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Oh man I'm so excited I can't contain myself!

No I haven't slipped forward in time to the holiday season, and posted this from the future (Obviously what you were thinking). It's still the start of summer where I am and I'm loving it. Not only has the sun started staying up late again, but it's the middle of the field research season here in the northern hemisphere!

See ocean conditions can be tricky; just ask anyone who's been out in a small boat on a really windy day. In order to take ships out, and actually accomplish anything, it's nice to avoid the season where the waves can average ten feet high. The cables that attach submersibles to ships generally don't like being whipped around that much. Plus even ocean researchers get seasick sometimes. About this time every year research vessels from across the States, and around the world gear up for their big research trips that will run throughout the summer.

Alright that's nice for everyone who works in those fields, but why should everyone else care? Because this is the time when all the cool footage and crazy stories from the deep start to come out, that's why. Thanks to this newfangled "internet" that seems to be sticking around, we have the opportunity to watch many of these events live as they happen. Remotely operated vehicles (ROV's) around the world are shooting footage from hundreds, even thousands, of meters below the ocean. And already incredible events are unfolding before the eyes of anyone with access to the web.

That video shows the largest of the toothed whales, the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), casually inspecting a highly advanced underwater robot. If the embedded video didn't work click here to see it on youtube. This incredible event happened during one of the ship E/V Nautilus' research dives into the Gulf of Mexico. The crew of the Nautilus broadcasts their entire expedition season live from their website while they're at sea. t any moment you can be watching, not only the crazy cool creatures you almost always find in the deep, but also one in a billion chances like this. 

In addition to streaming the entire expedition, and allowing you to listen to scientists being the adorably huge dorks they sometimes are, the Nautilus also allows you to ask questions of the crew in real time. It's an amazing chance to learn right from the researchers while they're doing the research. And the research they're doing is incredible.

So far this season the expedition has been focused on the Gulf of Mexico where oil and gas naturally seep out of the sea bed. This petroleum rich region was the site of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill which is in the midst of its five year anniversary. The Nautilus even visited the well head, and posted a sobering, silent, ten minute video of their survey of the area. The video is a stark juxtaposition to the live footage of crude billowing out of the well from 2010. This catastrophe has been the catalyst for a big scientific push to find out exactly how spills, and the methods used to clean them up, affect deep sea environments. Oil is a normal part of the Gulf ecosystem, but the blowout blasted more material than would have been released over decades, in a matter of months. 

It's like the Old Country Buffet for oil consuming bacteria.

There's way too much food and most of it ends up on the floor.

Courtesy: Lumis via Flickr

I think we'll be revisiting the spill in more detail here in a future post, so we can stay up-to-date on our understanding of those events. For now though, let's turn back to giving you cool research programs happening right now.

Aside from the E/V Nautilus the other crown jewel in the ocean exploration outreach world is the R/V Okeanos Explorer. While Nautilus is part of a non-profit organization founded by Robert Ballard (the guy who found the titanic, and helped discover hydrothermal vent ecosystems) Okeanos Explorer is owned entirely by the citizens of the United States. In fact, it's the only ship in the US fleet devoted solely to "explore our largely unknown ocean for the purpose of discovery and advancement of knowledge." (Okeanos Explorer webpage). 

"Yeah I own a boat, it's not a big deal or anything."

Courtesy: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Both ships are devoted to opening up ocean research to the public and increasing the visibility of the world's greatest frontier. It's become an old cliche to say that we know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean, but it's still true. In 2000 former president Clinton brought together a panel on ocean exploration that challenged researchers to dedicate energy to exploring parts of the ocean not usually covered by other research vessels. The Okeanos Explorer and the Nautilus are the answers to that challenge. In the 15 years since the panel's report both ships have sailed all over the world. They've found new species in unique ecosystems, peered into the chemistry of the deep ocean, and discovered historic and modern archaeological treasures. All the while their satellite link-ups and devotion to education have provided everyone with a chance to find wonder right alongside the scientists at sea.

So what are you waiting for? Get your infinitely curious, ocean loving self over to nautiluslive.org, or  oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/ and see what's happening for yourself. Okeanos also has a great Flickr feed all free for you to peruse and use whenever you like. If you see something cool share it on social media, tell your friends, use it in your classes, and always keep exploring!

References:

"About NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer", January 5th 2015, NOAA Ocean Explorer Website, http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/

The Ocean Exploration Trust, http://www.oceanexplorationtrust.org/

"New Frontiers in Ocean Exploration: The E/V Nautilus and NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer 2011 Field Season", Oceanography, Vol. 25, No. 1, Supplement, March 2012, Accessed via: http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-1_supplement.pdf

Nautilus Live, http://nautiluslive.org/

The Notorious B.I.G.

"Where does everyone keep getting that number!" I shouted irritably one day while doing some research for the Seattle Aquarium. I was profiling the giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) and the number that kept coming up was 272Kg/600Lbs. Don't get me wrong, giant Pacific's are well named. They're the largest octopus species in the world, and they can be massive. The largest animal I ever encountered was an octopus named Roland who weighed over 90 pounds and he had an arm span above ten feet.

Giant Pacific octopus also grow incredibly fast. They're short lived, only lasting 3-5 years in the wild, and they go from the size of a grain of rice to broader than a man's height in that time. It's been estimated that they average a gain of 1-2% of their body weight every day. They literally grow exponentially. A well-fed octopus gets bigger today than it got yesterday, and will get bigger tomorrow than it got today.

What had me so flustered about that 600 pound claim is that most giant Pacific octopus never get any bigger than 70 pounds, and the reliable accounts of extremely large animals only weighed around 120 pounds. I found article after article that referenced that size, in both the popular press and the peer-reviewed literature. Six hundred pounds is so far off from what's normally their maximum that I began thinking fish stories might not always be about fish. Many articles even acknowledged that any account above 120ish pounds was probably unreliable.

"I swear it was like two people across!" (Person in this example is defined 
as one elementary aged child) 

Courtesy LAZLO ILYES via Flickr

     Of course it's not not unheard of for a population of animals to shrink over time due to human influence. For example, the dusky grouper (Epinephalus marginatus) from the Mediterranean, is thought to be much smaller than before modern fishing pressure. In ancient Roman murals dusky grouper are portrayed as almost as large as a man, now they rarely get bigger than around 50cm (about 19 inches). Giant Pacific octopus on the other hand haven't really been a targeted catch thanks in part to their chewy texture. It could be that pollution has affected the health of these species, but the reports of truly giant octopus were claimed to be from Alaska where human impact is less significant.

Alright, so where did this number come from? Well lucky for our quest to discover the origins of the "super giant Pacific octopus, TM" , science has a spectacular convention of citation. At the end of every peer reviewed article the authors are expected to cite previous research that informs their experiment and is the basis of their prior knowledge. You can think of it as a built-in BS alarm.

Statistical analypus thinks you should have used an eight tailed test.
Courtesy canopic via Flickr

So I took the opportunity to put on my detective cap and dig around some scholarly research! I have friends I swear, they're humans and everything. Anyway after a little leg work (keyboard work?) I managed to track down the source of the 600 pound octopus in the room. It turns out that in 1975 William High wrote a summary of knowledge about giant Pacific octopus for the National Marine Fisheries Service's annual report. This article was cited by almost every paper I had been looking through, so I suspected it was what I needed. Thankfully the good folks at NOAA keep an online archive of these reports.

In High's summary he discusses how large these animals can get and even he doesn't totally buy the hype at first. He states: "Much larger ones (octopus bigger than 100 pounds) have been reported, but like the Loch Ness Monster, these usually elude the careful photographer or scientist." which is basically the scientific paper equivalent of "cool story bro." But then just a few lines later he goes on to say: "In the late 1950's I interviewed a Canadian commercial diver Jock MacLean... He reported capturing an immense creature weighing 600 pounds and measuring 32 feet from arm tip to top. MacLeans photographs, unfortunately, were of poor quality. Smaller animals, to 400 pounds, were occasionally taken..." Seriously!? Poor quality photos and the testimony of a guy whose job it was to go and get narc'd all the time are all we're going on. You'll have to forgive me if I remain skeptical.

"No you can't be real! The scientific literature doesn't substantiate 
your existence!" -The ship's naturalist
 "Denys de Montfort Poulpe Colossal" by Pierre Denys de Montfort († 1820)
 - Ellis, R. 1994. Monsters of the Sea. Robert Hale Ltd. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons  

Sadly it looks like the reports of "super giant Pacific octopus ™" have been exaggerated, even among those who try hardest to avoid hyperbole. Although I can't help but wonder; why is a giant octopus such a universal story? From the legends of the kraken to the creature that supposedly lives under the narrows bridge in Tacoma, Washington; monstrous octopus just capture our imagination. Maybe long ago there were octopus large enough to destroy a ship, or maybe having no frame of reference in the vastness of the ocean led to exaggeration. Either way the real giant Pacific octopus is a huge, magnificent creature that deserves our respect.

References:

Cosgrove, James, & McDaniel, Neil, "Super Suckers: The Giant Pacific Octopus and Other Cephalopods of the Pacfic Coast.", Harbour Publishing, March 2009

High, William, "The Giant Pacific Octopus", Marine Fisheries Review, Vol. 38 No. 9, Sept. 1976
Accessed via: http://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/mfr389/mfr3893.pdf

Guidetti, Paolo, & Fiorenza, Micheli, "Ancient Art Serving Marine Conservation", Frontiers in Ecology and the Enironment, 9: 374-375, DOI 10.1890/11.WB.020