Increasing carbon dioxide in the air penetrates into the ocean and makes it more acidic, while robbing seawater of minerals that give shellfish their crunch. The West Coast is one of the first marine ecosystems to feel its effects. A new tool doesn’t alter that reality, but it does allow scientists to better understand what’s happening and provide data to help the shellfish industry adapt to these changes.
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Oceanography students in the College of the Environment scoured the bottom of Lake Union on a research cruise, testing out new high-tech equipment that allows users to peer through the lake’s deep waters. Students set sail on the Clifford A. Barnes, one of several ships and boats operated by the University of Washington. King 5 reporters joined the students for the excursion, capturing video of what they were up to and what they saw on the lake bottom.
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The largest migration on the planet is the movement of small animals from the surface of the open ocean, where they feed on plants under cover of darkness, to the sunless depths where they hide from predators during the day. University of Washington researchers have found that this regular migration helps shape our oceans. During the daylight hours below the surface the animals release ammonia, the equivalent of our urine, that turns out to play a significant role in marine chemistry, particularly in low-oxygen zones.
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Students at the College of the Environment got a taste of what doing oceanographic research is all about this summer, spending numerous days at sea aboard the UW’s giant research vessel, the Thomas G. Thompson. The project: installing an underwater, cabled ocean observatory that will give scientists a continuous presence in the Pacific waters off of Oregon and Washington.
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The Southern Ocean plays a major role in taking carbon from our atmosphere and storing it in the ocean. Yet the finer points of what makes these waters so good at doing that are not well known. Notoriously dangerous seas, the Southern Ocean — which surrounds Antarctica — have historically been difficult for scientist to access and study. College of the Environment oceanographers are set to help change that as one of 10 partner institutions in a new National Science Foundation study.
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