WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

10-14 July 2017

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2017 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 21 August 2017. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Items of Interest:

NOAA Fisheries celebrating Habitat Month -- The Director of NOAA Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation has proclaimed that NOAA Fisheries is observing July as "Habitat Month", which celebrates the benefits of habitat conservation to fish and wildlife, communities, and the economy. During the month examples will be highlighted of how healthy habitat is the foundation for sustaining fisheries and recovering protected species. [NOAA Fisheries Habitat Conservation]
Astronauts see the southern lights from space -- A digital photograph was made by an astronaut on the International Space Station in mid-June of the aurora australis (also known as the "southern lights") that appeared near the southern horizon. Additional photographs and a video made from these photographs are available. [NASA Earth Observatory]
Worldwide GLOBE at Night 2017 Campaign commences -- The seventh in a series of GLOBE at Night citizen-science campaigns for 2017 will commence this Saturday (15 July) and continue through Monday, 24 July. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program designed to encourage citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky by matching the appearance of a constellation (Hercules in the Northern Hemisphere and Scorpius in the Southern Hemisphere) with the seven magnitude/star charts of progressively fainter stars. Activity guides are also available. The GLOBE at night program is intended to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution. The next series in the 2017 campaign is scheduled for 14-23 August 2017. [GLOBE at Night]
A summertime hands-on science program has scientists and kids working together -- Three scientists with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) along with 50 student scientists from the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Gulf Coast–Hancock County Unit in Mississippi participated in a summer program that investigated the water quality on the Magnolia Bayou located in Bay St. Louis, MS. The students recorded the data and will use the information as a part of the program designed to teach the students about watershed dynamics, the impacts of stormwater runoff on water quality and quantity, and the importance of watershed planning and action. This program is a part of a NOAA-21st Century Community Learning Center Watershed (CCLC) STEM Education Partnership Grant. The CCLC, which is the nation's largest out-of-school program serving over 1.5 million students in all 50 states, is designed to provide academic enrichment opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) during vacation time. [NOAA NCEI News]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics --- Two named tropical cyclones were detected over the tropical waters of the North Pacific Ocean during the last week, while a tropical depression was found in the North Atlantic:

In the western North Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Nanmadol was traveling toward the north passing near Okinawa at the start of last week. Nanmadol strengthened to just below typhoon strength (75 mph or higher sustained winds) early in the week as it curved toward the east-northeast, making landfall near Nagasaki on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Torrential rain associated with Nanmadol fell across the islands of southwestern Japan, with the island of Kyushu receiving as much as 20 inches of rain, resulting in flash flooding along with the wash-out of roads and bridges. (Kydo News Service). During the following day or two, Nanmadol weakened to a tropical depression and the lost its tropical characteristics, eventually dissipating as a remnant low pressure system. Additional information and satellite information on Tropical Storm Nanmadol can be found on the NASA Hurricane Page. A map of the total rainfall across southern Japan for 4-6 July was produced from data collected by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement Mission.
In the eastern North Pacific basin, a tropical storm identified as Eugene formed last Friday afternoon over the open waters of the Pacific approximately 765 miles to the south of Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. Eugene generally traveled toward the northwest over the weekend, intensifying to become the second hurricane of 2017 in the eastern North Pacific on Saturday evening. At that time Hurricane Eugene was 630 miles to the south-southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Rapid intensification continued with Eugene becoming a major category 3 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) as of Sunday morning. By Sunday afternoon Hurricane Eugene had 115-mph maximum sustained surface winds as it was traveling toward the northwest approximately 550 miles to the southwest of Cabo San Lucas. Current forecasts suggest that Hurricane Eugene could intensify slightly into early Monday before beginning to weaken on Monday. With an anticipated continued movement toward the northwest through the first half of the week, the projected path of Hurricane Eugene would be sufficiently far off the coast of Baja California that no coastal watches or warnings were in effect.
In North Atlantic basin, Tropical Depression 4 (TD4) formed last Wednesday night approximately 1545 miles to the east of the Lesser Antilles. This tropical depression, a weak low pressure system that formed over tropical waters, traveled to the west and then to the west-northwest across the waters of the tropical North Atlantic toward the Lesser Antilles. However, TD4 never strengthened to become a tropical storm, with maximum sustained surface winds exceeding 38 mph. As of late Friday afternoon TD4 weakened to become a disorganized tropical wave that then dissipated approximately 590 miles to the east of the Lesser Antilles. Consult the
NASA Hurricane Page for more information and satellite images of TD4.

Exploring shipwrecks in Michigan's national marine sanctuary with sonar -- During this past spring researchers from the University of Delaware conducted the second phase of a research expedition in the waters of northern Lake Huron within Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary to find lost shipwrecks using sonar (Sound Navigation and Ranging). The deep-water areas off nearby Presque Isle were the site of numerous shipwrecks. The two-week survey mission used sonar from onboard the NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory's research vessel. If the sonar detects an anomalous feature that could be a sunken vessel, the researchers can return with additional tools, such as underwater robots or divers, to further document a potential discovery of a lost shipwreck. [NOAA National Marine Sanctuary News]
Tracking microplastics in the oceans from the beaches to the ocean floor -- Chemists from NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center's Sandy Hook Lab and colleagues have developed a baseline library of the pyrolysis gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS spectra), or the chemical fingerprints, from commonly used plastic polymers that are found in the microplastics gathered from the oceans. These small pieces of plastic have been found in many locations of the oceans, from the beaches and ocean surface down to the ocean floor. They can pose a serious problem to marine animals, affecting their feeding and reproduction. [NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center News]
New England resource managers provided with real-time data from Gulf of Maine red tide monitoring -- Two submersible, robotic instruments called "Environmental Sample Processors" were deployed in the waters of the Gulf of Maine last year to autonomously collect discrete water samples to sample cells and toxins produced by red tide alga, Alexandrium fundyense, and another harmful alga, Pseudo-nitzschia. The instruments can be bundled with contextual sensors to document prevailing environmental conditions (temperature, salinity, nutrients). The near real-time data on estimated A. fundyense cell abundance collected from these deployments were made available to state and federal resource managers, researchers, other Gulf of Maine stakeholders and the public via a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution web server. [NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science News]
Reasons for exceptional toxicity during the 2015 West Coast Harmful Algal Bloom are explored -- Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the University of California, Santa Cruz and NOAA's National Ocean Service have recently published an article that explains what may have caused the high toxicity in the waters of California's Monterey Bay during the massive 2015 toxic bloom of the marine diatom Pseudo-nitzschia. This toxic bloom occurred along the West Coast of the United States, stretching from California north to the Alaska Peninsula. Apparently, warm ocean water, an abundance of nutrients in the form of nitrates and silicates, or a combination of factors may have caused the bloom and to some extent the toxicity. [NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science News]
Ice cover on rivers and lakes in the Arctic is also important -- An image made from data collected by the MODIS instrument onboard NASA's Terra satellite at the end of May 2017 shows ice remaining on the lakes and rivers across the northern sections of Canada's Northwest Territories and Nunavut. In addition, sea ice was found on the Amundsen Gulf, a saltwater embayment located in the Northwest Territories between Banks Island and Victoria Island and the mainland. Ice cover on lakes and rivers of the Canadian Arctic and its duration are important to the region's indigenous population.[NASA Earth Observatory]
New estimates of global inland fishery production show fruitful lake harvests -- A recently published study by researchers at Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University and the US Geological Survey (USGS) reveals that harvests from freshwater fisheries from around the world, such as the North American Great Lakes, could total more than 12 million tons annually and contribute more to global food supplies and economies than previously estimated. This study involved 246,000 freshwater lakes from around the world. [USGS News]
An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA's National Weather Service, FAA and FEMA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, fire weather, marine weather, severe weather, drought and floods. [NOAA/NWS Daily Briefing]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com]

Historical Events:

10 July 1979...Hurricane Bob became the first Atlantic Hurricane to be given a male name. (National Weather Service files)
11 July 1576...The British seaman Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland during one of his attempts to find the Northwest Passage. (Wikipedia)
11 July 1776...The English explorer Captain James Cook began his third and final voyage, exploring the North Pacific, western North America to as far north as the Bering Strait and the Sandwich Islands (later renamed the Hawaiian Islands), where he was killed in February 1779. (Wikipedia)
12 July 1844...Captain J.N. Taylor of the Royal Navy first demonstrated the fog horn. At the time, it was called a telephone - to mean far-signaling, thus an instrument like a fog-horn, used on ships, railway trains, etc., for signaling by loud sounds or notes. The 19 July 1844 Times (London) reported, "Yesterday week was a levee day at the Admiralty, and amongst the numerous models...was Captain J. N. Tayler's telephone instrument... The chief object of this powerful wind instrument is to convey signals during foggy weather. Also the Illustrated London News on 24 Aug. 1844 referred to "The Telephone; a Telegraphic Alarum. Amongst the many valuable inventions...that of the 'Telephone, or Marine Alarum and Signal Trumpet', by Captain J. N. Taylor." (Today in Science History)
12 July 1920...The Panama Canal was formally dedicated, having taken more than 30 years to overcome the enormous engineering challenges and complete at a cost of $347 million. The first ship had traveled through six years earlier when the Panama Canal opened to shipping on 15 Aug 1914. At that time, the world scarcely noticed the event since German troops were driving across Belgium toward Paris and the newspapers relegated the Panama story to their back pages; the greatest engineering project in the history of the world had been dwarfed by the totality of World War I. (Today in Science History)
12 July 1993...A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that was situated offshore of Hokkaido, Japan produced a tsunami that killed 202 people on the island of Okushiri. (Wikipedia)
13 July 1996...Heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Bertha caused roads to washout in the Camden, ME area. Two people were hurt when they drove into a 600-pound boulder that had fallen onto the roadway due to the heavy rain. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
15-16 July 1916...A dying South Atlantic Coast storm produced torrential rains in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Altapass, NC was drenched with 22.22 inches of rain, a 24-hour rainfall record for the Tarheel State, and at the time, a 24-hour record for the U.S. (The current 24-hour rainfall record for the US is 43 inches set 25-25 July 1979 at Alvin, TX). Flooding resulted in considerable damage, particularly to railroads. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) (NCDC)
16 July 1999...A plane piloted by John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashed into Long Island Sound as haze or a dark night sky caused him to lose control of the aircraft. (National Weather Service files)