Science

Yesterday’s budget proposal for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would add $110 million to its budget for a total of  $4.48 billion. That’s a big increase for an agency that for much of the past decade has had a mostly flat budget hovering at about $4 billion. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco has focused the proposed increase on climate research, in line with President Barack Obama’s clear priority toward climate research across his budget. (Even the State Department has become involved, holding a conference call this morning to highlight funding in its budget for assistance on energy and programs to protect rain forests abroad.)

Lubchenco wants to boost climate research at her agency by proposing an increase of $16 million in 2010 for efforts including comparisons of climate models, competitive research that academic scientists can compete for new studies to track rapid changes in the Arctic, and ocean-acidification monitoring. 

The increases come on the heels of $244 million that the government granted as part of the stimulus package for high-performance computing for climate modeling and climate sensors.

Read the complete story at Science Insider.

University science, which has already proven itself with scallops, gave a public demonstration yesterday of its facility at one-upping government science on behalf of the New England groundfish industry.

In a brief presentation to about 40 fishing industry representatives — in the No. 1 value-landed port in the nation — the chairman of the Department of Fisheries Oceanography at the University of Massachusetts’ School of Marine Science and Technology pointed out loose ends and problems with a government study that formed the basis of a new set of restrictions on fishing to protect winter flounder, one of 15 species in the New England groundfish roster.

Enough problems exist, Associate Professor Kevin Stokesbury advised his audience, to warrant following through on a challenge issued by Gov. Deval Patrick two weeks ago to scientifically battle the science of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

In a speech today to members of the National Academy of Sciences, President Barack Obama announced new initiatives and investments in scientific research, innovation, and education, declaring once again to restore science to its rightful place. "The days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over," he said.

Calling science "more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, and our environment than it has ever been," Obama said he is going to make major investments — 3 percent of the gross domestic product — in research and innovation. This exceeds the amount invested in 1964 at the height of the space race. He emphasized the importance of using funds to encourage high-risk, high-return research and to support researchers at the beginning of their careers.

Following a welcome from NAS President Ralph J. Cicerone, Obama was introduced to the audience by his science adviser and NAS member John Holdren, who said that Obama "wanted to bring science back into the center of how the government thinks, what it says, and what it does; and he is doing it."

Read the complete story at the "AZo Journal of Materials Online".

Gov. Deval Patrick’s promise to press for a rewriting of federal fishing regulations stands as good news for the industry and communities.  But while Patrick vowed to work with his contacts high within the Obama administration — identifying new Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel — perhaps the more encouraging long-term prospects rest with his commitment to carry out a scientific study through the marine science and technology center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Read the complete story from the Gloucester Times.

For the first time, scientists have observed the synchronized movement of millions of fish off New England – the same kind of “chain reaction” that will likely make the human wave move through Fenway Park later today.

Scientists have long known that millions of individual fish – and birds and locusts for that matter – often operate as a unit, seamlessly changing direction, dispersing and coming back together. We’ve all seen tiny schools of fish do it in shallow salt water, of course, but Northeastern and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers were able to directly “see” this happening with hundreds of million of herring on Georges Bank.

Using new imaging techniques that allowed researchers to more frequently monitor enormous schools of fish over farther distances, the researchers discovered that as soon as these large herring populations reached a critical population density, it triggered an orchestrated movement by millions of fish over miles.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

"…ooperative research is one of the best ways we have to reach common ground with the fishing industry in our shared goals of restoring groundfish stocks and providing good jobs for New Bedford and other fishing communities." Read the letter from Jim Balsiger, acting assistant administrator, NOAA Fisheries Service.

New technology is allowing researchers and conservationists to watch the movement of large groups of fish as they gather into shoals and later split up.

Focusing on Atlantic herring, the scientists were, for the first time, able to observe the fish gather off Georges Bank near Cape Cod, Mass., where they spawn under cover of dark, according to a report in today’s edition of the journal Science.

With dawn, the large mass of herring return to deeper waters and scatter, according to the researchers led by Nicholas C. Makris, a professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Using a system called Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing, the team can observe shoals of fish as much as 25 miles across, compared to past echo-sounders which cover only a small area. Makris says the change is like moving from seeing a single pixel to the entire movie.

Read the complete story at South Coast Today. 

DARTMOUTH, MA (March 19, 2009) – After powering down their cell phones and iPods, high school science students settled into their seats to listen to a different kind of noise: whale songs.

They giggled at the recorded grunts and whistles of right and pilot whales. Then they grew quiet as marine scientist Danielle Cholewiak explained her research into how human-made sounds such as freighter ship engines and fish-finding sonar affect the way whales and dolphins communicate with each other to find food, care for their young and navigate the dark ocean.

"The oceans are getting noisier and noisier," said Cholewiak, an acoustics specialist for Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

Read the Standard-Times story in full

 

WASHINGTON, DC (March 9, 2009) – New England lobstermen have gone high tech by adding low-cost instruments to their lobster pots that record bottom temperature and provide data that could help improve ocean circulation models in the Gulf of Maine.

Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps, or eMOLT, is a partnership involving NOAA, the Maine, Massachusetts, Downeast and Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Associations, the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, and the Marine Science Department at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) in Portland, Maine.

Read the full article, published in Lab Spaces

 

NEW BEDFORD, MA (March 4, 2009) – An investigation into the scientific practices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center found that the Woods Hole-based center uses the best available science but must take steps to improve how it communicates that science to the groundfishing industry, according to the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

NOAA Fisheries Service has until March 28 to submit an action plan to Inspector General Todd J. Zinser, detailing how the agency, which falls under the Commerce Department, will improve transparency with fishermen based on recommendations outlined in a 42-page report on the investigation.

Read the Standard-Times story in full