Rutgers Oceanography
Rutgers Oceanography Issue 14 • February 2014
Grants Awards : John Wilkin, Coastal ocean modeling of nonlinear internal-wave physical and acoustic effects.WHOI subcontract. $40,385 Benjamin Horton, Accomplishment based reserch: Relative sea-level channges from near, intermediate and far field. National Science Foundation $41,133 Enrique, Curchister Cook Inlat circulation model calculations. subcntract from University of Alaska $108,292
Follow IMCS on Facebook
Divers surveying corals offshore the Indonesian spice islands
Celebrating Peter Rona an intellectual giant, a dedicated teacher, and most of all a great friend to us It is with deep sadness that we heard our dear colleague Peter Rona had passed away. Peter was a treasured friend to many of us. For our Director Richard Lutz, Peter was a friend for over 40 years. He was of the finest and most honorable gentlemen in our oceanographic community. His contributions to deep-sea science have been immense, from the first discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic to pivotal roles in the production of the Rutgers-sponsored film “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea” that has been viewed by over 165 million individuals worldwide. Peter’s publications include over 250 scientific papers and 5 edited books and he was the recipient of the Shepard Medal for Excellence in Marine Geology; the Pettersson Bronze Medal of the Swedish Academy of Sciences; and the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal for exceptional scientific contributions to the nation .... we have lost one of the true giants in the field and he will be sorely missed To celebrate Peter’s genius, leadership, and friendship, we are holding a dedicated symposium at the Rutgers June 17-18 in the Alampi Room. The symposium already has confirmed world leaders flying in from around the world to celebrate Peter. Additionally a special issue of DeepSea Research will be prepared. If interested in attending or contributing let us know.
Rutgers postdocs Jessica Pilarczyk and Nicole Khan uncover sediments emplaced by Typhoon Haiyan when it made landfall in Tacloban, Philippines Last year Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Phillipines. It was one of the largest storms ever recorded in human history. This storm killed over 6,000 people and represents a humanitarian disaster and a rebuilding challenge for our global community. Locally, our experience with Hurricane Sandy drives home the scale of Haiyan’s terrible wrath.
A major obstacle in producing reliable predictions of catastrophic environmental changes is a lack of data on time scales longer than the short instrumental record. Despite the frequency of landfalling tropical cyclones in the Philippines, few studies have been published concerning the sedimentologic and geomorphic impacts of these events. Records of tropical cyclones, developed from the sedimentary deposits they leave behind, improve our understanding of processes and frequency by expanding the age range of events available for study. Storm surges associated with typhoons that makes landfall have the potential to leave a signal within the sedimentary record.
As part of an NSF RAPID grant awarded to Ben Horton and Jessica Pilarczyk, a field team consisting of members from IMCS, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and University of Philippines – Diliman were dispatched to study the sedimentary fingerprint left by Typhoon Haiyan. This investigation will lead to improved understanding of the frequency of past typhoon events in the Philippines, as well as other storm-impacted coastlines.
Rutgers Oceanography Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu The 17th biennial Ocean Sciences Meeting, co-sponsored by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), The Oceanography Society (TOS), and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), was held at the Hawaii Convention Center in February. This is one of the largest and most important meetings for the oceanographic community. Rutgers oceanography was well represented with over 90 scientific contributions presented at the meeting.
Congratulations Malin Pinsky for being awarded a Sloan Fellowship! This year the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation is awarding fellowships to 126 early career scientists and scholars. Recipients are often in their first appointments to university faculties and typically have more flexibility with Sloan funding than they would with project grants or other more restricted funding sources. Since the program began in 1955, 42 fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes and 63 have received the National Medal of Science. Hundreds have received other awards and honors for their research accomplishments.
Pinsky joined Rutgers in 2013 after doing postdoctoral research at Princeton and earning a doctorate in biolo-
gy at Stanford University. He is studying how changing climates affect coastal marine species and how that inturn affects human society. “As temperatures have been warming, we’ve seen some species shift toward higher latitudes,” he said. Summer flounder, one of the most important commercial and recreational species, used to be caught primarily off the North Carolina and Virginia coasts, but now it’s being caught off New York and New Jersey. Similarly, snowy grouper, a more tropical species, is now showing up in Virginia. “Faced with these challenges, how are people adapting? Are commercial fishermen able to shift to other species? Which ports received economic benefits? We are not deep enough into the human dimension to know, but we are investigating,” he said. Pinsky’s research is integrating data from various locations and sources, including the Pacific Northwest and the Gulf of Alaska. On the surface, migration patterns look disparate – some species are shifting north more quickly; others more slowly. And some are even migrating from the north to the south.“They are doing different things, but all are responding in a similar way to the climate changes where they are found,” he said.
Congratulations Lauren Seyler for being awarded a Fullbright Fellowship! PhD candidate Lauren Seyler has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Roscoff, France with Dr. Colomban de Vargas. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program of the U.S. government Ms. Seyler’s research involves studying a group of microorganisms known as crenarchaea, an ancient lineage of life that was discovered in the deep ocean in the early 1990s. She will focus on o understanding how their activity influences plankton ecology and the global carbon cycles. The competition for these awards are intense, and Lauren’s success is a testimony to her great cutting edge work!
marine.rutgers.edu
Shore Bowl 2014. On February 1st, 2014 IMCS hosted
the 14th Annual Shore Bowl. The Shore Bowl is one of 24 regional bowls that are run as part of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership’s National Ocean Sciences Bowl program. The competition aims to expose high school students to ocean science professionals and career opportunities and support critical thinking and workforce skills.
16 high school teams from NJ, NY, and PA came to Cook Campus’ Food Science Building to compete in this year’s competition. The competition was close throughout the day as teams competed in round robin and double elimination rounds. Ultimately, the winning teams were Princeton High School (first place), West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (second place), and Marine Academy of Science & Technology (third place). For their great attitude during the competition and their respect for other teams and officials, Manasquan High School was also awarded the Sportsmanship Award
Please help support us propel Rutgers oceanography to support the next generation!
Rutgers oceanography needs your support to meet the environmental and educational challenges facing the world today. Your support is critical to enabling high risk and high reward research, developing students to be the leaders of tomorrow and bringing the public with our scientists into the ocean. Your private gifts will create new laboratories, student fellowships, endowments and feed ambitious new programs. Come join us!
New Publications Kennish, M. J., Spahn, A., Sakowicz, G. P. 2014. Sentinel site development of a major salt marsh system in the Mid-Atlantic region (USA). Open Journal of Ecology. 44: 77-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oje.2014.43010 Seyler, L. M., McGuinness, L. M., Kerkhof, L. J. 2014. Crenarchaeal heterotrophy in salt marsh sediments . ISME J. doi:10.1038/ismej.2014.15 Galaasen, E. V., Ninnemann, U. S., Irvali, N., Kleiven, H. F., Rosenthal, Y., Kissel, C., Hodell, D. A. 2014. Rapid reductions in North Atlantic deep water during the peak of the late interglacial period . Science. 10.1126/science.1248667 Science News/Views synposis Andrianasolo, E. H., Haramaty, L., White, E., Lutz, R., Falkowski, P. G. 2014. Mode of action of diterpene and characterization of related metabolites from the soft coral, Xenia elongata . Marine Drugs.12, 1102-1115; doi:10.3390/md12021102 Grogan, J., Landis, M. R., Free, C. M., Schulze, M. D., Lentini, M., Ashton, M. S. 2014. Big-leaf mahogany Swietenia macrophylla population dynamics and implications for sustainable management. Journal of Applied Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12210 de Bruyn, M., M. L. Pinsky, B. Hall, P. Koch, C. Baroni, and A. R. Hoelzel. 2014.Rapid increase in southern elephant seal genetic variation after a founder event. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281: 20133078 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.3078 Pinsky, M. L. and S. R. Palumbi (2014) Meta-analysis reveals lower genetic diversity in overfished populations. Molecular Ecology 23: 29-39 doi: 10.1111/mec.12509 Cover article. News & Views perspective by Allendorf et al.
Grants Awards : John Wilkin, Coastal ocean modeling of nonlinear internal-wave physical and acoustic effects.WHOI subcontract. $40,385 Benjamin Horton, Accomplishment based reserch: Relative sea-level channges from near, intermediate and far field. National Science Foundation $41,133 Enrique, Curchister Cook Inlat circulation model calculations. subcntract from University of Alaska $108,292
Follow IMCS on Facebook
Divers surveying corals offshore the Indonesian spice islands
Celebrating Peter Rona an intellectual giant, a dedicated teacher, and most of all a great friend to us It is with deep sadness that we heard our dear colleague Peter Rona had passed away. Peter was a treasured friend to many of us. For our Director Richard Lutz, Peter was a friend for over 40 years. He was of the finest and most honorable gentlemen in our oceanographic community. His contributions to deep-sea science have been immense, from the first discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic to pivotal roles in the production of the Rutgers-sponsored film “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea” that has been viewed by over 165 million individuals worldwide. Peter’s publications include over 250 scientific papers and 5 edited books and he was the recipient of the Shepard Medal for Excellence in Marine Geology; the Pettersson Bronze Medal of the Swedish Academy of Sciences; and the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal for exceptional scientific contributions to the nation .... we have lost one of the true giants in the field and he will be sorely missed To celebrate Peter’s genius, leadership, and friendship, we are holding a dedicated symposium at the Rutgers June 17-18 in the Alampi Room. The symposium already has confirmed world leaders flying in from around the world to celebrate Peter. Additionally a special issue of DeepSea Research will be prepared. If interested in attending or contributing let us know.
Rutgers postdocs Jessica Pilarczyk and Nicole Khan uncover sediments emplaced by Typhoon Haiyan when it made landfall in Tacloban, Philippines Last year Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Phillipines. It was one of the largest storms ever recorded in human history. This storm killed over 6,000 people and represents a humanitarian disaster and a rebuilding challenge for our global community. Locally, our experience with Hurricane Sandy drives home the scale of Haiyan’s terrible wrath.
A major obstacle in producing reliable predictions of catastrophic environmental changes is a lack of data on time scales longer than the short instrumental record. Despite the frequency of landfalling tropical cyclones in the Philippines, few studies have been published concerning the sedimentologic and geomorphic impacts of these events. Records of tropical cyclones, developed from the sedimentary deposits they leave behind, improve our understanding of processes and frequency by expanding the age range of events available for study. Storm surges associated with typhoons that makes landfall have the potential to leave a signal within the sedimentary record.
As part of an NSF RAPID grant awarded to Ben Horton and Jessica Pilarczyk, a field team consisting of members from IMCS, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and University of Philippines – Diliman were dispatched to study the sedimentary fingerprint left by Typhoon Haiyan. This investigation will lead to improved understanding of the frequency of past typhoon events in the Philippines, as well as other storm-impacted coastlines.
Rutgers Oceanography Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu The 17th biennial Ocean Sciences Meeting, co-sponsored by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), The Oceanography Society (TOS), and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), was held at the Hawaii Convention Center in February. This is one of the largest and most important meetings for the oceanographic community. Rutgers oceanography was well represented with over 90 scientific contributions presented at the meeting.
Congratulations Malin Pinsky for being awarded a Sloan Fellowship! This year the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation is awarding fellowships to 126 early career scientists and scholars. Recipients are often in their first appointments to university faculties and typically have more flexibility with Sloan funding than they would with project grants or other more restricted funding sources. Since the program began in 1955, 42 fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes and 63 have received the National Medal of Science. Hundreds have received other awards and honors for their research accomplishments.
Pinsky joined Rutgers in 2013 after doing postdoctoral research at Princeton and earning a doctorate in biolo-
gy at Stanford University. He is studying how changing climates affect coastal marine species and how that inturn affects human society. “As temperatures have been warming, we’ve seen some species shift toward higher latitudes,” he said. Summer flounder, one of the most important commercial and recreational species, used to be caught primarily off the North Carolina and Virginia coasts, but now it’s being caught off New York and New Jersey. Similarly, snowy grouper, a more tropical species, is now showing up in Virginia. “Faced with these challenges, how are people adapting? Are commercial fishermen able to shift to other species? Which ports received economic benefits? We are not deep enough into the human dimension to know, but we are investigating,” he said. Pinsky’s research is integrating data from various locations and sources, including the Pacific Northwest and the Gulf of Alaska. On the surface, migration patterns look disparate – some species are shifting north more quickly; others more slowly. And some are even migrating from the north to the south.“They are doing different things, but all are responding in a similar way to the climate changes where they are found,” he said.
Congratulations Lauren Seyler for being awarded a Fullbright Fellowship! PhD candidate Lauren Seyler has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Roscoff, France with Dr. Colomban de Vargas. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program of the U.S. government Ms. Seyler’s research involves studying a group of microorganisms known as crenarchaea, an ancient lineage of life that was discovered in the deep ocean in the early 1990s. She will focus on o understanding how their activity influences plankton ecology and the global carbon cycles. The competition for these awards are intense, and Lauren’s success is a testimony to her great cutting edge work!
marine.rutgers.edu
Shore Bowl 2014. On February 1st, 2014 IMCS hosted
the 14th Annual Shore Bowl. The Shore Bowl is one of 24 regional bowls that are run as part of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership’s National Ocean Sciences Bowl program. The competition aims to expose high school students to ocean science professionals and career opportunities and support critical thinking and workforce skills.
16 high school teams from NJ, NY, and PA came to Cook Campus’ Food Science Building to compete in this year’s competition. The competition was close throughout the day as teams competed in round robin and double elimination rounds. Ultimately, the winning teams were Princeton High School (first place), West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (second place), and Marine Academy of Science & Technology (third place). For their great attitude during the competition and their respect for other teams and officials, Manasquan High School was also awarded the Sportsmanship Award
Please help support us propel Rutgers oceanography to support the next generation!
Rutgers oceanography needs your support to meet the environmental and educational challenges facing the world today. Your support is critical to enabling high risk and high reward research, developing students to be the leaders of tomorrow and bringing the public with our scientists into the ocean. Your private gifts will create new laboratories, student fellowships, endowments and feed ambitious new programs. Come join us!
New Publications Kennish, M. J., Spahn, A., Sakowicz, G. P. 2014. Sentinel site development of a major salt marsh system in the Mid-Atlantic region (USA). Open Journal of Ecology. 44: 77-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oje.2014.43010 Seyler, L. M., McGuinness, L. M., Kerkhof, L. J. 2014. Crenarchaeal heterotrophy in salt marsh sediments . ISME J. doi:10.1038/ismej.2014.15 Galaasen, E. V., Ninnemann, U. S., Irvali, N., Kleiven, H. F., Rosenthal, Y., Kissel, C., Hodell, D. A. 2014. Rapid reductions in North Atlantic deep water during the peak of the late interglacial period . Science. 10.1126/science.1248667 Science News/Views synposis Andrianasolo, E. H., Haramaty, L., White, E., Lutz, R., Falkowski, P. G. 2014. Mode of action of diterpene and characterization of related metabolites from the soft coral, Xenia elongata . Marine Drugs.12, 1102-1115; doi:10.3390/md12021102 Grogan, J., Landis, M. R., Free, C. M., Schulze, M. D., Lentini, M., Ashton, M. S. 2014. Big-leaf mahogany Swietenia macrophylla population dynamics and implications for sustainable management. Journal of Applied Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12210 de Bruyn, M., M. L. Pinsky, B. Hall, P. Koch, C. Baroni, and A. R. Hoelzel. 2014.Rapid increase in southern elephant seal genetic variation after a founder event. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281: 20133078 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.3078 Pinsky, M. L. and S. R. Palumbi (2014) Meta-analysis reveals lower genetic diversity in overfished populations. Molecular Ecology 23: 29-39 doi: 10.1111/mec.12509 Cover article. News & Views perspective by Allendorf et al.
