FSU Department of Oceanography Newsletter
No. 20 Spring/Summer 2000

Editor's note: The Spring and Summer issues have been combined this year for a variety of reasons. This spring was a busy time, as we had three expo events to attend, a new brochure to produce, and an unprecedented demand for posters and scientific figure creation. Also, I will be relocating to Victoria, B.C., Canada in July, and this edition will be the last before I depart. I have greatly enjoyed working for the Department of Oceanography and hope that my position will be filled in short order so readers may continue to be updated on events around the department. -Jennifer Moss

Thistle Appointed Chair for Third Term

In May of this year, Dr. David Thistle was appointed by Dean Donald J. Foss to a third three-year term as chair of the Department of Oceanography. Thistle joined the faculty in 1977 after completing his doctorate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. During his tenure, he has watched the department grow from 14 to 18 faculty members, seen the faculty consolidated into one building, and helped it acquire considerable new space.

At the beginning of Thistle's first term as chair, the department had use of the third and fifth floors and portions of the fourth floor and basement of OSB. Dr. Sturges had been instrumental in collecting the department into one building during his term as chair, but space was getting tight by 1994. "When I first came on as chair, we had a department that was at peace with itself, was doing good science, and was well respected in the community. So, I came into the job thinking that 'steady as she goes' was a pretty reasonable approach. Two outstanding problems soon became obvious, though. One was salaries, a matter that I quickly learned that chairs have little control over. The other was space, which was an issue I thought I could do something about," he said. To start, Thistle negotiated with the Department of Mathematics and the Dean's Office and was able to secure a 600 sq. ft. room on the fourth floor known as "the bowling alley." The room obviously needed to be subdivided, and thus began Thistle's quest to increase the functional utility of space in OSB through renovations.

Over the years, Thistle received help from the departmental space committee, Jim Winne, and Linda Carter as he identified and solved space problems. Early in the process, it became apparent that an oceanography warehouse was necessary. "In the early days, the Current Meter Facility did not need much space to store its equipment because most of it was being stored in the ocean!" As the pool of instruments grew, this system became problematic, so Dr. Weatherly and Dr. Thistle sought and secured funding for a warehouse that would serve both the Current-Meter Facility and other department needs.

Renovations to alleviate space problems and improve working conditions have included cleaning the HVAC ducts, building a shared-use laboratory in the penthouse, installing a fire-suppression system in the solvent-storage room, and many office remodelings. One of Thistle's goals for the next three years is to expand the warehouse, because additional space is needed for field gear, and to enclose the patio, creating offices and classrooms for OCN and STA.

About long-range goals for the department, Thistle commented, "I am striving to improve the pay of the faculty and staff and to ensure that we all have enough space to do our work. I am also working to attract the type of graduate students that we aspire to having. When the National Research Council comes out with new ratings, I hope that we have moved up a few places." He continues, "I had some fun with the NRC numbers when they appeared last time. The dean discovered that the best predictor of NRC rank was department size. I made a graph for him for oceanography. All the departments ranked higher than we were had huge numbers of faculty, as did those immediately below us. Our reputation is amazing considering the size of our faculty."

Thistle points out that the department could be even better. "The biological and chemical groups are just at the minimum size right now. We may be able to add to these groups and to physical oceanography as well because the Florida legislature has agreed to fund 200 new faculty lines in the sciences at FSU. We will definitely be competing for those positions. Although we need to have a larger faculty, growth has a double edge to it of course, because, if we are successful, the space problems become acute again. So, we have to make some decisions about what we want to happen. I'll also keep chipping away at the faculty salary problem," he said. very different and important jobs, one as an administrator and one as a faculty member. Thistle has managed to find his own equilibrium between the two and has experienced some rewards from this difficult position. He comments, "Being a faculty member requires an infinite amount of time in keeping up with the literature, doing research, writing up the results, and teaching. There are just not enough hours in the day, so one tends not to be very social. One of the joys of being chair is that you have to get to know everyone. That has been very rewarding, an unexpected plus of the experience. I also see the university in a completely different way. When I was just a faculty member, I had my own world that was focused on my work and my students, but you can't do that as chair. To be effective, you have to have an idea of what is going on around the university; you have to read the newspaper more faithfully. It's a richer view of the world. I think that folks who have gone through the academy without ever participating in academic administration have missed something; they don't have a sense of the larger enterprise they are part of."

Thistle stays as busy with his research as he does with the chair's duties. With the help of his colleagues Bill Burnett and Jim Eckman, he recently completed a project showing that it is feasible to study the importance of predation by large organisms to the organization of invertebrate communities on the deep-sea floor. The team has just submitted a proposal to continue the work to the National Science Foundation. He said, "The issues are fundamental, but the experiment has been logistically so challenging that no one has done it in the deep sea. If the new study is funded, it will be a tremendous project and could be what I am ultimately remembered for."

Another project Thistle is currently working on is funded by the Office of Naval Research. He and his student Linda Gensel are studying the ecology of a remarkable behavior - emergence of animals that live in the seabed into the water column at night.

For Thistle, early inspiration for a career in marine biology came from summer strolls along Cape Cod mudflats "wondering where all those little holes went, and why there were little piles of sediment everywhere." He has always been intrigued by why animals do what they do, but the inspiration for selecting harpacticoid copepods as his main study group had a practical motivation, "They are abundant and easy to identify and have short generation times, and their universe is so small they fit neatly into a flume!"

Congratulations to Dr. Thistle as our continuing chair and captain of the ship! Three cheers, and may he achieve all of his goals.

thistle inducted

Stephen J. Gould congratulates Dr. Thistle (right) on his induction as a Fellow of the AAAS.

Honors

At the faculty awards ceremony held in April at the Center for Professional Development, Dr. Alan Clarke and Dr. Doron Nof were presented with the following FSU honors. Clarke was the recipient of a 1999-2000 University Teaching Award and Nof was the recipient of the University Honors Program's Superior Honors Teacher for 1999-2000 Award. Both awards come with a $2,000 stipend.

Dr. Joel Kostka has been selected to receive one of the 1999 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards from Oak Ridge Associated Universities. The awards are designed to enrich the research and professional growth of assistant professors at ORAU institutions with $5,000 in seed money to be matched by FSU.

Reinard Harkema, computer research specialist for the Current Meter Facility, was honored at the staff appreciation awards ceremony this spring. He was recognized for twenty years of service to the university.

Paige Leitman, a Ph.D. candidate with Dr. Proctor, was awarded the 1999 SETAC-Batelle best student poster presentation for her poster titled "Comparison of the response of a marine benthic bacterial community in Tampa Bay, Florida, to fuel oil #6 and Orimulsion," presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Philadephia, PA.

Cherrier Teaches OCE1001

Dr. Jennifer Cherrier, an FSU Department of Oceanography alumna and assistant professor at the Environmental Sciences Institute at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee, is teaching the department's introductory oceanography course (OCE1001) this summer.

The course is the implementation phase of Cherrier's recent NSF fellowship project. She designed the course to be taught through a series of modules that incorporate an innovative teaching style, which is both interactive and collaborative. The textbook for class is one that Cherrier developed using text from newspaper and popular science articles. This is the third time Cherrier has taught the course, which she has lead previously at FAMU and as a web course through the Department of Science Education at FSU.

Cherrier has recently returned from an NSF Ocean Science Education Summit in Long Beach, Mississippi. The Summit was focused on identifying needs and strategies for improving ocean science education, exploring the feasibility of a "national center or regional centers for ocean science education excellence" as a mechanism for bridging the gap between ocean research and all levels of education.

Clarke and VanGorder Develop New Model to Forecast El Niño and La Niña

For nearly two years, surface water in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific has been colder than normal. This "La Niña," the opposite of El Niño has been blamed for the current drought in the Southeast U.S., the floods in Mozambique and many other climate anomalies around the world.

When will this La Niña end? If you were to ask this question in July, the answer would be easy: if there is a La Niña in July, it is highly likely that La Niña conditions will persist through to the February of the following year. But if you ask this question now, the answer is far from obvious because La Niña may or may not persist even for just a few months from the late Spring to the summer. There is a 'spring persistence barrier'. This barrier also applies for El Niño like La Niña; it may or may not persist through the spring.

The exciting news is that recently Dr. Allan Clarke and Steve VanGorder have developed a statistical model that can overcome the spring persistence barrier. Specifically, they found that there is a 'trigger' that indicates by March whether the La Niña (or El Niño) is likely to persist through to the end of the year. The key 'trigger' is the eastward wind near the equator in the western Pacific north of New Guinea and Australia (130 degrees E - 160 degrees E). Clarke cautions that, although the trigger model has definite predictive skill, it is not right 100% of the time. However, it's much better than pure guesswork.

What is the prediction for the rest of this year? Most of the climate models at various research centers around the world are predicting that La Niña conditions will weaken to neutral or an El Niño will begin by the end of this year. The 'trigger' model disagrees, predicting that La Niña will continue through to February next year!

A continuing La Niña would affect millions worldwide. Here in Florida La Niña will increase the likelihood of wild fires and hurricanes and a warmer than normal winter.

But, is the trigger model's prediction of a La Niña through February 2001 correct? We should know by the end of July because, as mentioned earlier, both La Niña and El Niño are persistent from the middle of the year to the end of the year. Clarke, VanGorder and many others will be closely monitoring what happens over the next few months.

Clarke, A.J., S. VanGorder, 2000. ENSO prediction using an ENSO trigger in the far-western equatorial Pacific, J. Climate, in review.

Clarke, A.J., L. Shu, 2000. Quasi-biennial winds in the far western equatorial Pacific phase-locking El Niño to the seasonal cycle, Geophys. Res. Lett., 27 (6), 771-774.

Check out NOAA's El Niño Theme Page at: www.pmel.noaa.gov/toga-tao/el-nino/nino-home.html#

Around the OSB:

Welcome:

Dan Sutton joined the department this year to work as systems administrator with Drs. Hsueh and Speer. Dan is a student at the FSU Department of Computer Science.

Dr. Rick Lumpkin joined the department from IFREMER this spring to work as assistant in research with Dr. Speer.

Construction around the OSB has been nonstop for the past year. The worst is over though with the completion of the roof project. Renovation of the penthouse into a primary laboratory is also finished. The insulation and sheetrock project taking place on the north side of the fifth floor is half finished with the last two offices expected to be ready soon.

On the fourth floor, room 431 is being divided into two work areas for Dr. Speer. Room 437, a student office and our old hub room, is also due for renovation. Room 440 is now split into two offices and one large computer laboratory, the hub and 4th floor print lab.

building construction

A crane lifts material onto the roof during the roof renovation project's smelly tar phase!

Professional Activities

PUBLICATIONS:

Clarke, A.J., and L. Shu. 2000. Biennial winds in the far western equatorial Pacific phase-locking El Niño to the seasonal cycle, Geophys. Res. Letters, 27, 771-774.

Clarke, A.J., J. Wang, S. Van Gorder. 2000. A simple warm-pool displacement ENSO model, J. Physical Oceanogr., in press.

Clarke, A.J., and S. Van Gorder. 2000. Reply to Comment on The connection between the boreal spring Southern Oscillation persistence barrier and biennial variability, J. Climate, 13, 668-671.

Hong, B.G., W. Sturges and A.J. Clarke. 2000. Sea level on the U.S. east coast: Decadal variability caused by open ocean wind curl forcing, J. Phys. Oceanogr., in press.

Mortazavi, B., R.L. Iverson, W.M. Landing, F.G. Lewis, and W. Huang. 2000. Control of phytoplankton production and biomass in a river-dominated estuary: Apalachicola Bay, Florida, USA. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.,198. 19-31.

Mortazavi, B., R.L. Iverson, W.M. Landing, and W. Huang. 2000. Phosphorus budget of Apalachicola Bay: A river-dominated estuary in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 198, 33-42.

Radko, T., and M.E. Stern. 2000. Self propagating eddies on the stratified f plane, J. Phys. Oceanogr., in press.

Radko, T., and M. E. Stern. 1999. On the propagation of oceanic mesoscale vortices. J. Fluid Mechanics, 380, 39-57.

Stern, M.E., and E.P. Chassignet. 2000. Mechanism of eddy separation from coastal currents. J. Mar. Res., 58, in press.

Stern, M. E.. 2000. Scattering of an eddy advected by a current towards a topographic obstacle. J. Fluid Mechanics, 402, 211-223.

GRANTS:

Dr. William Landing, Dr. Joel Kostka, and chemist Dr. Klaus Dahmen were awarded an FSU Research Foundation Program Enhancement Grant, up to $100,000, to develop complementary chemical sensor technologies for measuring heavy metals in natural and contaminated sediments in estuarine and coastal areas. One goal of this effort is to improve the ability to monitor government-mandated remediation of Superfund sites and other contaminated environments.

Dr. Phil Hsueh received an Office of Naval Research grant for $147,296 for the period of May 1, 2000 through April 30, 2003 titled "The dynamics of the South China Sea Warm Current."

Carl Childs, a Ph.D. candidate with Dr. Proctor, was awarded a grant from the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserve Graduate Research Program in the amount of $49,500. The grant is titled "Environmental and seasonal regulation of denitrification in Apalachicola Bay, Florida", and runs from June of 2000 through May of 2003.

The National Science Foundation awarded a three year grant of $208,024 to Dr. William Landing for his proposal, "Influences of atmospheric deposition, organic complexation, and photochemical processes on the redox cycle of iron in surface waters." Co PI is Rodney Powell, at LUMCON, who received his doctoral degree in 1995 from the department.

Harper Simmons, a Ph.D. candidate with Dr. Nof, was awarded an International Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation for his proposal, "Climate dynamics mediated by overflow processes." The grant is for $57,816, and will be used for research done with Dr. Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria, B.C., Canada over the next two years.

POSTER SESSIONS & MEETINGS:

Carl Childs, a Ph.D. candidate with Dr. Proctor, presented their poster (coauthors C., N. Rabalais and E. Turner), "Sediment denitrification potential in the seasonal hypoxic region on the Louisiana continental shelf." at the 2000 American Geophysical Union/Ocean Sciences in San Antonio, TX.

Afonso Souza, a Master's student with Dr. Lita Proctor, presented their poster, "Improved method for enumeration of deep-sea and coastal sediment bacteria with estimates for % CTC-active bacteria." at the American Society for Microbiology 2000 in Los Angeles, California. At the same conference, Danielle Harvey and Afonso Souza, Master's students with Dr. Lita Proctor, presented a poster (co-authors J. Hallas and L. M. Proctor) titled "Relationship of growth conditions with various measures of activity in Pseudomonas stutzeri: Ecological implications for marine benthic bacteria."

Margaret Murray, a Masters student with Dr. Nancy Marcus, presented a poster at the Aquaculture America 2000 Conference in New Orleans Feb. 2-5, 2000. The poster was titled, "Maximizing copepod egg production: The effect of different algal diets on survival and fecundity of the copepod Centropages hamatus.

Dr. James O'Brien presented "Seasonal Impacts of ENSO Variability and North Pacific Oscillation" at the workshop "The Implications of La Niña and El Niño for Fire Management" at the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, University of Arizona, Tucson, this spring.

Dr. Melvin Stern has been invited to give a lecture at the Fifth International Symposium of Stratified Flows, in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, July 10-13, 2000. The talk will be titled "Finite amplitude salt fingers in a vertically bounded layer" by T. Radko & M. E. Stern.

Dr. David Thistle gave a talk at the 2000 Benthic Ecology Meeting entitled "Cages can be used to study predation in the deep sea."

The following poster presentations were given at the 2000 Department of Energy Biotechnological Investigations - Ocean Margins Program Conference held at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University here in Tallahassee on March 15 and 16.

Badisa, L., D. Harvey, C. Frederick, C. Fasanya-Odewumi, L. Latinwo, and L.M.

Proctor. Presence of nir and nif DNA and nir and nif transcripts in Gulf of Mexico coastal and continental shelf sediments

Childs, C.R., J.P. Chanton, N. Rabalais, E. Turner, and L.M. Proctor. Regulation of Sediment Denitrification in the Gulf of Mexico Seasonal Hypoxic Zone

Harvey, D. M., R. Davis, L. Latinwo, and L.M. Proctor. Amplification of nifH (nitrogenase gene), cd-nir (cytochrome cd-type nitrite reductase) and Cu-nir (copper-containing nitrite reductase) from Gulf of Mexico estuarine, coastal and continental shelf sediments.

Hallas, J., D.M. Harvey, J.P. Chanton, and L.M. Proctor. Nitrogen fixation potential in enrichments of surficial sediments from the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone

Harvey, D.M., C.R. Childs, L. Latinwo, and L.M. Proctor. Preparing total nucleic acids (TNA) for molecular analyses of benthic bacterial communities in marine sediments

Souza, A.C., R. Hogg, L. Latinwo, and L. M. Proctor. Enumeration of Marine Sediment Bacteria and Estimates of the Active Fraction of Bacteria in Coastal and Continental Shelf Sediments

Travel

London Study was Center for Global Experience this Spring

This spring, Dr. Jack Winchester was invited to bring his courses, Global Change - Its Scientific and Human Dimensions and Nuclear Technology and Global Change to London. The London Study Center is the largest in the FSU International Programs group of study abroad opportunities with space for 128 students. International study centers are located around the world in London, Oxford, Glasgow, Italy, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Costa Rica, Panama, Barbados, and Viet Nam. Dr. Winchester has this report on his experiences teaching abroad:

The world is in a state of flux, with our physical and biological environments changing rapidly. We are becoming "globalized" in our life-styles, ways of doing business, ease of communication and information transfer, and cultural outlooks. It is both fascinating and important to view these changes from abroad, especially by studying or teaching abroad for a semester.

My classes each had enrollments of fewer than 10, which permitted individualized instruction. More than half the students were FSU undergraduate degree candidates, but some others were transient students from other U.S. colleges and from American families residing in London.

The following are some topics of change in the global community we touched on in the global change class. The Human Genome Program, principally a joint U.S. and U.K. initiative, is based on fundamental understanding of DNA manipulation credited to U.K. scientists. Europe, including the U.K., is challenging U.S. biotechnology by resisting import of genetically modified food. Cloning mammals, first in Edinburgh with the sheep Dolly, is now being refined to make drugs and transplanted organs more widely available for medical use. Finally, the U.K. has had centuries of change in its biological environment, especially during the industrial revolution when the landscape was denuded of trees to make charcoal for smelting iron ore. Being in London added immediacy to these present and past changes.

Some examples of nuclear technology currently in a state of ferment are: The economic viability of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., a world leader in reprocessing spent nuclear reactor fuel and a prime contractor with the U.S. Department of Energy for cleanup of contaminated weapons installations, is in jeopardy. Internal mismanagement threatens loss of international markets for plutonium reactor fuels and possibly even U.S. contracts. Yet, U.S. policy makers may welcome a halt in reprocessing to discourage proliferation of plutonium in the world, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. In addition, Russia is considering importing spent nuclear fuel from countries in Europe and Asia that do not have means for its safe long-term storage. The U.S. resists the idea since it could risk diversion of plutonium into future nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, some problems have become emotional and highly politicized. Global warming seems to have paralyzed Congress for the rest of this year. Geologic isolation of nuclear waste in the U.S. and reprocessing nuclear fuels in the U.K. have risen to new heights of dissention. The marketing of genetically modified foods has put much of Europe on edge, and worry about the possibility of cloning humans is widespread, to name a few. People are starting to realize that climate change may affect the oceans in a number of ways, not just by raising sea level but also by seriously altering global oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. A report and commentary in Science in January regarding the instability of plutonium concerns the compromised safety of nuclear fuel elements and strategies for geologic isolation of spent fuel.

In the Department of Oceanography, we try to upgrade science for general students by our OCE1001 course and in my courses in global change science, nuclear technology and global change, and the President's Seminar on the future of basic science. We not only help students acquire the tools and basic facts of science but also show their larger relevance to current public affairs, and knowledge of the geosciences is of crucial importance. Teaching for a semester in London has sharpened my focus and objectivity by viewing global issues from abroad.

london

Dr. Kostka traveled to the Netherlands in April to take part in a multidisciplinary study of the ecological impacts of diking on wetlands in the Scheldt estuary. Sampling was carried out at a saltwater site near the Netherlands Institute of Ocean Ecology in Yerseke and at a freshwater site near Antwerpen, Belgium. Dr. Kostka also attended seminars and met with colleagues at the University of Utrecht. Shown are photos of a dyke on the North Sea near Zeeland near a Dutch Water Management Facility, the research group in Yerseke, and windmill.

windmill photo kostka group photo kostka photo

Dr. Clarke spent 2 weeks in Australia this spring as key lecturer in the Fourth Australian Climate Research Graduate Summer School sponsored by Flinders University of South Australia and CSIRO Divisions of Oceanography and of Atmospheric Research. This year the theme was El Niño/Southern Oscillation Dynamics and Mechanisms. Shown below are summer school participants

clarke photo

Alumni Notes

In January, the department brought a historical poster for display at RSMAS in Miami at the Office of Naval Research's Colloquia, "Oceanography-The Making of a Science: People, Institutions and Discovery," in celebration of advancements in oceanography and a follow up to the 1998 year of the ocean. Because students have their own version of departmental history during the time they were here, we wanted to hear from alumni about what it was like to be a student at the department and what they have been up to since graduation. This link contains their stories. Thank you to all the alumni who participated.

Link to Alumni Notes

Degrees Conferred

Fall 1999

Spring 2000

shu and clarke photo

Dr. Allan Clarke and former student, Dr. Lianghua Shu, at commencement

kontar lecturing

Dr. Gorges Weatherly, Dr. Marie Cowart, and Dr. Evgeny Kontar

Dr. Evgeny Kontar, Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Oceanography, was invited by Dr. Marie Cowart, Dean of the College of Social Sciences, to make a presentation "Ecology of the Black Sea: Aftermath of Chernobyl" as part of the Broad International Lecture Series sponsored by the college. In addition, Dr. Kontar was invited to attend the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Conference "Modern Democracy in a Changing World" April 12-15, 2000,Washington DC. While at FSU, Dr. Kontar has been working with Dr. Burnett on prediction of the fate of Chernobyl radionuclides in the Black Sea.

View from the Bridge

The spring semester was remarkable. I won't repeat all the successes, but I do want to mention the teaching awards given to Drs. Clarke and Nof. As a graduate-only department, we are at a great disadvantage when good teaching is recognized. I was very pleased that we finally won two prestigious, university-level teaching awards. Also, Dr. Landing's and Dr. Kostka's Cornerstone Award is the second one to someone in the department in the two years of the competition. I was very gratified to overhear the dean mutter that we seemed to be winning all the money!

I'd like to thank all the alumni who have sent in news over the years. I very much enjoy learning where our graduates have gone and how their careers have developed. I am also pleased that some folks are taking the time to send us reminiscences about their time in the department. They make for very interesting reading and give us a sense of where we came from.

Our resources for funding graduate-student research that is separate from the work of the major professor is still quite limited. In case you'd like to contribute, an envelop with instructions is included in this newsletter.

I'm looking forward to continuing as chair. In particular, I'll enjoy having the opportunity to collaborate on these newsletters with our arts-publications person. Unfortunately, the present incumbent, Jennifer Moss, who has done a great job with the newsletter and all our "image" needs for several years, is leaving in July. She will be missed!

The next few months will see some changes to the building. The "inner sanctum" on the fifth floor will get a door to the corridor to improve the traffic pattern. Several changes on the fourth floor will create more usable office space. These renovations will be particularly important because several physical oceanography postdocs will be joining us. The chemistry group is also looking forward to the semester-long visit of Dr. Phillip Froelich, who was a faculty member here during the 1980's. So it will be a busy semester. I'm looking forward to it!