What a machine!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbgkMHDGCMI

Check out the video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kICtEBJ3kk

The Hexa was bought to support an ongoing project of mine, essentially, it will be used as an aerial photography platform to monitor sites around the coast of North Wales, building on work that I did during my PhD. The Hexa will in fact support one of my PhD students who starts her project in September 2011. We will first develop a database of existing aerial photography of the Welsh coastline going back as far as we can (hopefully to the 1940′s). We will then revisit these sites at the present day with the Hexa, taking up to date imagery. We’re going to look at changing human utilisation of the coast and the dynamics of seaweed and biogenic reefs.

The Hexa was acquired from mikrocontroller.com and is the basic set. Notable additions are:

• MK GPS
• MK3 mag
• Bluetooth connectivity to PC
• LiPo holder
• 6 LiPos 6600 mah
• Ultramat 14 Plus charger
• MK HiSight II SE camera mount.

The video below shows the first test of the system. I had to wire a LED to the buzzer to visualise the beeping error codes and status updates so it took a while to get that far. It is a worthwhile addition and the LED is simply soldered to the positive and negative terminals of the buzzer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLXp6EmQK_Q

The first test flight should be next week…

The framework-forming coral Lophelia pertusa

Andrew J. Davies and John Guinotte

Cold-water corals are found in all the oceans of the world. Usually below 200 metres, they create structurally complex habitat that gives rise to a unique deep-sea ecosystem in, what otherwise may be a relatively featureless area. Numerous other filter-feeding organisms are found, along with fish that may use the coral as a nursery ground. Yet, we don’t know where many occurrences of cold-water coral are….

This is where habitat suitability modelling comes in. By using the best available scientific information and powerful statistical tools, we are able to predict, based on the species environmental requirements where they are likely to occur. Mine and John’s work, published in PLoS ONE is an important step towards turning habitat suitability modelling into a viable tool for the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems in the deep sea. This paper represents several years of work, designing and constructing new approaches to allow us to model coral distributions at high resolution. The outputs speak for themselves, with a 1 km resolution, we may finally be able to say to other researchers, go here, you have a good chance of finding coral in this area. Or, we may be able to say, there is a high probability of coral occurrence here, perhaps we could designate this area closed to bottom contact fishing or other exploitation.

Read the abstract below, or download the PDF from either my site or the PLoS ONE site.

Download article

Full citation

Davies AJ, Guinotte JM (2011) Global Habitat Suitability for Framework-Forming Cold-Water Corals. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18483. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018483

Abstract

Predictive habitat models are increasingly being used by conservationists, researchers and governmental bodies to identify vulnerable ecosystems and species’ distributions in areas that have not been sampled. However, in the deep sea, several limitations have restricted the widespread utilisation of this approach. These range from issues with the accuracy of species presences, the lack of reliable absence data and the limited spatial resolution of environmental factors known or thought to control deep-sea species’ distributions. To address these problems, global habitat suitability models have been generated for five species of framework-forming scleractinian corals by taking the best available data and using a novel approach to generate high resolution maps of seafloor conditions. High-resolution global bathymetry was used to resample gridded data from sources such as World Ocean Atlas to produce continuous 30-arc second (~1 km²) global grids for environmental, chemical and physical data of the world’s oceans. The increased area and resolution of the environmental variables resulted in a greater number of coral presence records being incorporated into habitat models and higher accuracy of model predictions. The most important factors in determining cold-water coral habitat suitability were depth, temperature, aragonite saturation state and salinity. Model outputs indicated the majority of suitable coral habitat is likely to occur on the continental shelves and slopes of the Atlantic, South Pacific and Indian Oceans. The North Pacific has very little suitable scleractinian coral habitat. Numerous small scale features (i.e., seamounts), which have not been sampled or identified as having a high probability of supporting cold-water coral habitat were identified in all ocean basins. Field validation of newly identified areas is needed to determine the accuracy of model results, assess the utility of modelling efforts to identify vulnerable marine ecosystems for inclusion in future marine protected areas and reduce coral bycatch by commercial fisheries.

Not all introduced (invasive) species in a region will spread from a single point of introduction. Long-distance dispersal or further introductions can obscure the pattern of spread, but the regional importance of such processes is difficult to gauge. These difficulties are further compounded when information on the multiple scale process of invasive species range expansion is reduced to one-dimensional estimates of spread (e.g. km yr⁻¹). We therefore compared the results of two different metrics of range expansion: maximum linear rate of spread and accumulation of occupied grid squares (50 × 50 km) over time. An analysis of records for 54 species of introduced marine macrophytes in the Mediterranean and northeast Atlantic revealed cases where the invasion process was probably missed (e.g. Atlantic Bonnemaisonia hamifera) and suggested cases of secondary introductions or erratic jump dispersal (Dasysiphonia sp. and Womersleyella setacea). A majority of species analysed showed evidence for an accumulation of invaded sites without a clear invasion front. Estimates of spread rate are increasing for more recent introductions. The increase is greater than can be accounted for by temporally varying search effort and implies a historical increase in vector efficiency and/or a decreased resistance of native communities to invasion.

In press in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B: Biological Sciences.

Full citation

Mineur F, Davies AJ, Maggs CA, Verlaque M, Johnson MP (In press) Fronts, jumps and secondary introductions suggested as different invasion patterns in marine species, with an increase in spread rates over time. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0494

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Published in Marine Ecology Process Series 397.

The Mingulay reef complex in the Sea of the Hebrides west of Scotland was first mapped in 2003 with a further survey in 2006 revealing previously unknown live coral reef areas at 120 to 190 m depth. Habitat mapping confirmed that distinctive mounded bathymetry was formed by reefs of Lophelia pertusa with surficial coral debris dating to almost 4000 yr. Benthic lander and mooring deployments revealed 2 dominant food supply mechanisms to the reefs: a regular rapid downwelling of surface water delivering pulses of warm fluorescent water, and periodic advection of high turbidity bottom waters. Closed chamber respirometry studies suggest that L. pertusa responds to seawater warming, such as that seen during the rapid downwelling events, with increases in metabolic rate. Lipid biomarker analysis implies that corals at Mingulay feed predominantly on herbivorous calanoid copepods. Integrating geophysical and hydrographical survey data allowed us to quantify the roles of these environmental factors in controlling biodiversity of attached epifaunal species across the reefs. Longitudinal structuring of these communities is striking: species richness (α) and turnover (β) change significantly west to east, with variation in community composition largely explained by bathymetric variables that are spatially structured on the reef complex. Vibro-cores through the reef mounds show abundant coral debris with significant hiatuses. High resolution side-scan sonar revealed trawl marks in areas south of the coral reefs where vessel monitoring system data showed the highest density of local fishing activity. The interdisciplinary approach in this study allowed us to record the food supply and hydrographic environment experienced by L. pertusa and determine how it may be ecophysiologically adapted to these conditions. Improved basic understanding of cold-water coral biology and biodiversity alongside efforts to map and date these long-lived habitats are vital to development of future conservation policies.

Full citation

Roberts, J.M., Davies, A.J., Henry, L.-A., Dodds, L.A., Duineveld, G.C.A., Lavaleye, M.S.S., Maier, C., van Soest, R.W.M., Bergman, M.J.N., Hühnerbach, V., Huvenne, V.A.I., Sinclair, D.J., Watmough, T., Long, D., Green, S.L. & van Haren, H. (2009) “Mingulay reef complex, northeast Atlantic: an interdisciplinary study of cold-water coral habitat, hydrography and biodiversity.” Marine Ecology Progress Series 397: 139-151.

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My email address has changed to:
andrew.j.davies (at) bangor.ac.uk.

Mailing address:
Andrew J Davies
School of Ocean Sciences
Bangor University
Menai Bridge
LL59 5AB

Thanks,
Andy

21st September 2008 – 3rd November 2008

I am just starting my Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship (WCMT) to the USA. My project for 2008 is entitled “Preserving the UK’s deep-sea heritage“. Within the confines of the fellowship, I’m travelling the US, meeting scientists and hopefully forging future collaborations. A highlight of the fellowship is a 2 week research cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ll be joining a team of US researchers on the R/V Nancy Foster, we’ve access to an ROV and we’ll be deploying landers with some of my equipment on it for almost a year. These opportunities do not come often!

So far, I’ve made it to the University of North Carolina Wilmington. The trip from the UK took a combined total of over 20 hours. By hour 24, I’d firmly planted my head on the bed of the motel where I’m staying for the next 9 days until I fly to Pascagoula to meet the ship. I’ll be there for 4 days prepping the lander equipment before we set sail on the 5th October. We return on the 16th, and after a few days I fly to Seattle to the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. That rounds up the trip!

Today, 24th September, I’m in Wilmington NC. I’ve been meeting up with Dr Steve Ross. Steve is the chief scientist of the cruise and we’re just formulating ideas and discussing the science that we’ll do in the Gulf of Mexico.

One particularly notable attempt was to quantify and identify the fish community in the area, the water depth is nearly 1000 m. We used a timed bait release system mounted on the ALBEX lander and attached a new SAMS infra-red camera.

The results were pretty good. You can see a sneak preview below: