Oceanography and marine science mentions (counted by Google) peaked in the 1960’s at the time of intense exploration and record breaking dives to the ocean depths (and of course the Apollo missions into space). The latter part of the 20^th century was then characterised by sustained efforts to explore the ocean depths, with the discovery of deep sea hydrothermal vents near seafloor volcanoes and development of a new integrated understanding of how the oceans function, control the climate and how ecosystems operate in this vast, and largely invisible realm. This period saw the burgeoning of new science disciplines and cross-disciplinary efforts and the relative frequency of the words ‘oceanography’ and ‘marine science’ subsequently decreased systematically through to 2019 in Google search counts.

Ocean science has evolved as a specialist subject at a number of Universities in each country across most of the globe. This silo-ing of the subject has not helped its integration into the national psyche, broader society nor mainstream Sustainable Development. Marine science is only touched on in the UK National Curriculum and is taught in a relatively small number of Universities world-wide. To compound this lack of integration, policy making in the coastal, marine and deep-sea realm is distributed across a bewildering number of Government Departments, Agencies, Organisations and Bodies globally, making integrated approaches difficult.

The oceans control our weather, our future climate, supply much of our protein, hold many of our future energy and other resources and are the global highway for ships, cables and pipelines supplying the huge coastal cities across the globe. As the global population increases to well over 9 billion by 2050, our demands on the oceans will increase significantly, yet we have only limited understanding of how to do this sustainably. We know that human activity has already led to ocean-warming, acidification, sea-level rise, depletion of fish-stocks, increases in pollutants and wide-spread degradation. We also know that different combinations of environmental stressors hugely amplify these negative impacts in ways that are hard to predict or reverse.

We need an Ocean Decade to integrate ocean science into our global society, into our education systems, into broader academic research, into our policy-making at every level of Government, into our individual and collective actions.

We need an Ocean Decade to break down national barriers and to define ways to work together to identify regions of our ocean that are most at risk of irreversible damage and protect these as a priority.

We need an Ocean Decade to agree how to create the ocean we need to sustain life on this planet.

There have been 46 different United Nations Decades since the first UN Development Decade (1960-1970).  Our ambition is to make this new Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development one that transforms our discipline, our society and the future of our planet.

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Our last day of science sampling and we are collecting water just above a site where we suspect there is low-temperature fluid flow at the seafloor 2.5km below the ship.   This is the site that in 1974 was named TAG after dredging hydrothermal deposits from the eastern rift-valley wall. I worked on these precious samples much later in the 1990’s and demonstrated that hydrothermal neodymium could be traced in these ferromanganese crusts demonstrating that they formed from low-temperature vent fluids rather than from seawater. We want to see what we can see in the deep water over this site and measure the input from the seafloor.

Over the last 38 days we have put our sampling rosette into the deep water 83 times and collected nearly 30,000 litres of seawater for processing, filtering, measuring and archiving. We have pumped over 45,000 litres of seawater through our deep sea cartridges to strip out natural radioactive isotopes that we use measure time in the deep sea. We have filled the container on the aft deck with over 100 crates of samples carefully wrapped for transport around the world to our labs in the UK, the US and elsewhere. Our physics team have made over 20 million measurements of turbulence through the water column and measured the plumes wafting through the deep waters in intricate detail.

We have steamed 4200 nautical miles since we left Southampton and have over 1000 to go to get to Guadaloupe. We have drunk over 7000 cups of coffee and eaten nearly a tonne of potatoes and over a 1000 rashers of bacon. We’ve hit the gym (perhaps because of the potatoes) and collectively rowed, run and cycled thousands of kilometres. We’ve played 350 games of cribbage, nearly 500 games of table football and some challenging games of darts when the ship is rolling.

All 52 people on the ship have worked (and played) really well together on this expedition – we have made new friends and close collaborations that will last a long time. On this long passage south to Guadaloupe we are drafting the ideas for the next proposals, practicing the talks for the big conferences coming up in 2018 and of course getting our fancy-dress costumes designed and made for the ‘RPC’.

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I have studied this hydrothermal site called TAG, nearly 4km below us on the seafloor, for nearly 30 years. First for my PhD, then on and off over the years. TAG is now one of the most well studied, deep-sea vent sites anywhere on the seafloor. The nations that explore the deep have mapped every square metre of the active hydrothermal mound, we have drilled deep beneath the seafloor into the stockwork that lies underneath the mineral deposit, we have mapped out the older inactive mounds littered over the rift valley floor, marking past sites of venting.

The International Seabed Authority has granted IFREMER (France) a 15-year exploration licence for a suite of 100, 10x10km blocks that include this area of the mid-ocean ridge. This remote and extremely deep mineral deposit is one of the largest in the Atlantic but I question whether mining will ever happen here despite the significant levels of copper, gold and other metals present right at the seafloor. We don’t know what the impact of extraction is on specialist vent fauna and the extreme depths and associated pressure makes operations extremely risky compared with shallower (or land-based) sites.

We are here to assess the impact of these vents on the wider ocean chemistry. To test how leaky they are – which metals, sulphide and other species are dispersed up into the water column and how far this enriched plume of essential micro-nutrients can be tracked into the deep ocean interior.

Our physics team track the hot buoyant fluid up over several hundred metres into the overlying water; zig-zagging the sampling frame through the plume to measure instabilities and mixing. We overlay the chemistry onto these physical observations to look at iron oxidation, sulphide complexation, particle exchange reactions and the fate of these elements. We repeat sample along the ridge; close to vents, far from vents to track the water as it disperses.

One of the most important elements of this work is the way we integrate our results into the global GEOTRACES programme – our measurements are made to the same rigorous protocols and carefully cross-calibrated so we can contour our data straight into the global database. We are looking forward to adding our piece of the puzzle to the global understanding of how the geology of the seafloor controls the chemistry of the ocean.

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We still ‘sail’ in rather larger science teams for much shorter periods of time. The rhythm of work on a ship and the lowering and hauling of wires is very familiar. We collect water samples in large bottles that can be closed remotely at depth and are arranged around an array of in situ sensors that give us real time data of ocean properties as we sit in the lab. The samples are recovered at awkward times of day and night – these samples need to be processed immediately to catch the helium atoms that escape out of the sample, the oxygen samples that are compromised as soon as the tap is opened, the microbial and chemical measurements of trace amounts of rare elements that we use to understand the scale and timing of ocean processes. We pump tonnes of water through cartridges to strip out radioactive isotopes that help determine the timescales in the deep ocean.

All this happens in slick sequence time and time again as we progress South along the volcanic ridge towards the subtropics. After a couple of weeks we are a great team – called on deck at odd hours to process samples under ultra-clean conditions, careful not to contaminate that water from the deep. Make decisions, move on South.

The key to effective work on the ship is of course how well this team works. You would all recognise the dynamics – the Captain is in charge of the ship – the Chief Scientist is in charge of the programme and together they make decisions every day to curtail a bit of this, cut a bit of that, move on if this isn’t working. The rest of the team are here to get the most out of this fantastic opportunity to track all the known volcanic vents in this region.

Ocean expeditions are fabulous training grounds for the next generation of scientists. We have an undergraduate student from California, a POGO funded postgraduate student from Malaysia, a whole group of PhD students from Southampton and Liverpool and the graduate students from collaborating labs in the US and France aboard. They work relentlessly round the clock and still have the energy to have fun – friendships made at sea last a lifetime.

The ship is a melting pot for people from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of experiences, all sorts of life stories and these are shared during the night shift over cups of Maeve’s espresso. The bridge calls down to point out those things that we can only really appreciate out here – dolphins on the starboard bow, alignment of Jupiter and Mars off the port deck.

The best part of being at sea is the freedom to focus on the task at hand and nothing more, nothing less. Time slows down, problems are solved, solutions are found, new data is stuck to the walls, new ideas forged as we each contribute to the picture emerging of plumes of metals wafted deep along the ridge. I love the rhythm of the days and nights – the sunsets and sunrises, the slow passing of time. We love the singularity of purpose.

The worst part is the severing of connections with home over the first few days and the vague feeling of institutionalisation and repetition that takes over after several weeks – all lifestyle decisions are out of your hand – what you eat, what you drink, when you sleep, when you do laundry, how you exercise, who you mix with.

The FRidge team is exceptional. I have made new friends, really cemented some work relationships and am looking forward to working with these great scientists over the next few years to get these samples measured and our new ideas out into the community and beyond.

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The first question you may have is, “how is the light produced?” and the answer to this is chemistry. It is all due to a molecule called luciferin and an enzyme known as luciferase. Luciferase causes the reaction of oxygen with luciferin which produces energy released as a flash of light.

A wide diversity of organisms were shown during Widder’s talk, ranging from eels to single celled marine plants (dinoflagellates), and indeed bioluminescence is widespread in nature. From bacteria (such as found in the lure of deep sea angler-fish) to the larger vampire squid of the deep ocean. An interesting fact is that, aside from a few exceptions, bioluminescence is absent from freshwater environments.

The deep sea angler fish (left) and vampire squid (right).

The reason why the container of dinoflagellates lit up when Widder gave it a good shake is due to the chemical reaction discussed above. The physical action on the outside membrane of the cell causes ions (such as calcium, sodium) to generate a chemical charge and the reaction of luciferin to produce light. This all happens within 12 milliseconds! Although the flash of light from 1 cell may not look like much, if we scale it down to the size of a dinoflagellate (about 0.5 millimetres) the light can be seen by a fish up to 5m away. That would be equivalent to a 2m human being seen 20km away by flashing light, pretty impressive if you ask me!

Most of the bioluminescent light emitted in the oceans is within the blue and green spectrum of light, particularly in the deep ocean, as shown in Edith Widder’s talk. There is a reason for this and it is to do with the properties of light. When light hits the surface of the ocean (or any body of water) the light is absorbed sequentially through different wavelengths (see diagram). Red is the first to be absorbed, followed by orange, yellow, green and finally blue. This is why when you look at water it appears blue as all other wavelengths have been absorbed. As red light would not penetrate to the deep ocean, organisms here have not evolved to detect red light, so emitting red light to distract your predator would have no real effect here.

Finally, someone may ask “this is all great, but what has bioluminescence ever done for humanity?” Well, a small molecule known as green-fluorescent protein (GFP) was discovered and isolated from a jellyfish (Aequorea victoria) in 1962. This molecule (and others) have revolutionised biology. By attaching GFP to proteins it is possible to look at the movements and fates of compounds within cells. It is used to look at gene activation within cells and visualise growing tumours. In fact GFP has had such a profound impact on science that in 2008 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the discoverers of this molecule.

Image of the jellyfish Aequorea victoria and GFP-tagged keratin in a culture of skin (epithelial) cells

There are still many mysteries surrounding bioluminescence, but I hope this has been provided you with a little bit more information. If you have any further questions please ask in the comments section and we will try to answer them.

Many fun facts were taken from “Bioluminescence in the Sea, Haddock S., Moline M.A., Case, J.F. Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci. 2010”.

Information on the Nobel Prize awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsein can be found here.

Dinoflagellates on the beach image: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/5-amazing-bioluminescent-things-that-actually-exist-in-nature

Image of the light absorbtion spectrum: http://www.seos-project.eu/modules/oceancolour/oceancolour-c01-p07.html

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Yesterday we finished filming our versions of the experiments detailed in step 2.13 of the MOOC. With a lot of help from Cristian, Helen and Christopher, we completed each of the four experiments with varying degrees of success! We have given a short explanation for what each of the experiments illustrates in the real world, we hope you enjoy the video, let us know how successful your experiments were!

There are several great images on the padlet wall for this activity, please do share your photos or videos either on padlet or in twitter (@UoSoceans)

 

Don’t forget you can join in a live chat about the MOOC this thursday where the team will be taking questions on the topics so far, as well as how to pursue a career in ocean sciences. If you have a question, please tweet it using #oceanshangout or leave it on the blog or the forums. If you can’t make the hangout at 1pm, this thursday, the video will be available afterwards.

Millie (@GeoMillie)

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