Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Diatoms by Richard Henkels



The diatom is the most vital organism on the planet for it feeds the oceans and as it sequesters carbon through photosynthesis it gives off the critical core of the 60% of the earth's oxygen (the percentage attributed to the oceans.
Even more, where this oxygen would most logically be carried over land one finds the principal rains that water the core of the crops produced by the landmasses of the Northern Hemisphere.
In any case the triangular North Pacific would, most logically, pinch water movement into place and the S-shaped Atlantic lift.
The fact that the South Atlantic draws water from both the Indian and the South Pacific (around Cape Horn) when it should be slipping with the wind, makes this [Cape Horn] the roughest of waters on earth (due to the Atlantic's lifting).
As this foreign (trans-equatorial) jet enters the North Atlantic it draws the seed diatoms from the area around the Sargasso and at its convectional bend, southeast of George's Bank (a shoal documented as the primary reproductive section of the North Atlantic for fish) the sinking Gulf Stream creates great eddies known as Gulf Rings that carry seed diatoms on an arching path towards George's Bank in the same season the precise food for the triggering of the diatom bloom should be surfacing at Cape Cod (a deposit of silica) to be swept off shore to meet and be inhaled by the watery tornado-like Rings.
Most all the newly hatched fish (and shellfish) of George's Bank from cod, to flounder, to hake and herring depend for survival upon the diatom.
If one adult cod lays between 4 million and 7 million eggs and the two dozen other species that spawn here also depend upon diatoms. . . have the fish stocks in the North Atlantic have declining over the past 70 years been cause primarily by over-fishing as most everyone believes, or could it have to do with the extreme erosion of Cape Cod and Nantucket? It is my belief that this erosion has been mistakenly blamed on winter storms that sweep up this coast known as "Northeasters."
The truth is that the Labrador Current, the richest of cold water veins, is being ruptured. Without silica in this current, the Cape and Nantucket erode and the diatom bloom as a geometric progression, is being chopped before it begins.
Without diatoms, the newly hatched starve soon after taking life.
With a greatly reduced diatom count in the North Atlantic the fishing grounds from the Grand Banks, to the southern tip of Greenland, to the southern tip of Iceland, the British Isles, North Sea and even the North Pacific fed via the Bering Strait and Bering Sea. As this rich super-cooled flow passes out on the floor of the Bering Sea it creates the Alaskan "King" Crab (proof of this rich food).
Where the oxygen produced by the bloom would most logically be carried over land one finds the rains over the British Isles (that then drift over Northern Europe). Where it surfaces in the Northeastern Pacific it creates the nearly constant rains of the Pacific Northwest and Canadian West that then drift over North America (watering the farmlands of the Midwest, "breadbasket of thew world".
This means the rupture of the vein that triggers the diatom bloom is reducing fish stocks in the two most productive oceans on the planet.
If one were to repair this mechanism it would generate over a trillion dollars of revenue for the United Sates and the same for the rest of the world.
By repair the Bloom one could turn vast areas of these oceans into carbon dioxide-absorbing, oxygen emitting surfaces.

Richard Henkels

Diatoms in Aquaculture


A video about Diatoms in aquaculture and use of Nualgi is available on Youtube -

www.youtube.com/?v=zV9XangaWaI

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Grand Lake, Ohio - Update



Officials unveil information to help restore lake
Thursday, 09 September 2010
By MIKE BURKHOLDER
Staff Writer
CELINA — Ohio State officials Tuesday night unveiled another piece in the puzzle in the fight to help restore the water quality of Grand Lake St. Marys.
Directors of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Ohio Department of Health and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a public forum at the Celina Fieldhouse as a way to brief residents regarding a pair of pilot projects on the lake. Several hundred people who attended the meeting were allowed to submit questions to a moderator, which were then answered by members of the panel. Russ Gibson, with the Ohio EPA, gave a brief presentation regarding the alum dosing test project. The project, which is slated to begin Sept. 20, calls for liquid alum to be applied to six locations along the lake — West Beach, Harmon’s Channel, 4-H Camp, West Bank boat ramp, Otterbein channel No. 1 and Otterbein channel No. 2 — for a total of 53 acres.
“It’s designed to provide some near-term relief to reducing the nutrient loads that are within the lake itself,” Gibson said.
When introduced into the water column, the alum will bind with the phosphorus and force it to the bottom of the lake. The alum will not add to the sediment at the bottom of the lake, and Gibson said the compound poses no risks to humans, fish or other animals.
“It’s something that has been safely used in nearly every drinking water supply and treatment system — the city of Celina uses alum every day,” Gibson said. “It’s been used in more than 150 lakes successfully across the country.
“We have the literature to support that alum will be successful in helping to reduce the internal phosphorus load that is in the lake,” he said. “Just to give you an idea, Grand Lake St. Marys has a very, very high phosphorus level. Our goal with this project is to reduce the internal phosphorus and inactivate those levels by 60 to 85 percent. That is substantial.”
Gibson encouraged residents to come out Sept. 20 to witness the start of the four-day project. He also reassured the crowd the alum dosing poses zero risk to people.
“There is no harm in coming out and watching,” Gibson said. “If you happen to be around the lake one of those days, drive by and look at what’s going on.”
The new project is different than the one proposed by Gov. Ted Strickland in July. That project called for two sites of 20 acres a piece.
“We just really had a very difficult time finding two different sites that were that large,” Gibson said. “So we elected to instead do six sites that totaled 54 acres.”
Once the alum is applied via a barge, the water will instantly turn milky. Within two hours, Gibson said the results will be noticeable.
“As that alum settles down through the water column, it’s basically stripping the water of the phosphorus and other nutrients that are in that water column and the water will become remarkably clear,” Gibson said. “We do not expect Grand Lake St. Marys to become gem clear. The demonstration sites, for some period of time, will be very clear.”
The second pilot project, which is being conducted by Algaeventure, of Columbus, involves introducing silica into the water column with the hopes of flipping the bad algae into diatoms. Diatoms are a species of algae that do not produce toxins and if the conditions are right, will dominate harmful algae. That project started last week at a site near the city of Celina.
During the question-and-answer session, panel members handled a variety of questions. Some ranged from dredging the entire lake to the harmful side effects of alum.
One resident asked what is being done to rid the lake of geese.
ODNR Director Sean Logan said geese produce waste approximately 28 times a day and there are more than 2,000 of them living around the lake.
“We believe that we have a resident population of 2,500,” Logan said. “We will continue, through controlled hunts in designated locations, to continue to reduce the population.”
The question of opening up the spillway to flush out the lake was posed to the panel. Logan said that was not a viable option and would produce little, if any, benefit.
“The average length of time the water in Grand Lake St. Marys takes to come in and come out is 1.3 years,” Logan said.
Logan also said opening the spillway would fail to reduce the internal loading in the lake — a root cause of the algae bloom problems during the past two years. Logan said the depth also is as hurdle.
“Because of its shallowness, it does not have the same stratification that would lead you to believe or would it allow such exchange of water as the question asks,” Logan said. “You could open up both tubes for 24 hours and only get 1 inch drop.”
Dredging also was brought up. Logan said state official will focus on spot dredging near tributaries that lead into the lake.
“Right now, in Montezuma Bay, we are going to go a little deeper where we already have a spoil site available and there is already an active dredging project in place,” Logan said. “The key to dredging is the spoil site. Where do you put the dredged material to allow it to dewater in a quick enough fashion so that you don’t have water being your capacity. We are open to all sorts of suggestions.”
Logan said state officials are open to help solving the problem. However, he again stressed that dredging the entire lake is not a viable option.
“We do need your help,” Logan said. “We need help in identifying upload disposal sites, I think we should start with Prairie Creek. We need upload land owners to help identify where we can have disposal of this material.”
Winter manure application procedures also were posed to the panel. Logan said any manure application between Dec. 15 and March 15 would have to comply with a series of guidelines in order to be allowed. In two years, Logan said there will be a ban on winter manure applications.
“The proper crop to uptake the nutrients that are applied, set back distance from stream, the future weather and the soil,” Logan said of the requirements. “The soil will always tell you what it can handle and what it cannot handle.”
Logan also stressed that the ultimate solution is in the hands of landowners, not politicians.
“We all are part of the solution,” Logan said. “The ultimate, long-term solution to this problem does not lay with government, it lays with private landowners. You need to unite together and say that we want a better future and I know that you do. We just need to step up to the plate, each and every one of us.”
Last Updated ( Thursday, 09 September 2010 )

Monday, September 6, 2010

Algal bloom in Barnets Sea

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=45624&src=nha

Phytoplankton Bloom in the Barents Sea

Phytoplankton Bloom in the Barents Sea
download large image (8 MB, JPEG)acquired August 31, 2010

In this natural-color image from August 31, 2010, the ocean’s canvas swirls with turquoise, teal, navy, and green, the abstract art of the natural world. The colors were painted by a massive phytoplankton bloom made up of millions of tiny, light-reflecting organisms growing in the sunlit surface waters of the Barents Sea. Such blooms peak every August in the Barents Sea.

The variations in color are caused by different species and concentrations of phytoplankton. The bright blue colors are probably from coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton that is coated in a chalky shell that reflects light, turning the ocean a milky turquoise. Coccolithophores dominate the Barents Sea in August. Shades of green are likely from diatoms, another type of phytoplankton. Diatoms usually dominate the Barents Sea earlier in the year, giving way to coccolithophores in the late summer. However, field measurements of previous August blooms have also turned up high concentrations of diatoms.

The Barents Sea is a shallow sea sandwiched between the coastline of northern Russia and Scandinavia and the islands of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, and Novaya Zemlya. Within the shallow basin, currents carrying warm, salty water from the Atlantic collide with currents carrying cold, fresher water from the Arctic. During the winter, strong winds drive the currents and mix the waters. When winter’s sea ice retreats and light returns in the spring, diatoms thrive, typically peaking in a large bloom in late May.

The shift between diatoms and coccolithophores occurs as the Barents Sea changes during the summer months. Throughout summer, perpetual light falls on the waters, gradually warming the surface. Eventually, the ocean stratifies into layers, with warm water sitting on top of cooler water. The diatoms deplete most of the nutrients in the surface waters and stop growing. Coccolithophores, on the other hand, do well in warm, nutrient-depleted water with a lot of light. In the Barents Sea, these conditions are strongest in August.

The shifting conditions and corresponding change in species lead to strikingly beautiful multicolored blooms such as this one. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Fish Kill near Jones Park, Mississippi - Video



RED ALERT Fish are dying



I

Gulf oil spill: Has it caused a new fish kill?



Louisiana state biologists Monday were investigating whether a large fish kill at the mouth of the Mississippi River was caused by oil or dispersants from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The gulf also contains a vast dead zone created by agricultural runoff along the river.

"By our estimates, there were thousands, and I'm talking about 5,000 to 15,000 dead fish," St. Bernard Parish President Crag Taffaro said in a news release Monday. "Different species were found dead, including crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout, red fish, you name it, included in that kill."

The fish were found floating at the top of the water, collected along plastic booms that were placed to contain millions of gallons of oil from the spill that was touched off by the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The oil flowed into the gulf until July 15 when the gusher was capped.

A half-mile long swirl of thick substance with several tar balls and a strong smell of diesel was discovered Monday around Louisiana's Grassy Island, St. Bernard Parish officials announced. Skimmers were collecting the scum.

"There is what we believe to be some recoverable oil in the area," Taffaro said. "We will be sampling that and recovering what we can. We don't want to jump to any conclusions because we've had some oxygen issues by the Bayou La Loutre Dam from time to time.

"The Marine Division of Wildlife and Fisheries is on it ... It does point to the need for us to continue to monitor our waters."

According to St. Bernard Parish spokeswoman Karen Bazile, the fish were found in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile shipping shortcut from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans that was dug by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s. "It is blamed for massive wetlands loss and is widely believed to have worsened the flooding from Hurricane Katrina," she said in an e-mail. "Since that storm, the federal government has paid for a rock structure across the channel at Bayou La Loutre to stop the flow of salt water, also putting an end to shipping in the channel."

UPDATE: On Monday evening, St. Bernard Parish oil disaster information officer, Jennifer Belson, said that preliminary testing by the state's Wildife & Fisheries indicated that the cause of the fish kill was "hypoxia" or lack of oxygen. "But we don't have the final testing back," she said. Hypoxia is most often caused by an excess of nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural fertilizer or human waste, but it can also be caused by chemical dispersants, which were used extensively after the oil spill.

Ralph Portier, an environmental scientist at Louisiana State University, cautioned in an interview that, "A lot of things can explain a fish kill, which is not uncommon during the hot summer weather in Louisiana. It could be the nutrient-rich environment with a lot of heat. It could be rainfall. It could be changes in salinity or upwelling from disturbed sediment."

The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, he noted, is "like a dead end canal with water that does not mix as much as you would like it to." If oil were the cause, he said, he would expect a more gradual, rather than a sudden fish kill.

But he said he could not rule out that the fish kill could be related to the oil spill. Fresh water, which has been diverted into the marshes since the spill, can change salinity levels and affect fish, he noted. The fish kill announcement, he said, "goes to show how sensitive the (oil spill) issue is. You can imagine the angst of a lot of people in the sea food industry when they hear about a fish kill now."

-- Margot Roosevelt


Friday, August 20, 2010

Chlorophyll f



Chlorophyll gets an ‘f’
New variety of photosynthetic pigment is the first discovered in 60 years
Web edition : Thursday, August 19th, 2010
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RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHTAn organism bearing a never-before-seen form of chlorophyll, which can absorb rays that most photosynthesizers can’t use, dwells in knobby chunks of rock and algae known as stromatolites (above) that pepper Shark Bay, Australia.Happy Little Nomad/Wikimedia Commons

A new kind of chlorophyll that catches sunlight from just beyond the red end of the visible light spectrum has been discovered. The new pigment extends the known range of light that is usable by most photosynthetic organisms. Harnessing this pigment’s power could lead to biofuel-generating algae that are super-efficient, using a greater spread of sunlight than thought possible.

“This is a very important new development, and is the first new type of chlorophyll discovered in an oxygenic organism in 60 years,” says biological chemist Robert Blankenship of Washington University in St. Louis.

The newfound pigment, dubbed chlorophyll f, absorbs light most efficiently at a wavelength around 706 nanometers, just beyond the red end of the visible spectrum, researchers report online August 19 in Science. This unique absorbance appears to occur thanks to a chemical decoration known as a formyl group on the chlorophyll’s carbon number two. That chemical tweak probably allows the algaelike organism that makes chlorophyll f to conduct photosynthesis while living beneath other photosynthesizers that capture all the other usable light.

“In nature this very small modification of the pigment happens, and then the organism can use this unique light,” says molecular biologist Min Chen of the University of Sydney in Australia. Chen and her colleagues identified the new pigment in extracts from ground-up stromatolites, the knobby chunks of rock and algae that can form in shallow waters. The samples were collected in the Hamelin pool in western Australia’s Shark Bay, the world’s most diverse stromatolite trove.

Previously there were four known chlorophylls made by plants and other photosynthesizing organisms that generate oxygen: a, b, c and d. Chlorophyll a, the standard green type, is found in photosynthesizers from algae to higher plants. It absorbs mostly blue light around 465 nanometers and red light around 665 nanometers (it reflects green light, hence plants look green). Chlorophylls b and c are found in fewer organisms and absorb light in a similar range as chlorophyll a does, but shifted a bit. Chlorophyll d, found in a specific group of cyanobacteria, absorbs the most light at roughly 697 nanometers, a slightly shorter wavelength than the absorption of the new chlorophyll.

While some bacteria make chlorophyll-like pigments that absorb even longer wavelengths of light, these creatures aren’t harnessing light to split water, the step in photosynthesis that generates oxygen. Scientists didn’t think that wavelengths absorbed by chlorophyll f would have enough oomph to split water either, but it turns out they do, says Chen.

“This challenges our conception of the limit of oxygenic photosynthesis,” she says.

The find may also enable scientists to engineer algae that are more efficient producers of oil for biofuels, says algae biologist Krishna Niyogi of the University of California, Berkeley. Microbes bearing the new chlorophyll could soak up rays that most microbes can’t make use of.

There is still much to be learned about the new type of chlorophyll and the organisms that make it, Niyogi says. Chlorophyll f was extracted from the ground-up stromatolites along with a lot of chlorophyll a. It isn’t clear what creature was making chlorophyll f, but evidence points to a filamentous cyanobacterium. This cyanobacterium might use both chlorophylls, or perhaps just f.