Julia Whitty

Environmental Correspondent

Julia is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction (Deep Blue Home, The Fragile Edge, A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga), and a former documentary filmmaker. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

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Julia is a writer and former documentary filmmaker and the author of The Fragile Edge: Diving & Other Adventures in the South Pacific, winner of a PEN USA Literary Award, the John Burroughs Medal, the Kiriyama Prize, the Northern California Books Awards, and finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. Her short story collection A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga won an O. Henry and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

Thar She Blows! Arctic Ocean Diaries No. 2

—By Julia Whitty

| Tue Oct. 9, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Humpback whale with northern fulmars. Image courtesy of Master Chief Tim Sullivan, USCG

Editor's note: Julia Whitty is on a three-week-long journey aboard the the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, following a team of scientists who are investigating how a changing climate might be affecting the chemistry of ocean and atmosphere in the Arctic. Read her first dispatch here.

On our way north yesterday, we encountered a phenomenal gathering of humpback whales. I've seen a lot of whales in my time, dating back to my filmmaking days, but I've never seen as many humpbacks as were congregating off Unalaska Island yesterday. They're migrating south, some to Hawaii, others to the west coast of Mexico. They must have run into something of consequence—maybe krill—for so many to stop and feed.

But because Healy's on such a tight schedule, we can't linger until we reach the first mooring site sometime Tuesday morning. From that point on there will be a crazy amount of work to do literally around the clock in all weather, fair and foul.

Most of the scientists aboard are sampling water from various depths and in various locations in relation to land and rivers. In a way they're doing what whales and other marine life do: "reading" the water. The humpbacks are presumably reading for clues to food, migration route, friends, and foes. The humans are reading for clues to the rapid change underway as the Arctic icecap dwindles—change that will likely impact the future of krill, humpback whales, and people, to name a few.

The map below marks our current position as of 1517 hours on October 8. The red lines marks our passage up from Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, through the Bering Sea. We passed through the Bering Strait and over the Arctic Circle sometime last night. We're currently in the Chukchi Sea. You can see the yellowish outline of a boat with red dot in the center: That's us. The red triangles mark mooring sites where we'll be stopping to sample water. We'll be cruising the Alaskan shelf of the Beaufort Sea all the way east to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

To collect data, the Healy research team will use CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth profiler), a package of oceanographic instruments that captures water at various depths and takes other measurements on its way to and from the bottom. It's deployed via winch and run to the bottom (or wherever) on cables.

Most research aboard Healy this cruise is supported by the National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs.

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And We're Off: Arctic Ocean Diaries No. 1

—By Julia Whitty

| Mon Oct. 8, 2012 3:51 PM PDT

USCGC Healy in port at Dutch Harbor, Unalaska. Image courtesy of Master Chief Tim Sullivan, USCG

Last Friday the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy sailed from the gorgeous shelter of Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, bound north for the Arctic Ocean.

Healy is a research vessel carrying 38 science crew on this cruise. I'm working with Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer, and his lab, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He's collaborating with Bob Pickart from WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), a physical oceanographer. They're jointly investigating how a changing climate might be affecting the chemistry of ocean and atmosphere in the Arctic. I'll write more about that later.

But for now we're just hunkering down while Healy makes the 1,000-mile long transit from Dutch Harbor through the Bering and Chukchi Seas to the first research stations in the Beaufort Sea. We should arrive after three days, depending on weather. You can check out the view from Healy's Bridge from this webcam, which updates hourly.

So far the Bering Sea is being really kind to us. Fingers crossed.

Marine Ecologist Featured in MoJo Cover Stories Wins MacArthur "Genius" Award

—By Julia Whitty

| Tue Oct. 2, 2012 12:51 PM PDT

Nancy Rabalais: Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.I was very happy to hear that one of this year's MacArthur's Fellows is Nancy Rabalais, executive director and professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON). I profiled Nancy's work in my MoJo cover story "The Fate of the Ocean" after her research facility in Chauvin, Louisiana, had been hammered by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and again in my MoJo piece "The BP Cover-Up" when her facility was slammed by an oil spill and oil-dispersant catastrophe, and this year in my profile of Keystone Ladies in science and conservation. I've also blogged regular updates on her pioneering work on dead zones and on her receipt of a prestigious Heinz Award last year. I honestly can't think of anyone more deserving of a MacArthur Fellowship in light of her constant efforts against the odds in the near-war zone of the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's what the MacArthur Foundation has to say about her career so far:

Nancy Rabalais is a marine ecologist who is dedicated to documenting and mitigating the effects of hypoxic zones—aquatic areas with low dissolved oxygen levels commonly known as "dead zones—that have expanded dramatically in the Gulf of Mexico and many other coastal systems around the globe. Since the mid-1980s, she has led a long-term monitoring program to study the size, intensity, and seasonal occurrence of dead zones in the waters off the Louisiana continental shelf; she has also analyzed the relationship between the extent of hypoxia and the increasing quantities of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into the Gulf from the Mississippi River watershed. When concentrated in coastal waters, the nutrients from farmland fertilizer and other sources spur the growth of an overabundance of algae, the decomposition of which consumes oxygen vital to sustaining an enormous spectrum of aquatic species. Over the past three decades, Rabalais's studies have evolved to include collaborations with researchers from many different disciplines and have used methods from physical oceanography, hydrology, geochemistry, and paleoecology to make ever more precise assessments of hypoxia dynamics and their impact on a range of fragile, interconnected ecosystems. In addition to her scientific contributions, Rabalais has played a prominent role in informing strategies to restore the degraded waters of the Gulf by reducing nutrient pollution from urban and agricultural runoff upstream and has focused national attention on the environmental and economic consequences of large-scale eutrophication. Her outreach efforts have included lecturing throughout the United States about the effects of hypoxia on those far from its waters, testifying before Congress, and working with federal, state, and tribal agencies on an action plan for improving water quality in the Mississippi River basin. While weathering the destruction of her research facility in catastrophic hurricanes and treacherous diving conditions due to oil spills, Rabalais continues to deepen our understanding of this profound oceanographic problem that threatens the well-being of the entire Gulf region.

Congratulations, Nancy!

The Arctic Is Way Hotter Now Than Anytime in Past 1,800 Years

—By Julia Whitty

| Thu Sep. 27, 2012 12:14 PM PDT

Summers on Svalbard are up to 4.5°F (2.5°C) hotter than during the warm period when Vikings colonized Greenland and Iceland: Svalbard landscape: Wen Nag (aliasgrace) via Flickr. Viking statue: frankdouwes via Flickr. Mashup: Julia Whitty (thanks PicMonkey!)

Things are so hot on the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard these days that if the Vikings were still around they'd flee north to get away from their own sweat. Okay, that's total conjecture. But a fascinating new paper in the science journal Geology describes how much hotter it is on Svalbard now than it was during the Medieval Warm Period when Vikings colonized Greenland and Iceland and briefly Newfoundland.

The Medieval Warm Period was driven by a natural increase in solar radiation that warmed parts of the northern hemisphere and severely dried out others (California, Nevada, Mississippi Valley). The current warming is driven by us.

Since 1987 summers on Svalbard have been 3.6° to 4.5°F (2° to 2.5°C) hotter than they were during the warmest parts of the Medieval Warm Period.

The authors used a novel method to decipher temperatures on Svalbard for the past 1,800 years based on the fatty remains of microscopic algae left behind in Kongressvatnet lake. Turns out the algae are miniature record-keepers extraordinaire because they make more unsaturated fats in colder water and more saturated fats in warmer waters, reports the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The researchers then dated the sediments based on grains of glass spat from volcanoes hundreds of miles away in Iceland: Snæfellsjökullin volcano in the year 170, Hekla in 1104 and Öræfajökull in 1362. How cool is that detective work?

The big difference with the new research is that most Arctic climate records come from ice cores that tell of winter snowfalls. The lake sediments record summertime temperatures. Which reveals a lot about how climate varied from winter to summer and also in places where there are no (longer) ice sheets.

Based on the new summertime story, here's some of what the authors learned:

The region was not particularly cold during another recent anomalous period: the Little Ice Age of the 18th and 19th centuries when Svalbard glaciers grew to their greatest extent of the past 10,000 years (and when glaciers in much of parts of Western Europe grew too).
This suggests that a wetter climate (more snow) rather than colder temperatures may have fed the Svalbard glaciers.
By 1600 Western Svalbard had begun to gradually warm as the northern arm of the Gulf Stream (the West Spitsbergen Current) brought more tropical water to the region.
In 1890 the warming began to accelerate.
Meanwhile ice cores from Svalbard tell a different wintertime story: a slight cooling over the last 1,800 years.
The conflicting evidence suggests that temperatures may have fluctuated sharply between winter and summer.

From the Earth Institute at Columbia University:

Climate models suggest that by 2100 Svalbard will warm more than any other landmass on earth, due to a combination of sea-ice loss and changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation... In a study published last year in the journal Advances in Meteorology, Norwegian researchers estimate that average winter temperature in Svalbard could rise by as much as 10 degrees C or 18 degrees Fahrenheit [by 2100].

This video from lead author Billy D'Andrea, a research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, describes the scientific motivations behind his work.

The paper:

William J. D'Andrea, David A. Vaillencourt, Nicholas L. Balascio, Al Werner, Steven R. Roof, Michael Retelle and Raymond S. Bradley. Mild Little Ice Age and unprecedented recent warmth in an 1800 year lake sediment record from Svalbard. Geology (2012). DOI:10.1130/G33365.1

Pygmy Seahorse Discovered on Google Street View

—By Julia Whitty

| Wed Sep. 26, 2012 10:43 AM PDT

Denise's pygmy seahorse: O.J.Brett, Norway, via Wikimedia Commons

In the course of mapping the the world's reefs for Google Street View, divers found the teensy weensy Denise's pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus denise) in Australian waters for the first time, reports New Scientist (subscription). The five-eighths-inch long (1.5 cm) seahorse had previously been found living on coral reefs off Vanuatu, Palau, Malaysia, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and southern Japan. The mapping team found it off Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef at 302 feet (92 meters) deep.

"It's very much a critical time for reefs and we want to cover as much as we can in the next two to three years to create a global record," says project founder and director Richard Vevers.

The announcement marks today's launch of Google underwater street view. In the same way you can virtually walk around the topside world you can now virtually dive through the underwater world of a coral reef off Australia. It's stage one of a six-part underwater series. Next up, the deep and shallow coral reefs of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Bermuda.

The mappers are Catlin Seaview Survey—a partnership between the global insurance company Catlin Group Limited and the nonprofit Underwater Earth (check out the insanely beautiful images at their site). One of the two unique cameras used for the project (each capturing ≤50,000 360-degree panoramic images stitched together to create the underwater street views) was named "Sylvia," for legendary marine biologist Sylvia Earle, founder of Mission Blue.

The lucky mappers probably have the coolest job on Earth. And they've given us another unbelievably addicting way to get no work done.