Parental experience may help coral offspring survive climate change

A new study from scientists at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) reveals that preconditioning adult corals to increased temperature and ocean acidification resulted in offspring that may be better able to handle those future environmental stressors. This rapid trans-generational acclimatization may be able to “buy time” for corals in the race against climate change.

Hollie Putnam, lead author of the Journal of Experimental Biology-featured study and HIMB assistant researcher; and Ruth Gates, co-author and HIMB senior researcher, exposed two groups of parental corals to either ambient ocean conditions or IPCC-predicted future ocean conditions—warmer and more acidic water. As expected, the harsher future conditions negatively affected the health of the parental coral—lowering photosynthesis and production to consumption ratios. Surprisingly, however, the offspring of parents who were exposed to future conditions appeared healthier when re-exposed to the harsher environment.

“By preconditioning the corals while the offspring are being brooded it may be possible to increase the offspring’s potential to perform under stressful environmental conditions,” said Putnam.

Read more about it on NSF’s Science 360 and the UH System News.

Marine Debris Drift Model Simulates MH370 Crash Site and Flow Paths

The International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) within SOEST has used the Marine Debris Drift Model developed by SOEST researchers Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner to silt the pathways of debris from the likely crash site of MH370 in the Indian Ocean. Building upon the model the developed to predict the movement of debris from the 2011 tsunami in Japan, Maximenko and Hafner also estimated the likely location of the crash site, derived from an analysis of wind and ocean currents in the Indian Ocean over the past 18 months. Please visit the IPRC website below for detailed animations and plots of debris trajectory and likely crash location.

Six scientists to spend 365 days in isolation for HI-SEAS simulated Mars trip

The crew that will spend 365 days in isolation in the next Hawaiʻi Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission has been selected. The six scientists will begin their yearlong stay in the solar powered dome atop Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i Island, on 28 August 2015. It will be the fourth and longest HI-SEAS mission yet in the UH research project that simulates long duration space exploration.

As with the previous two HI-SEAS missions in the NASA funded study, this mission will focus on crewmember cohesion and performance. HI-SEAS researchers are working to develop effective team composition and support strategies to allow crews to successfully travel to Mars and back, an estimated three-year journey.

“The longer each mission becomes, the better we can understand the risks of space travel,” said Kim Binsted, HI-SEAS principal investigator and UH Mānoa professor of Information and Computer Sciences and graduate student of Geology and Geophysics. “We hope that this upcoming mission will build on our current understanding of the social and psychological factors involved in long duration space exploration and give NASA solid data on how best to select and support a flight crew that will work cohesively as a team while in space.”

Read more about it at KHON2, UH System News, Space.com, Huffington Post, and Honolulu Civil Beat.

Allen Foundation supports SOEST efforts to save the world’s coral reefs

The quest to stabilize and restore coral reefs, a critical component of our ocean ecosystem, is receiving increased help through a unique research project supported by Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc. As ocean temperatures rise and oceans become more acidic, corals are declining in record numbers. A new project and winner of the 2013 Paul G. Allen Ocean Challenge will apply human-assisted evolution in developing resilient coral species to help reverse this decline.

“Not all corals are created equal,” said researcher and co-grantee Ruth D. Gates from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. “We will capitalize on those corals that already show a stronger ability to withstand the changing ocean environment and their capacity to pass this resilience along to new generations.”

The winning research team of Gates and Madeleine van Oppen from the Australian Institute of Marine Science was awarded the $10,000 grand prize and invited to submit a grant proposal for funding consideration. A nearly $4-million, five-year project agreement was reached in June of this year, with research timed to maximize this summer’s peak coral reproduction season in North America.

“Paul Allen is deeply committed to ocean health and has a growing portfolio of programs targeted at the protection of marine life,” explained Dune Ives, senior director of philanthropy at Vulcan Inc. “This project uniquely addresses the need to reverse the rapid decline of our coral reef ecosystems.”

Initial research will be conducted in Hawaiʻi and Australia, providing an unparalleled opportunity to study different coral species, environmental conditions and human factors to generate stronger research conclusions than single-site data.

Hawaiʻi component will work with resilient corals

At the University of Hawaiʻi’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology on Coconut Island, Gates and her team are working with a set of corals that were unaffected by a warming event last year that caused bleaching in many of their neighboring adjacent strains. These resilient corals are being conditioned to survive in increasingly warmer and more acidic water. Gates refers to this as “training corals on environmental treadmills.” The goal is to induce greater resilience in the individual samples as well as in their offspring.

“Once we have a proof of concept, we’ll build a bank of coral stocks that are preconditioned to withstand the warmer and more acidic ocean conditions of the future,” said Gates. “Within the five-year grant period we should have a significant stockpile of highly resilient coral strains and a plan in place to use them to restore a completely denuded reef, as well as plant them on a partially damaged reef so they can reproduce with the existing corals and enhance the overall resilience of the vulnerable reef.”

Australian component examines selective breeding techniques

The Australian experiments will be conducted at the state-of-the art National Sea Simulator (SeaSim) located on the campus of AIMS headquarters in Cape Ferguson. The SeaSim allows for tightly controlled environmental factors including temperature and water acidity during the selective breeding-style activities.

The Australian component of the research will use human-assisted evolution. This is an innovative use of the age-old selective breeding techniques similar to those used in the agriculture industry. “Assisted evolution takes advantage of natural processes,” said van Oppen. “It accelerates the evolution of coral and with the rapid decline of coral health worldwide, the development of tools to help protect corals from stress is urgent.”

“At Vulcan, we are excited about this project because of the significant need that it addresses,” said Ives. “If coral reefs continue to decline due to warmer, more acidic ocean water, marine ecosystems will forever be altered with ripple effects that we don’t yet fully comprehend.”

For more information, read the Vucan Inc. news release and the Pacific Business News article.

Public invited to join NOAA on expedition of Pacific marine protected areas

Update: Room 131 in the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics (HIG) Building on the UH Mānoa campus is an Exploration Command Center — a location where live video feeds from the ship and ROVs are displayed and scientists on land can communicate with the ship-board team, enabling tele-presence collaboration.

NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer will begin two months of dives using unmanned remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to explore marine protected areas in the central Pacific Ocean. Starting on 01 August 2015, anyone with an internet connection can virtually explore the deep sea with scientists and researchers from their computer or mobile device.

The ship and its crew will investigate deeper waters in and around Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.

“Given the unexplored nature of these areas, their remoteness and their known status as biodiversity hotspots, I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see many animals and phenomena that are new to science,” said expedition science team lead Christopher Kelley, associate professor of biology and program biologist at the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL).

Read more about it in the NOAA press release.

City releases “extreme tsunami” maps

The city unveiled a new set of Extreme Tsunami Evacuation Zone (XTEZ) maps which outline refuge areas and routes in high-impact, worst-case scenarios. The maps are based on the research of Kwok Fai Cheung, professor of Ocean and Resources Engineering (ORE).

The zones do not replace current tsunami zones, but rather add a second zone should an extremely large (9M+) earthquake occur in the Aleutian Islands, generating an especially destructive tsunami in Hawai‘i.

Gerard Fryer, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) affiliate faculty and the senior geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, says an extreme tsunami can come from nearly any direction. For example, the Aleutian Islands to the north of the state, the Kamchatka Peninsula to the northwest, and Vancouver Island to the northeast, just to name a few.

The new extreme tsunami maps were made possible through a $200,000 grant given to the UH Sea Grant College Program by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). An additional $40,000 grant from NOAA allowed the city to create the smartphone app.

Read more about it and watch the video reports at KITV4 and KHON2.

Humans’ rising impact on the oceans

Stark new research shows the extent to which humans are affecting the oceans, with only the most remote corners emerging relatively unscathed. Nowhere is without human influence entirely, says the study in Nature Communications, and nearly the entire surface of the ocean (97.7%) suffers under more than one pressure.

Climate change “dominates humanity’s footprint” on the oceans, coming in above commercial fishing, pollution, and shipping, the authors conclude. The scientists found that nearly 66 percent of the ocean and 77 percent of the ocean within national jurisdictions showed increased human impact over the five-year study period, driven mostly by climate change pressures. Only 13 percent of the ocean within national boundaries was unchanged or experienced decreasing impacts. In addition, approximately 5 percent of the ocean has been heavily impacted, facing increasing pressures, while 10 percent has experienced low impact to date as well as decreasing pressures.

Kimberly A. Selkoe, affiliated with the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), is one of the co-authors.

Read more about it in The Carbon Brief and the UCSB press release.

Support Science: Hammerhead shark movement in Hawaii

Scalloped Hammerhead sharks, endangered throughout the worlds oceans, are a unique and mysterious species in Hawaiian waters. The Scalloped Hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) population in Hawaii is geographically isolated from other population groups in the Pacific, yet we know very little about the local ecology of these animals.

Over the past 20 years, scientists within the School have successfully caught and tagged thousands of sharks in Hawaiian waters, but have only been able to successfully satellite-tag 4 adult male S. lewini. Traditional fishing and tagging methods do not work well with these animals, despite the fact that S. lewini form large aggregations at specific locations around Hawai’i.

We know that closed-circuit rebreather technology allows divers to swim among these aggregations, close-enough to individuals to successfully tag them, yet we haven’t attempted this endeavor yet. Please join us in supporting this community-funded effort to use closed-circuit rebreather technology to allow our diving scientists to outfit S. lewini with satellite tags. The more we learn about the population ecology of these magnificent animals, the better we can protect and ensure the survival of the species.

First net zero energy buildings under construction at UH Mānoa

On June 15, 2015 contractors broke ground for the installation of two 1,500 square foot, net zero energy classrooms. These classrooms will be energy neutral, that is they will generate at least as much energy as they will use.

“This multiyear effort characterizes the effect of usage and building design on energy demand. This is part of a larger research program intended to evaluate the performance and integration of a range of energy technologies that includes energy efficiency, storage and renewable generation systems,” said Richard Rocheleau, Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) director.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Education will use these classrooms that were funded by HNEI, through a grant from the Office of Naval Research, and designed and installed by Project Frog, a California architecture company. Site work, hardscape, and landscaping are funded by the UH Mānoa Office of Planning and Facilities. The stand-alone buildings are being built on plot adjacent Castle Memorial Building and behind Wist Hall, home of the College of Education. They are expected to be complete by spring 2016.

“This is a real stake-in-the-ground milestone for the university, as we embark on a new journey toward aggressive sustainability and energy goals,” said Stephen Meder, UH Mānoa assistant vice chancellor, Office of Planning and Facilities, a key advocate for this project.

Read more about it in the UH System News.

New tool forecasts high sea levels and potential flooding on Kwajalein Atoll

A new Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) tool is now available that forecasts the potential occurrence of high sea levels and wave inundation for the most populated segments of Kwajalein Atoll. The forecast is updated hourly and accessible to the public on the PacIOOS website.

“Due to the low elevation of the Marshall Islands, communities are vulnerable to flooding and wave inundation. Storm events, high waves, extreme tides, or a combination of these factors can threaten public health and safety,” said Doug Luther, PacIOOS co-investigator and professor of Oceanography. “The forecast will increase community resilience and enhance preparedness by providing decision-makers, agency representatives, and community members with some time to plan in advance of potential flooding events.”

Read more about it in the UH System News.