Blue economy, red ink, white flag? Restarting America’s maritime and coastal industries
By Jesse H. Ausubel and Vice Admiral Paul Gaffney II. (Ret.), appeared in The Hill 05/07/20
Area of Research: Oceans
New PHE paper about surprising species found off New Jersey
Front. Mar. Sci., 05 May 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.00226
Improved Environmental DNA Reference Library Detects Overlooked Marine Fishes in New Jersey, United States
Mark Y. Stoeckle*, Mithun Das Mishu and Zachary Charlop-Powers
- Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, United States
An accurate, comprehensive reference sequence library maximizes information gained from environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding of marine fishes. Here, we used a regional checklist and early results from an ongoing eDNA time series to target mid-Atlantic U.S. coastal fishes lacking reference sequences. We obtained 60 specimens representing 31 species from NOAA trawl surveys and institutional collections, and analyzed 12S and COI barcode regions, the latter to confirm specimen identification. Combined with existing GenBank accessions, the enhanced 12S dataset covered most (74%) of 341 fishes on New Jersey State checklist including 95% of those categorized abundant or common. For eDNA time series, we collected water samples approximately twice monthly for 24 months at an ocean and a bay site in New Jersey. Metabarcoding was performed using separate 12S primer sets targeting bony and cartilaginous fishes. Bioinformatic analysis of Illumina MiSeq fastq files with the augmented library yielded exact matches for 90% of the 104 fish amplicon sequence variants generated from field samples. Newly obtained reference sequences revealed two southern U.S. species as relatively common warm season migrants: Gulf kingfish (Menticirrhus littoralis) and Brazilian cownose ray (Rhinoptera brasiliensis). A beach wrack specimen corroborated the local presence of Brazilian cownose ray. Our results highlight the value of strengthening reference libraries and demonstrate that eDNA can help detect range shifts including those of species overlooked by traditional surveys.
PHE during COVID-19: IQOE, COVID game, deep carbon science
We all continue healthy and working long hours and hard, though mostly from our homes. We are catching up on lots of writing and editing but also trying to seize immediate, unique opportunities.
For example, COVID-19 may have created the reduction of additions of human noise that we dreamed about for the International Quiet Ocean Experiment. IQOE welcomes ideas about how the present quieting of the world economy may advance research in marine sound. High-quality observations of the ocean soundscape, as well as possibly related behavior of marine life during this period, may offer unique opportunities of exceptional value.
Resuming our interest in Serious Games, we are also please to encourage a team at the Indian Institute of Technology in Tirupati that is developing SurviveCovid-19 — A Game for Improving Awareness of Social Distancing and Health Measures for Covid-19 Pandemic
Jesse has also written a foreword for Simon Mitton’s forthcoming history of deep carbon science, From Crust to Core, to be published by Cambridge U. Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/from-crust-to-core/E0E2E8FC30B4C784B0FB268AC4AA8371
New genus and species of Bryozoan named for Jesse Ausubel
Dating back to the Ordovician period about 450 million years ago, Bryozoa are small aquatic invertebrates with exoskeletons that typically sieve food particles out of the water with a crown of tentacles. The individual zooids live in colonies forming fans, bushes, and sheets.
Dennis P. Gordon, distinguished taxonomist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, has described “New Hippothoidae (Bryozoa) from Australasia” in the journal Zootaxa.
Dennis and Jesse Ausubel worked together in the Census of Marine Life 2000-2010. Dennis has named a new genus of Hippothoidae Bryozoans the Jessethoa and the first species Jessethoa ausubeli.
This brings the total of described hippothoid genera to nine (plus two fossil) and species to 83 recent (plus 15 fossil).
The Jessethoa page in the World Registry of Marine Species
The Jessethoa ausubeli page in the World Registry of Marine Species
On behalf of the entire Census of Marine Life, Jesse is greatly honored to be permanently associated with this fascinating taxon. Thank, Dennis Gordon!
eDNA in Wired magazine
Journalist Eric Niler publishes a good feature in Wired magazine on eDNA that includes coverage of the work of PHE’s Mark Stoeckle:
‘Environmental DNA’ Lets Scientists Probe Underwater Life
With the help of a new kind of drone, marine biologists can sequence DNA found in the ocean to reveal what’s living in an ecosystem—and what’s missing.
4th Quiet Oceans newsletter
the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research has just issued the 4th newsletter of the International Quiet Oceans Experiment.
Animation of deep sea including our lobster
Neil Agarwal has created an informative and enjoyable dive into the deep sea where one passes species at their characteristic depths down to the deepest sea floor. At 250 meters below the surface, one passes the Terrible Claw lobster, also known as Dinochelus ausubeli.
Monitoring fish habitat restoration with eDNA on Twitter
Mark Stoeckle’s eDNA survey caught the Twitter eye of Mystic Lakes Watershed Association https://mobile.twitter.com/AndyMysticRive1/status/1187805832555257857
Whales and eDNA in NY waters Podcast
NYU science journalism grad student Kaitlyn Jeanne Nichols’s podcast follows the return of whales to NY and interviews Mark on how eDNA is helping reveal animal life in NYC waters. https://soundcloud.com/user-833449477/chasing-whales-in-new-york-city (segment starts at 7:30).