A SOEST graduate student is the first Pacific Islander to voyage to the deepest part of the Earth, the Mariana Trench, and its deepest region, the Challenger Deep (35,827 feet), on March 11, 2021.

Nicole Yamase, a PhD candidate in the UH Mānoa Marine Biology Graduate Program, explored the Western pool of the Challenger Deep with Victor Vescovo, a deep-ocean explorer and multi-world record holder, making this the third dive ever to this location. Yamase was also the first marine botanist, youngest female and third woman to ever visit Challenger Deep.

Watch the YouTube video of her experience.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the fine silt bottom of the Challenger Deep through the small window. We were hovering 2 meters off the ground,” said Yamase. “This was the moment I was preparing for and it was finally here. All I could think about was how proud my ancestors and the whole Pacific Island community would be.”

“I hope this experience inspires other young Pacific Islanders to pursue STEM fields and higher education, so that they can serve as role models for the next generations,” added Yamase.

10-hour expedition

Because the Challenger Deep is located in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) ocean territory for the Federated States of Micronesia, Yamase was nominated by the Micronesia Conservation Trust in partnership with the Waitt Institute to represent her country.

Vescovo, owner of the 224-foot research vessel DSSV Pressure Drop and the only commercially certified submersible that is capable of reaching any ocean depth multiple times, piloted the two-person submersible to the Challenger Deep. Four hours after leaving the surface, Yamase and Vescovo made it to the bottom and spent 2 hours exploring the eastern part of the pool, an area no human, to their knowledge, has ever been before. Then they took another 4-hour ride back up to the surface, spending a total of 10 hours underwater.

Yamase brought down a few personal items, one being a hand-size model canoe that belongs to her father, Dennis Yamase, who is a UH Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law alum. The canoe represented her father being her first inspiration to pursue undergraduate and now graduate studies in marine biology. Yamase reflected, “I’ve identified as a Micronesian. The canoe also represents my mother’s family from Pohnpei and Chuuk. She instilled in all her children the values of respect for others, our traditional culture and my natural surroundings, as well as an appreciation for our diverse background.”

Shallow reefs connect to deep ocean

Yamase’s research focuses on shallow-water communities, specifically macroalgae—the foundation of the food web. Some of the energy that supported life in Challenger Deep may have been contributed by dead plant material that has made its way to the bottom via marine snow, a shower of organic material falling from upper waters to the deep ocean.

“And now I could see, quite literally how these reefs in the Federated States of Micronesia are connected with the deepest place on Earth,” added Yamase.

After seeing debris (tethers) at the bottom of the ocean, this pushes Yamase to finish her degree and be a part of organizations that help protect the full reef from shallow waters to deep ocean.

“Yamase’s inspiring voyage to the Challenger Deep is a once-in-a-lifetime journey to a place that less than 20 people visited before in human history,” said Malte Stuecker, an assistant professor at UH Mānoa’s Department of Oceanography and International Pacific Research Center. “In addition to being an explorer, Nicole is currently finishing her graduate studies in marine biology and working as a teaching assistant for the ‘Sustainability in a Changing World’ class offered in the Oceanography Department.”

Read more on UH News, Marianas Variety, The Guam Daily Post and The Guardian.

A visionary educational tool aimed at fostering dialogue about future planning along the south shore of urban Honolulu, which stretches from Diamond Head to Pearl Harbor, is the result of a two-year, state-funded applied research, analysis and proof-of-concept design project by the University of Hawaiʻi Community Design Center.

The completed “South Shore Promenade and Coastal Open Space Network Study: Resilience and Connectivity by Design” (PDF) project intends to further the contemporary local and global discourse on climate-resilient, adaptive urban waterfront development in tropical island settings. The work visualizes potential long-term sea-level rise scenarios and speculative, nature-based living shoreline design solutions.

“Bringing the South Shore project to its conclusion has felt great because we are proud of the results and happy to disseminate them more broadly!” said Judith Stilgenbauer, principal investigator of the project and professor of landscape architecture in the School of Architecture. “In contrast to many scientific sea-level rise and climate-change studies, which often paint doomsday scenarios, our project highlights opportunities intrinsic to an inevitable need to plan for the adaptation of our coastal urban fabric throughout the remainder of the century.”

Embrace coastal flooding

By investigating past, present and planned shoreline conditions in urban Honolulu, this study advocates for the anticipation of climate-crisis challenges through innovative planning and ecological design that embraces dynamic conditions, such as coastal flooding, rather than preventing them—all while taking inspiration from traditional Native Hawaiian biocultural land-water practices.

“This is critically important work that highlights the vast potential for adapting to sea-level rise,” said Chip Fletcher, associate dean and professor in UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “The fact-based land-use analysis combined with the creative design depicting flooded landscapes, frees the viewer’s imagination to consider a future for Hawaiʻi in which our communities live with water, rather than fighting it. I will be referring to Judith Stilgenbauer’s work for years to come as it is a source of many solutions that we need to implement on our journey to building climate change resilience.”

Leveraging sea-level rise research

The project’s four guiding principles, which form the basis for the structure of the research and carry throughout the multi-scalar planning and design proposals—balanced in mutually beneficial ways—include: climate-change resilience, ecosystem performance, connectivity and placemaking.

“Stilgenbauer’s work leverages the sea-level rise modeling that researchers in SOEST produced in 2018,” said Fletcher. “Our models of flooding depict the footprint of sea-level rise impacts this century. It has always been our goal that experts in other disciplines would build on our products, which is exactly what this project does. This is the type of interdisciplinary thinking that needs to be at the heart of solutions to protect our communities in the face of a more dangerous climate.”

For any questions or inquiries regarding the South Shore project, please email Stilgenbauer at jstilg@hawaii.edu.

Learn more at UH News, Hawaii News Now, West Hawaii Today and The Garden Island.

The first imaging of substantial freshwater plumes west of Hawaiʻi Island may help water planners to optimize sustainable yields and aquifer storage calculations. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers demonstrated a new method to detect freshwater plumes between the seafloor and ocean surface in a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The research, supported by the Hawaiʻi EPSCoR ʻIke Wai project, is the first to demonstrate that surface-towed marine controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) imaging can be used to map oceanic freshwater plumes in high-resolution. It is an extension of the groundbreaking discovery of freshwater beneath the seafloor in 2020. Both are important findings in a world facing climate change, where freshwater is vital for preserving public health, agricultural yields, economic strategies, and ecosystem functions.

Profound implications

While the CSEM method has been used to detect the presence of resistive targets such as oil, gas and freshwater beneath the seafloor, this study is the first time CSEM was applied to image freshwater in the ocean water column, according to ʻIke Wai research affiliate faculty Eric Attias, who led the study.

“This study has profound implications for oceanography, hydrogeology and ocean processes that affect biogeochemical cycles in coastal waters worldwide,” said Attias. “Using CSEM, we now can estimate the volumes of freshwater emanating to the water column. This is indicative of the renewability of Hawaiʻi’s submarine freshwater system.”

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), the leaking of groundwater from a coastal aquifer into the ocean, is a key process, providing a water source for people, and supporting sea life such as fish and algae. According to UH Mānoa Department of Earth Sciences Associate Professor and study co-author Henrietta Dulai, the location of offshore springs is extremely hard to predict because of the unknown underlying geology and groundwater conduits.

“The flux of such high volumes of nutrient-rich, low salinity groundwater to the ocean has great significance for chemical budgets and providing nutrients for offshore food webs,” said Dulai. “It is great to have a method that can pinpoint discharge locations and plumes as it opens up new opportunities to sample and identify the age of the water, its origin, chemical composition, and its significance for marine ecosystems in this otherwise oligotrophic (relatively low in plant nutrients and containing abundant oxygen in the deeper parts) ocean.”

Four Olympic swimming pools

This study included electromagnetic data driven 2D CSEM inversion, resistivity-to-salinity calculation, and freshwater plume volumetric estimation. Through the use of CSEM, the research team was able to image surface freshwater bodies and multiple large-scale freshwater plumes that contained up to 87% freshwater offshore Hawaiʻi Island. The results imply that at the study site substantial volumes of freshwater are present in the area between the seafloor and the ocean’s surface. A conservative estimate for one of the plumes suggests 10,720 cubic meters or approximately the volume of four Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The methodology used in this study can be applied to coastal areas worldwide, thus improving future hydrogeological models by incorporating offshore SGD and optimizing sustainable yields and storage calculations. Attias plans to extend the novel use of CSEM to further prove its application in imaging freshwater at other volcanic islands around the globe.

Attias will present his work at the International Tropical Island Water Conference taking place April 12–15, 2021. Hosted by the UH Water Resources Research Center and Hawaiʻi EPSCoR, this conference brings together water scientists, water managers and community members from around the world to share cutting-edge research and learn from each other’s experiences managing and understanding water resources across a broad range of tropical island settings.

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation EPSCoR Program Award OIA #1557349.

Read also on UH News.

An invention that enhances the longevity and performance of fuel cells has been awarded a U.S. patent. Researchers from the Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) in SOEST developed a “smart” system called an Environmental Sensor Array that senses and reacts to changing air quality in real time.

Renewable energy has grown to almost one-fifth of the electricity produced in the U.S.—increasing energy security, conserving natural resources and reducing carbon emissions. Fuel cells produce energy for transportation and other applications by combining hydrogen and oxygen, producing exhaust that is nothing more than water.

To supply fuel cells, hydrogen is typically sourced from a high pressure, onboard tank and oxygen is sourced from the ambient air. Although it is possible to assure the purity of the hydrogen, air contaminants within the environmentally-sourced air can be poisonous to the fuel cell and cause performance degradation to the point of fuel cell failure.

The new system, developed at HNEI by Mitch Ewan and Scott Higgins, may be the solution.

“This device will significantly lower the operational and maintenance costs of operating fuel cell electric vehicles, prevent breakdowns and lower the cost barriers to replacing internal combustion vehicles,” said Higgins. “In addition, this device will allow fuel cells to operate reliably in environments they previously could not.”

Identifying an opportunity

Environmental air quality varies based on location and can be highly contaminated with atmospheric particulates or poisonous gases from natural or industrial sources, depending on the area of operation.

“Air quality is particularly problematic for military vehicles in a battlefield environment with significant levels of air contaminants that could cause operating fuel cell electric vehicles to stop working,” said Ewan. “Over the past 25 years, the PEM fuel cell industry has addressed this contamination problem by applying increasingly complex and costly air filtration technologies to the air inlet of fuel cells.”

Innovating a solution

Ewan and Higgins began work on their new invention in 2012 after realizing that although there was a significant emphasis on hydrogen purity, little attention was given to air supply purity and how to manage it in real time.

As they developed and tested their system design, they also developed the software control system in order to make the system “smart,” including real time feedback on the health of the air filtration system. The software can respond to changing air contaminant conditions by adjusting operation of the fuel cell electric vehicle including calling for shutdown of the fuel cell when air contaminants are above damaging levels. When the fuel cell is operating in an environment with low levels of air contamination where the onboard air filter is capable of purifying the air to safe levels, the system continues to monitor its performance and calculates how much useful life remains in the filter.  Laboratory scale capabilities were developed at HNEI to allow simulation of environmental air quality and performance testing of the sensor array and filtration media, thus allowing predictive filtration performance modeling and optimized operation of fuel cell performance for any location around the globe.

Ewan and Higgins’s patented technology is currently in use in two Fuel Cell-Electric Buses being deployed in the County of Hawaii public transportation bus fleet. This technology can also be used on any stationary and mobile fuel cell power system. Their work is supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research.

University of Hawai‘i support

The Office of Innovation and Commercialization (OIC) promotes University of Hawai‘i-developed intellectual property and technology assets and shares those assets to address the challenges and opportunities faced by Hawai‘i and the world. 

OIC supported the patenting process from inception with the initial invention disclosure through engaging and working with the patent attorneys to eventually secure the patent for the HNEI invention. OIC also supported HNEI’s interaction with potential industrial partners who have expressed interest in licensing the patent.

“We couldn’t have done this without their support,” said Ewan.

Read also on UH News.

Shuai Li, an assistant researcher at the Hawaiʻi Institute for Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP), is one of nine scientists recently funded by NASA to serve on the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter mission team. Li will be using data acquired by the satellite’s ShadowCam instrument to locate ice deposits in the Moon’s polar craters. ShadowCam’s principal investigator is Arizona State University’s Mark Robinson, who is a HIGP alumnus.

Set to launch in August 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and orbit the Moon for about a year, KPLO is the first space exploration mission of the Republic of Korea (ROK) that will travel beyond Earth orbit.

The three overarching goals of the KPLO mission are realizing the first space exploration mission by ROK, developing and verifying space technologies suitable for deep-space exploration on future missions, and investigating the physical characteristics of the lunar surface to aid future robotic landing missions to the Moon. 

To meet these objectives, the spacecraft will carry a payload of five scientific instruments to include three cameras, a magnetometer, and a gamma-ray spectrometer. NASA is contributing one of the cameras, the ShadowCam, which will be used to obtain optical images at high-resolution of the permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles of the Moon that are thought to contain ice.

“The KPLO Participating Scientist Program is an example of how international collaborations can leverage the talents of two space agencies, to achieve greater science and exploration success than individual missions,” says Dr. Sang-Ryool Lee, the KPLO Project Manager, “It’s fantastic that the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) lunar mission has NASA as a partner in space exploration—we’re excited to see the new knowledge and opportunities that will arise from the KPLO mission as well as from future joint KARI–NASA activities.”

The Moon will be the focus of many robotic and human exploration missions in the coming years, including those under the agency’s Artemis program. Beginning later this year, NASA will send science instruments and technology experiments on two separate American robotic landers to the lunar surface. Follow-on commercial deliveries for NASA are slated about twice per year, including flights to the lunar South Pole. The KPLO lunar mission will provide scientific data to better understand the lunar poles and assist planning for some Artemis activities. 

Read more on NASA News.

Two graduate students from Hawai‘i, Derek Kraft and Anita Harrington, were awarded the prestigious 2021 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship and recently began their one-year paid fellowship in Washington, D.C. focusing on critical marine policy issues.

The students are representing the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program and were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants from across the nation to serve in either the legislative or executive branch of government.

“We are excited to welcome the 2021 class of Knauss fellows and look forward to the skill and perspective that they will provide towards addressing critical marine policy and science challenges,” said Jonathan Pennock, National Sea Grant College Program Director.  “As the government and the sciences adapt to new norms for working driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Knauss fellowship will create novel opportunities for the fellows to redefine how government and science interact and operate for the benefit of society.”

Derek Kraft, who recently completed his PhD in in marine biology at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, will be spending one year in the NOAA Fisheries Highly Migratory Species Management Division.

As a PhD student his research focused on conservation genetics of sharks, and he developed a shark bite forensics protocol used to identify the shark species involved in bites on surfboards, wetsuits, and even fish. The year at NOAA will provide him with an opportunity to continue his passion for developing policies for the sustainable management of sharks, tunas, and billfish.

He noted “I feel honored to have landed in the Highly Migratory Species Management Division for my Knauss Fellowship. I’m excited for this experience, and hope it leads to a successful career in fisheries management so I can see how my PhD research on conservation genetics of sharks plays into sustainable management of my favorite creatures – sharks!”

During her time at Hawai‘i Pacific University completing a master’s degree in marine science, Anita Harrington began her pursuit of a career in conservation and environmental stewardship through studying the winged box jellyfish in Hawai‘i. 

In Washington D.C. she will have the opportunity to work as a science and policy fellow for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Science Applications Office. She joined the team at a critical time as it begins to focus heavily on integrating critical climate adaptation and resiliency strategies throughout the organization.

Anita said “This year, I will be spending most of my time as a member of the Climate Change Workgroup which is focused on implementing the new administration’s climate change goals and policies. I look forward to collaborating with colleagues of diverse backgrounds to provide necessary information on climate change and help bring the topic to the forefront of discussion.”

Since 1979, the National Sea Grant College Program has provided fellowships working in federal government offices in Washington, D.C. to over 1,400 early-career professionals who have become leaders in science, policy, and public administration.

Source: Hawaii Sea Grant press release

Researchers found something unexpected inside a rare false killer whale that stranded dead on Maui in February 2021, and it could ultimately help the endangered species. The whale was an insular false killer whale, the most critically endangered species of dolphins and whales in Hawaiian waters. While investigating it’s cause of death, the University of Hawaiʻi Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Lab found the remains of octopuses in its stomach, which was previously an unknown part of the species’ diet.

“Understanding their food habits is foundational to their biology and ecology and has relevance to fishery interactions (an identified threat to the population) and in defining critical habitat for this endangered species,” said Kristi West, lab director and an associate researcher at UH Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology.

The UH lab conducted a necropsy, an animal autopsy, in cooperation with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service, to obtain biological samples and examine the individual for signs of cause of death and evidence of fishery interactions. Examining an insular false killer whale in Hawaiʻi is a rare opportunity for the UH lab, as the last stranding occurred in 2016.

The stomach contents in the recent stranding revealed the importance of a new food item, the pelagic octopus, to false killer whales in Hawaiʻi. The remains from 25 individual pelagic octopuses were identified among the stomach contents of this individual.

Population threats

There are three distinct populations of false killer whales that call Hawaiian water homes with one that is endangered.

The best estimate is that there are approximately 170 individual false killer whales remaining in the endangered insular main Hawaiian islands population. Fishery interactions and high pollutant loads have been identified as population threats. Most of the remaining individuals have been individually identified by their dorsal fin profile with sightings catalogued by Cascadia Research Collective. The stranded whale was matched to the catalog and represents a known individual first sighted off Maui in 2000.

“This work is only possible because of an extremely dedicated team of graduate students, undergraduate students and other program volunteers,” said West. “UH partners with collaborators such as Cascadia Research Collective, the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) and NOAA Fisheries to maximize the information that can be obtained on false killer whales and the threats that they face.”

Examining stomach contents

The diet composition of endangered false killer whales is known from the stomach contents of previously stranded individuals and observations of live animals in the wild. Live false killer whales are most commonly observed by Cascadia Research Collective foraging on gamefish, including mahi-mahi, ono, aku and ʻahi. Prior stomach content analyses have identified gamefish such as ʻahi, mahi-mahi and the large diamondback squid as important to the species’ diet.

Future research on this animal will include stable isotope analysis, contaminant analysis and body condition assessment at the time of stranding through blubber examination. This is anticipated to provide further information to assess diet and predator prey relationships in the species, and to better understand the threat of pollutants and nutritional stress.

If members of the public have the opportunity to take photos of this species, photo contributions to Cascadia Research Collective’s photo-ID catalog are useful for monitoring the population. Researchers also rely on public reporting of distressed or dead dolphins and whales. To report strandings, call the NOAA Fisheries hotline at 1(888) 256-9840.

Read more on UH News, Maui Now, Maui News and Big Island Now.

The first Mars sounds and images via SuperCam, an instrument located on top of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars, were presented in an online press conference on March 10 via YouTube. Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology researcher Shiv Sharma is a co-investigator on the SuperCam instrument team.

This was the first opportunity for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and France’s National Centre for Space Studies to show SuperCam data to the public, with the first half of the press conference in French and the second half in English. SuperCam is currently undergoing a series of tests designed to verify the operating status of all of its systems, part of an overall rover check-out phase which will last about three months.

“We all at UH were thrilled to hear the first sounds and see the first images of rocks on Mars taken by SuperCam,” said Sharma. “In the next three months, we are looking forward to more discoveries, especially if the SuperCam finds past life on Mars’ surface.”

The SuperCam instrument team will assist with detection of biosignatures—indicators that life existed in the distant past. The team will be able to detect organic compounds and biosignatures from a distance on and in rocks, soils and sediment layers on Mars.

SuperCam is a suite of instruments that uses remote optical measurements and laser spectroscopy to determine fine-scale mineralogy, chemistry, and atomic and molecular composition of samples encountered on Mars.

“The successful landing of the Mars 2020 rover during this pandemic has captured the attention of people around the world, and has restored the confidence in science and technology,” said Sharma. “At UH, it is creating enthusiasm among undergraduate and graduate students showing that they could one day participate in the field of planetary science as well as solving the problems of our home planet Earth.”

Read more on UH News.

Andrian (Adi) Gajigan, oceanography graduate student at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), has been awarded an Early Career Grant from the National Geographic Society to examine microbial and viral drivers of red tide in Bolinao, Philippines as a 2021 National Geographic Explorer.

National Geographic Early Career Grants identify emerging leaders, build their capacity through professional development, and provide funding for a one-year project.

Gajigan, a biochemist and oceanographer, will use the award to investigate the role of microbes and viruses in red tides, a phenomenon that occurs when certain algae are so numerous that coastal water can be colored red. The algal blooms can deplete oxygen in the water and release toxins that are dangerous to humans and other animals, causing some areas to enforce shellfish bans to protect communities. This project will be done in collaboration with his colleagues both in Hawai‘i and the Philippines.

As a doctoral candidate in SOEST professor Grieg Steward’s laboratory, Gajigan focuses on phytoplankton viruses. His scientific endeavors span from the molecular level to ocean-scale processes.

While earning his Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and Master’s degree in marine science at the University of the Philippines, Gajigan participated in open-ocean research near the Philippines and around the world, assessing microbial community diversity and structure as well as assisting with a project to develop an early predictive system for harmful algal blooms.

“I’ve been fascinated with science since I was a kid,” said Gajigan. “However, growing up in a developing country like the Philippines, I didn’t think of science as a career. My life has always been at the intersection of the sociopolitical turmoil in my home country that affects the resources we have, and what dreams I can pursue.”

“There is still work to be done in advocating and moving towards the inclusion of marginalized and minoritized people so that we have the chance to work in and contribute to STEM fields,” he continued.

Beyond his research, Gajigan is also active in community organizing around justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professions; youth, migrant and worker’s rights; and genuine freedom for the Filipino people.

“My career goal is to become a multifaceted scientist spearheading projects at the national level in the Philippines and at a regional scale across the Asia-Pacific region,” he said. “I intend to be connected to my roots, establish a research program in my home country, and train the next generation of oceanographers and explorers.”

Read also on UH News.

Heavy rains are part of the winter wet season in Hawaiian Islands. But the downpours triggering flooding that destroyed homes and bridges and set off mass evacuations on multiple islands recently are also an example of the more intense rainstorms officials and climate scientists say are occurring more frequently as the planet warms.

Two key ingredients came together in Hawaii in recent days to deliver the rain: an upper-level disturbance and extra moisture in the lower layers of the atmosphere. The downpours first affected Maui, moved northward up the island chain to Oahu and Kauai, then circled around and hit the southernmost part of the Big Island.

Pao-Shin Chu, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at SOEST and the state climatologist, described for the Associated Press how climate change might affect Hawaii weather events.

He said theoretical studies suggest that for every one-degree Celsius increase in sea surface temperatures, there is likely to be a 7% increase in atmospheric moisture.

The frequency of intense rains like that one and this week’s are an indication people should be prepared for such events more often, Chu said.

Read the full story on Associated Press.

Chip Fletcher, SOEST associate dean for academic affairs, detailed for Hawaii News Now the limitations of Honolulu’s current infrastructure in the face of climate change.

“And one of the factors that plays into the damage is that our engineering systems designed to drain runoff out of our communities are under scaled for this intense level of precipitation,” said Fletcher.

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said the city has created an interdepartmental “One Water” panel to address climate adaptation.

Read more on Hawaii News Now.