GRUMMAN DONATES CURRENT METERS TO MSRC
The Grumman Corporation of Bethpage, Long Island has generously donated two advanced-design current meters to the MSRC. The device, which was developed by Grumman, combines an Anderaa-type current meter, a depth sensor, salinity and temperature sensors and data recording hardware in a single housing. The unique feature of the Grumman design is that it is capable of taking vertical profiles of the water column continuously. The meter is deployed for extended periods of time on an unattended mooring. By means of a dynamic buoyancy system the meter travels up and down the mooring wire, recording data as it does. Not only does it replace the present system of multiple meters at a single mooring, thus realizing a cost saving, but it can produce a more detailed profile than can a set of individual meters.
The Center thanks Mr. Jack Graham and Mr. Arthur Speidel of Grumman for bringing the availability of the meters to the Center’s attention. In recognition of this generosity of the Center has extended to the Grumman Corporation an honorary corporate membership in the MSRC Associates Program.
NOYES FELLOWSHIP WINNERS
Marine Sciences Research Center students Cynthia Decker and Christina Barnes were recently awarded Jessie Smith Noyes (JSN) Fellowships for the 1984-85 academic year. Two JSN Fellowships are awarded each year to outstanding MSRC students working on important problems in the coastal environment.
Ms. Decker a Ph.D. candidate at the Center, will use her Fellowship to investigate feeding selectivity and mechanisms of food selection in marine harpacticoid copepods. Harpacticoid copepods form a major part of the meiobenthos in marine sediment. Ms. Decker’s research will help elucidate the role of these minute but numerous animals in the cycling of organic matter in sediments.
Ms. Decker is from New Concord, Ohio. She received her B.A. in Zoology from Miami University of Ohio, and her M. S. in Zoology from Louisiana State University. Her M. S. thesis on the colonization of sediments by meiofauna led to a paper which is in press. Her faculty advisor is Dr. Glenn Lopez.
As a JSN Fellow Ms. Christina Barnes will study the geochemistry of uranium in reducing marine sediments. Uranium undergoes very different reactions in reducing and oxidizing environments. Ms. Barnes’s work will describe the redox chemistry of uranium and similar elements, such as plutonium, when they enter the typically reducing environment of coastal sediments.
Ms. Barnes received her B.A. in Chemistry from Mount Holyoke College, where she worked independently on flavin photoreactions using new laser-assisted nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. She spent three years working on drug metabolism at Pfizer, Inc. before coming to the Center to work toward an M. S. degree under Dr. Kirk Cochran. Her home town is Ames, Iowa.
STEINBERG – SQUIRES WINNERS ANNOUNCED
Monica Bricelj and David Ullman have been designated as this year’s winners of the Steinberg-Squires Award, which honors the best thesis produced in an academic year. This is the first year that two awards have been given. Ms. Bricelj won on the basis of her Ph.D. thesis, “Effects of suspended sediments on the feeding physiology and growth of the hard clam, Mercenaria mercenaria.” The hard clam is the basis of a very large fishery on Long Island. Ms. Bricelj’s thesis has important implications for the management of the fishery and the establishment of mariculture efforts.
Dave Ullman’s M.S. thesis was entitled “Subinertial current oscillations in western Long Island Sound.” Mr. Ullman’s work has shown that low frequency wave motions in the Sound can account for an appreciable fraction of the variance in current speeds, and represents an advance in understanding free oscillations in estuarine systems.
The goal of the Steinberg-Squires Award is to provide recognition for outstanding student accomplishment and to stimulate the preparation of high quality theses. Theses are evaluated on the basis of originality and significance of the research, the quality of writing, and the degree of independence shown by the student. The award was established in 1980 through a gift to the Stony Brook Foundation from Donald F. Squires and his wife, Marian Steinberg. Dr. Squires is the Director of the New York Sea Grant Institute and former Director of the Marine Sciences Research Center.
MSRC WELCOMES COASTAL MARINE SCHOLARS
The Marine Sciences Research Center welcomes two new Coastal Marine Scholars. Dr. Carmela Cuomo and Dr. William Dennison will be carrying out research at the Center for the coming year. Dr. Cuomo is a geologist and marine benthic ecologist. She received her Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1984 with a dissertation on the ecological and paleoecological significance of sulfides in marine sediments. During the coming year Dr. Cuomo intends to continue her research on muddy sediments. She plans a project which will determine whether Mya arenaria larvae use the presence of hydrogen sulfide as a cue in settlement. This research may have direct applications for Long Island’s soft clam industry. She also plans to look at the effect of environmental factors on the development of polychaetes, and at the distribution of the oxygen minimum zone facies in Precambrian and Paleozoic marine shales.
Dr. Dennison is a plant physiologist specializing in marine vascular plants. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1984 with a dissertation on the adaptive physiology of the seagrass Zostera marina. Dr. Dennison will be working with Doug Capone on the nitrogen cycle in seagrass sediments in Great South Bay. Specifically, Dr. Dennison will investigate the relationship between nitrogen availability and plant growth. He also intends to determine how oxygen is transported within the roots and leaves of Zostera, and is developing additional projects with Drs. Gerard, Malouf and Siddall.
D.W. PRITCHARD ADDRESSES CONVOCATION AT COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY
On February 2 MSRC Associate Director D. W. Pritchard was the principal speaker at the College of William and Mary’s Charter Day convocation. The ceremonies in Williamsburg, VA. marked the 292nd anniversary of the granting of the College’s royal charter in 1693. The theme of this year’s Charter Day was marine sciences, and Dr. Pritchard was chosen to speak because of both his key role in developing estuarine research in the Chesapeake Bay system and his classic scientific work on the physics of estuaries. His speech addressed the history of academic research in Chesapeake Bay, with emphasis on the role of Virginia institutions.
In addition to selecting Dr. Pritchard as the Charter Day speaker, the College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science Degree.
The ceremonies were preceded by a two-day symposium on estuarine science which was held at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester Point. VIMS is the oceanographic research arm of the College of William and Mary, and is the unit of the College which was honored during Charter Day. The symposium featured presentations of papers by colleagues and former students of Dr. Pritchard who have been influenced by his work.
J.L. McHUGH FELLOWSHIP ESTABLISHED
The MSRC has established a new fellowship in honor of Professor Emeritus J. L. McHugh. The fellowship has been established to acknowledge Professor McHugh’s manifold and distinguished contributions to science and society, and will be awarded annually to an outstanding new student who wishes to pursue a career in fisheries oceanography or fisheries management. If you would like to contribute to the J. L. McHugh Fellowship Fund, please send your check, payable to the Stony Brook Foundation Account No. 066540, to:
CURRENT RESEARCH
The National Science Foundation awarded DOUG CAPONE and SARAH HORRIGAN a three year grant to study nitrogen cycling in nearshore sediments. The project will examine the rates of several microbially mediated nitrogen transformations under naturally varying physical and chemical conditions in the sediments of Great South Bay.
DAVID CONOVER received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study the evolution of temperature dependent sex determination in fishes.
LINDA DUGUAY received a two-year Sea Grant award to study the production and survival of hard clam larvae in Great South Bay. She will be studying factors influencing the planktonic larval stage with emphasis on predation by Ctenophores.
BUD BRINKHUIS received a Sea Grant award to study tissue culture and genetic selection in the kelp Laminaria saccharina.
The National Science Foundation renewed MARY SCRANTON’s grant to study hydrogen cycling and its relationship to carbon remineralization in anoxic marine environments. The renewal is a two-year, Ş181,000 award.
JED FUHRMAN received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation as part of the multidisciplinary program, Microbial Exchanges and Couplings in Coastal Atlantic Systems. Six other principal investigators at four other institutions are also in the program. As part of the program, DR. FUHRMAN and GEORGE MCMANUS participated in a cruise in the Chesapeake Bay plume aboard the R/V OCEANUS for two weeks in February. Additional cruises are planned for June and August, 1985.
The National Park Service awarded BILL PETERSON a grant to characterize the hydrography and annual plankton production cycle in Jamaica Bay, NY.
BILL PETERSON and BOB WILSON received a grant from NSF to study the effects of topographic and wind-induced upwelling on biological productivity off Talcahuano, Chile.
PEOPLE AND MEETINGS
AKIRA. OKUBO was appointed Adjunct Professor at the Ecosystems Research Center Section of Ecology and Systematics, Cornell University for the period December 1984 through November, 1986.
MSRC was well represented at the fall joint meeting of the American Geophysical Union and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, which was held in San Francisco 3-7 December. W. T. PETERSON and HANS DAM presented a paper on food limitation of fecundity of boreal copepods in Long Island Sound. SARAH HORRIGAN presented a paper entitled, “Bacterioplankton growth in seawater may be nitrogen limited.” KIRK COCHRAN gave an invited paper entitled “The geochemistry of uranium and thorium in coastal marine sediments.” MARY SCRANTON presented a paper which she co-authored with F.L. SAYLES and M.P. BACON titled “A non-steady state model for nutrients in the Cariaco Trench.” PAUL, NOVELLI and MARY SCRANTON presented a paper on hydrogen distributions in marine sediments. MALCOLM BOWMAN also attended the AGU-ASLO meeting.
On 24 January at a ceremony in Shanghai J. R. SCHUBEL was made an honorary faculty member of East China Normal University.
SHEILA TOBIN visited the laboratory of Mentz Indegaard, in Trondheim, Norway for five weeks to learn alginate extraction and spray cultivation techniques.
MALCOLM BOWMAN toured oceanographic facilities on Vancouver Island, B.C. in December, visiting the University of British Columbia and the Institute of Ocean Sciences.
BILL PETERSON was an invited speaker at the International Symposium on Marine Plankton, which was held in August in Shimizu, Japan.
KIRK COCHRAN and DAVID HIRSCHBERG participated in a research cruise to the Nares Abyssal Plain south of Bermuda. The collected water and sediment samples as part of DR, COCHRAN’s Department of Energy – funded radioactive waste disposal baseline investigations project.
FOCUS ON RESEARCH
HARRY CARTER – IT ALL STARTS WITH PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY
For the past twenty years Professor Harry Carter has applied the science of physical oceanography to the problems of managing wastes and fisheries resources in estuaries and coastal waters. His Work on bivalve larval dispersal and the disposal and impact of wastes in aquatic environments has been distinguished by its diversity and its rigor. His training as a physical oceanographer enables Professor Carter to apply basic research results to resolve a variety of practical problems.
Professor Carter became involved in oceanography while he was in the U.S. Coast Guard. He graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1943, and after the war was assigned to the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol. As part of that assignment he attended Scripps Institute of Oceanography for graduate training in physical oceanography, earning an M.S. degree in 1948. His subsequent Coast Guard experience included assignment to the Ice Patrol as a physical oceanographer, and command of several vessels, including a small icebreaker which was among the first U.S. ships to navigate the Northwest Passage.
When he retired from the Coast Guard in 1963, Professor Carter joined the research Staff at the Chesapeake Bay Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. At that time the staff included MSRC Professors Pritchard and Okubo, whom he credits with a major influence on his subsequent research. There Professor Carter became interested in the physics of estuaries. “The estuary is a more exciting place to work than the ocean because the time scale of events is shorter,” he points out. “For that reason the problems are more difficult than in the open ocean, but are more interesting.”
Professor Carter joined the MSRC faculty on a part-time basis in 1975 becoming full-time in 1977. He has continued his work in estuarine and coastal physics with studies of estuarine sedimentation and the biological impacts of thermal effluents from power plants, in collaboration with Dr. J. R. Schubel and a series of sampling and modeling studies of the N circulation and mixing of Long Island bays.
Professor Carter is above all an experimental oceanographer, renowned in his field for his ability to design and conduct field studies, to analyze data and to cast the results in forms most suitable for testing a theory or resolving a problem. According to J. R. Schubel, Director of MSRC, “Harry has played a key role in the development of MSRC as a comprehensive center of excellence. He set new and higher standards for the application of the results of basic research to the resolution of complex practical problems which result from society’s multiple and conflicting uses of the coastal ocean.”
His preference for applied research clearly colors his current work, which includes a project to define the circulation of the Peconics Bay system. The project entails an ambitious program of current meter deployments to gather the data which will permit the project team to develop a model of the system. The model, in turn will permit future resource managers to assess the potential problems posed by increasing development pressures on the relatively pristine Peconics Bay system.
Professor Carter particularly enjoys projects which use the results of physical oceanographic studies to answer biological questions. A recent example is a series of studies in Great South Bay, site of a major clam fishery, which have focused on the effects of physical processes on the dispersal of hard clam larvae. Knowledge of the factors affecting larval survival and recruitment is important to effective management of the fishery. Professor Carter and his colleagues at MSRC have developed a rationale with which they can predict where larvae spawned in a particular area Will end up and conversely, where to put brood stock in order to obtain recruitment in a particular area. Professor Carter says of such projects, “Physical oceanography is where it all starts. If you want to work in a coastal environment you have to understand the physics.”
ROBERT CERRATO – STRESS MANAGEMENT IN THE BENTHOS
Is it possible to predict quantitatively what will happen to a community of animals when it is stressed? Benthic ecologist Dr. Robert Cerrato hopes that someday the answer will be “yes.” His long-term goal in marine science is to develop the capability for making quantitative predictions about natural systems. Dr. Cerrato studies populations and communities of animals which live on the seafloor – the benthos – in an effort to determine the ways in which animals respond to physical disturbances. Physical disturbances can be natural, such as storms and temperature extremes, or manmade, such as dredged material disposal. The study of responses to these disturbances provides information about the dynamics of biological systems as well as information to aid in conservation and resource management.
Dr. Cerrato came to marine biology by an unusual route. He received his B.S. in Physics from Drexel University in 1972. Seeking a graduate department which could offer a diversity of interests, he joined the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, where he found himself excited by the problems posed by benthic marine systems. He received both his M. Phil. and his Ph.D. degrees from Yale, working on a method to develop and interpret empirical models of time-varying populations. He also worked on two projects for determining the rate of growth of deep-sea clams and mussels. One method determined ages by the decay of a short-lived natural radioisotope found in the shells of clams, while the other used a mark-recovery experiment to determine growth rates of a mussel found at the mid-ocean rift hydrothermal vents Currently Dr. Cerrato is developing a third technique for age determination, based upon the dissolution rate of shell material.
“I’m drawn toward studies of extreme or changing environments because of the amount of information they provide about the dynamics of ecosystems, ” says Dr. Cerrato, and, indeed, his current projects tend to bear out his Statement. His biggest project is a study of the impact of borrow pits in New York Harbor. Many of the borrow N pits, which are depressions in the seafloor caused by sand-mining, trap and accumulate fine-grained sediments, organic matter and pollutants. The benthos of the pits declines every summer to the point of being eliminated entirely, only to recolonize the pits when conditions are again favorable. Interestingly, despite the stressed benthic fauna, finfish tend to be very abundant around the pits.
In another project, Dr. Cerrato and one of his students are studying the growth patterns of surf clams in Long Island waters. They hope to relate geographical variations in growth rate and age distribution with variations in environmental factors such as temperature, salinity and pollution. Dr. Cerrato and another student are trying to determine whether the coliform counts in Great South Bay, for which extensive data are available can be used as an indicator of pollution stress on the benthic fauna. Using a common, frequently measured parameter Such as coliform count would be much quicker and easier than conducting extensive benthic sampling, so the Study has considerable practical potential. Finally, Dr. Cerrato is collaborating with Dr. Bokuniewicz to locate suitable areas for disposal of dredge spoils in New York Harbor. They have developed a unique approach to evaluating potential sites on the basis of their resource value, as measured by benthic community richness and utilization by fishermen.
In all of the se projects Dr. Cerrato continues to work toward his goal of understanding and ultimately predicting how benthic communities respond to controlling factors in their environment. He acknowledges the magnitude of this task and the need for efficient ways of approaching it, saying , “Even under optimum circumstances, field studies yield sets of observations which are small and incomplete relative to the complexity of the systems I’m dealing with, so I am constantly looking for new ways of extracting the most information I can from a limited amount of data.”
PUBLICATIONS
BRICELJ V. M. and R. E, MALOUF 1984. Influence of algal and suspended sediment concentrations on the feeding physiology of the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria. Marine Biology 84: 155-165.
COCHRAN, J. K. 1984 – The fates of uranium and thorium decay series nuclides in the estuarine environment. Pages 179 – 219 in : Kennedy, V. S. (ed.). The Estuary as a Filter. Academic Press.
CONOVER, D.O. and B. E. KYNARD, 1984. Field and laboratory observations of spawning periodicity and behavior of a northern population of the Atlantic silverside Menidia menidia: (Pisces : Atherinidae). Environ. Biol. Fishes 11:161-171.
COSPER, E.M., C.F. WURSTER and R. G. ROWLAND. 1984. PCB resistance within phytoplankton populations in polluted and unpolluted marine environments. Marine Environmental Research 12: 209-223.
FELDMAN – G – 1984 – Satellites , seabirds and seals. Tropical Oceans – Atmosphere Newsletter, Special Issue 28: 4-5.
FELDMAN, G, , D. CLARK and D. HALPERN. 1984. Satellite color observations of the phytoplankton distribution in the eastern equatorial Pacific during the 1982-83 El Nino Science 226: 1069-1071.
GERARD, V.A. 1984. The light environment in a giant kelp forest: influence of Macrocystis pyrifera on spatial and temporal variability. Marine Biology 84:189-195.
GERARD, V.A. and W. J. NORTH 1984. Measuring growth, production and yield of the giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera. Hydrobiologia 116/117 : 321 – 324.
ITZKOWITZ, N and J. R. SCHUBEL 1983. Tolerance of five-day-old winter flounder, Pseudopleuronectes americanus, larvae to thermal shock. Fishery Bulletin (U.S.) 81(4) 91.3-916.
KIENE, R.P. and D. CAPONE 1984. Effects of organic pollutants on methanogenesis, sulfate reduction and carbon dioxide evolution in salt marsh sediments. Marine Environmental Research 13:141-160.
McHUGH, J.L. 1984. Fishery Management. (Lecture Notes in Coastal and Estuarine Studies Vol. 10). Springer-Verlag, New York. 207 p.
OKUBO, A. V. ANDREASEN and J. G. MITCHELL. 1984. Chaos-induced turbulent diffusion. Physics Letters 105A. 169-172.
PRITCHARD, D. W. and M VIEIRA, 1984 . Vertical variations in residual current response to meteorological forcing in the mid-Chesapeake Bay – Pages 27-65 in : Kennedy, V. S. (ed.), The Estuary as a Filter. Academic Press.
SCHUBEL, J. R. and H. H. CARTER, 1984. The estuary as a filter for fine-grained suspended sediment. Pages 81-105 in : The Estuary as a Filter. Academic Press.
SCRANTON , M. I. . P. C. NOVELLI and P. A. LOUD. 1984. The distribution and cycling of H gas in the waters of two anoxic marine environments. Limnology & Oceanography 29: 993-10O3.
STATER, J. and D.G. CAPONE 1984. Effects of metals on nitrogen fixation and denitrification in slurries of anoxic saltmarsh sediments. Marine Ecology Progress Series 18: 89-95.