Latest Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Stories
A team of scientists that last year created waves by correctly forecasting the 2011 eruption of Axial Seamount years in advance now says that the undersea volcano located some 250 miles off the Oregon coast gave off clear signals just hours before its impending eruption. The researchers’ documentation of inflation of the undersea volcano from gradual magma intrusion over a period of years led to the long-term eruption forecast. But new analyses using data from underwater hydrophones also...
[ Watch the Video ] Researchers on an 18-year study of the Octopoteuthis deletron, a species of squid that is found at a depth of 1300 to 2600 feet in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, found that males mate as often with their own gender as they do with females, reports BBC News. By studying footage taken by submersible vehicles, researchers, led by Hendrik Hoving of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing, California, found that this rarely seen marine...
New robotic labs are now going mobile to collect ocean samplesIt looks a lot like a garbage can-"“but it's actually a fully functioning laboratory, thrown overboard, to analyze water samples in the open ocean. One day, a machine like it might tell us whether a beach is safe for swimming or water is clean enough to drink. The so-called "Lab in a Can" is nicknamed ESP."The ESP is the Environmental Sample Processor. It is an instrument that collects water, allows you to extract...
Recently discovered worm with bone-eating lifestyle not exclusive to whale carcassesA new study led by a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is painting a more complete picture of an extraordinary sea worm that makes its living in the depths of the ocean on the bones of dead animals.Discovered fewer than 10 years ago off Monterey, Calif., but since identified in other oceans, the flower-like marine "boneworms," or Osedax, have been documented mainly...
A team of biologists has discovered an entirely new group of algae living in a wide variety of marine and freshwater environments. This group of algae, which the researchers dubbed "rappemonads," have DNA that is distinctly different from that of other known algae. In fact, humans and mushrooms are more closely related to each other than rappemonads are to some other common algae (such as green algae). Based on their DNA analysis, the researchers believe that they have discovered...
Dead whales that sink down to the seafloor provide a feast for deep-sea animals that can last for years. Previous research suggested that such "whale falls" were homes for unique animals that lived nowhere else. However, after sinking five whale carcasses in Monterey Canyon, researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) found that most of the animals at these sites were not unique to whale falls, but were common in other deep-sea environments as well....
Over the past decade, the undersea robots known as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have become increasingly important in oceanographic research. Today's AUVs fall into two groups: 1) propeller-driven vehicles that can travel fast and carry lots of instruments, but are limited to expeditions of only a few days; and 2) "gliders," which can stay at sea for weeks or even months at a time, but cannot travel very quickly. MBARI engineers recently demonstrated a new super-efficient...
Algae obtain nitrate from deep waters 250 meters beneath the surfaceFor almost three decades, oceanographers have been puzzled by the ability of microscopic algae ("microalgae") to grow in open-ocean areas where there is very little nitrate, an essential nutrient for the algae.In this week's issue of the journal Nature, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) chemical oceanographer Ken Johnson, along with co-authors Stephen Riser at the University of Washington and David...
MBARI's Division of Marine Operations, under an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sent a high-tech robotic submersible to the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The goal is to collect information about the oil plume from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident for NOAA.Although satellites and aircraft can help show the extent of the spill at the surface, MBARI's autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) will help researchers understand the nature and...
It sounds like a classic horror story"”eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green "roots" to devour their bones. In fact, such worms do exist in the deep sea. They were first discovered in 2002 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), who were using a robot submarine to explore Monterey Canyon. But that wasn't the end of the story. After "planting" several dead whales on the seafloor, a team...
