March 31, 2022: The Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO) moored buoy was successfully deployed by NOAA PMEL and partners, renewing an ongoing OceanSITES time series that began almost 18 years ago. First deployed in 2004, its time series was disrupted by the COVID pandemic. KEO collects vital data in the Kuroshio Extension recirculation gyre, a region known to affect the development of storms over the North Pacific before they reach the United States.

The deployment was just in time for KEO to capture the air-sea interaction process underneath an intense atmospheric river that connected the western Pacific to the east and brought stormy weather and heavy precipitation to the Pacific Northwest. 

KEO carries sensors for NOAA PMEL and partners from Japan and US academic institutions that measure surface air-sea heat and momentum fluxes, along with various oceanographic variables in the upper 525 meters and near the seafloor. New this year, the KEO-2022 mooring includes dissolved oxygen sensors, a nitrate sensor, and a testbed for new biodegradable “plastic-alternative” materials from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the University of Washington-Applied Physics Lab’s bubble and acoustic observations, and a moored CO2 system. 

KEO will also play a critical role in the Japanese national program “Middle-latitude atmosphere-ocean interaction hotspot in a changing climate system” (HotSpot-2), as an ocean observatory by providing a reliable platform for new sensors and the long-term, large-scale context of intensive field campaign observations.

Learn more about the research part of the Ocean Climate Stations program: https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ocs/KEO 

This work is funded by NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program to sustain in situ global ocean observations and information in support of research, monitoring, and prediction.

February 1 - March 7: NOAA PMEL scientists join NOAA Fisheries and an international team of researchers aboard the NOAA R/V Shimada to provide expertise in physical oceanography and lead hydrographic data collection, nutrient sampling, analysis and processing. EcoFOCI is taking part in the International Year of the Salmon expedition to help detect and monitor changes both within Pacific salmon and their respective ecosystems, especially in the Gulf of Alaska.  

Pacific salmon are a uniquely important resource for countries across the North Pacific yet there are major scientific gaps in our understanding of the ocean phase of the salmon life cycle. This cruise will collect vital data to improve that understanding and aid in forecasting and management of salmon. 

The expedition will include as many as five research vessels to conduct the largest ever pan-Pacific, epipelagic ecosystem survey during winter, focused on understanding salmon and their ecosystems. The 2022 Expedition will involve a full ecosystem survey with pelagic trawling and detailed sampling of marine life in the upper ocean and will include research on physical, biological and chemical oceanography. Novel technologies such as gliders, environmental DNA and genetic stock identification will be used to enhance research efforts. This collaborative international effort spanning the entire North Pacific includes scientists from Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States. 

The data collected by PMEL will provide key baseline and comparative data to the overall pan-Pacific collaboration focused on salmon recovery. During the expedition, PMEL will collect samples from over 30 CTD stations, deploy satellite-tracked drifters and several Argo floats, and collect carbon dioxide, nutrient and salinity measurements from an on-board flow-through system. 

The research cruise will extend from 1 February to 7 March in the central to western Gulf of Alaska. More about the expedition: https://yearofthesalmon.org/2022expedition/

Follow along with the expedition on the blog and more details online: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/2022-pan-pacific-winter-high-seas-expedition 

A research team led by NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Marine Ecosystem and Resource Studies at Oregon State University has developed an automated method that can accurately identify calls from a family of fishes.

The method takes advantage of data collected by underwater microphones known as hydrophones and provides an efficient and inexpensive way to understand changes in the marine environment due to climate change and other human-caused influences, said researchers from Oregon State’s Cooperative Institute for Marine Ecosystem and Resource Studies.

The findings were published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

Hydrophones are increasingly being deployed in the world’s oceans. They offer advantages over other types of monitoring because they work at night, in low-visibility conditions and over long periods of time. But techniques to efficiently analyze data from hydrophones are not well developed.

This new research led by Jill Munger when she was an undergraduate student, begins to change that. Munger came to Oregon State having worked more than 20 years in the corporate world. An avid scuba diver, she wanted to study the ocean. She received a fellowship from CIMERS to research underwater acoustics with Joe Haxel, who at the time was at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport working with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab’s acoustic program.

Haxel handed her a hard drive with 18,000 hours of acoustic data collected over 39 months in a tropical reef region within the National Park of American Samoa. American Samoa is a U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean.

The data was collected via a 12-station hydrophone array maintained by NOAA and the National Park Service that is distributed throughout the world in water controlled by the United States. The hydrophones were designed and built by NOAA and CIMERS researchers at Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Munger decided to focus on calls from damselfish, in part, because they are distinctive. They grind their teeth to create pops, clicks and chirps associated with aggressive behavior and nest defense. She compared the sound to purring kittens. Quickly, it became apparent to her that manually listening to the recordings was not going to work.

“This is such a slow and tedious process,” she remembered thinking. “I have all this data, and I am just looking at a tiny, tiny portion of it. What’s happening in all the other parts that I haven’t had a chance to listen to?”

A conversation with her brother, Daniel Herrera, a machine learning engineer, sparked an idea. Could they use machine learning to automate the analysis of the data?

Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as training data, to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so.

Machine learning techniques have been used to automate processing of large amounts of data from passive acoustic monitoring devices that collected sound data from birds, bats and marine mammals. The techniques have been used for fish calls, but it is an underdeveloped area of science, Munger said.

In this case, the machine learning sample or training data was 400 to 500 damselfish calls Munger identified by manually listening to the hydrophone recordings. With that start, Herrera, a co-author of the paper, built a machine learning model that accurately identified 94% of damselfish calls. 

“We built a machine learning model on a relatively small set of training data and then applied it to an enormous set of data,” Munger said. “The implications for monitoring the environment are huge.”

Munger, who now works in the lab of Scott Heppell, an associate professor in Oregon State’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences in the College of Agricultural Sciences, believes machine learning will increasingly be used by scientists to monitor many species of fish in the ocean because it requires relatively little effort.

“The benefit to observing fish calls over a long period of time is that we can start to understand how it’s related to changing ocean conditions, which influence our nation’s living marine resources,” Munger said. “For example, damselfish call abundance can be an indicator of coral reef health.”

Munger received input from National Park Service staff on the biology of the damselfish and the reef habitats in close proximity to the hydrophone.

Other co-authors of the paper are Haxel, Heppell, and Samara Haver, all of Oregon State; Lynn Waterhouse, formerly of John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago; Megan McKenna, formerly of Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado; and Jason Gedamke and Robert Dziak of NOAA’s Office of Science and Technology, Silver Spring, Maryland, and Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Newport, respectively.

The following article was written by Sean Nealon at Oregon State University and adapted for NOAA PMEL. The Oregon State University news release is available online.

New Report Released: Automated buoys and volunteers helped gather critical Puget Sound data during pandemic

On October 27, the Puget Sound Marine Waters Work Group of the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program released the tenth annual report on marine water conditions in Puget Sound providing a comprehensive long-term view and current assessment of the Puget Sound marine ecosystem. There were few extreme weather or ecological events in 2020, but overall, conditions in Puget Sound were generally warmer, sunnier, and wetter than in typical years. The report further reveals patterns and trends in numerous environmental parameters, including plankton, water quality, climate, and marine life. The observations in this report collectively provide both a comprehensive long-term view and current assessment of the Puget Sound marine ecosystem.

In Puget Sound, ocean acidification (OA) continues as does our understanding of patterns. Annual average atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) values over Hood Canal were high relative to globally averaged marine surface air, yet were at the same level as in 2019. OA in Puget Sound is of particular concern as estuarine processes, both natural and human-mediated, can also increase the CO2 content and lower the pH of marine waters. Moreover, coastal upwelling brings deeper waters with naturally higher CO2 concentrations upwards and into Puget Sound via the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Thus, Puget Sound is influenced by a variety of drivers that exacerbate the growing OA signal, making our waters particularly sensitive to these conditions. All of these changes have ramifications for marine food webs and are areas of active current research, including PMEL's  Moored Autonomous pCO₂ (MAPCO₂^TM) system collecting on atmospheric and surface seawater xCO2 (mole fraction of CO2) at the Ćháʔba· mooring off of La Push, WA and at the Cape Elizabeth mooring. 

Having high-quality observations of carbon in the coastal environment is important for understanding coastal ocean carbon and its impact throughout the water column and the ecosystem. Learn more about PMEL's Carbon and Ocean Acidification Research.

Read the full report here.