December 28th

Nice story the tale of the unexpected bloom but it was a joke. Sorry. December 28th is the day of "inocentes" and the tradition is to give some credible but false news. The icon of this day is the next one:

Happy new year for all of our followers.

At the edge of an ecological disaster

During the last days, our remote sensing devices detected the development of a bloom south of Gran Canaria Island. In the satellite images below, the reader can observe the generation of the bloom in the four typical oceanographic phases. Because this season is not characterized by the presence of any bloom around the islands, we investigated its generation through specific algorithms performed in our labs. Applying the one obtained by Ramos et al. (2005), we found the presence of the cyanobacteria Trichodesmium spp (red dots in the images). Because of the high confidence of this algorithm, we are now sure that the bloom was generated artificially, probably by dumping tons of iron to the ocean. Therefore, we investigated the presence of any research vessel in the economic zone of the Canary Islands. No results were obtained and we asked our colleagues at the University of Madeira. They reported the presence of the new research vessel of the new american company Plantox during November. This company is pursuing the drawdown of carbon dioxide using iron fertilization in order to earn carbon credits through the Kyoto protocol. However, this procedure is rather controversial because of the unknown toxic effects in the marine environment. In fact, the International Committee for the Law of the Sea based in London has dictated the prohibition of those procedures. The detection of cyanobacteria using remote sensing procedures alert us about one of these effects. As it is known, this bacteria can produce toxic substances affecting fishes and humans. The fact that fertilization took place quite near of Gran Canaria Island alert us about their effect of our coastal zone. This problem is even worst due to the important turistic area located south of this island.

Phase I of the bloom south of Gran Canaria Island. Observe the formation of the phytoplankton outburst (in green) and the formation of cyanobacteria (red dots). Areas in white are clouds formed during the last weeks due to an important low crossing the islands from southwest to northeast.

Phase II of the bloom. Observe the increase in phytoplankton (green) and the growth of cyanobacteria at the boundaries of the forming bloom (red). Areas in white are clouds.

Phase III of the bloom. The area of the phytoplankton bloom is approaching the size of Gran Canaria Island. The cyanobacteria remained at the edge of the bloom.

Phase IV. Observe the impressive size of the phytoplankton outburst and the generation of cyanobacteria at the boundaries of the bloom. Right now, our concern is the proximity of the bloom and cyanobacteria to the south of Gran Canaria during the last hours.

Gara and Inma at work in the Pacific Ocean

Below some more pictures of Gara Franchy and Inma Herrera at work during the Procomex cruise on board the RV "Puma".

Gara Franchy and Inma Herrera preparing the dilution experiments

Gara filtering seawater from the 30 L Niskin bottles for the dilution experiments

Inma Herrera working with the MOCNESS

Gara, Jaime and Inma

Procomex Cruise

Below are the members of the Procomex Cruise recently finished in Mazatlán (Sinaloa, México). Two members of the Biological Oceanography Group, Inma Herrera and Gara Franchy, participated in the cruise to study the response of micro- and mesozooplankton to the oxygen minimum zones. This area of the Pacific Ocean is characterized by the rather shallow oxygen minimum and an interesting place to study the response of zooplankton to this deficit in oxygen, especially those organisms performing vertical migrations.

The cruise leader Dr. Jaime Färber-Lorda (orange shirt) and the cruise members.

New paper by Quima in Science

Today, the abstract of a new paper by Watson et al. about the variability of carbon dioxide flux. Interesting paper giving the annual variability across latitudes in the North Atlantic assessed using continuous measurements on board commercial ships. As co-authors, the members of the Marine Chemistry Research Group (Quima), Melchor González-Dávila and Magdalena Santana-Casiano. Congratulations.

Antarctic Treaty

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty adopted the 1st December 1959. This document recognized that “it is in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord”. A recent publication in Nature (Berkman, 2009) introduces the idea to have a similar treaty for the Arctic where the global warming is promoting a new scenario of international discord. Science is not only a tool for the advance of ideas and technologies. It is also a tool for peace and concord. From here, we join the celebration of this 50th anniversary and his spirit for the advancement of science, political good sense and humankind progress.

Peaceful inhabitants of Antarctica