Category: 2025

Posted on

Kiersten Newtoff: It Takes Two to Bongo, January 10, 2025

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Kiersten Newtoff
Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces
January 6 – January 29, 2025

Mission: Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS)
Geographic Area of Cruise: North Atlantic Coast
Date: January 10, 2025
Current Location: 37° 35.83 N, 73° 39.83 W (you can follow us at Windy in real time!)
Weather from the Bridge: Waves are 3-5ft, 42°F, wind speed of 15.8kn, and we are traveling 9.9knph.

What is Zooplankton?

If you ask someone what their favorite marine animal is, I guarantee it’s either dolphins, whales, turtles, or sharks. And honestly, you can’t really blame them. The term charismatic megafauna exists for a reason. Fortunately, these animals have used their charisma to inspire us to protect them and their habitat. While they have been great stewards for conservation, they don’t tell the whole story of what’s happening in the ecosystem.

a close-up view of the bottom of a sample jar filled with krill in water; the tiny crustaceans, resemble small white shrimps, have piled up at the bottom
One example of zooplankton is small krill, as seen in this sample container.

While some of the research groups on the Pisces are focused on marine mammals and seabirds, The Bongonauts focus on zooplankton. Plankton just refers to any organism in the water that can’t swim against a current and ‘floats’ in the water column. You can then further split plankton into animal-like (zooplankton) or plant-like (phytoplankton). The marine food chain starts with phytoplankton, which get consumed by zooplankton, which might get directly eaten by a baleen whale, like humpbacks. Zooplankton may also get eaten by small fishes then larger fish that eventually are consumed by toothed whales. Identifying and quantifying the abundance of zooplankton helps us to understand the health of the food chain. There really aren’t any “Save the Zooplankton” movements happening because let’s be honest, it’s hard to get people to like microscopic organisms. But their downfall due to changes in ocean temperature, salinity, and currents will permeate to the top of the food chain of whales, dolphins, and other megafauna. If we wish to protect the ‘cute’ species, we need to protect their food too!

Let’s Get Ready to Bongo!

Here enters the bongo. If you’ve played Donkey Kong, then you already know what a bongo is.  A bongo is a set of two drums that are connected in the middle. In the marine world, what we do is beat on this drum set on the side of the boat and collect all the zooplankton that jump out of the water into collection buckets.

………………………..

Just kidding! But that would be cool.

Although we don’t have the musical bongo, we do have a plankton bongo! It was so named because there are two frames connected in the middle supporting the two plankton nets, kind of like a bongo drum. The nets are made of a mesh with openings that are 1/3 mm. As the nets travel in the water, the water can move through the mesh but larger organisms like zooplankton can’t. Part of the bongo apparatus is the CTD, which uses a series of sensors to measure conductivity, temperature, and depth. These oceanographic variables can help to explain the zooplankton communities we see.

a crewmember wearing an orange float coat and white hard hat looks over the rail of the ship as the paired bongo nets rise out of the water. It is nighttime, and we can only see a patch of the dark water illuminated by the ship's lights. A scientific probe is attached to the cable hoisting the paired nets.
Four women in float coats or life vests, reflective gear, tall boots, and hard hats pose for a photo on the aft deck of the ship. The paired bongo nets lay spread out on the deck. It is nighttime.
(Left) A bongo net is coming out of the water. The device you see on the rope is the CTD, (Right) The zooplankton team gets lots of support in deploying the bongo nets from the deck crew. Pictured (left to right): Amanda, Tanya, Tasha, and Kiersten.

Bongo time is during the evening and is deployed in the same general areas as the cetacean observations earlier in the day. This allows the scientists to make correlations between plankton communities and the cetaceans spotted earlier. We release the bongos in the evening as the speed needed for a successful deployment is around 3 knots, whereas the observation teams need to be at a minimum of 8 knots. Also, many zooplankton undergo a diel vertical migration (move upwards) in the evening, making it more likely to get a representative sample of zooplankton from the entire water column.

Bongos, a Haiku
gliding through water
collect plankton by bongo
hopefully, cool things

Meet the Bongonauts

a woman wearing an orange float coat and a white hard hat sits at a computer desk and looks at an array of monitors.
Amanda monitors the depth of the bongo so she can communicate with the boatswain when to start hauling it back to the boat.

On this cruise, Amanda and Lily make up the zooplankton team. Amanda is a Biological Science Technician and has been working with NOAA since 2018. During her undergraduate studies, she spent a semester abroad focused on marine science. As soon as she finished, she immediately began looking for marine jobs. Her first position was with NOAA focusing on commercial fisheries. A few years later in 2021, her contracting company had another position within NOAA that she switched to and started focusing on zooplankton.  One of the coolest things she’s seen in a bongo net was a strawberry squid, but don’t worry, it was promptly returned to the seas. She enjoys working with other groups on the science team to see what they are finding, and every time the nets come up there is excitement over what they may contain.

a woman lifts one sample jar out of a divided cardboard box and gazes down at the contents. Other jars in the boxes are topped with black lids and printed, detailed labels.
Lily examines the plankton spoils. Some are preserved in ethanol and others in formalin.

Lily is currently a sophomore at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The professor in one of her classes shared with her the opportunity to sail with the Pisces to volunteer on the zooplankton team and she took it up! Her future career goal is to understand the environmental impacts of cruise ships in port. Further along the line, she would like to get a Master’s in Library Science and be a children’s librarian. She chose Mass Maritime for their marine science program; other schools with similar programs were out of state or prohibitively expensive, but she feels like she’s made the right choice. Of all the things she’s told me, Mass Maritime seems really cool and gives lots of hands-on experience to their students.

Advice for Students

Amanda and Lily shared some of their insights for students who may want to work for NOAA some day.

  1. Look for jobs on Indeed and LinkedIn. If you are already working with a company, see if they have other positions that you might like.
  2. If you’re interested in marine science, go to a school that specializes in it. Avoid institutions that have it as a small program or just a minor, as you likely won’t be getting nearly as much hands-on experience as a school dedicated to it.
  3. Keep your opportunities open – you might think you like Marine Science now but that may change as you do field work.
  4. Even if an opportunity comes up that is not related to marine science, do things to give you any sort of field experience.
  5. You can volunteer with NOAA! There are lots of programs to explore.
Posted on

Kiersten Newtoff: Ode to Scopolamine. January 7, 2025

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Kiersten Newtoff

Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces

January 6 – January 29, 2025

Mission: Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS)

Geographic Area of Cruise: North Atlantic Coast

Geographic Area of Cruise: Massachusetts to North Carolina

Date: January 7, 2025

I’m finally aboard! Other than a fishing boat that was just barely in the ocean for a couple hours, I’ve never been in a ship this large, for this long, out in the open ocean. This is definitely a new adventure and really putting me to the test with the rough waters.

view of assorted plankton against a black background through a microscope
Examples of some of the plankton we may see! Credit: Dr. D. P. Wilson/Science Source

There are four scientific teams on the board: marine mammal observations, seabird observations, hydrophone for marine mammals, and plankton assessments. Since this trip is 24 days long, I’ll be bouncing around groups to learn about what they are doing. I’m starting with the plankton group, but we weren’t able to deploy last night due to weather. I’ll share more about each of the groups when I finish that “rotation” and in between I’ll write about other cool things – like motion sickness!

I’m one of those people that being in a car, metro, airplane, and boats gets me quite nauseous. My brain is like “nu-uh, not today!”. And I’ll totally admit, that was one of my concerns about joining the Teacher at Sea program because being in a boat in the ocean, especially with less than great weather, was not going to go well. Although I do not like having motion sickness, I still find it fascinating and so I went down a rabbit hole to learn more about it.

a scientific illustration of the vestibular system in the inner ear. there is a wider scale drawing of an ear and ear canal, and then a magnified view of just the vestibular system. parts labeled include the vestibular nerve, semicircular canals, utricle, vestibule, and saccule. the image is credited to the Cleveland Clinic 2024.
The vestibular system in this picture refers to the parts of the inner ear that help your brain understand where it is in space. Your brain interprets how the fluid inside the inner ear is moving so it can understand what is going on physically with the body. Credit: Cleveland Clinic.

Our bodies use lots of senses to understand the world around us and make judgements to what is safe, normal, and okay. The main players in motion sickness are your brain, your inner ears, and muscles. Your inner ear has a fluid in it and as your body moves, the liquid moves a certain amount and direction within your ear and tells your brain how much you have moved. But, if you are looking at something stationary such as reading a book or typing on a computer, your visual processing system thinks you are sanding still. When you are in a vehicle, whether it be a car, train, boat, or bus, you become more likely to develop motion sickness because your brain is confused. This trip started off with some big weather causing the boat to rock a lot. My ears and body recognize this movement and send signals to the brain about what’s happening. However, my eyes are deceiving my brain. I’m staring at this screen which my eyes are interpreting that everything is still, which it communicates to the brain. Now the brain is just confused because it’s getting mixed signals and starts assuming the worst.

a simple illustration of a brain, with an interior area highlighted in blue. there is a small green dot at the base of the brain stem, circled in red, labeled Area postrema.
Anatomy of the brain; note the small area at the base showing the area postrema, the part of the brain responsible for making sense of the signals from the body. Credit: W. McGinnis, T Audhya, & S. Edelson

There’s a couple of theories behind what exactly is happening to cause nausea, but one in particular I found interesting was the Defense Against Poison hypothesis. There is a region in the brain called the area postrema that is responsible for deciphering between conflicts in what is seen versus what is felt and it is also the area that triggers vomiting when it detects a toxin (such as food poisoning). The hypothesis is that when your brain is getting mismatched signals, your brain thinks it’s hallucinating and wants to induce vomiting because it assumes it’s a toxin causing the mismatch. Essentially, our brain is smart but it can be such a diva if things aren’t perfect.

To help prevent or lessen the impacts of motion sickness, it’s best to sit in the front of the vehicle and look out the window so that your brain feels like it’s moving too. This also means avoiding reading while on the move since keeping your eyes fixated on something stationary is what caused the problem in the first place. This boat trip I was prescribed scopolamine patches to address my motion sickness and it’s worked so wonderfully. So wonderful in fact, I decided to write a poem singing its praises.

Ode to Scopolamine

by Kiersten Newtoff

The sticker behind my ear is none other than scopolamine.

I have to take it because these treacherous waters are mean.

Without it, misery would set in.

And I’d always have to be cautious of the nearest bin.

Inside our brains is a neurotransmitter, acetylcholine.

It likes to tell on us and make our body go green.

But scopolamine is here to save the day!

You need to put it on without delay.

It blocks those transmitters in the brain,

So even if mismatched, it can’t communicate and cause you pain.

So here’s to you, my friend, scopolamine,

You are making this trip so much more serene!

view over the ocean toward he horizon at sunrise. the sun peeks through golden clouds, casting some visible sunbeams. the ocean, blue gray, has distinct waves; the image focuses on one in particular in the foreground.
A view from this morning. The waves look deceptively small, but trust me — you will feel every dip.
Posted on

Kiersten Newtoff: Let’s Try This Again! December 18, 2024

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Kiersten Newtoff

Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces

January 6 – January 29, 2025

Mission: Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS)
Geographic Area of Cruise: North Atlantic Coast
Departure Port: Newport, RI
Arrival Port: Newport, RI

Date: December 18, 2024

I’m back! You may remember all the mishaps that happened that prevented me from sailing on the Oregon II in summer 2023. I’ve been incredibly fortunate that the Teacher at Sea program has been flexible and was able to place me on a new cruise with the NOAA Pisces, so named by a group of 7th grade students in a naming contest.

This cruise is focused on the AMAPPS protocol, or the Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species. By collecting data on the species of marine mammals, turtles, and seabirds observed, scientists can create abundance maps that show where these species can be found year-round. We will also be using a hydrophone to record the calls and songs of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). In addition to the surveys, scientists will collect data to see how factors in the environment affect abundance and distribution. While there are many products from the research, one easily available tool to the public is the Marine Mammal Model Viewer. On this viewer, you can choose a marine mammal species and a time of year to see density maps of the species over time. This is a powerful tool as we learn about oceanic species and how a changing climate impacts their distribution.

screenshot of a lightly topographical map of the eastern U.S. seaboard. Along the coast, the waters have been color-coded to show animal density (animals / square kilometer), ranging from cold colors (low density) to hot colors (high density.) In this example, density of sperm whiles is higher a bit farther from the coast, except along North Carolina's outer banks and a bit off the coast of New Jersey/ New York.
A screenshot from the Marine Mammal Model Viewer. This map shows the abundance of Sperm Whales in the fall.

While I gave a lot of background in my first introductory post, there have been some fun updates. I am on sabbatical from Montgomery College to gain more experience in biological research to bring back to the classroom. Specifically, I have been focused on bird banding, which involves capturing birds and adding a metal identifying ‘bracelet’ to their leg. Each band has a unique identifier, so if someone else catches it they will be able to learn a lot about the bird’s ecology. In the banding process, we collect data such as age, sex, reproductive stage, wing length, tail length, amount of fat, and more. All this data can help us assess the health of the bird and draw conclusions about the species, bird migration, and changes over time. Banding birds requires a federal permit that I have applied for, so now I’m sitting and waiting to hear back — fingers crossed!

Kiersten (right) holds a Ruffed Grouse during banding operations in Montana. Another bander is taking a picture of the tail to analyze further after the bird is released. a third person looks on, hands behind his back. Everyone wears beanie caps and sweaters.
Kiersten (right) holds a Ruffed Grouse during banding operations in Montana. Another bander is taking a picture of the tail to analyze further after the bird is released. Bird banding can tell scientists about bird ecology and conservation.

Thank you again to the Teacher at Sea team and the crew of the Pisces for welcoming me aboard!