The University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program (Hawai‘i Sea Grant) is proud to announce that, out of 12,000 entries received from all 50 states and 5 continents, our Voice of the Sea television series has received five 2019 Telly Awards for episodes focused on environmental and cultural issues in Hawai‘i.

Voice of the Sea won two bronze Telly awards in the Educational Institution category for “Designing Future Coastal Communities” and “Visiting the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology.” These episodes highlight the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Architecture and the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology. Both episodes delve into the cutting-edge work the university is doing to understand sustainability, community resilience, and tropical marine ecosystems.

Voice of the Sea also won two bronze awards for “Adapting Culture to Climate Change” and “Hidden Benefits of Farming Kalo” in the Cultural category. These episodes explore how cultural practitioners, university faculty, community members, and non-profit organizations are working together to understand the changes in our environment, and how centuries-old traditions are critical to optimizing today’s food production and water quality.

Lastly, Voice of the Sea won a bronze award for “Water Resources Research” in the Education category. The episode features the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Hawai‘i, and how its research is furthering our understanding of the unique water and wastewater management issues in Hawai‘i and the Pacific.

This Saturday and Sunday, May 25 and 26, Voice of the Sea will highlight EXPORTS (EXport Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing) researcher Dr. Brian Popp, an oceanographer with the University of Hawai‘i, along with 100s of colleagues from more than 20 institutions across the country.

EXPORTS is an epic research project funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation to study the ocean’s carbon cycle. The aim of the research is to understand how carbon moves from the atmosphere to the deep ocean in order to more accurately predict future climate conditions.

“The carbon humans are putting into the atmosphere is warming Earth,” Mike Sieracki, program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, noted in a NASA press release. “Much of that carbon eventually finds its way into the ocean and is transported to the deep ocean, where it is sequestered and will not return to the atmosphere for a long time. This project will help us understand the biological and chemical processes that remove the carbon, and establish a foundation for monitoring these processes as the climate changes.”

Planning for the expedition has taken over a decade to coordinate scientists, satellites, remote underwater vehicles, and two research vessels. The School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology’s (SOEST) Dr. Popp is leading one of the expedition’s projects, in collaboration with former SOEST Young Investigator Hilary Close, now a professor at the University of Miami.

To watch the 30-sec Promo of the episode visit vimeo.com/330700174  or https://youtu.be/AKPl_QHEKyw. To learn more about EXPORTS and view the first EXPORTS episode which premiered in April, visit http://seagrant.soest.hawaii.edu/exports-sally-ride/

Voice of the Sea airs on TV Saturdays at 4:00 pm and Sundays at 5:30 pm, on K5 The Home Team (KFVE). It is a signature project of the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant Center for Marine Science Education. To watch full episodes or learn more about Voice of the Sea visit voiceofthesea.org.

The Telly Awards were established in 1979 to honor excellence and support creativity in local, regional, and cable TV programming. Sabrina Dridje, managing director of the Telly Awards noted in a release “With record-shattering number of entries, this year’s Telly Award entrants truly represent the most innovative video and television work being made for all screens.”

NOAA, the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS), and partners have launched a new buoy in Fagatele Bay within the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa to measure carbon dioxide and other important seawater characteristics within the bay’s vibrant tropical coral reef ecosystem.

“This new monitoring effort in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean will not only advance our understanding of changing ocean chemistry but will also help us communicate these changes to diverse stakeholders in the Pacific Islands and across the United States,” said Derek Manzello, coral ecologist with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

Fagatele Bay is home to more than 160 species of coral, as well as giant clams, fish, dolphins, and the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle. Coral reefs and shellfish are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of increasing carbon dioxide in our ocean. As the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the acidity of seawater increases. This is known as ocean acidification, which can threaten the ability of shellfish and corals to build their skeletons, hamper new coral growth and accelerate reef erosion. The loss of coral reefs impacts local economies, affects the health of fisheries and tourism, and exposes coastal communities to increased storm surge.

“PacIOOS is excited to collaborate with NOAA and many local resource management agencies to implement this valuable ocean observing asset in the Pacific Islands region” said Chip Young, PacIOOS Operations Coordinator. “This new buoy site in the Southern Hemisphere will support the ongoing coral reef research being conducted by NOAA and other agencies in the region with near real-time observations, and complement two similar existing coral reef monitoring sites in Kāneʻohe Bay and on the South Shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.”

The buoy measures carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as well as seawater measurements of carbon dioxide, temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and chlorophyll. All data can be viewed online on the PMEL and PacIOOS websites.

“Each buoy is unique based on the location and partners involved,” said Adrienne Sutton, oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab who oversees NOAA’s ocean acidification mooring network. “It takes a whole village to create and manage an ocean acidification observing site like this.”

Partners in the project include the National Park of American Samoa, Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources of American Samoa, Coral Reef Advisory Group of American Samoa, Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) and NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Coral Reef Conservation Program, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, and National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.

On May 10, 2019, the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) based at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology redeployed its wave buoy outside of Tanapag, Saipan, after it broke free from its mooring during Super Typhoon Yutu in October 2018.

The wave buoy was adrift for more than six weeks. In December 2018, approximately 800 nautical miles into the Philippine Sea, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sequoia, stationed in Guam, recovered the buoy in challenging ocean conditions while patrolling the high seas,

The yellow wave buoy provides valuable wave and ocean information. Data on wave height, direction and period, as well as sea surface temperature, are transmitted in real-time and are publicly available online.

“We are so grateful for the U.S. Coast Guard’s support and effort to recover the drifting wave buoy. Without their partnership, we would have lost this important ocean observing instrument,” said PacIOOSDirector Melissa Iwamoto. “The buoy is now back on station and we are excited to continue to provide high-quality data to our stakeholders in Saipan and the region.”

The Tanapag wave buoy is one of three PacIOOS wave buoys in the Mariana Islands; the other two are located off Ritidian Point and Ipan in Guam. Wave buoy data benefit a large variety of ocean users, agency officials and community members to make safe decisions. Fishermen, surfers, commercial tour operators and many others regularly check the data to get a better understanding of the ocean conditions.

Read the full story on the PacIOOS website.

Learn more about the other PacIOOS wave buoys deployed around the Pacific.

For the first time, a cross-disciplinary study has shown chemical, physical, and material evidence for water formation on the Moon. Two teams from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa collaborated on the project: physical chemists at the UH Mānoa Department of Chemistry’s W.M. Keck Research Laboratory in Astrochemistry and planetary scientists at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in SOEST.

Although recent discoveries by orbiting spacecraft such as the Lunar Prospector and the hard lander Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite suggest the existence of water ice at the poles the Moon, the origin of this water has remained uncertain. Lunar water represents one of the key requirements for permanent colonization of the Moon as a feedstock for fuel and energy generation (hydrogen, oxygen) and also as “drinking water.”

The breakthrough research is outlined in “Untangling the formation and liberation of water in the lunar regolith,” lead-authored by UH Mānoa postdoctoral fellow Cheng Zhu and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chemistry Professor Ralf I. Kaiser and HIGP’s Jeffrey Gillis-Davis designed the experiments to test the synergy between hydrogen protons from solar wind, lunar minerals and micrometeorite impacts. Zhu irradiated samples of olivine, a dry mineral that serves as a surrogate of lunar material, with deuterium ions as a proxy for solar wind protons.

Deuterium irradiated only “experiments did not reveal any trace of water formation, even after increasing the temperature to lunar mid-latitude daytime temperatures,” Zhu explained. “But when we warmed the sample, we detected molecular deuterium, suggesting that deuterium—or hydrogen—implanted from the solar wind can be stored in the lunar rock.”

Kaiser added, “Therefore, another high-energy source might be necessary to trigger water formation within the Moon’s minerals followed by its release as a gas that can be detected.”

The second set of deuterium irradiation experiments was followed by laser heating to simulate the thermal effects of micrometeorite impacts. A burst of ions with mass-to-charge ratios matching that of singly ionized heavy water was observed in the gas phase during the laser pulses. “Water continued to be produced during laser pulses after the temperature was increased, suggesting that the olivine was storing precursors to heavy water that were released by laser heating,” said Zhu.

To image these processes and interpret the broader impact on the Moon and other bodies, HIGP’s Hope Ishii and John Bradley used focused ion beam–scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy in the Advanced Electron Microscopy Center. They observed sub-micrometer-sized surface pits, some partially covered by lids, suggesting that water vapor builds up under the surface in vesicles until they burst, releasing water from lunar silicates upon micrometeorite impact.

“Overall, this study advances our understanding on the origin of water as detected on the Moon and other airless bodies in our Solar System such as Mercury and asteroids and provides, for the first time, a scientifically sound and proven mechanism of water formation,” HIGP’s Gillis-Davis concluded.

Patricia Fryer, professor in the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, participated as science advisor for the recent Mariana Trench expedition led by extreme explorer Victor Vescovo. During the expedition, which ended on May 9, 2019, the submersible DSV Limiting Factor dove four times in the Challenger Deep area, reaching the greatest depth record, and once in the Sirena Deep, the second deepest part of the Mariana Trench.

Fryer, who is also an alumni of the SOEST Department of Earth Sciences (formerly Department of Geology and Geophysics), was requested on this expedition for her expertise in the Mariana Trench. She was there when first remotely-operated vehicle from the United States dove to the Challenger Deep in 2009. And Fryer was a member of the expedition in 2012 during which James Cameron became the first person to complete a solo dive to the deepest place on Earth to date.

“Being a part of this recent expedition was thrilling!” said Fryer. “This exemplifies the incredible, incremental advances we are making as a scientific community in looking at the world’s deepest ocean.”

The Limiting Factor was designed and built by Triton Submersibles, for Vescovo’s Five Deeps Expedition with the goal of reaching the deepest point in each of Earth’s five oceans. As the only submersible certified to dive to unlimited ocean depth, the Limiting Factor dove in the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic, the South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean, the Java Trench in the Indian Ocean and most recently the Challenger Deep in the Pacific. The Molloy Deep in the Arctic is the last of the remaining dives to complete the Five Deeps Expedition goal.

Vescovo brought back sediment and a couple of rocks from the Sirena Deep that Fryer is examining at UH Mānoa. First, Fryer will image the surface of rocks with a scanning electron microscope to assess the microbial and other seafloor creatures than may exist on the rocks and exposed portions of the mantle in this area. Next, she will make extraordinarily thin slices of the rocks to identify the minerals present and the texture of the rocks. Depending on what she finds there, Fryer may learn more about the mantle’s stress history in this geologically active area.

One thing that is clear, is in terms of how rocks are altered in the deep sea, microbial and geochemical activity are intimately linked. Fryer is interested in understanding the limits and origins of life and what factors influence it. The Limiting Factor submersible will be made available for future dives and will open a new era of hadal marine discovery.

The Five Deeps Expedition is being filmed by Atlantic Productions for a five-part Discovery Channel documentary series due to air in late 2019.

Read more on BBC, The Washington Post and Independent.

After three intense rounds of competition, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Shidler College of Business Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE) announced the winners of the 2019 UH Business Plan Competition (BPC), sponsored by American Savings Bank. Nic Ulm and Bradley Beeksma, graduate students in the SOEST Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering, took home the second place prize for Dive Buddy, their diving equipment and technology company specializing in providing tour companies with diver safety and diver identification products. The prize package includes includes a $5,000 UH BPC Award in Honor of Pioneer Billy Richardson by HiBEAM and more than $13,500 in legal, marketing, and startup support services

While diving for UH’s scientific diver course, Ulm was frustrated by having to carry technical equipment and an awkward tow-line for a dive flag, all while keeping track of his dive partner. So, Ulm and Beeksma developed a drone that eliminates the need for tow-lines on dive flags, giving divers the freedom to focus on safety and research unhindered.

Last year, the Dive Buddy team won second place in the 2018 UH Breakthrough Innovation Challenge conducted by PACE. This year, they added three consultants for the competition—UH Mānoa students focusing on business and law, Melody Leilani Kaohu, Isaac Lee and Zack Naqvi.

“We plan on using our awards for developing a prototype over the summer,” wrote Beeksma. “We’ll also be working to build the company in preparation for meeting the local demands of our technology within a year.” 

Jeff Taylor, Researcher Emeritus with the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in SOEST,  has been named a member of the Science Advisory Board for the Blue Origin lunar lander, called Blue Moon.

Board membership was revealed during a press conference by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on May 9, 2019 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The five other scientists on the advisory board are Harrison “Jack” Schmitt (Apollo 17 astronaut, geologist), Steve Squyres (professor of astronomy at Cornell University), Bradley Jolliff (Scott Rudolph professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis), Dean Eppler (former geologist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and field tester of experimental spacesuits), and Ryan Watkins (research scientist with the Planetary Science Institute). The Board provides feedback to the Blue Moon team about lunar surface composition and material properties, sampling strategies, lander design, landing site selection, lunar science goals, and resource exploration.

“Serving on this advisory board and working with Blue Moon is one of the most exciting opportunities I have had,” Taylor said. “The Blue Moon project is the beginning of the second stage of human exploration of the Moon, and the one I hope leads to permanent settlement.”

“Space exploration is far from a diversion in addressing pressing problems on Earth,” Taylor said, “it’s part of the solution. Using space resources expands Earth’s natural resources and opens up vast new opportunities for the benefit of people on Earth.”

For more information on Blue Moon, visit https://www.blueorigin.com.

Read more on UH News and Yahoo News.

A journal article published this week by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology concluded that naturally occurring super corals in Kāne‘ohe Bay, O‘ahu are already surviving under ocean conditions that many predicted would decimate all coral reefs on the planet.

The research, funded by the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program (Hawai‘i Sea Grant) and published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,” showed how reefs within Kāne‘ohe Bay which were devastated by sewage inputs between the 1930’s and 1970’s recovered within 20 years after the sewage input was diverted. Amazingly, the reefs recovered while withstanding warmer temperatures and more acidic conditions than nearby reefs outside the bay.

Dr. Christopher Jury, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology at University of Hawai‘i and lead researcher for this study, noted “I discovered how unique the situation is in Kāne‘ohe Bay during my PhD research at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. We knew that the temperature and chemistry conditions in Kāne‘ohe Bay are very similar to the conditions that people predict will kill corals off globally, yet, the reefs in the bay are thriving, making the area incredibly valuable as a possible window into the future.”

Around the world, coral reefs are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. To reverse this trend scientists are working to create super corals that can survive climate change, ocean acidification, and local human impacts. The coral reefs in Kāne‘ohe Bay naturally harbor large populations of super corals, which were given the opportunity to recolonize and thrive once the sewage pollution was removed.

Dr. Jury concluded “Over the next 20-30 years, changing ocean conditions and human impacts will have negative impacts on coral reefs. The question is, what happens next? If we ignore these problems then our generation will be the last one to see healthy, functional coral reefs. However, if we take major strides to substantially reduce the rate of climate change, conditions will start to improve. During our lifetime we could begin to see the corals rebound, and our children and grandchildren will witness the recovery of coral reefs because we made the decision that reefs are worth saving.”

Read more on Discover Magazine, KITV, Big Island Now and UH News.