Horseshoe Crab Release

Over the past few years Rutgers University has released more than 250,000 horse shoe crabs into the wild near Cape May for several reasons.  Horseshoe crabs are an important part of the shore ecosystems, but there is a 90% mortality rate for these crabs in the wild, so Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences grows these crabs and lets them develop enough to give them a better chance of survival and then releases them into the wild.  Horseshoe crabs are important for various reasons, they are an important food source for many endangered shore birds who depend on their eggs to make long migrations.  The decline in crab population has had a direct effect on the population of migrating shore birds, especially the red knot.  The horseshoe crab population is in danger from loss of habitat, commercial fishing, and pollution.  Fishermen use the horseshoe crabs when they are young as bait to catch eels and other fish.  The young horseshoe crabs are raised in large rectangular tanks where they can be observed which has allowed researcher to learn more about their habits and behaviors. Horse shoe crabs are also of interest to medical and drug companies because of a rare gene in their blood which they use to test contamination.   These scientists hope that their work will have a positive effect on not only horseshoe crabs but on entire ecosystems on the shore.

http://www.thedailyjournal.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2014/09/29/rutgers-lab-churning-baby-horseshoe-crabs/16440393/
http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/30/66/84536630/photos/Things-I-think-are-beautiful/baby%20horseshoe%20crabs%20006.JPG

Ancient Mollusk Recreated

Recently a 390 million year old mollusk was recreated using digital scanning and 3D printing at the university of Texas at Austin.  Until now, only fragments of fossils have been found of this rare and ancient mollusk, this has made reconstruction nearly impossible. But using the most complete specimen found to date they have built an accurate representation of what this creature would have looked like crawling on the sea floor millions of years ago.  Protobalanus spinicoranatus was resembled from fragments using something similar to a CT scanner, which is a fairly new technique, and then recreated using a 3D printer.  Instead of making a life size model the researchers made their's 12 times larger than the real spinicorantus, which is only one inch in length.  The tough plating and sharp spines on the mollusk give clues to the dangerous environment it lived in so many millennia ago.  This study is a great example of using modern technologies to better understand ancient wonders from the ocean.

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/593/cache/ancient-mollusk-found-recreated-3d-printer_59370_990x742.jpg

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120918-ancient-mollusk-reconstruction-3d-animals/

Deep Sea Mining

Over the past few thousand years man has been mining on land for precious metals like gold, silver, copper, and so on but now new developments in underwater mining has opened up a whole new way to dig for these materials.  The excessive mining on land for metals that people find desirable or useful has made it harder and harder to find easily accessible deposits of these valuable items.  But now a company called Nautilus Minerals is using giant machines to tap into the rich reserves of copper, gold and other metals deep with in the ocean (1600 meters).  The are finding mines with grades of over 8%, a massive improvement to the mine son land which average around .57%, these deposits deep within the pacific ocean rival those found before the bronze age on land.The CEO of Nautilus Minerals say that the technology to mine deep on the oceans surface is there it just needs to be used.  The machines they use to mine these metals weighs 760 tons and will break up and scoop up the valuable minerals on the sea floor.  The company hopes to start their mining of the coast of Papua New Guinea, and a similar mine on land would cost 6 times what it will under water.  There are some environment al concerns about the project but deep sea mining seems to be a viable method for the future.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/earth_climate/oceanography/
http://www.oilprice.com/uploads/AB500.png

Brown Tide

Researchers from Columbia University have been studying the "brown tides" that plague many US coastlines.  The culprit to blame for these dense clouds of murky brown water is Aureococcus anophagefferens, a microscopic algae.  This algae, which was first noticed in the 80's, has terrible ecological effects on the ecosystems present in these coastlines; and a large drop in natural flora and fauna has been observed.  Researchers say that Aureococcus is genetically wired to thrive in these coastlines and bodies of water polluted by human activity.  The genes that make this algae able to survive in murky but nutrient rich water has made it extremely successful in the waters where humans have been polluting it with lawn fertilizer, sewage and other providers of nutrients.  Aureococcus's success has come at the cost of other species in these environments who are pushed out by the overwhelming algae; shellfish and sea grasses have all but disappeared in some areas. Aureococcus actually excretes arsenic from its cells and blocks out sunlight for other plants.  Brown tide is a spreading problem witnessed in the Great lakes, China and South Africa now.

Article:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140905153013.htm
Image: http://cdn.newsday.com/polopoly_fs/1.1306998.1247943585!/image/1060057217.jpg_gen/derivatives/display_600/1060057217.jpg