Here is a taste of programs to come. Recently, I spent a week on the west coast of Ireland, working with a number of scientists at the Irish Seaweed Center, part of the Martin Ryan Institute of the National University in Galway. One of these lads is Declan Hanniffy, who is searching for ways to harvest and cultivate different varieties of seaweed. In the video, you’ll see a clip of Declan gathering one of the kinds of seaweed he’s trying to cultivate.

Along the coastal areas of Ireland, seaweed has been gathered as a food, medicine and fertilizer for centuries, although for the past few decades, the practice has largely been discontinued. Now science and industry are taking a serious second look at seaweed as a source of animal and fish food, nutritional supplements, cosmetics and other uses. On the Aran Islands, just offshore from Galway, they make a pudding from carrageen moss - a kind of seaweed. And of course you can order seaweed salad in most Japanese restaurants. Whether seaweed will ever replace Irish stew is another matter.
More on seaweed science in future Pulse of the Planet Science Diary programs. You heard it here first.

Jim

This photograph was taken on St. Bees Island in northeastern Australia, in the company of Science Diarist Alistair Melzer and his Earthwatch team. Their mission was to study koalas; mine was to make sure that we got the recordings we needed for our programs. It was far easier to find spiders than koalas, by the way. But at night, you could hear the male koalas calling, and it was not the sound you’d expect from these cuddly-looking poster critters.
To listen to what koalas really sound like check out
http://www.pulseplanet.com/archive/Jun07/3981.html

The New Site – a Preview
Being “behind the microphone” suggests a life of continuously recording in remote situations like St Bees, which would be great if it were true. For the past year, it’s meant a lot of behind the scenes work for our entire production team at Pulse of the Planet, developing a new web site that is – at the time of this writing – on the cusp of being launched. It will provide lots more information on an incredible variety of material. We have, after all, been on the air for nearly twenty years, and have produced over 4000 programs. Much of what will be on the new site is in response to a survey we did almost two years ago, in which web visitors and radio listeners told us what you would like to see. One of the key questions was, “would you be willing to pay for some of the material?”, and the answer, perhaps surprisingly, was yes. We have implemented this because we are obliged to find new ways to become sustainable, self-sufficient. On the new site, all program transcripts will continue to be available free of charge, as will current month’s MP3’s. Older audio programs will be available for a nominal fee on a per program basis. And we will be offering downloadable CD’s of selections of programs, with such catchy titles as “Tooth and Claw”, “Heavy Weather” and “Turning up The Heat – 18 years of Programs on Global Warming”. There will be lots of fun, informative content on the new site as well – Audio Adventures and an in depth look at subjects of particular interest to our listeners – Pulse Picks. We’ll also be initiating our first web-based call-to-action, asking you to send us examples of Ghost Signs. What’s a ghost sign? Check out the new Listener’s Blog: Feedback Loop, when we launch the new site. As always, we welcome your responses and suggestions.

Rainbow Over Tulik

August 11, 2006

Here it is, a month to the date that’s been hijacked by its moment in history, and it’s déjà vu all over again. Another terrorist plot, this one apparently nipped in the bud. I’m on the way to Alaska, waiting in line to be checked by security at LaGuardia Airport, shoes off, belt removed, watch and change in the plastic bin, fully expecting to be given the once over for carrying no less than two heavy hitter recorders and other sorts of electronic gear. I don’t even register a blip on the surveillance system.
But the young woman next to me in line is another matter. Carrying lipstick, hand crème and other forms of contraband, she fits the current terrorist profile and is thoroughly searched. Just when you think that life isn’t quite upside down, someone turns the crank. I imagine the airport check in lines of the future where we go through security wearing hospital gowns, or else get CAT scanned – like the Mars bound Schwarzenegger in Total Recall - down to the bone.

Flying into Fairbanks is like diving into a marshmallow. When land appears, the impression is that swatches of trees have been scraped away to accommodate a town.

August 12, 2006
Welcome to Alaska, whose unofficial state license plate is a cracked front windshield. You see em everywhere; it’s like a driver’s merit badge - the inevitable result of gravel highways spewing the odd pebble when those semis go rolling along.

Reunited with the other MBL fellows – Molly, Mark, Mary and Anton; lots of esprit de corps, sort of like the science journalist musketeers. We spend the morning visiting a number of field experiments near Fairbanks. One has to do with taking two small sections of wetlands — lowering the water level in one, while raising it in another, and measuring the effects on the growth of plants within. Among the questions being asked: is there an increase or decrease in the amount of decomposition of the organic matter? Is there an increase or decrease in the amount of carbon that’s being released back into the environment? If our climate is indeed warming – as so many indications seem to confirm – then these are the kinds of questions that will help us predict the future of our environment. The more carbon – in the form of carbon dioxide - that gets pumped back into the atmosphere, the more greenhouse gas, and the more warming.

August 13
It’s a twelve hour drive from Fairbanks, north past the Arctic Circle (major photo op), past the tree line and the last lonely spruce, through the Barrow range of mountains at the very tippy top of AK, to the north slope and Toolik Lake Long Term Environmental Research Center. Our road runs side by side with Alaska oil pipeline; which runs alternatively above and below ground – easier to maintain. The Toolik Lake facility- and the road – owes their existence to the pipeline, environmental research being a kind of dividend, a give back for pumping all that oil and impacting that much pristine territory.

Our visit coincides with British Petroleum stopping production in it’s oil fields in Prudhoe Bay, about a hundred miles north of here on the Arctic Ocean. We’re scheduled to pay a visit later this week.

Although there’s talk of a grizzly sighting on the CB, we see very little wildlife until we’re near Toolik lake – a few ground squirrels, some mountain sheep, and then – caribou grazing near the highway. One beautiful male with an impressive rack is being stalked by a bow hunter as we drive by.

August 14th
A long hike over the tundra, which is a sometimes squishy affair, like trying to navigate through a landscape of bushy sponges. Another suite of experiments which try, through manipulating parts of the landscape, to predict some of the consequences of a warming world, with increased amounts of nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) entering into the ecosystem. How did the nutrients get there? In part, as a result from melting permafrost (frozen soil), dissolving some of its mineral content into the groundwater. Another source is atmospheric – from the burning of fossil fuels. So if we take a section of ground, and we warm it up by constructing a mini-greenhouse, what will happen? What if we add nutrients? What if we decrease the amount of sunlight? What if we increase the amount of snowfall? Interestingly enough, the results of some of these experiments run counter to the expectations of scientists, generating more questions and experiments.

Next – Fishing for Science

I realize the point here is not to sound like I’m having too good a time. Perhaps a few words about how cold the Kuparik River was and how most of the day was spent casting and losing those barb-less lures. Barbless because the fish (Arctic grayling) are caught, kept over night in a holding pen – in the river – and then weighed, measured and tagged.

The tagging process is very cool. A small capsule (even tinier than a Tylenol) is injected into the fish’s abdomen.

To detect the presence of the tag and to read its unique number signature, the fish is scanned with a handheld device, similar to a supermarket’s barcode reader. It beeps if the fish already has a tag, and indicates the number on the screen.

This means a little more work for the scientists – since there’s no way shy of scanning to tell if the fish has already been tagged, but it’s good for the fish, since there’s no drag from an external tag. Juvenile fish are given a small tag, however, which is attached to a thin line and threaded through the fishes’ skin behind the dorsal fin.

I was working with researcher Heidi Golden, who is, in turn, assisting Linda Deegan, the principal investigator of this project. They constructed a weir (resembling a plastic chain link fence) across the river to temporarily halt the upstream migration of the grayling, so they can be caught by intrepid anglers like me, and then tagged.

So after a day of fruitless fishing downstream, Heidi took pity on me and let me cast near the weir, which – at least in the evening hours of this particular day - turned out to be something like shooting fish in a barrel. Every cast was a strike – and the grayling were roughly 16�? long. As if in payment for living a fisherman’s dream, was that black flies chose this very moment to make their appearance. Although they weren’t biting, these swarms of tiny flies were a prodigious nuisance, finding their way into every available orifice. Heidi seemed oblivious to the onslaught and claimed they tasted sweet. I draped a mosquito net-hat over my head and fished through the net-scape darkly. Twelve fish in twenty minutes – including the time it took to haul the fish to the holding pin. Honest. Ask Heidi. One of the findings of the grayling team is that the older fish thrive in seasons when there is a high water flow in the river; younger fish have a much lower growth rate in these high-flow years. When there is a lower flow rate, the younger fish do better. The Arctic climate is highly variable and the grayling have apparently adapted to do well in a variety of conditions. But what if - due to climate change - there were a number of consecutive years in which the grayling had do survive in a low flow situation? Some researchers hypothesize that this scenario could spell doom for the species.

Visit the Arctic Long Term Ecological Research Site.

As the lyrics Nitrogen Fix (see below) state, “the ocean is filled with a gazillion cells”, gazillion in this case translating to 10²⁹, give or take. That is an enormous number; virtually impossible to wrap one’s mind around. Here’s another, a bit closer to home: a quart of seawater contains about a billion microorganisms. When you go for an ocean swim, you’re backstroking through a population that dwarfs the number of human beings on earth.

For an hour or so at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Dr. Mitchell Sogin threw a couple of these zingers at us, plus an array of extraordinary photographs, a few of which are shown here.

Mitch is at the helm of the International Census of Marine Microorganisms (ICOMM), which has as its mission the daunting task of identifying this plethora of life forms. They aim to “accelerate (the) discovery, understanding, and awareness of the global significance of marine microbes�?.

More factoids:
• It is thought that microbial life comprises from 50 to 98 per cent of the earth’s biomass. So we’re not just talking numbers here, but bulk too.
• We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean.

We tend to associate the diversity of species with regions like the Amazon; yet the last frontier of biodiversity will quite likely be our oceans.

Check out ICOMM’S website at http://icomm.mbl.edu/

Does this remind anyone else of one of world’s most famous post-impressionist paintings? BE THE FIRST to write a comment with the name of the painting and we’ll send you something special.

By popular demand, here are the lyrics and guitar chords to “Nitrogen Fix”, an anthem I wrote for our enviro team at Woods Hole, performed last night at our “graduation”. Picture two hundred scientists, administrators, fellows and faculty singing out at the top of their lungs “Yeah, I want a nitrogen fix!!”

It’s a rocker. Alas, the debut performance was not recorded, but the very next day, “Albert and the Micro-Einsteins” (aka the 3M’s: Mark Airhart, Mary Engel and Molly Murray; Albert shall remain unknown, for his own good) sang a rollicking version of “Nitrogen Fix” for MBL instructor Rich McHornery, who wasn’t able to make the graduation banquet. You can listen to this version by clicking here:

Nitrogen Fix (3:22) [audio:NitrogenFix.mp3]

E
I’ve been pounding those well points
G
I’ve been digging in dirt
D C
I got acetone all over my shirt
Bm
I’ve been bit by mosquitoes
C
I’ve been covered in ticks
D
I believe I need a nitrogen fix (EGDC)

I’ve been scrubbing that algae
Squeezing that pipette
I’ve been massaging the figures in my data set
Now did I get those numbers right or
is my mind playing tricks?
Now I believe that I need a nitrogen fix

The ocean is filled with gazillions of cells
If the pathogens won’t getcha than the predators will
Add the Gulf Stream and global warming into the mix
Oh no, I believe I need an nitrogen fix

BREAK
C
It may seem like an inconvenient truth
E
but we’re surrounded by evidence - there’s plenty of proof
C
our ecosystem needs a little TLC
D
Or else you want to live anaerobically

My head is overloaded and I need a break
I think I’ll mosey over up to Toolik Lake*
while that permafrost is still as hard as bricks
I’m going to get myself an nitrogen fix.
*a segue to my next series of blogs - live from Toolik Lake, Alaska, where the MBL fellowship of the environment will continue its journey.

Chris Neill and Rich McHorney taking water samples at a well on Martha’s Vineyard.

It really is like taking the Pulse of the Planet. Arriving on Martha’s Vineyard, we split into teams and begin our work of taking samples. We’re bagging soil from different locations – places where the land has been cleared, and from where it hasn’t. We’re also taking samples where sawdust has been spread on the ground. All this goes back to nitrogen – we’re trying to measure and trace the way it cycles through this ecosystem.

Our instructors, Ken Foreman, Chris Neil, and Rich McHorney demonstrate the techniques of sample gathering, and then patiently guide us through the process of actually doing it.

What strikes me again and again are rigors of the procedure. Part of our team spends much of the day taking water samples along the edges of different ponds.

To take a sample of ground water, you have to pound a hollow steel tube into the ground, and pump out the water by hand. But the water pumping has to be done in a very particular manner: the bottles you are sampling in must be flushed; the salinity of the water must be measured; the sediments filtered, the location noted, the samples preserved in ice. And that’s just the bare outline: like Russian nesting dolls, each procedure has its own subset of mini-particularities: the tube is placed in a location near where we think the fresh ground water may be interfacing with the slightly salty pond water. The tube is driven into the ground rhythmically, with the help of a brass collar that we grunts (I mean, we journalist assistants) grasp and pound up and down – like a piston. The tubes are attached and removed following a methodical procedure; the hand pump – which works and feels just like one of those hand exercisers that you use in a gym – is also done methodically, first turning a stop cock on the tube, then allowing the sediment to build up, then pumping again. The sediment filters are attached to syringes, which much be first be flushed. And on and on.

Although a little overwhelming at first, after a while you get the hang of it, and you fall into the overall rhythm of the task. What’s interesting though is that if your mind wanders, you’ll inevitably screw up the procedure, so it’s the kind of work that hones your attention, not to mention the muscles on your hand.
More soon.

Ken Foreman drives deep into the sands of Martha’s Vineyard.

6/6/6
Top of the sixes to you you.
I’ve been thinking about numbers, about how they seem to be one of the coins of the realm of science, which needs DATA to prove its hypotheses.  Everything must be quantified, the amount of fixed nitrogen in the soil and in the water, the amount of chlorophyll, and so on. The data may yet save us if it doesn’t kill us first.  After a few forays in the realm of logarithms, equations and curves, my brain cells begin to turn into Tapioca pudding. I could probably even draw a graph which showed the relationship between the amount of Tapioca pudding and the number of numbers I have been assimilating. After a day of feeling crunched by numbers, I was grateful to just sit and scrape the algae off of rock samples.
More soon.