Oceans: Photosynthesis, Mapping, Politics

 

Pairing Fuchs’ light data with Hoppe’s microalgae observations clinched it: At the end of March, right when the barest amount of sunlight returned, the microalgae not only had their photosynthetic machinery up and running but were also growing and building biomass. Her team concluded that they’d made the first-ever field observation of photosynthesis at just around the theoretical minimum — where the amount of light was an order of magnitude lower than what had been observed in nature before.

She wonders, too, whether Arctic phytoplankton’s ability to ride out near-absolute darkness might be shared by some algae in the colder, darker waters of the deep sea. If she’s right, the zone of productive ocean may be deeper than anyone thought.

Photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature.

An interesting story.

My suspicion is that the the low light algae evolved in the ocean to the south 100’s millions of years ago and was preadapted to handle the Arctic. Regardless, if this occurs across the global ocean it is a very big deal as they suggest.

Art meets science: See the first detailed illustration of an ancient deep-sea mountain

Another ocean story. We have all seen maps like the above that give an impression that they are accurate. I think this one is from Nat Geo and was published in the 1960’s. ​The truth is the ocean bottom is very poorly mapped.

This map of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was published in 1968 and is based on ocean depth surveys compiled by Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp.
The map was painted by Heinrich Berann for the magazine National Geographic. World GeoDemo

 

A SCIENCE NEWS MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF 2023

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF 2023

Five oceans—the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Southern—cover approximately 70 percent of the earth. Yet we know little about what lies beneath them. By the early 2020s, less than twenty-five percent of the ocean’s floor has been charted, most close to shorelines, and over three quarters of the ocean lies in in what is called the Deep Sea, depths below a thousand meters. Now, the race is on to completely map the ocean’s floor by 2030—an epic project involving scientists, investors, militaries, and private explorers who are cooperating and competing to get an accurate reading of this vast terrain and understand its contours and environment.

In The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey documents this race to the bottom, following global efforts around the world, from crowdsourcing to advances in technology, recent scientific discoveries to tales of dangerous dives in untested and costly submersibles. The lure of ocean exploration has attracted many, including the likes of James Cameron, Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, and Eric Schmidt. The Deepest Map follows a cast of intriguing characters, from early mappers such as Marie Tharp, a woman working in the male-dominated fields of oceanography and geology whose discoveries have added significantly to our knowledge; Victor Vescovo, a man obsessed with reaching the deepest depths of each of the five oceans, and his young, brilliant, and fearless mapper Cassie Bongiovanni; and the diverse entrepreneurs looking to explore and exploit this uncharted territory and its resources.

This book on the subject looks interesting. Ocean mining is coming and it may be worse under water vs on land. Sight unseen though means the public will likely ignore it.

 

But in late 2023, after a long and expensive mapping project, the State Department announced that the continental shelf had grown by 1 million square kilometers—more than two Californias.

according to the State Department, the combined area could be worth trillions of dollars.

How the U.S. has gamed the international system.