Tales from topographic oceans

Posted: June 17, 2006 - 11:48am

ABOARD THE NANCY FOSTER - Some people are slobs.

That's not a hypothesis. That's a fact. It's supported by the debris we picked up (four white fluorescent light bulbs, two semi-inflated Mylar balloons and a pair of orange fisherman's pants) several miles off the Georgia coast last weekend, headed for the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary.

Here's a real hypothesis:

Hurricanes and tropical storms do more than batter East Coast beaches and coastal communities. They also chew up the ocean bottom, which is slow to recover - bad news for fishermen and anyone else who depends on the sea for their livelihoods.

That's not my theory, however. It belongs to Danny Gleason. He's a marine ecologist and professor in the biology department at Georgia Southern University, and he and a handful of his graduate students have been diving on Gray's Reef for several years doing field work and research.

Except I'm not sure that diving on this splendid underwater outcropping of limestone, which supports an incredible variety of marine life and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year as a national sanctuary, is what you'd call work.

It's more like getting paid to ride a roller coaster or check out the Louvre.

"We're finding out that the ocean bottom off the Georgia coast is heavily impacted by these storms," said Gleason, a tall, angular professor whose goal is to make Georgia Southern the go-to institution for scientific information about the underwater shelf that sticks off the coast. (But that doesn't stop him from doing research off Belize - all in the name of science, of course.)

Gleason and his students have been diving on Gray's Reef and photographing the same 20, 1-foot-by1-foot squares since June 2004. They can do this because of stainless steel rods embedded into the sea floor about 70 feet below surface, global positioning and a big assist from the Nancy Foster, an 187-foot floating laboratory and survey vessel that's part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fleet.

Here's what they are learning. Early during the summer of 2004, the plots contained a variety of life - oculina coral, sponges, anemones that look more like tiny octopi than plants and brightly colored, bristly polychaetes (a fancy word for underwater worms).

Then came Hurricane Charley in August that year.

It bashed Florida from the Gulf side with 145 mph winds, then crossed over into the Atlantic and marched up the coast. It brushed past Georgia and made landfall near Myrtle Beach, S.C. But just because it missed the Peach State didn't mean the area dodged a bullet - at least not Gray's Reef, located about 18 nautical miles east of Sapelo Island and about a two-hour boat ride south from Savannah.

Gleason's photos taken in November 2004 showed a shroud of sediment carpeting his control plots, apparently dumped there by Charley. In March 2005, the areas hadn't bounced back. This year, it was the same thing.

"I think the sediment from these storms causes a lot of mortality," Gleason said. "And so far, we haven't seen a lot of recovery."

Fortunately, Gray's Reef is more than just a few square feet. In fact, it covers 17 square nautical miles (about 11,000 acres). And after looking at some of the stunning photographs of the reef shot this summer by Greg McFall, a NOAA research coordinator, you have to conclude that some sections are getting along swimmingly.

Judging from the dozens of recreational fishing boats bobbing in the water on this sunny Saturday around the Nancy Foster, you'd have to conclude that the action must be good, too. Otherwise, a lot of people burned a lot of expensive gas money for nothing.

But to the crew and scientists on Nancy Foster, a refitted U.S. Navy yard torpedo test craft, the fishing is always excellent. They fish for information - and there's plenty of it out there. The challenge is making sense of it, then making it relevant to everyday life.

Take soft sponges - the kind that live on ocean bottoms, not the kind stuck in the bottoms of kitchen cabinets. Scientists are looking at their natural secretions, used to repel predators, to see if they have any medical uses (re: cancer treatment).

One of Gleason's students was on the Nancy Foster feeding cross-sections of Gray's Reef sponges to sea urchins. Early conclusions: Some sponges must taste far worse than the grilled cheese sandwiches served in the mess room, and sea urchins are picky eaters.

Sadly, some coastal humanoids are not so meticulous when it comes to policing themselves. I can understand a pair of slicker pants flying off a fishing boat. And Mylar balloons can escape a careless kid's grip and get carried seaward. (A dangerous thing; Keith Golden, a NOAA lieutenant who drove NOAA's R.V. Joe Ferguson out to hook up with the Nacny Foster, said the balloons look like food to endangered loggerhead turtles. They eat them and die.)

But fluorescent lights?

If we don't see the light on being less trashy, we're dim bulbs.


Up to 46% off subscriptions to the Savannah Morning News

Recent comments

BiS Local Business Directory

Connect with savannahnow.com