Line W: A 10-year Portrait of Our Planet. News Release : Study Examines How Diving Marine Mammals Manage Decompression. December 21, 2011 Any diver returning from ocean depths knows about the hazard of decompression sickness (DCS) or “the bends.” As the diver ascends and the ocean pressure decreases, gases that were absorbed by the body during the dive, come out of solution and, if the ascent is too rapid, can cause bubbles to form in the body.
DCS causes many symptoms, and its effects may vary from joint pain and rashes to paralysis and death. But how do marine mammals, whose very survival depends on regular diving, manage to avoid DCS? Do they, indeed, avoid it? In April 2010, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Marine Mammal Center (MMC) invited the world’s experts in human diving and marine-mammal diving physiology to convene for a three-day workshop to discuss the issue of how marine mammals manage gas under pressure. The workshop resulted in a paper, “Deadly diving? News Release : Researchers Assess Radioactivity Released to the Ocean from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Facility. December 6, 2011 With news this week of additional radioactive leaks from Fukushima nuclear power plants, the impact on the ocean of releases of radioactivity from the plants remains unclear.
But a new study by U.S. and Japanese researchers analyzes the levels of radioactivity discharged from the facility in the first four months after the accident and draws some basic conclusions about the history of contaminant releases to the ocean. The study, conducted by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution chemist Ken Buesseler and two Japanese colleagues, Michio Aoyama of the Meteorological Research Institute and Masao Fukasawa of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, reports that discharges from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plants peaked one month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that precipitated the nuclear accident, and continue through at least July.
Oceanus : Tracking an Elusive Chemical: Estrogens. By David Griffith :: Originally published online : In print Vol. 49, No. 1, Dec 2011 On a crisp October morning, our small boat bobbed gently 10 miles offshore. The sun glinted off the dark blue surface of Massachusetts Bay and directly below us, all of Boston’s sewage was surging into the ocean. Back on shore the city was waking up and flushing the toilet, and the ensuing “morning rush” had just begun its 19-hour journey to this place. Out of sight, this plume of sewage effluent would be easy to ignore if it didn’t contain hard-to-detect chemicals that could have impacts on our health and the environment.
We had spent weeks preparing for our first sampling trip, and I crossed my fingers as we began setting up the equipment we would use to stalk an elusive chemical in the ocean. If you are a human or any other animal with a backbone, your body makes estrogen. Is dilution the solution? And it is likely that treated sewage isn’t the only source of estrogen. A wide variety of estrogens.
Oceanus : The Scientist Who Loves the Cold. Oceanus : The Scientist Who Loves the Cold. Blue Ocean Institute | Home. Marine Conservation Biology Institute. NOAA's National Ocean Service Office of Response and Restoration. Home | The Smithsonian Institution: The Ocean Portal. Did Whale Evolution Go Backwards?