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December 18, 2012 The Ten Best Ocean Stories of 2012 | | | Share on redditReddit | Share on diggDigg | Share on stumbleuponStumble | Share on emailEmail | More Sharing ServicesMore Two market squids mating 2012 was a big year for squid science. Photo Credit: © Brian Skerry, www.brianskerry.com Despite covering 70 percent of the earth's surface, the ocean doesn't often make it into the news. But when it does, it makes quite a splash (so to speak). Here are the top ten ocean stories we couldn't stop talking about this year, in no particular order. Add your own in the comments! 2012: The Year of the Squid From the giant squid's giant eyes (the better to see predatory sperm whales, my dear), to the vampire squid's eerie diet of remains and feces, the strange adaptations and behavior of these cephalopods amazed us all year. Scientists found a deep-sea squid that dismembers its own glowing arm to distract predators and make a daring escape. But fascinating findings weren't relegated to the deep: at the surface, some squids will rocket themselves above the waves to fly long distances at top speeds. James Cameron Explores the Deep Sea Filmmaker James Cameron has never shied away from marine movie plots (See: Titanic, The Abyss), but this year he showed he was truly fearless, becoming the first person to hit the deepest point on the seafloor (35,804 feet) in a solo submarine. While he only managed to bring up a single mud sample from the deepest region, he found thriving biodiversity in the other deep-sea areas his expedition explored, including giant versions of organisms found in shallow water. Schooling sardines form a "bait ball." Small fish, such as these schooling sardines, received well-deserved attention for being an important part of the food chain in 2012. Photo Credit: © Erwin Poliakoff, Flickr Small Fish Make a Big Impact Forage fish-small, schooling fish that are gulped down by predators-should be left in the ocean for larger fish, marin

Teaching & Learning with the New York Times

"In some cases, cheaper types of fish were substituted for expensive species. In others, fish that consumers have been urged to avoid because stocks are depleted, putting the species or a fishery at risk, was identified as a type of fish that is not threatened. Although such mislabeling violates laws protecting consumers, it is hard to detect. Some of the findings present public health concerns. Thirteen types of fish, including tilapia and tilefish, were falsely identified as red snapper. Tilefish contains such high mercury levels that the federal Food and Drug Administration advises women who are pregnant or nursing and young children not to eat it."

http://www.alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/newsreleases/2011/orangesubstance081811.pdf Alaska - NOAA determines "orange goo" in Alaska's Kivalina village is fungal spores The "orange goo" that washed ashore earlier this month in the remote Eskimo village of Kivalina along Alaska's northwest coast is fungal spores, not microscopic eggs as preliminary analysis indicated. Scientists at the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center's Auke Bay Laboratory announced last week that the substance was biological in nature, rather than oil or pollution as originally thought by concerned residents of Kivalina. Per standard scientific procedure, samples were sent to NOAA's Analytical Response Team for a more thorough and detailed analysis and verification process. At NOAA's National Ocean Service Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research, based in Charleston, S.C., a team of scientists highly-specialized and equipped to analyze microbiologic phenomena such as this determined that the substance is consistent with spores from a fungi that cause rust, a disease that infects only plants causing a rust-like appearance on leaves and stems. Rust fungi reproduce to infect other plants by releasing spores which disperse often times great distances by wind and water. However, whether this spore belongs to one of the 7,800 known species of rust fungi has not yet been determined. More information will be posted on the Alaska Fisheries Science Center website as it becomes available.

by Judy A. Sakanari, Mike Moser, Thomas L. Deardorff

Background: The 10 minute education film is part of Healthy Ocean, Healthy Humans a project of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. The film was produced for aquariums, museums, schools, and theaters - to help people understand that all life on Earth, including our own, depends on the ocean.

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers approving a genetically modified (GM) Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), it faces fundamental questions of risk analysis and impact assessment. The GM salmon-whose genome contains an inserted growth gene from Pacific chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and a switch-on gene from ocean pout (Zoarces americanus)-would be the first transgenic animal approved for human consumption in the United States (1, 2). But the mechanism for its approval, FDA's new animal drug application (NADA) process (2), narrowly examines only the risks of each GM salmon compared with a non-GM salmon (2, 3). This approach fails to acknowledge that the new product's attributes may affect total production and consumption of salmon. This potentially excludes major human health and environmental impacts, both benefits and risks. Regulators need to consider the full scope of such impacts in risk analyses to avoid unintended consequences (4), yet FDA does not consider ancillary benefits and risks from salmon market expansion (2, 3), a result of what may be an overly narrow interpretation of statutes.

"The theme of the 175th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), "Our Planet and Its Life, Origins, and Futures," celebrated an enormous breadth of scientific accomplishments that transcends many subdisciplines of the natural and social sciences. It was intended to be both a reflection on what has been learned and a look forward to what must yet be better known if we are to make wise choices as stewards of our planet. The program committee saw this as an opportunity to examine how we have come to know and understand the coevolution of life with its interacting biological, biogeochemical, and physical environments. Further advances in this area are essential to develop scenarios that can be useful in guiding decisions to address some of society's most pressing problems. We must work toward a future that embraces the wise application of science to improve human health and well-being and to sustain the great diversity of life on our planet. "