Scientists have discovered new microbes in the deep-sea which can use greenhouse gases, such as methane and butane, as energy sources. These new microbes could help reduce the concentration of these gases in our atmosphere and have the potential to be used to clean up oil spills in the future.

The deep-sea is one of the Earth’s most unexplored areas. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute have published findings from an extensive documentation of microbial communities living in the hot, deep-sea sediments of the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California, US. 

They found new microbes, vastly different genetically from any found before, that possess the same ability to ‘eat’ pollutant-chemicals as previously identified microbes.

 

A view of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill from the International Space Station. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The scientists analysed sediment from 2000m below the surface for genomic data. At this depth, volcanic activity causes high temperatures – around 200°C – and the water contains many hydrocarbons such as methane and butane, which can be used as energy sources for bacteria.

Images of turtles trapped in plastic packaging or a fish nibbling on microfibres pull on the heartstrings, yet many scientists studying plastics in the oceans remain open-minded on the long-term effects.

While plastics shouldn’t be in our oceans, they say there is still insufficient evidence to determine whether microplastics – the very tiniest plastic particles, usually defined as being less than 1mm in diameter – are actually harmful.

 

It is estimated that over 1,000 turtles die each year from plastic waste. Image: NOAA Marine Debris Program

On top of this, there is debate over how much plastic is actually in the sea and why so much of it remains hidden from view. Much of the research carried out to date is in its early stages – and has so far produced no definitive answers.

‘My concern is that we have to provide the authorities with good data, so they can make good decisions,’ says Torkel Gissel Nielsen, Technical University of Denmark (DTU). ‘We need strong data – not just emotions.’

Searching the sea

 

Plastic shopping bags can be degraded into microplastics that litter the oceans. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Gissel Nielsen leads a team of researchers who discovered that levels of microplastics in the Baltic Sea have remained constant over the past three decades, despite rising levels of plastics production and use.

The study – by researchers at DTU Aqua, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Geomar, Germany – analysed levels of microplastics in fish and water samples from the Baltic Sea, taken between 1987 and 2015.

‘The result is surprising,’ says Nielsen. ‘There is the same amount of plastic in both the water and the fish when you go back 30 years.’ He claims that previous studies of microplastics levels were ‘snapshots’, while this is the first time levels have been studied over a longer period.

 

The UK introduced a ban in January this year of the sale and manufacture of products containing microbeads. Image: MPCA Photos 

‘The study raises a number of questions, such as where the plastic has gone,’ he says. ‘Does it sink to the bottom, are there organisms that break it down, or is it carried away by currents? Some is in the sediment, some is in the fish, but we need to find out exactly how much plastic is there.’

In the study, more than 800 historical samples of fish were dissected and researchers found microplastics in around 20% of them. This laborious process involved diluting the stomach contents in order to remove ‘organic’ materials, then checking the filtered contents under a microscope to determine the size and concentration of plastics. It illustrates the difficulty of quantifying plastics in any sample, says Gissel Nielsen.

‘You must remove the biology to get a clear view of the plastics,’ he says.

River transport

Originally posted by flyngdream

Just as rivers supply the sea with water, they also act as a source of pollution. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany, found that 10 large rivers are responsible for transporting 90% of plastic waste into the sea.

The team collected pre-published data on plastics in rivers and collated it with upstream sites of ‘mismanaged’ plastics waste – municipal waste that is uncollected.

‘The more mismanaged plastic waste there was, the more you found in the river,’ says Christian Schmidt, UFZ. ‘There was an empirical relationship between the two.’

 

The Yangtze river (pictured in Shanghai, China) is the main polluter of plastic in the ocean in the world. Image: Pedro Szekely/Flickr

Eight of these 10 rivers are in Asia, while the other two are in Africa. All of them flow through areas of high population.

‘Countries like India and China have seen huge economic growth – and now use large amounts of plastic food packaging and bottles – but have limited waste collection systems,’ he says. The data include both microplastic and ‘macro’ plastics – but microplastics data dominate ‘because scientists are more interested in that’, says Schmidt.

Plastic Ocean. Video: United Nations

While it is important to measure how much plastic is in the environment, Schmidt believes that the next step of his research will be more important – understanding the journey the plastics make from the river to the sea.

For all the uncertainty and debate over how much plastic is in the sea – and what harm it can do – one thing is clear. Future research is likely to focus more on the plastics that we can’t see, rather than the items we can.

It’s well known that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb increasing amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. Now, German researchers say they have found the first evidence that this is happening in freshwaters, too, with potentially widespread effects on ecosystems.

‘Many current investigations describe tremendous effects of rising CO2 levels on marine ecosystems,’ says Linda Weiss at Ruhr-University Bochum: acidic oceans can have major impacts on marine food webs, nutrient cycles, overall productivity and biodiversity. ‘However, freshwater ecosystems have been largely overlooked,’ she adds.

Originally posted by boitoyscotty

Waters with high acidity have reduced biodiversity.

Weiss and colleagues looked at four freshwater reservoirs in Germany. Their analysis of data over 35 years – from 1981 to 2015 – confirmed a continuous increase in CO2, measured as the partial pressure or pCO2, and an associated decrease in pH of about 0.3, suggesting that freshwaters may acidify at a faster rate than the oceans.

In lab studies, the team also investigated the effects of higher acidity on two species of freshwater crustaceans called Daphnia, or water fleas. Daphnia found in lakes, ponds and reservoirs are an important primary food source for many larger animals.

 

Daphnia are an essential part of the freshwater food chain. Image: Faculty of Natural Sciences at Norwegian University of Science and Technology/Flickr  

When Daphnia sense that predators are around, they respond by producing ‘helmets’ and spikes that make them harder to eat. Weiss found that high levels of CO2 reduce Daphnia’s ability to detect predators. ‘This reduces the expression of morphological defences, rendering them more vulnerable,’ she says.

The team suggest that CO2 alters chemical communication between species, which could have knock-on effects throughout the whole ecosystem. Many fish learn to use chemical cues from injured species to detect predatory threats and move away from danger, for example.

Ocean acidification - the evil twin of climate change | Triona McGrath | TEDxFulbrightDublin. Video: TEDx Talks

Cory Suski, an ecologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, says he is not aware of many other data sets showing trends in CO2 abundance in freshwater over an extended time. Also, he notes: ‘A lot of the work to date in this area has revolved around behavioural or physiological responses to elevated CO2, so a morphological change is novel.’

But he points out that it is difficult to predict how this change could impact aquatic ecosystems, or whether this may be a global phenomenon, simply because of the complex nature of CO2 in freshwater. The amount of CO2 in freshwater is driven by a number of factors including geology, land use, water chemistry, precipitation patterns and aquatic respiration.

In May 2018, the first full-scale mobile marine plastics collection system, developed by The Ocean Cleanup, will leave San Francisco, California, bound for the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch,’ also known as the Pacific trash vortex. The plan, ultimately, is to use 60 of these $5m systems to clean up half of the debris in the Pacific Garbage Patch within five years, according to Boyan Slat, CEO of Netherlands foundation The Ocean Cleanup, speaking at the Cefic Chemical Congress held in Vienna, Austria, at the end of October 2017.

Each collection system comprises a 1km U-shaped barrier, which floats on the surface of the ocean and supports a 4m deep screen to channel floating plastic debris to a central collection point, for future recycling. A 100m prototype system has already been tested in the North Sea.

 

The system will leave from the San Francisco bay area. Image: Giuseppe Milo

The environmental cost of the Pacific’s plastic waste currently stands at roughly $13bn/year, while an estimated 600 wildlife species are threatened with extinction partly as a result of ingesting it. Plastic microbeads and particles only represent 5% of the plastics in the oceans, ‘but the remaining 95% will break down into small particles and chemicals that are already in the tuna we eat,’ Slat said. The larger plastics debris are all found in the top 4m of the oceans, the same depth as the system’s screens.

 

Plastic debris can end up in the food we eat. Image: Pixabay

Also speaking in Vienna, Emily Woglom, executive VP, Ocean Conservancy, said that 8m t/year of plastics goes into the oceans – ‘one city dump truck every minute’; between 2010 and 2025 the amount in the oceans will double. As much as ‘30% of fish on sale have plastics in them,’ she said. Most of the plastics now come from the developing economies, mainly in Asia, she added, noting that the Trash Free Seas Alliance, founded by the Ocean Conservancy and supported by the American Chemistry Council, Dow Chemical, P&G and the World Plastics Council as well as several big-name food and beverage companies have recently adopted the goal of launching a $150m fund for waste management in South East Asia.

How we roll. Video: The Ocean Cleanup 

Meanwhile, Slat says that the mobile collection systems can also be used to trap plastic pollution closer to the source, for example in rivers and estuaries. Researchers at The Ocean Cleanup estimate that rivers transport between 115 and 241 m t/years of plastic waste into the oceans, with two-thirds coming from just 20 rivers, mostly in Asia.

The Pacific trash vortex forms as a result of circular ocean currents created by wind patterns and the forces created by the Earth’s rotation. Similar gyres are found in the South Pacific, Indian Ocean, and North and South Atlantic.

In May 2018, the first full-scale mobile marine plastics collection system, developed by The Ocean Cleanup, will leave San Francisco, California, bound for the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch,’ also known as the Pacific trash vortex. The plan, ultimately, is to use 60 of these $5m systems to clean up half of the debris in the Pacific Garbage Patch within five years, according to Boyan Slat, CEO of Netherlands foundation The Ocean Cleanup, speaking at the Cefic Chemical Congress held in Vienna, Austria, at the end of October 2017.

Each collection system comprises a 1km U-shaped barrier, which floats on the surface of the ocean and supports a 4m deep screen to channel floating plastic debris to a central collection point, for future recycling. A 100m prototype system has already been tested in the North Sea.

 

The system will leave from the San Francisco bay area. Image: Giuseppe Milo

The environmental cost of the Pacific’s plastic waste currently stands at roughly $13bn/year, while an estimated 600 wildlife species are threatened with extinction partly as a result of ingesting it. Plastic microbeads and particles only represent 5% of the plastics in the oceans, ‘but the remaining 95% will break down into small particles and chemicals that are already in the tuna we eat,’ Slat said. The larger plastics debris are all found in the top 4m of the oceans, the same depth as the system’s screens.

 

Plastic debris can end up in the food we eat. Image: Pixabay

Also speaking in Vienna, Emily Woglom, executive VP, Ocean Conservancy, said that 8m t/year of plastics goes into the oceans – ‘one city dump truck every minute’; between 2010 and 2025 the amount in the oceans will double. As much as ‘30% of fish on sale have plastics in them,’ she said. Most of the plastics now come from the developing economies, mainly in Asia, she added, noting that the Trash Free Seas Alliance, founded by the Ocean Conservancy and supported by the American Chemistry Council, Dow Chemical, P&G and the World Plastics Council as well as several big-name food and beverage companies have recently adopted the goal of launching a $150m fund for waste management in South East Asia.

How we roll. Video: The Ocean Cleanup 

Meanwhile, Slat says that the mobile collection systems can also be used to trap plastic pollution closer to the source, for example in rivers and estuaries. Researchers at The Ocean Cleanup estimate that rivers transport between 115 and 241 m t/years of plastic waste into the oceans, with two-thirds coming from just 20 rivers, mostly in Asia.

The Pacific trash vortex forms as a result of circular ocean currents created by wind patterns and the forces created by the Earth’s rotation. Similar gyres are found in the South Pacific, Indian Ocean, and North and South Atlantic.

As another phenomenal Sir David Attenborough-narrated nature documentary draws to a close, many in the UK will be wondering what to do with themselves. The long-awaited Blue Planet II brought viewers on an enchanting journey through the oceans, with jaw-dropping photography capturing this hidden world, from the darkest depths to coral reefs and coasts.

In the final episode, we met Dr Jon Copley, who is Associate Professor in Ocean Exploration & Public Engagement at the University of Southampton. Jon was scientific advisor for Episode 2 (The Deep), which included providing some of the footage shown of deep-sea vent animals, from NERC research projects he was involved with. 

 

Dr Jon Copley pictured during the Blue Planet II expedition to the Antarctic. Image: Jon Copley

Jon also took part in a month-long shoot in the Antarctic, which was shown in the incredible opening of The Deep episode, where Jon and his fellow researchers travelled in a minisub 1km deep into the Antarctic ocean. 

We caught up with Jon to find out about the real-world benefits of exploring our oceans, why communicating science matters, and more.

SCI: Some 16 years after the first Blue Planet series was broadcast, viewers were given the opportunity to visit the deep Antarctic ocean in Blue Planet II. What are the challenges in sending a manned craft to the deep Antarctic?

JC: We’ve actually had the technology to explore the Antarctic deep sea with human-occupied vehicles for several decades – Cousteau went there in the early 1970s with his ‘flying saucer’ minisub, which had a depth limit of 400 metres.

But dives by human-occupied vehicles depend on a fairly narrow window of wind, sea, and ice conditions. So the cost of sending such technology to the Antarctic can be a gamble – there’s a risk of not getting many suitable days for sub dives.

Fortunately, better information from satellites monitoring wind, sea, and ice conditions throughout the area allows more careful and adaptive planning of operations – and we depended on that during the Blue Planet II expedition. By being able to choose dive targets in more protected areas, there were only a couple of days when conditions prevented us from launching the subs. And of course the experience and professionalism of the ship’s crew and sub team were key to that success.

SCI: What are the real-world benefits of exploring the deep oceans?

JC: We can learn from the ingenuity of nature in the deep ocean – for example, an antifreeze protein now synthesised to improve storage of ice cream products comes from a deep-sea eelpout fish; materials scientists are investigating the damage-resisting properties of the shell of the ‘scaly-foot snail’ (a new species that I was co-author in describing) to design better crash-helmets, body armour and pipeline protection; there’s a new treatment for early-stage prostate cancer based on the light-sensitive behaviour of bacteria from the ocean floor; and possibly even eye drops in development to treat night blindness, from studying how dragonfish hunt in the inky depths.

 

Eye drops inspired by the night-hunting dragonfish are under development to prevent night blindness. Image: Marcus Karlsson

SCI: What can we do in our daily lives to protect our oceans, and what role does industry have to play in this?

JC: We don’t each have to become paragons of virtue – just a simple change or two that we can easily make into new habits will help to make a difference for the future of our blue planet. Those changes can be things like carrying your own drinks mug with you instead of needing single-use cups, or getting the ‘sustainable fish app’ from the Marine Conservation Society to help to decide which fish to eat.

But it’s more challenging where our everyday lives are more connected to the oceans than we realise. For example, an average family car produces around 40 milligrams of microplastics per kilometre from tyre wear, and some of those microplastics inevitably end up in waterways and the ocean. So a public transport policy that gives people real alternatives to personal car use, in terms of cost and convenience, is also a policy for a healthy ocean. And employers who support teleworking where possible or appropriate are also actually supporting a healthier ocean.

Industry can play a vital role for ensuring healthy oceans by innovating products and processes that give us real choices and alternatives to old ways of doing things that we now know have an impact on the oceans.  And I think we’re starting to see that there is real consumer demand for those choices and alternatives.

SCI: You co-founded SciConnect, a company to train scientists to share their research with the wider public. Do you think that scientists are more conscious today of the importance of communicating their science to a broad audience – and is the public more engaged with science?

JC: Being able to share specialist knowledge with people outside your specialism is essential for scientists to work with colleagues in different disciplines, interact with people in other roles across organisations, report to stakeholders and clients, inform policymakers and practitioners, engage with the media, inspire the next generation – if anything, it’s a more common activity in most scientific careers than just sharing research with peers in your own field. So I think that scientists today are very aware of the value of developing the underlying skills for all those applications.

But it’s a set of skills that are not routinely taught by experienced practitioners as part of scientific training, which is why I co-founded a company to do that, with colleagues who work day-to-day in science communication as writers, broadcasters, and presenters, and who have backgrounds in science so that they appreciate the needs and perspective of those they are training.

Fundamentally, engaging people with your research involves understanding your target audience – for example, the approach that you would take to inform policymakers about the consequences of a research finding is different to how you might try to inspire young people’s interest in science through your work, which makes us realise that there isn’t really a homogeneous ‘public’; outside our own area of specialism, we’re all members of ‘the public’ when it comes to finding out about research in another field.

Originally posted by davignola

SCI: Now that the Blue Planet II is over, how would you recommend bereft viewers fill the void?

JC: There are some great ways for anyone to continue pursuing their interest in marine life – for example, there’s the Capturing Our Coast project, which is building a nationwide community of volunteers who get together to survey shores, which helps to monitor changes in distributions of species around the UK. 

The University of Southampton also runs a free ‘Massive Open Online Course’ about Exploring Our Oceans, which covers the history, science, and relevance of the oceans to our everyday lives. It’s not a formal course, so there aren’t any exams, and no science background is required – just an interest in finding out more about our ocean world.

So, there you have it – from crash helmets to cancer treatments, exploring the deep allows us not only to learn more about the blue planet, but to improve life for us landlubbers, too! 

If you’re interested in learning about how our water and waste is analysed and treated, SCI’s Environment, Health and Safety group is running this event at our London headquarters in March 2018. Early bird fees available until 30 January.