Warning: base64_decode() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/eheupel/eclecticechoes.com/wp-content/plugins/askapache-google-404/askapache-google-404.php on line 156
Science » Eclectic Echoes
Skip to content

Category Archives: Science

Guest Blogging Fun

The past few weeks turned out to be pretty busy for me online (at least compared to the past oh, 24 months), though from this site alone, it may be hard to tell. Since much of my posting has been at other places I thought a quick summary of the months posts (and links) would be helpful for those interested:

  • 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.

Reflections

As I begin the home stretch for my MSc in oceanography I have been looking very hard at the job markets and the world of research science out there. It is not pretty right now, but then, with the help of a loving and supportive family we’ve weathered this type of climate before. I know we’ll find our way through this and come out the other side, happy. Because that is just what we do Tammy and Johann and me. We cling tight to what matters most – each other and our closest family and friends.

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.

Neemo9 aquarius

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.

IZE Sunset

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.

Motley Crew

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.

Juvenile Sergeant Major

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.

A Magnificently Motley Crew

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 Whiskers – now only Babies

Para-sight recently wrote a post at DSN urging caution in assigning blame to the BP oilspill as the cause of recent cetacean deaths along the Gulf Coast. To try and address one of the issues he raised, I wrote a guest post there using the raw data from NOAA to quickly try and get an idea of how bad the dolphin situation in the gulf really is when examined in the light of the historical data available. Unfortunately the graphs NOAA created comparing 2010 and 2011 to historic data made it hard to truly evaluate as they used the average value for each month for the historic data. Based solely on their presentation of the data all that can really be determined with any confidence is, as Para-sight noted:

…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

As both commenters pointed out there seems to be a major issue going on here! Just look at February! a 36x increase from 2010 (pre spill) and an almost 18x increase in deaths over historic averages. And March is better, but still a 2x increase over last year and 3x increase over historic levels.

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.

Budget Hacking

The current crop of Republican and Tea-Party congressmen and women are trying their best to kill this country. At least, that is how it seems to me now. Many of their budget cuts so far have been primarily symbolic; however, now they are cutting into an organization that has historically been significantly underfunded for the tasks put before them – now they are going after NOAA. I have to admit, I have a bias in this, as much of what I do is directly related to NOAA and I work with NOAA employees frequently. But the truth is, every American has a direct stake in this one.

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).

NOAA/UNCW Safety Divers prep to remove Aquanauts

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.

Hurricane Hunters

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


Speaking of NWS, there is the Satellite and Information Service they rely on to help manage the fleet of NOAA and NOAA partnered satellites that provide 24 hour global coverage for weather and climate data. They also operate the DoD weather satellites. What is a good portion of the recent NOAA budget increases (this year and in recent years) people keep tossing around? Here is where much of it is. Satellites have a pretty fixed lifetime and NOAA is currently building and launching a new generation of Polar orbiting and geostationary satellites to continue providing (and to improve) the weather forecasting we all rely on one way or another. The NOAA portion of the new polar orbiting weather satellite program (DoD and NASA are also involved) has a budgetary price tag of over $1 billion, which is largely on the 2011 and 2012 budgets.

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.

NOAA Ship Nancy Foster

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.

Behind the scenes

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.


NOAA maintains a cadre of educators and communicators to engage the public, especially children, about ocean and weather issues. Using a range of technologies, they provide training for educators through the Teach at Sea program and through web delivered continuing education courses. They broadcast missions from the middle of the ocean or from beneath the seas directly to classrooms, aquariums, and museums across the nation, as well as providing high bandwidth internet video feeds.

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.

Some R + Google magic

Nothing much to see, just me making sure I understand everything going in in the post over at R-Ecology to use Google Visualization API. Using this we can get excellent presentation of data like Hans Rosling’s brilliant TED Talk. Took the fish harvest data set and added a new column for trophic level (using fishbase for species I didn’t already have literature references for). First the basic modification to make sure I understood the subsetting etc.

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




Data: trophdata2, Chart ID: MotionChart_2011-01-23-00-26-21

R version 2.12.1 (2010-12-16),

Google Terms of Use

Generated on Sun Jan 23 00:26:25 2011 with googleVis.
Powered by R.rsp v0.4.1.

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!

Eclectic Echoes is Stephen Fry proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache