The Countdown is on for the Youth Match Racing World Championships in New Caledonia
May 20, 2016: RPAYC
RPAYC's Will Dargaville and his team of Josh Dawson, Sarah Parker and James Farquarson will be travelling to
This June, Will and the team will be facing competitors from New Zealand, Denmark, America, Japan and France. New Caledonia to compete in the Youth Match Racing World Championships in Noumea. He won the Youth Match Racing Championships in New Caledonia last October and along with that win also won the Hardy Cup. These strong wins brought Will into the top 50 in the Open Mens Match Racing World Rankins which resulted in Will being selected to take one of the two spots to represent Australia. Harry Price from the CYCA is the other Australian selected.
The Nouméa Yacht Club (CNC) will host the competition on an isolated Island in front of Noumea, the main city. Competitors from six nations will sail in paradise, in the biggest lagoon of the world, surrounded by turtles, tropical fishes and dugongs.
Will competing in the 2015 HARKEN Youth Match Racing Champs.
Biodiversity protects fish from climate change
May 16, 2016
These are reef fishes in the global center of fish diversity, Raja Ampat, West Papua. Credit: Rick Stuart-Smith
Fish provide protein to billions of people and are an especially critical food source in the developing world. Today marine biologists confirmed a key factor that could help them thrive through the coming decades: biodiversity. Communities with more fish species are more productive and more resilient to rising temperatures and temperature swings, according to a new study from the Smithsonian's Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and other international institutions.
The accelerating loss and rearrangement of species all over the globe have troubled scientists and the public for decades. But the question of whether biodiversity offers practical value--for humans and ecosystems--remained controversial. The new study, published May 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers the most thorough proof yet that preserving marine biodiversity can benefit people as much as it benefits the oceans.
"Biodiversity is more than a pretty face," said lead author Emmett Duffy, director of the Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network and senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. "Preserving biodiversity is not just an aesthetic or spiritual issue--it's critical to the healthy functioning of ecosystems and the important services they provide to humans, like seafood."
The discovery came out of the Reef Life Survey, a comprehensive program that has conducted surveys of more than 3,000 fish species in 44 countries around the world. Many of the surveyors were volunteer citizen scientists, about a third of whom had no scientific background. Volunteer divers from 11 countries received training from the program's lead scientists at the University of Tasmania to collect data using standardized methods.
"This study is based on more than 4,000 underwater surveys," said co-author Rick Stuart-Smith of the University of Tasmania. "It was only possible with the enthusiastic contributions of highly trained volunteer divers in the Reef Life Survey program, which allowed us to achieve this comprehensive coverage of the world's reefs, from tropical to polar waters."
Armed with the most comprehensive global dataset on marine biodiversity involving standardized counts, the researchers tracked how 11 different environmental factors influenced total fish biomass on coral and rocky reefs around the world. Surprisingly, one of the strongest influences was biodiversity: The number of species (species richness) and the variety in how they use their environment (functional diversity) enhanced fish biomass. The boost in fish resources provided by biodiversity was second only to that of warm temperatures.
Temperature had a more complex relationship with fish biomass: Warmer ocean temperatures tended to boost fish biomass on average, while wider temperature fluctuations hindered it. But biodiversity made fish communities more resilient against changing climate. In communities with only a few species, fish biomass tended to increase with rising temperatures until seas warmed above 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit)--at which point biomass started to fall. But communities with many species remained stable at these higher temperatures.
The researchers found a similar buffering effect of diversity against temperature swings. While both high- and low-diversity communities were less productive under fluctuating temperatures, high-diversity communities suffered only half as much as low-diversity ones. The researchers suspect communities with more species are better equipped to handle temperature changes because they have more of their bases covered. When temperatures fluctuate, a community with numerous species has better odds that at least a few species can thrive in the new normal.
"This work is a critical step forward in linking insights from experiments in buckets and garden plots to the larger world," said co-author Jonathan Lefcheck of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, referring to earlier biodiversity experiments done with plants and small animals in gardens or greenhouses. "It shows that experimental ecologists have in fact been on the right track for 20 years, and that biodiversity is paramount to how natural systems work."
"Results demonstrate that preserving local biodiversity is not only an ethical directive with aesthetical and genetic insurance value, but that it is an imperative for human life," said co-author Sergio Navarrete of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
J. Emmett Duffy, Jonathan S. Lefcheck, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Sergio A. Navarrete, and Graham J. Edgar. Biodiversity enhances reef fish biomass and resistance to climate change. PNAS, May 2016 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1524465113
Western Woodlands Koala Report
May 17, 2016: National Parks Association of NSW
BREAKING NEWS: An alarming new report shows that koalas across a massive two thirds of NSW face extinction from habitat loss and climate change -
westernwoodlands.weebly.com/koala-report.html
And this comes at the same time as our government is unveiling new laws which will see land clearing escalate to a catastrophic level.
In light of this report we are calling on the government to take immediate action to protect all remaining koala habitat - please share this news to show your support.
Polluted dust can impact ocean life thousands of miles away
May 16, 2016
As iron is deposited from air pollution off the coast of East Asia, ocean currents carry the nutrient far and wide. Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology
As climatologists closely monitor the impact of human activity on the world's oceans, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found yet another worrying trend impacting the health of the Pacific Ocean.
A new modeling study conducted by researchers in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences shows that for decades, air pollution drifting from East Asia out over the world's largest ocean has kicked off a chain reaction that contributed to oxygen levels falling in tropical waters thousands of miles away.
"There's a growing awareness that oxygen levels in the ocean may be changing over time," said Taka Ito, an associate professor at Georgia Tech. "One reason for that is the warming environment -- warm water holds less gas. But in the tropical Pacific, the oxygen level has been falling at a much faster rate than the temperature change can explain."
The study, which was published May 16 in Nature Geoscience, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, a Georgia Power Faculty Scholar Chair and a Cullen-Peck Faculty Fellowship.
In the report, the researchers describe how air pollution from industrial activities had raised levels of iron and nitrogen -- key nutrients for marine life -- in the ocean off the coast of East Asia. Ocean currents then carried the nutrients to tropical regions, where they were consumed by photosynthesizing phytoplankton.
But while the tropical phytoplankton may have released more oxygen into the atmosphere, their consumption of the excess nutrients had a negative effect on the dissolved oxygen levels deeper in the ocean.
"If you have more active photosynthesis at the surface, it produces more organic matter, and some of that sinks down," Ito said. "And as it sinks down, there's bacteria that consume that organic matter. Like us breathing in oxygen and exhaling CO2, the bacteria consume oxygen in the subsurface ocean, and there is a tendency to deplete more oxygen."
That process plays out in all across the Pacific, but the effects are most pronounced in tropical areas, where dissolved oxygen is already low.
Athanasios Nenes, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech who worked with Ito on the study, said the research is the first to describe just how far reaching the impact of human industrial activity can be.
"The scientific community always thought that the impact of air pollution is felt in the vicinity of where it deposits ," said Nenes, who also serves as Georgia Power Faculty Scholar. "This study shows that the iron can circulate across the ocean and affect ecosystems thousands of kilometers away."
While evidence had been mounting that global climate change may have an impact on future oxygen levels, Ito and Nenes were spurred to search for an explanation for why oxygen levels in the tropics had been declining since the 1970s.
To understand how the process worked, the researchers developed a model that combines atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, and ocean circulation. Their model maps out how polluted, iron-rich dust that settles over the Northern Pacific gets carried by ocean currents east toward North America, down the coast and then back west along the equator.
In their model, the researchers accounted for other factors that can also impact oxygen levels, such as water temperature and ocean current variability.
Whether due to warming sea waters or an increase in iron pollution, the implications of growing oxygen-minimum zones are far reaching for marine life.
"Many living organisms depend on oxygen that is dissolved in seawater," Ito said. "So if it gets low enough, it can cause problems, and it might change habitats for marine organisms."
Occasionally, waters from low oxygen areas swell to the coastal waters, killing or displacing populations of fish, crabs and many other organisms. Those "hypoxic events" may become more frequent as the oxygen-minimum zones grow, Ito said.
The increasing phytoplankton activity is a double-edged sword, Ito said.
"Phytoplankton is an essential part of the living ocean," he said. "It serves as the base of food chain and absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide. But if the pollution continues to supply excess nutrients, the process of the decomposition depletes oxygen from the deeper waters, and this deep oxygen is not easily replaced."
The study also expands on the understanding of dust as a transporter of pollution, Nenes said.
"Dust has always attracted of a lot of interest because of its impact on the health of people," Nenes said. "This is really the first study showing that dust can have a huge impact on the health of the oceans in ways that we've never understood before. It just raises the need to understand what we're doing to marine ecosystems that feed populations worldwide."
Takamitsu Ito, Athanasios Nenes, Matthew Johnson, Nicholas Meskhidze, and Curtis Deutsch. Acceleration of oxygen decline in the tropical Pacific over the past decades by aerosol pollutants. Nature Geoscience, 2016 DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2717
Migration Time for Birds
May 19, 2016: BirdLife Australia
A true wildlife spectacle is happening right on our doorstep!
It's not only our shorebirds that migrate during autumn, a whole flock of other Australian birds migrate too.
The swifts head back to their northern hemisphere breeding grounds; Grey Fantails, Silvereyes and Striated Pardalotes fly across Bass Strait to spend the winter on the Australian mainland; Eastern Koels head to New Guinea and possibly Indonesia; Tree Martins and Welcome Swallows head to northern Australia; and Gang-Gang Cockatoos and Flame Robins vacate their mountain homes, heading to the lowlands.
An impressive sight to see is the thousands of Yellow-faced Honeyeaters and other small songbirds forming massive flocks, on the move along the Great Dividing Range on a journey to warmer parts of Australia.
Find out more about Australia's migratory birds:http://birdlife.org.au/media/autumn-is-migration-time/
Above: Striated Pardalote photographed in Ingleside escarpment by A J Guesdon.
Scientists predict extensive ice loss from huge Antarctic glacier
May 18, 2016
This is a picture of the Totten Glacier front.Credit: Esmee van Wijk/Australian Antarctic Division
Current rates of climate change could trigger instability in a major Antarctic glacier, ultimately leading to more than 2m of sea-level rise.
This is the conclusion of a new study looking at the future of Totten Glacier, a significant glacier in Antarctica. Totten Glacier drains one of the world's largest areas of ice, on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS).
By studying the history of Totten's advances and retreats, researchers have discovered that if climate change continues unabated, the glacier could cross a critical threshold within the next century, entering an irreversible period of very rapid retreat.
This would cause it to withdraw up to 300 kilometres inland in the following centuries and release vast quantities of water, contributing up to 2.9 metres to global sea-level rise.
The EAIS is currently thought to be relatively stable in the face of global warming compared with the much smaller ice sheet in West Antarctica, but Totten Glacier is bucking the trend by losing substantial amounts of ice. The new research reveals that Totten Glacier may be even more vulnerable than previously thought.
The study, by scientists from Imperial College London and institutions in Australia, the US, and New Zealand is published today in Nature. Last year, the team discovered that there is currently warm water circulating underneath a floating portion of the glacier that is causing more melting than might have been expected.
Their new research looks at the underlying geology of the glacier and reveals that if it retreats another 100-150 km, its front will be sitting on an unstable bed and this could trigger a period of rapid retreat for the glacier. This would cause it to withdraw nearly 300 km inland from its current front at the coast.
Retreating the full 300 km inland may take several hundred years, according to co-author Professor Martin Siegert, Co-Director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. However, once the glacier crosses the threshold into the unstable region, the melting will be unstoppable -- at least until it has retreated to the point where the geology becomes more stable again.
"The evidence coming together is painting a picture of East Antarctica being much more vulnerable to a warming environment than we thought," he said. "This is something we should worry about. Totten Glacier is losing ice now, and the warm ocean water that is causing this loss has the potential to also push the glacier back to an unstable place."
"Totten Glacier is only one outlet for the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, but it could have a huge impact. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is by far the largest mass of ice on Earth, so any small changes have a big influence globally."
To uncover the history of Totten Glacier's movements, the team looked at the sedimentary rocks below the glacier using airborne geophysical surveys. From the geological record, influenced by the erosion by ice above, they were able to understand the history of the glacier stretching back millions of years.
They found that the glacier has retreated more quickly over certain 'unstable' regions in the past. Based on this evidence, the scientists believe that when the glacier hits these regions again we will see the same pattern of rapid retreat.
Journal Reference:
A. R. A. Aitken, J. L. Roberts, T. D. van Ommen, D. A. Young, N. R. Golledge, J. S. Greenbaum, D. D. Blankenship, M. J. Siegert.Repeated large-scale retreat and advance of Totten Glacier indicated by inland bed erosion. Nature, 2016; 533 (7603): 385 DOI: 10.1038/nature17447
Coal shipping threat to Great Barrier Reef
May 16, 2016
Dead coral smothered by coal. Credit: Kathryn Berry
Australian researchers have raised fresh concerns that a major shipping disaster could harm the Great Barrier Reef, with new research revealing coal dust in seawater can kill corals and slow down the growth rate of seagrasses and fish.
"Corals exposed to the highest concentrations of coal dust died within two weeks," says author Kathryn Berry, who led the experimental research.
"Corals exposed to lower concentrations of coal lasted longer, but most of them also died after 4 weeks of exposure.
"While some fish and seagrass died from coal dust exposure, it mostly stunted their growth by half compared to clean water."
The scientists exposed the marine species to fine coal particles in carefully controlled experiments within the National Sea Simulator at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and measured their responses over time.
Coal dust enters the marine environment at loading and storage facilities when it is blown or washed into the sea, during transport, and in rare shipping disasters.
In 2013, the bulk carrier, MV Smart, broke apart in South Africa while carrying over 140,000 tonnes of coal. In Australia, over 60,000 tonnes of coal remained on board the Shen Neng 1 when it ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef off Gladstone in 2010.
"Risks to the Great Barrier Reef posed by large coal spills depend on the probability of an accident and the potential impacts to marine life," says author Dr. Andrew Negri.
"While the likelihood of a major spill on a coral reef or seagrass meadow is low, we are now beginning to understand the likely consequences."
Author Dr. Mia Hoogenboom hopes the results will inform management of coal shipping activities in Australia and around the world.
"This research will allow decision makers to understand the risks to marine life to identify the species that are most vulnerable."
The findings by scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Australian Institute of Marine Science have been published inNature Scientific Reports.
Kathryn L. E. Berry, Mia O. Hoogenboom, Florita Flores, Andrew P. Negri. Simulated coal spill causes mortality and growth inhibition in tropical marine organisms. Scientific Reports, 2016; 6: 25894 DOI:10.1038/srep25894
New species of diatom discovered
May 16, 2016
Afrocymbella barkeri was identified by Belgian taxonomists Christine Cocquyt and Els Ryken in Lake Challa, a 92-metre deep crater lake at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Credit: Image courtesy of Lancaster University
A newly discovered species of diatom, a microscopic creature that is key to the health of the planet, is named after a Lancaster professor.
Professor Philip Barker has dedicated much of his working life to the study of diatoms, exploring what these microscopic phytoplankton can tell us about climate change and water quality.
Now his efforts have have been rewarded, with a recently identified diatom species being called Afrocymbella barkeri in his honour.
Afrocymbella barkeri was identified by Belgian taxonomists Christine Cocquyt and Els Ryken in Lake Challa, a 92-metre deep crater lake at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Phil has spent many years there doing research into long term climate change.
The paper identifying the diatom states that: "The name barkeri is in honour of Prof. Philip A. Barker (Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, United Kingdom), a diatomist with a long-term research interest in the palaeolimnology of East Africa's lakes, including Lake Challa."
Phil may have published more than 100 peer reviewed papers and chapters, and had many accolades for his research, but having a diatom named after him is something special. "!f something is named after you, then it is there for ever," he said.
The importance of diatoms
"Diatoms are incredibly important organisms that live in oceans and fresh water," said Phil. "They contribute the same in terms of photosynthesising carbon as rainforests.
"I started using them when I did my PhD as a tool to understand past climates. They are highly diagnostic of salinity and nutrient levels but what has sustained my interest is that they are terribly beautiful."
Diatoms are a diverse group of single celled organisms, with a silica shell forming the cell wall. It was the chemistry of the shell that captured Phil's interest.
"When the diatoms die their shells get preserved in the sediment at the bottom of lakes and oceans, providing an indicator of the conditions in the water at the time when they lived."
Phil developed a series of new geochemical methods that scientists can use to analyse these preserved shells.
Drilling 250,000 years back in time
Lake Challa, where Afrocymbella barkeri was discovered, is very deep, so the sediments are not disturbed by mixing and are very well preserved.
"We have already got a record for the past 25,000 years. In November, we are hoping to drill 150 metres into the sediment and get a record of diatoms, and climate, going back 250,000 years. It will potentially give us a really good record of long term climate changes, in particular the evolution of monsoons in that part of Africa."
"This research provides a context for contemporary climate change, giving us an understanding of natural variability in climate before we start ascribing any human causes to current climate change."
It will also enable Phil to test a hypothesis about the interaction between climate and human evolution.
"Between 130,000 and 190,000 years ago, around the times Homo sapiens were evolving, there were a series of thousand-year long mega droughts in Africa. Humans will have had to change their behaviour to adapt and so maybe some of the traits we have today are a result of these droughts."
Christine Cocquyt, Els Ryken. Afrocymbella barkerisp. nov. (Bacillariophyta), a common phytoplankton component of Lake Challa, a deep crater lake in East Africa. European Journal of Phycology, 2016; 51 (2): 217 DOI:10.1080/09670262.2015.1126766
Artificial intelligence replaces physicists
May 16, 2016: Australian National University
The experiment, featuring the small red glow of a BEC trapped in infrared laser beams. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU
Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment.
The experiment, developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize.
"I didn't expect the machine could learn to do the experiment itself, from scratch, in under an hour," said co-lead researcher Paul Wigley from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
"A simple computer program would have taken longer than the age of the Universe to run through all the combinations and work this out."
Bose-Einstein condensates are some of the coldest places in the Universe, far colder than outer space, typically less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
They could be used for mineral exploration or navigation systems as they are extremely sensitive to external disturbances, which allows them to make very precise measurements such as tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic field or gravity.
The artificial intelligence system's ability to set itself up quickly every morning and compensate for any overnight fluctuations would make this fragile technology much more useful for field measurements, said co-lead researcher Dr Michael Hush from UNSW ADFA.
"You could make a working device to measure gravity that you could take in the back of a car, and the artificial intelligence would recalibrate and fix itself no matter what," he said.
"It's cheaper than taking a physicist everywhere with you."
The team cooled the gas to around 1 microkelvin, and then handed control of the three laser beams over to the artificial intelligence to cool the trapped gas down to nanokelvin.
Researchers were surprised by the methods the system came up with to ramp down the power of the lasers.
"It did things a person wouldn't guess, such as changing one laser's power up and down, and compensating with another," said Mr Wigley.
"It may be able to come up with complicated ways humans haven't thought of to get experiments colder and make measurements more precise.
The new technique will lead to bigger and better experiments, said Dr Hush.
"Next we plan to employ the artificial intelligence to build an even larger Bose-Einstein condensate faster than we've seen ever before," he said.
The research is published in the Nature group journal Scientific Reports.
P. B. Wigley, P. J. Everitt, A. van den Hengel, J. W. Bastian, M. A. Sooriyabandara, G. D. McDonald, K. S. Hardman, C. D. Quinlivan, P. Manju, C. C. N. Kuhn, I. R. Petersen, A. N. Luiten, J. J. Hope, N. P. Robins, M. R. Hush. Fast machine-learning online optimization of ultra-cold-atom experiments. Scientific Reports, 2016; 6: 25890 DOI:10.1038/srep25890
Volcanic voyage of Investigator
Published on 16 May 2016: by CSIRO
Smoking, snow-covered volcanoes, soaked scientists and sticky black mud. Follow the volcanic voyage of researchers on board RV Investigator as they visit Australia’s Heard Island and McDonald Islands in early 2016. Two action-packed months at sea in three minutes of video, one second at a time! Big thanks to Pete Harmsen for putting this awesome video together.
Visit the Marine National Facility website for more information about Australia’s science super ship, RV Investigator: www.mnf.csiro.au
The Other Left
