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Climate change is rapidly reshaping the Long Island Sound, as citizen science data shows

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DMS scientists digitized old records from Project Oceanology and discovered a treasure chest of data on warming oceans and shifting marine populations

For more than 45 years, the non-profit Project Oceanology on UConn’s Avery Point Campus has inspired middle and high school students to care about the ocean. Students learn how measure water temperature, pH and oxygen and sift through trawl catches of fish and crabs that many have never seen for real before. Thereby, Project Oceanology did something else of enormous value: it routinely collected data for decades. Steel cabinets swallowed the student’s records and obliviously guarded this growing treasure.

In 2016, Master’s student Jacob Snyder and Professor Hannes Baumann decided to lift the treasure. They painstakingly entered every recording from every data sheet they found, anxious for the time, when the data would finally speak. The study, published in April 2019, shows how rapidly temperatures in eastern Long Island Sound have increased over the past four decades (+0.45C per decade), at a rate four times faster than in the global ocean (Levitus et al. 2000). This is also true for the larger Northwest Atlantic shelf, of which Long Island Sound is a part, where some areas have warmed faster than 99% of all ocean waters on earth (Pershing et al. 2015).

Another symptom of marine climate change is ocean acidification, measured as a pH slow decline in the ocean which swallows the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by humans (Doney et al. 2009). In coastal waters, nutrient pollution (e.g., nitrogen, phosphate) from sewers, waste water treatment plants and fertilizer runoff can intensify acidification. The Project Oceanology data revealed that pH declined much more rapidly in Long Island Sound than globally, which could imply worsening conditions for shellfish farmers.

Trawl records were particularly telling, showing that cold-water species such as American lobster, rock crab or winter flounder became less frequent over time. This is exactly what long-time instructors at Project Oceanology said they had noticed too. Lobsters once supported a proud fishery in Long Island Sound, but warmer, more acidic waters, shell disease, and overfishing have now decimated them to nearly complete absence.

However, a winner of dubious qualities emerged too. Over the past decades, spider crabs have moved into Long Island Sound from the south and are now the dominant crab species in the trawls. Spider crabs are no equivalent to lobsters, humans do not like to eat them and they can alter the ecosystem, as they eat much more plant-based food than lobsters.

Long Island Sound has been rapidly changing, and the data collected by generations of middle and high school students re-affirmed this. Other time-series from Norwalk Harbor and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CTDEEP) have shown similar trends. It is therefore undeniable that marine climate change is happening right now in Long Island Sound.

 

Snyder, J., Whitney, M., Dam, H., Jacobs, M., and Baumann, H. Citizen science observations reveal rapid, multi-decadal ecosystem changes in eastern Long Island Sound. Marine Environmental Research 146:80-88

Contacts/Links:

Hannes Baumann, Assistant Professor, Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, 1080 Shennecossett Road, 06340 Groton, CT, hannes.baumann@uconn.edu, Twitter: @Baumannlab1, 860-405-9297

Project Oceanology: 1084 Shennecossett Road, 06340 Groton, CT www.oceanology.org, Twitter: @Proj_Oceanology

 

Department Award and Publication Highlights

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Graduate Student Publications:

 

Ilia, A., & O’Donnell, J. (2018). An Assessment of Two Models of Wave Propagation in an Estuary Protected by Breakwaters. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 6(4), 145. doi:10.3390/jmse6040145

 

Hedley, J.D.; Mirhakak, M.; Wentworth, A.; Dierssen, H.M. Influence of Three-Dimensional Coral Structures on Hyperspectral Benthic Reflectance and Water-Leaving Reflectance. Appl. Sci. 2018, 8, 2688.

 

Sasaki, M., Hedberg, S., Richardson, K., & Dam, H.G. (2019). Complex interactions between local adaptation, phenotypic plasticity and sex affect vulnerability to warming in a widespread marine copepod. R. Soc. open sci., 6(3). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.182115

 

Faculty Awards:

 

Sandra Shumway was awarded the FUCOBI Foundation Award for Outstanding Contributions by Women in Aquaculture, the APEX Award for Publishing Excellence (Journal of Shellfish Research) and the Association Trends Gold Award (Journal of Shellfish Research).

 

Senjie Lin (PI) and Huan Zhang (Co-PI) received a two-year grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop a CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technique for studying dinoflagellate gene functions. Titled “Moving from transformation to CRISPR/Cas9 gene knockout for dinoflagellates.”

 

Michael Whitney, has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Iceland, set to start in 2020.

 

 

Samantha Siedlecki was awarded a NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) fellowship.

Highlights: https://today.uconn.edu/school-stories/marine-knowledge-is-power/#

 

 

Student Awards:

 

Jo-Marie Kasinak was awarded the Torrey Botanical Society’s Greller Graduate Student Research Award for the Conservation of Local Flora and Ecosystems.

 

Incoming graduate student, Monica Garity was awarded a Harriott Fellowship through the UConn Graduate School.

 

Amin Ilia, Matt Sasaki, and Brittany Sprecher received awards from the William A. Lund, Jr. Fellowship in Marine Sciences and the Andrew J. Nalwalk Memorial Award.

 

Tyler Griffin, Yipeng He, Amin Ilia, Molly James, Ewaldo Leitao, Michael Mathuri, Patricia Myer, Sean Ryan, Matt Sasaki, Emma Shipley, Sue Smith, and Mengyang Zhou received UConn Graduate School predoctoral fellowship awards through the department of Marine Sciences.

 

Graduate students Halle Berger, Sean Ryan, and Lingjie Zhou received awards from the John Rankin Scholarship Fund, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

 

Marine Knowledge is Power

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Marine Knowledge is Power: Predicting Ocean Resources for Coastal Communities

Big ocean changes are happening, but global trends may not accurately represent what happens in coastal regions. With support from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), UConn marine scientist Samantha Siedlecki’s research aims to help address this gap in knowledge.

Through a new NCAR program launching this summer, Siedlecki will couple global models with regionally refined systems so that coastal communities can better predict what biogeochemical changes their waters might face in the future. Her NCAR project focuses specifically on coastal biogeochemistry and health metrics relevant to marine resource management on the Northeast Atlantic shelf.

UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/school-stories/marine-knowledge-is-power/Twitter: https://twitter.com/UConnResearch/status/1131164302327595009LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6536935526912573441

Jim O’Donnell sits down with Face the Facts

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Jim O’Donnell is a professor of marine sciences at UConn and leader of the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Change. He sat down with Face the Facts With Max Reiss to talk about our changing climate and what impacts Connecticut residents could see in the future, especially along the shoreline Face the Facts With Max Reiss airs Sundays at 10 a.m.

Congratulations 2019 Graduates!

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Yan Jia, Qiang Sun, Michael Whitney, Steven Deignan-Schmidt

Yan Jia, Qiang Sun, Prof. Michael Whitney, and Steven Deignan-Schmidt at the doctoral commencement ceremony.

 

Gihong Park, Youngmi Shin, James O'Donnell

Gihong Park, Youngmi Shin, and Prof. James O’Donnell at the doctoral commencement ceremony.

 

Chris Murray

Christopher Murray after the doctoral commencement ceremony.

 

Penny Vlahos and Allison Byrd

Prof. Penny Vlahos and Allison Byrd after the master’s commencement ceremony.

 

2019 Senior Recognition Avery Point

Marine Sciences graduates and faculty at the Senior Recognition Ceremony at Avery Point on May 10, 2019.

16th Annual Marine Sciences Day: May 9th, 2019

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In collaboration with Project Oceanology, the graduate students from Department of Marine Sciences hosted workshops for middle schoolers to teach them about marine sciences and research being done in the department. Students extracted DNA from strawberries and put it in necklaces for all to see. Another workshop had students identify plankton under microscopes.

Thanks to students from the McManus, Lin, and Dam Labs for organizing and running these activities, and inspiring the next generation of scientists.

DMS graduate students present at UConn’s 2nd Climate Research Symposium

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On April 30th, four graduate students from the Marine Sciences Department traveled to UConn, Storrs to present their research at UConn’s 2nd Climate Research Symposium cohosted by the Geology and Marine Sciences departments. The students were Kelly McGarry (Ph.D student; top left), Halle Berger (Master’s student; top right), Sarah McCart (Master’s student; bottom left) and Alec Shub (Master’s student; bottom right). Everyone’s presentations were well received, and Sarah McCart even won the graduate student poster competition!

The event featured two keynote speakers; Professor Margaret Rubega of UConn, and Professor Tim Cronin of MIT. Professor Rubega talked about science communication and how the scientific community could better communicate their climate change research to non-scientists without using overbearing jargon and too many words. Professor Cronin gave a speech on his past research on the suppression of Arctic air formation with climate warming.

By Callie Concannon

2nd Climate Research Symposium

Long Island Sound Habitat Mapping website now available

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A new website highlighting the Long Island Sound Habitat Mapping Initiative went live on Earth Day. The website provides information on the background and motivation for the mapping initiative, summaries of the field work conducted, interpretive story maps describing some of the results, links to data products and publications generated and multimedia links to images and video of at-sea operations that illustrate the beauty and complexity of the underwater habitats of the Sound.

https://lismap.uconn.edu/

DMS post-doctoral researcher Emma Cross publishes new brachiopod research

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15 April 2019. Dr. Emma Cross from the Baumann Lab just published her latest paper about brachiopod resilience to future ocean acidification in Environmental Science & Technology. The project involved long-term culturing of a polar and a temperate brachiopod under future ocean acidification and warming conditions during Emma’s PhD-research with the British Antarctic Survey. Substantial shell dissolution posed a threat to both species under ocean acidification, with more extensive dissolution occurring in the polar species.

Unexpectedly, however, the authors also discovered that brachiopods thicken their shell from the inner shell surface when extensive dissolution occurs at the outer shell surface under ocean acidification. This important finding furthers our understanding how predicted vulnerable marine calcifiers might cope under future environmental change.

Cross-ES&T-Graphical-abstract

Cross, E. L., Harper, E. M. and Peck, L. S. 2019. Thicker shells compensate extensive dissolution in brachiopods under future ocean acidification. Environmental Science & Technology (published online March 29, 2019).

Canadian Journal of Zoology publishes perspective on experimental OA research by DMS faculty

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Fig01---breakthrough-themes_c
15 April 2019. Today, the Canadian Journal of Zoology published a perspective on the progress and challenges of experimental ocean acidification research, written by Hannes last year as an extension of keynote lectures on this topic given at the Annual meeting of the Canadian Zoological Society (St. John’s, NL, Canada) and the Gordon Research Symposium (Waterville Valley, NH). The perspective takes stock of the progress achieved in the field over past two decades in four key areas, hoping to inspire particularly new researchers to the field to build on this foundation.
Abstract: Experimental studies assessing the potential impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms have rapidly expanded and produced a wealth of empirical data over the past decade. This perspective examines four key areas of transfor- mative developments in experimental approaches: (1) methodological advances; (2) advances in elucidating physiological and molecular mechanisms behind observed CO2 effects; (3) recognition of short-term CO2 variability as a likely modifier of species sensitivities (Ocean Variability Hypothesis); and (4) consensus on the multistressor nature of marine climate change where effect interactions are still challenging to anticipate. No single experiment allows predicting the fate of future populations. But sustaining the accumulation of empirical evidence is critical for more robust estimates of species reaction norms and thus for enabling better modeling approaches. Moreover, advanced experimental approaches are needed to address knowledge gaps including changes in species interactions and intraspecific variability in sensitivity and its importance for the adaptation potential of marine organisms to a high CO2 world.
OVH-GRCtalk
Illustration of the Ocean Variability Hypothesis positing that the CO2 sensitivity of marine organisms is related to the magnitude of short-term CO2 fluctuations in their habitat (e.g., from nearshore to open ocean) and length of their early life stage durations. It suggests that the most CO2 tolerant marine organisms are those that develop fast and (or) in habitats with large contemporary CO2 fluctuations, whereas the potentially most vulnerable species are those that develop slowly in relatively stable open-ocean habitats.