This Time, The Mission is the Message

By Deb Castellana

Key Largo, Florida

Deb at Aquarius Habitat (c)KipEvans/Mission Blue

As Mission Aquarius, a celebration of 50 years under the sea, winds to a close, the Mission Blue team in Florida is filled with hope for the future of Aquarius. Dr. Sylvia Earle, her team of Aquanauts and everyone working to support and highlight the mission pulled together into a cohesive team that has made a clear statement to the world – Aquarius must be saved.

With One World One Ocean in the lead, a winning group of talented ocean media professionals converged on Key Largo, Florida this week to call attention to the imminent loss of funding for the world’s last remaining undersea laboratory. Utilizing IMAX film, live webcasts from both inside the habitat and from the seabed, social media and mainstream news networks, teams worked 24/7 to highlight both the past achievements of Aquarius, and it’s possibilities for the future. The live U Stream feed typically had 200-400 viewers at any given time.

Fabien Cousteau visited Aquarius for his first time early in the week. The grandson of Jacques and son of Jean-Michel Cousteau, Fabien has known Sylvia Earle since he was 3 years old. And growing up on the decks of Calypso & Halcyon, saving the ocean is in his blood. His cozy one-on-one chat with Sylvia was touchingly personal, yet far reaching as they discussed both the degradation of the world ocean and the possibilities for improving it’s health in the future.

Fabien Cousteau with Handcuffs (c) Deb Castellana

Topside, with his typical irreverent sense of humor, Cousteau jokingly plotted to handcuff himself to Aquarius in protest of it’s closing. He could see the headlines, “Cousteau handcuffs himself to Aquarius underwater habitat to protest closing!”

His intimate visit inside Aquarius with Sylvia was filled with nostalgia. “I follow in your fin steps and my grandfather’s,” he said, “in being more comfortable in the sea than on land.” How to bring that type of ocean consciousness to the general public is a dilemma. How can those who have never gone beneath the waves, truly care for something they’ve never seen? We hope that through the efforts of this talented group of filmmakers, journalists, and photographers, enough attention will be focused on the ocean to begin to bridge that gap.

Embedded ocean journalist and former Gizmodo Editorial Director, Brian Lam contributed his young, hip take to the mission. Earlier this year, when he Interviewed Sylvia for a New York Times article on home made subs, Brian’s epiphany about the state of the world’s oceans was evident. His touching follow-up piece, “A Heartbreaking Interview with Dr. Sylvia Earle,” went viral. Brian’s deep commitment to using his considerable talents towards saving the ocean continues to grow, and his contribution to the Aquarius mission has been outstanding.

With digital media being shared on every platform from cell phones to IMAX screens, we hope that the public, and our leaders in Washington will hear the message to save Aquarius loud and clear. The photographic talents of the crew from One World One Ocean, Liquid Pictures’ Aquanaut DJ Roller, and our own Kip Evans have created a bank of rich content that is being shared worldwide.

Kip Evans & Brian Lam (c) Deb Castellana

Like an ocean wave closing in on the shore, news of Mission Aquarius grew as the week progressed. When the AP story hit the wires on Thursday, news of Aquarius’ plight hit newspapers coast to coast. NPR had two pieces during the week, including Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Nightline anchor Bob Weir dove to Aquarius to interview the aquanauts both inside and outside of the habitat. Sylvia’s TED wish to spread the news by all means possible that our ocean is in trouble has never been better served.

Culminating with a gala fundraising event at the Museum of Diving History in Islamorada, we have increasing hope that Aquarius will be saved. Certainly millions of people have now heard about the imminent closure due to budget cuts. Even with today’s difficult economy, the $3 million that it takes to operate Aquarius annually seems like a goal that should be easy to reach. Given the return on investment that Aquarius will provide, it seems a tiny amount.

No article about Aquarius would be complete without a shout-out to the team at Aquarius Reef Base. It has been a pleasure to spend this week working alongside the NURC team – each member bringing a consummate professionalism and a great deal of heart to the table, keeping the aquanauts and those of us working around the lab safe and comfortable. Mission Aquarius has been a resounding success due to the hard work of this incredibly dedicated and skilled team. We hope that we’ve been able to focus the necessary attention on Aquarius to bring in the funds needed to keep her and this amazing group of submariners up and running for a very long time into the future.

Aquarius Team (c) Deb Castellana

Originally posted at: MISSION BLUE

Mission Aquarius, Celebrating 50 years of Ocean Exploration

Point Richmond, CA
By Deb Castellana

Followers of Planet Ocean News may have noticed that the page has gone dark these past few months as I have come up to speed in my new position as Director of Communications for Dr. Sylvia Earle’s ‘Mission Blue.’ Now I am looking forward to posting more often with some exciting, and always thought provoking content. First up, Mission Aquarius!

Training begins tomorrow off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, for Mission Aquarius, ‘Celebrating 50 years of Living Beneath the Sea.’ The mission seeks to highlight not only the achievements of Aquarius, but also its tenuous future in today’s uncertain economic and political climate.

A question for you. Have you ever heard of Aquarius Reef Base? Don’t feel badly if you haven’t. Somehow this incredible feat of underwater engineering has largely escaped the public eye for the all the years that it has been in operation.

Since 1993, the Aquarius undersea lab has supported 114 missions, with over 550 peer-reviewed scientific publications produced, numerous educational programs, and television pieces. NASA has participated in a number of programs to research everything from the psychological effects of living in close quarters to mining asteroids (see NASA/NEEMO Website here). The Aquarius Reef Base is also supporting one of the longest running and thorough coral reef monitoring programs in the world, critical given current ocean stressors such as climate change and ocean acidification.

Aquarius has provided the world’s leading marine scientists with the opportunity to live aboard and engage in complicated research projects that could only have been carried out from saturation diving. By living and working on the seafloor for an extended period of time (up to 10 days,) scientists are able to comprehensively and intimately study and document the coral reef ecosystem.

Says Dr. Sylvia Earle, who now embarks on her third saturation dive with Aquarius, “Being able to study the animals and plants in their home using an underwater habitat gives me the gift of time,” Earle said in a mission summary. “Time to see what these magnificent life forms are actually doing on the reef.”

A cohesive partnership has formed between Mission Blue, One World One Ocean, Google, The Aquarius Foundation, NOAA, UNCW (The University of North Carolina at Wilmington,) National Geographic, and Reef Base Aquarius and the collaboration promises to be a powerful force bringing public attention to the achievements of Aquarius as well as to what may be lost if this should be the last mission.

The media teams will be transmitting across multiple platforms from Mission Aquarius through live feeds, social networks, feature articles, as well as mainstream media. Dr. Earle and Principal Investigator Mark Patterson will speak live with students from Williams and Mary College, there will be a live feed with Chautauqua Institution, a Google + Hangout, and possibly even a call-in with Ira Flatow’s always entertaining and fascinating NPR show, ‘Science Friday.’ We’ll keep you posted.

One World One Ocean will be on site with IMAX cameras, and DJ Roller of Liquid Pictures 3D will be shooting in 3D. Yours truly will be there with my trusty Go Pro.

We hope that you will help us to maximize this educational and outreach effort, and to use this rare opportunity to increase ocean literacy. So tweet it, facebook it, and e-mail our news if you can. The ocean would thank you if she could!

Much more content on Mission Aquarius is on it’s way, so stay tuned!

Tara Oceans Expedition returns after two years at sea

On March 31, 2012, two and a half years after setting sail, The Tara Oceans Expedition returned to the harbor at Lorient, France. True to style, the people of Brittany – some of the saltiest folks in the world, came down in droves to meet the voyagers. But Tara’s mission is not over – there is still much science to be done. The Tara Oceans expedition aims to identify the effects of global warming on planktonic and coral reef ecosystems, and the consequences on food webs and marine life. The crew have traversed the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and Antarctica. Eric Karsenti (senior scientist at CNRS and EMBL) and Etienne Bourgois (President of Tara Foundation) co-direct the mission.

Sir Peter Blake, formerly partners in the then called “Seamaster,” was murdered onboard on the Amazon River in 2001 by would-be thieves. Blake had been engaged as Director of Expeditions for the Cousteau Society, and was also named special envoy for the UN Environment Programme. While on an environmental exploration trip in South America, monitoring global warming and pollution for the United Nations, this sailing legend and ocean hero met his tragic end. It was unthinkable. In New Zealand, his grave is a place of pilgrimage. With Sir Peter’s tragic death, it looked like his legendary 119-foot schooner Seamaster might never be used to her full potential. But baby, look at her now. Sir Peter would be proud!

Since leaving Lorient on September 5, 2009, the schooner Tara has taken samples at 150 scientific stations around the world, collecting material for laboratory analysis, and has also studied specific coral reef sites. (938 expedition days, including 630 days at sea and 58 days studying corals.) After two-and-a-half years circling the globe, Tara returned to her home port in Lorient on Saturday, March 31, 2012.

With this unprecedented expedition, scientists hope to better understand the functioning and diversity of marine life and provide answers about their role in the face of climate change. Preliminary analyses from 30 stations show that 60-80% of genes characterizing plankton were unknown up to the present.

Tara Oceans is also an outreach expedition; meeting the people of the countries they passed through. During the 50 stopovers, nearly 5,000 children from all continents visited Tara and interacted with the scientists. The mission has been a great human adventure involving hundreds of people onboard and ashore.

In the coming months, the first scientific results will be published. Three papers are in preparation: on the genomics of stations in the Mediterranean Sea, the impact of environment on the complexity of biodiversity, and the effects of ocean circulation on ecosystems. In addition, analyses of their samples will continue for many years in partner laboratories. Possible applications of these results are numerous, especially in the biomedical field and for climate models.

2012 is the year for sharing the Tara Expeditions project – first, this June at the Earth Summit in Rio. The schooner will remain in Brittany throughout the summer. During the French leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, she’ll be in Lorient, then in Camaret-sur-Mer and at the “Tonnerres de Brest”. The schooner will then sail to Paris in September, and dock there for several months.

Tokyo Soil Samples “Would be considered nuclear waste in the U.S.”

While traveling in Japan several weeks ago, Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen took soil samples in Tokyo public parks, playgrounds, and rooftop gardens. All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US. This level of contamination is currently being discovered throughout Japan.

At the US NRC Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC’s Chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko emphasized his concern that the NRC and the nuclear industry presently do not consider the costs of mass evacuations and radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Fairewinds believes that evacuation costs near a US nuclear plant could easily exceed one trillion dollars and contaminated land would be uninhabitable for generations.

Tokyo Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

Barataria Bay Dolphins Exposed to Oil Are Seriously Ill

According to The New York Times, dolphins exposed to the Deepwater Horizon Disaster’s combined effects of crude oil and chemical dispersants, “are seriously ill.”

In August of 2010, just after the wellhead was capped, I joined The Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s Dr. Chris Pincetich, Captains Al Walker and Terry Palmisano, and Scott Porter of Ecorigs to see how much oil was still in Barataria Bay, in the Mississippi Delta. We found much more than we expected, with crude oil and sheen seemingly everywhere we checked.

In one area we found a pod of dolphins poking their noses in the mud looking for morsels of food, only to kick up a nasty rainbow sheen of oil. And when they’d surface to breathe, their blowholes would open, sucking in that same oily sheen. It was the stuff of nightmares. When my respiratory problems became too hard to manage, I went to Florida to recuperate. The dolphins and other creatures of the Gulf were not so lucky.

The situation was reported to the authorities, with whom I exchanged a number of frustrating emails. Finally a few months later, they went to the GPS Position I had provided and reported back that the dolphins’ health appeared to be normal. Frustrating for all sides involved I’m sure, and with the government’s gag order on NOAA staff due to pending lawsuits against BP, it’s been a long time with no news.

My friends know how long I raged about the dolphins in Barataria Bay – and elsewhere in the Gulf where the mortality rates have been no less than astounding. Today that anger is back again, the memories of those dolphins are as vivid as if it were yesterday.

In this video, you’ll see the dolphins around 1:13 forward.

New York Times/Environmental Blog

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Dolphins in Barataria Bay off Louisiana, which was hit hard by the BP oil spill in 2010, are seriously ill, and their ailments are probably related to toxic substances in the petroleum, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggested on Friday.

As part of an ongoing assessment of damages caused by the three-month spill, which began with an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, NOAA scientists performed comprehensive physicals last summer on 32 dolphins from the bay. They found problems like drastically low weight, low blood sugar and, in some cases, cancer of the liver and lungs.

Yet the most common symptom among the dolphins, found in about half the group, was an abnormally low level of stress hormones like cortisol. Such hormones regulate many functions in the animal, including the immune system and responses to threats. Scientists said the dearth of hormones suggested that the animals were suffering from adrenal insufficiency.

Lori Schwacke, the lead scientist for the health assessment, said the findings were preliminary and could not be conclusively linked to the oil spill at this point. But she said the exams were also conducted on control groups of dolphins that live along the Atlantic coast and in other areas that were not affected by the 2010 spill and that those dolphins did not manifest those symptoms.

“The findings we have are also consistent with other studies that have looked at the effects of oil exposure in other mammals,” Dr. Schwacke added, citing experimental studies of mink that were dosed with oil. Some of those minks developed adrenal insufficiency.

Strandings of dolphins began rising in states along the Gulf of Mexico in February 2010, or about two months before the oil spill.

But NOAA says that the strandings have returned to normal rates along the Florida coast, which was the farthest from the spill, while remaining abnormally high along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In Barataria Bay alone, with a population of about 1,000 dolphins, 180 strandings have been reported since February 2010. In a normal year, about 20 dolphin standings would be reported in all of Louisiana, the agency said.

Ben Sherman, a NOAA spokesman, cautioned against drawing too broad a conclusion about dolphin deaths across the gulf from the findings. He said the results could provide “possible clues” to the effects of the oil spill on other dolphins in the northern Gulf of Mexico. “However, it is too soon to tell how the Barataria Bay findings apply,” he said.

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