First thing to notice comparing the two tables is that yes February deaths were an order of magnitude higher than the historic range.

The second thing to note is — they don’t match. Not just that I included the entire year in the table, but the numbers for the averages in each month they did include don’t match. They only averaged 2002-2007 for their historic baseline. So I redid the table using only 2002-2007, still the numbers were slightly off. Using their dataset and the definition for premature / neonatal / stillborn they gave, I get different numbers than they do. Aggravating. I am comparing historic data to the 2011 data, I double checked all the subtotals are correct and redid the summary table creation three times each time with the same result. I have verified that the data in the table is true to the definition given by NOAA and the raw data NOAA has provided. I really don’t like omitting data without good reason (which was not provided by NOAA) so I finished the evaluation keeping the 2008-2009 data in:

Box and Whisker plot of Stranded Bottlenose Dolphins less than 115cm. 2011 data blue diamonds, 2002-2010 data boxplots with outliers as open circles.

So what does this one tell us? And is it different from the conclusions inferred from the NOAA graph?

Based on the NOAA graph and table one would assume that all months except April were UME months, and April, one could easily argue, is on it’s way to being a UME month as well, after all, that is only 10 days of April data. However, looking at the box plots only January and February really stand out as a UME(s). February is clearly an outlier, in fact the most deaths and the most radical outlier of the entire data set. January is an outlier but is it a UME? I guess that depends on the definition, but it is two standard deviations above the mean January number of deaths, so I would say it is a UME. While March is high, it is still within the range of expected numbers from the historical data. Granted March is right at the upper edge of that range, but it is within that range nonetheless. If we were using Para-sight’s suggestion of using values greater than two standard deviation above the mean as the definition of a UME then only January and February would be as well. However when taken with the previous two months I would suggest that March is a continuation of the same UME.

As for April, with only 10 days of data for the analysis, it is right at the edge of the expected range of values from the historic April data. One could argue, I suppose, that it will climb much higher, but without the actual numbers any discussion of that is pure speculation. I expect that it will climb as well, but we’ll just have to wait for the rest of the data to come in to really say anything about it conclusively.

What is more interesting to me though than the month by month numbers is the pattern, both historic and for this year. Historically, just as with the larger population, bottlenose dolphins < 115cm have a clear pattern of strandings. The late winter and spring (January through May) is the period of strandings, with most strandings clustered in the February through April period with the sharp peak in March. The rest of the year have much lower numbers. The box plot and the full table also reveal that each year it would be unexpected to find no strandings under 115cm but in the summer through early winter (June through December) it is actually an unusual event to find a stranding, let alone more than one.

This is a direct clue to the reproductive biology pattern of the Bottlenose Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. I have very little knowledge of dolphins so had to turn to some local experts for help (contrary to popular belief all ocean scientists DO NOT work on dolphins). Turns out that Bottlenose Dolphins generally mate from late March to May and have ~11-12 month gestation period. At birth a bottlenose dolphin is anywhere from 85-110 cm long (the reason for the 115cm cutoff). Looking at the length records the smallest animal found was a January 2006 stranding at 40cm. Fully 83% of the strandings were of individuals between 85 and 110cm which combined with the seasonal pattern would corresponds essentially to very late term neonatal or newborn aged individuals. Examining the length vs. month of death did not provide any real patterns except that March had the widest range of sizes in the strandings, which is not too surprising as March had significantly more deaths than any other month in the aggregated data.

This year however the peak is clearly in February. Why? Unfortunately I did not see any length data for this year, just summary numbers. Were these individuals mostly less than 85cm? That would infer prematurely born babies or late term miscarriage. If they were mostly in the 85-110cm range? That would suggest they were from the early mating season, likely conceived before the oilspill, and at full term.

So, yes , there is a major unexplained mortality event that is causing a significantly higher number of neonatal, stillborn and premature Bottlenose Dolphin strandings. February’s mortality is the worst event for individuals under 115cm on record, by a fair margin. I expect the number for April will go higher, quite possibly being an outlier. From the timing, the oil spill is certainly a suspect for being a cause. That does not however mean it IS responsible. There is still no way to know the oilspill’s relation to these deaths without detailed necropsy and toxicity study results.

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.

Be sure and play with the axis and selecting species etc.

This would be sweet to use on the Vinal Edwards data! I know i still have it around here somwhere… or the NEBO data?

Next add subsort by price per pound and trophic levels then….[edit] done!