The Crest 9

Editor’s Note: The followingarticle is the second in a two-partseries designed to highlight the workof VIMS researchers involved inCensus of Marine Life projects. TheCensus of Marine Life is a 10-yearinternational research program toassess and explain the diversity,distribution, and abundance of theworld’s marine organisms. Theinformation and technologiesdeveloped through the Census willbe made publicly available tostrengthen management of marineecosystems and improve publicunderstanding of the oceanenvironment.

Like anglers everywhere, Dr. MikeVecchione knows what it feels like tosnag a lure and break a line—but on amuch grander scale. On a researchcruise last year he lost a 60-footbottom trawl on a seafloor snag a miledown, after only three casts.

Vecchione, a NOAA Fisheriesemployee, adjunct faculty at VIMS,and world expert in deep-sea squid,describes the loss with surprisingequanimity. “One of the risks of deep-sea exploration is losing gear,” saysVecchione. “You just have to be willingto face that hazard.”

Vecchione lost the trawl whilestudying bottom-dwelling organisms onBear Seamount, a dormant underseavolcano near Georges Bank. Theseamount begins 9,000 ft beneath thewaves and rises more than 6,000 ft toits flat top, which still lies more than3,000 ft below the sea surface. It’s atthe inshore end of a seamount chain

that runs southeast toward Bermuda,and is distinct in that it rises out of thecontinental slope.

“Seamounts hold great promise forundiscovered biodiversity,” saysVecchione. “The fauna of such steep,deep bottoms is practically unknown.”One reason is the difficulty of deep-water trawling across a rough volcanicseafloor.

Even more poorly known is theocean’s mid-water fauna, the commu-nity of fishes, squid, and other organ-isms that hover in the water columnmidway between surface and seafloor.

“Bottom life is generally betterknown than the stuff up in the water,because it’s easier to study an inter-face and things tend to concentratethere. We’ve only studied a tinypercentage of the bottom, but it’s stilltaught us a lot more than what weknow about what’s in this huge volumeof water below 1,000 m. That realmmakes up more than 90% of thebiosphere, but it’s the part of the Earththat we know the least about.”

Vecchione’s deep- and mid-waterinvestigations are part of MAR-ECO, aCensus of Marine Life (CoML) projectto explore the poorly known ecosys-tems of the northern Mid-AtlanticRidge (MAR). The seamount cruises,which also contribute to another CoMLproject aimed at the Gulf of Maine, arefunded by NOAA’s Ocean ExplorationProgram.

“MAR-ECO wants to comparedeep-water communities on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with similar communi-ties elsewhere,” says Vecchione.

“Bear Seamount is associated with thecontinental slope, but it’s depth andsteepness resemble that of a ridgeenvironment.”

Vecchione notes that the Census ofMarine Life and MAR-ECO weredesigned to gain a basic understandingof life in the sea. “But there are appliedimplications to the work as well,” headds.

“Fishing has been moving progres-sively into deeper water and fishing onseamounts has become a hot topic.Deep-sea fishery resources are beingexploited in such areas elsewhere inthe world. It thus makes sense toexplore and study deepwater habitatsand the distribution and biology of suchanimals before large-scale exploitationbegins in the western North Atlantic.”

A May 2003 cruise wasVecchione’s third and most recent tripto Bear Seamount. Previous tripsinclude a 2-week summer cruise in2002 (when he lost his bottom trawl)and a winter voyage in 2000. Therecent spring cruise allowed theexpedition’s team to further explorehow biodiversity on the seamount mightchange with the seasons.

“Our overall objective is to docu-ment the biodiversity of this seamountand how it might differ from thecontinental slope and from otherseamounts,” says Vecchione. “We’realso trying to look at seasonal changesin diversity, particularly among pelagicanimals.” He plans a fall researchcruise within the next few years.

The May cruise gave students inVecchione’s Deep Sea Biology course

at VIMS a unique opportunity to takepart in oceanographic research.Student crew members were JoelHoffman, a Ph.D. student at VIMS,and five masters students from Dr.Cindy van Dover’s laboratory atWilliam & Mary.

The group sailed from the NationalMarine Fisheries Service lab at WoodsHole, MA, on May 12th aboard the155-foot, 600-ton NOAA ship Dela-ware II for a 19-hour transit to theseamount. They spent the next 10 daysworking around the seamount beforereturning to Woods Hole on May 23rd.

“It was pretty rough the first twodays,” says William & Mary studentTaylor Heyl, “but after that it wasn’ttoo bad. The weather didn’t cut intoour sampling at all. And the food wasexcellent. That kept morale up.”

While onboard, the scientists keptbusy during their 12-hour watches bysorting the trawl catches, recording logentries, and processing salinity, tem-perature, and depth data from a trawl-mounted CTD.

Heyl notes that the mid-watertrawls generally went off without ahitch, but that the bottom trawling was“a little more precarious,” due tooccasional snags on seamount crags.“The snags would actually pull the boatbackward,” she says. To escape, theship would have to stop, reverse coursefor a few hundred meters, then resumeits forward motion. Fortunately, thistime around the maneuver preventedthe loss of any trawl gear.

Seamount Census Reveals New and Poorly Known Marine Life

Continued on next page

William and Mary graduate students Kathleen Krick, Taylor Heyl, and Jennifer Dreyer holda chimera fish caught in a mid-water trawl above the Bear Seamount.

Dr. Mike Vecchione and other members of the Delaware II crew bring in a deep-sea trawlcatch.

The Crest10

“Our main goal was to explore theseamount’s biodiversity by collectingfishes and cephalopods in bottom andmid-water trawls,” says Vecchione.The researchers identified, counted,and measured the netted organisms,and sampled tissues for later DNAanalysis. They also prepared voucherspecimens for museum collections atthe Smithsonian, Harvard, and Yale.Their deepest trawl ran to more than6,000 feet.

In keeping with the Census ofMarine Life’s goal to develop andimplement new marine-science tech-nologies, the group tested a newcomputer-based measuring systemduring the cruise. The system, whichuses a magnetized ruler and a digitalweight table to automatically record an

organism’s length and weight, “workedextremely well,” says Heyl.

Preliminary identifications indicatethat the group collected about 200species of fishes, more than 40 speciesof cephalopods, and many otherinvertebrate species from on or overBear Seamount during the cruise. Amore precise list will be produced oncetaxonomic experts complete theirstudies of the animals captured andcompare their findings with resultsfrom previous cruises. Many of thespecies are extremely rare in previouscollections and some specimens are thelargest ever captured for their species.A newly discovered species of mid-water fish is being described from the2002 cruise.

Both Vecchione and Heyl considertheir most exciting find a cephalopodspecies called the ram’s horn squid.“This is a very unusual kind of deep-

sea cephalopodwith an internalcoiled shell,” saysVecchione. Just afew inches long,these creaturesfloat and sinkthrough the watercolumn by varyingthe amount of gaswithin their shell.Detailed photo-documentation ofthe live animal andtissue collected forDNA analysis willbe useful forfiguring out therelationships of this strange little squid.

Vecchione’s team is also intriguedby an unusual biogeographic patternthat has begun to emerge after analysisof taxonomic and range data from thethree cruises. “One interesting resultfrom these studies is that a smallpercentage of the fauna is representedby ‘natural invader’ species,” he says.“Most of these species are moretypically found in the eastern Atlantic,and are either rare or previouslyunknown from the western Atlantic.Their occurrence appears to representa natural process. We don’t yet knowfor certain how they arrived at BearSeamount, but it’s possible that theseamount chain is acting as a series of

‘stepping stones’ across the deepseafloor.”

“Some people seem to think that ataxonomic study like the Census ofMarine Life is a cut-and-dried exer-cise, just arranging organisms in littlecubbyholes,” says Vecchione. “But it’snot. It’s the process of understandingrelationships. And its really importantfor us to know the relationships amongdifferent groups of organisms so thatwe can understand things like howevolution occurs and how differentorganisms come to be where theyare.”

For more information on MAR-ECO and the Bear Seamount cruisesvisit www.mar-eco.no

Seamountcontinued from previous page

This ram’s horn squid was one of the unusual deep-sea organ-isms collected in mid-water trawls above the Bear Seamount. Itsinternal coiled shell is partly visible to the right.

VIMS Helps Local Students AidOyster Restoration Effort

Students from Gloucester Montessori school helprestore oysters to Felgates Creek.

Members of the organizing committee for the 2003 Crustacean Society Annual Meetinggather at VIMS on June 5th. Committee members are (L to R) Dr. Rochelle Seitz, Dr. JeffShields, Dr. Martha Nizinski (formerly at VIMS), Senior Research Scientist Karen Hudson,and Dr. Emmett Duffy. The conference, which was held in Williamsburg, attracted 150scientists from 11 countries and featured symposia on the biology and ecology of the bluecrab, exploited shrimp, deep-sea crustaceans and the behavioral ecology of crustaceans.Meeting participants also celebrated the scientific career of Dr. Willard van Engel, VIMSfaculty emeritus, who recently received VIMS’ inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award (seestory on page 8).

Students from local schools arehelping to restore Chesapeake Bay’sbeleaguered oyster population througha hands-on collaboration with twoGloucester Point agencies.

Researchers with VIMS’ Chesa-peake Bay National Estuarine Re-search Reserve in Virginia(CBNERRVA) and the Oyster ReefKeepers of Virginia (ORKV) helpedthe students transplant 104,000 one-year-old oysters onto the FelgatesCreek Oyster Reef this past spring andsummer. Felgates Creek empties intothe York River between Yorktown andWilliamsburg.

The students, from York,Gloucester, Hampton, Williamsburg,and Newport News, grew and moni-tored the oysters during the 2002-2003school year through an ORKV oyster-restoration education program.CBNERRVA ran oyster-transplant

field trips that allowed the students toaccess the Felgates Creek oyster reefwith canoes launched from theYorktown Naval Weapons Station, bywading to the reef from National ParkService property on the ColonialParkway, or by boating to the reeffrom VIMS.

“We had great student interest andinvolvement during the oyster trans-plant field trips this past spring andsummer,” says CBNERRVA EducationDirector Bob Carroll, “and we’llcontinue the program in 2004.”

ORKV Director Laurie Sorabellasays it was “a great partnership” andnotes that ORKV is looking for 10 newteachers to participate in the programthis coming year. Sorabella is a recentVIMS graduate who started theORKV program after she completedher master’s thesis under Drs. MarkLuckenbach and Ken Moore.

Early monitoring suggeststhat the transplanted oystersare surviving and will hope-fully increase oyster repro-duction on the FelgatesCreek reef and surroundingareas.

For more informationabout how school groups canstart growing oysters in thisrestoration program, contactLaurie Sorabella at 804-721-8806 or emailoysterreefkeeper@yahoo.com