Two reasons to watch the documentary “Mission Blue”

By Jana M. del Favero and Catarina Marcolin

Translated by Lídia Paes Leme

Edited by Katyanne M. Shoemaker

In our first post in the Women's session “Old challenges for current women” we received a suggestion by Prof. Otto Muller P. Oliveira to post about the documentary “Mission Blue.” Indeed this documentary deserves a special mention in our blog because, aside from the excellent production, its content is simply inspiring.

The documentary “Mission Blue” was released in 2014 and tells the story of the incredible biologist Sylvia Alice Earle, explorer, author, mother, grandmother (amongst a thousand other possible titles) and her campaign to create a global coalition of marine protected areas, called “Hope Spots.”

When watching the movie, it is impossible not to fall in love with and be inspired by two “characters.” The first is the organization itself, also called Mission Blue (www.mission-blue.org), which was created in response to the prize Sylvia Earle earned in 2009 at “TED PRIZE WISH” (watch the talk here). In that talk, Dr. Earle encourages the use of all possible media (movies, expeditions, internet, new submarines) in a campaign to inspire public awareness and support for a worldwide network of marine protected areas. If these “Hope Spots” are wide enough, it could be possible to save and restore the planet's blue heart! Today, Mission Blue is a coalition of over 100 groups, from multinational corporations to groups of scientists, concerned with matters of ocean conservation. Mission Blue's website brings an interesting but scary statistic: only 2% of the World’s ocean is protected, hence the importance of this kind of effort.

Font: https://www.ted.com/participate/ted-prize/prize-winning-wishes/mission-blue

The second reason to fall in love with this film is the main character, Sylvia Earle, a woman that turned 80 in August 2015, who actively keeps studying, exploring, diving, and defending the ocean (learn more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Earle). Sylvia completed high school at the age of 16, undergrad at 19 and her masters at 20. During her Doctorate, this rhythm slowed down, due to marriage and kids, but soon Sylvia returned to her frantic pace. In 1964, when her kids where only 2 and 4 she traveled for 6 weeks on an expedition in the Indian Ocean. According to Sylvia, she didn't know she'd be the only woman on board, for she was invited as the only botanist, not only woman. A reporter approached her in Mombassa, Kenya, from where the ship would depart, and Sylvia remembered being interested in talking about her work, but the reporter only wanted to know about what being on the ocean with so many men would be like. After all, the article was called “Sylvia sails away with 70 men, but she expects no problems.”

Despite everything appearing well, Sylvia implies in some interviews that her scientific expeditions may have lead to the end of her first marriage. This is a recurring difficulty faced in the scientific world; it is common to have campaigns where the scientists are away for weeks, sometimes months, without any communication with family. In 1966 Sylvia finished her Doctorate, and in 1968 she traveled 30m deep in the waters of the Bahamas in a submersible, 4 months pregnant with her 3rd child and in her second marriage.

In 1969 she signed up to participate in the project Tektite, where scientists lived weeks in a laboratory placed under the sea, at 15m depth. Despite her 1000+ hours of diving experience and her excellent written proposal, she was not allowed to live together with men underwater in Tektike I. The following year however, she was invited to lead the Tektite II project, with a women-only team. The success of this team was an important milestone for women in research, and it set a precedent for future aquatic and space expeditions to include women in their teams.

Picture: Bates Littlehales.
Font: http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/450/cache/sylvia-earle-habitat-window_45011_600x450.jpg

After her experience as a mermaid, Sylvia became a popular face in the media and her career took off (we'd say, all other qualities aside, she also has a lovely face). In 1979 Sylvia walked on the ocean floor at depths never before touched by any other human. This was done using what is called a JIM SUIT, and was used at a depth of almost 400m. This adventure resulted in the book “Exploring the Deep Frontier.”

Image: Dr. Sylvia Earle in Deep Rover Submarine. Font: http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2012/05/Sylvia-Earle-in-a-Deep-Rover_horiz.jpg

In the 80's, together with the engineer Graham Hawkes, she started a company to create submersible vehicles, like Deep Rover. This partnership ultimately led to her third marriage, one where the offspring were the submarines created by them. One of her daughters currently works with her in her company.

When asked if she had problems reconciling family and career, Sylvia says yes, many, and that she tried to rearrange her life, having a laboratory and a library at home. For women that dream about following a scientific career, Sylvia advises “Try, you'll never know how it would be if you don't try.”

Font: http://mission-blue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/IMG_1065.jpg

Other than the documentary itself, we recommend this short video: http://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2013/06/14/in-her-words-sylvia-earle-on-women-in-science/?source=newsbundlearticles

A tour through the ocean: understanding the comings and goings of humpback whales

By Daniela Abras

It is immensely challenging to try to understand the mechanisms that move a 15 meter-long and 40 ton organism 9,000 km yearly.

Humpback whales migrate every year from the feeding grounds of Antarctica to the mating grounds of Brazil. The route, which is about 4,500 km each way, is made twice a year and typically takes about 2 months going, and 2 months coming back. By including their 4 month stay in Brazil mating, these whales spend 8 months of the year without food. That’s a long fast! To accomplish this feat, they need to eat a lot during the 4 months in Antarctica, and they need to stock up on energy reserves, in the form of body fat.

Map that shows the migratory corridor of the humpback whales between the feeding
area in Antarctica, and the main reproductive area on Abrolhos Bank.

But what do these whales eat? As the adorable Dory, from Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo would say, whales don't eat fish, they eat krill. Krill are small crustaceans, similar to shrimp, that are about 5cm long and live in giant clusters (swarms). Krill are the base of the vertebrate food chain in Antarctica, where most species depend on it, directly or not. Many species of fish, seals, penguins, and whales prey almost exclusively on it. Some species, like Orca whales and Leopard seals, prey on fish or penguins. This is why the food chain in Antarctica has been called by scientists “krill-dependent.”

Krill (Euphausia superba), the main food of Humpback whales
in Antarctica, live in large swarms.

Every year, whales arrive at the Brazilian coast in July and stay there until November. There are times when the population arrives slightly earlier in the year and stay longer, but they can also come later in the season and leave more quickly. In some years, there are more whales than in others. This started to raise some questions: When they stay in Abrolhos longer, is it because they fed better? When they leave the bank earlier than average, is it because of high water temperatures? Or do these things not influence their behavior at all, and they rely mostly on genetic programming? What initiates the migration process?

My Master's research focused on these questions to try to understand the diverse environmental mechanisms influencing the migratory dynamics of humpback whales. I primarily focused on the availability of their main source of energy. To do that, I analyzed parameters such as photoperiod, water temperature in both Abrolhos and in Scotia Sea (where they stay in Antarctica), and the availability of krill during summer. I compared this to 7 years of sighting data collected at a fixed location around the Abrolhos Archipelago. To observe the whales, a piece of topography equipment with 30X zoom, called a theodolite, was used. For the 5 months the whales were in Abrolhos, we observed the whales daily, and found that the population's abundance fluctuates throughout the reproductive season with a gradual increase in July, followed by the peak in August/September, and then a gradual decrease, until no more whales were present by the end of November.

Watching whales with the theodolite, 

from Abrolhos Archipelago.

The results were more than expected. In years when there were more krill available, the whales fed more and had greater energy stores. This allowed them to invest a longer period of time on reproduction and more whales were seen in Abrolhos. The opposite was also true. In years with less krill, fewer whales were seen in Abrolhos and their time at Abrolhos was shortened. The water temperature didn't seem to have significant influence on their migration, however it assisted in indicating the starting moment for the migration – the migratory timing.

The most surprising result was related to the photoperiod (length of daylight in a day). No other research had related the migratory dynamics with photoperiod, perhaps because scientists thought it was too obvious. But, sometimes, it's important to understand the obvious! The photoperiod in Antarctica has a huge difference between summer (18 hours of light) and winter (6 hours), while in Abrolhos, the difference from summer (13 h) and winter (11h) is far smaller.

Therefore, as my dissertation's conclusion, I discovered that the humpback whale's migration starts and is influenced by the sharp lowering of photoperiod when they are in Antarctica. When in Abrolhos, migration is impacted by the sum of 3 factors: the photoperiod (which is more steady than in Antarctica), the sea surface temperature (this slightly increases gradually during the reproductive season) and krill availability while in Antarctica.

It was difficult to analyze such a high volume of data, linking different environmental parameters in order to answer all of my research questions. With these results, we have started to understand complex migratory dynamics and the importance of krill in the maintenance of the humpback's population.

If you want to know more about my Master's dissertation, contact me via email at daniabras@gmail.com

The humpback whale population was almost driven to extinction in the early 20^th century from intensive commercial hunting. Before commercial whaling, the estimated population was around 25,000 individuals, but it dropped to about 800 individuals while at the peak of whaling. After the whale-hunting moratorium in 1986, the population recovered and is now around 15,000 individuals today! In 2015, humpback whales were officially removed from the endangered species list in Brazil. This is a victory for the whales as well as for those of us that have the privilege of watching them arrive annually, in bigger numbers every time, performing their aquatic ballet. Go meet them! Between July and November, they are concentrated on the Abrolhos region, but they can also be seen from the states of Rio Grande do Norte state to Rio de Janeiro.

Want to know more about humpback whales? Visit the Brazilian Humpback Whale Institute website: www.baleiajubarte.org.br

Humpback whale jumping in Abrolhos region.

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Daniela Abras is from Belo Horizonte, has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology from UFRJ, and has a Masters degree in Oceanography from USP. She has loved cetaceans since she was 8 years old, when she did a school project about them. When she was a teenager, she would say that she wanted to work with whales, but was never taken seriously. In the early 90s, she heard the famous National Geographic “Whale Songs” vinyl record and discovered the “Save the whales” project. From all of this obstinacy, her dream to study and protect whales came to life. She is now a researcher for the Brazilian Humpback Whale Institute, dedicating herself daily to studying these magnificent animals.

Three minutes, one slide, and lots of fish eggs

By Jana M. del Favero

Would you be able to explain your research to an audience of academics from all different disciplines, in just 3 minutes, with only one slide? That is the premise of a competition called the Three Minute Thesis (3MT). 3MT was created at the University of Queensland, Australia in 2008, and it has been performed at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA since 2011. (Details about the competition can be found here: http://www.threeminutethesis.org).

While thinking about the goals of this blog, I decided to participate in the competition this year, as it does exactly what we try to do here: talk about science to a diverse audience while keeping it interesting and educational. I signed up thinking only about the training; I would have to prepare and memorize my text and then deliver the presentation (in English!). Of course, I also had the ultimate goal of winning (who turns down a chance to earn $1,000?).

Unfortunately, I did not get rich on April 29th, 2015, but as expected, it was great practice and lots of fun. It was interesting to watch presentations about the research from various fields: engineering, arts, administration, etc. There were nervous people and people who seemed to have come straight from a theater stage. You can watch some videos of previous years by visiting the following website: http://www.umassd.edu/graduate/spotlights/three-minutethesiscompetition/.

You can read the transcript of my talk and learn more about my research below:

Many people do not know, but fisheries management is not just based on adult population data. It is also important to study early life stages for better stock management. For example, as fish eggs are usually spawned in the water column, knowing when and where they are helps to define spawning sites and periods.

But, before doing any kind of fish studies, it is necessary to know who they are. Fish egg identification is time consuming and difficult. After sampling on board, you need to sort all of the fish eggs from the plankton sample, using a microscope. Sorting the eggs from the family I am studying is easy because their eggs have an ellipsoid shape.

The problem is reaching the species identification. As each group presents different size and shape, the identification has previously been done by manually measuring each egg and then counting.

Figure 1. The single slide presented during the competition. The eggs illustrations are from Nakatani (1982).

In my doctoral thesis, I want to verify long-term fluctuations in the abundance and distribution of eggs from a fish named Argentine anchovy on the Brazilian coast. This small fish is one of the most common fisheries resources in Argentina and Uruguay. At the Brazilian coast they haven’t been commercially fished yet, but some studies have suggested that Argentine anchovy can be sustainably fished in Brazilian waters.

Coming back to my thesis, when I mentioned that I am studying long-term fluctuations, I didn’t mention that by long-term I meant 40 years of data, totaling almost 2000 samples. That is a huge amount of samples and it would take my whole PhD period just to identify all the eggs. The solution was to create a faster and more accurate methodology, so I did it.

I used a digital camera attached to a microscope to image the eggs, and using the photos, I got the measurements. After that, I created a model that automatically gave me the counts of eggs within each species. This new model has over 90% accuracy and can be used by any researcher to optimize their time and effort.

In the end, besides taking four years to identify the eggs for my thesis, I identified more than 100,000 anchovy eggs in just one year, allowing enough time to continue my research project.  

If you are interested in this methodology, the paper is already in publication, and it can be accessed in the following link or requested by email.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfb.12594/abstract

See you soon.