Tuesday 28 October 2014

Sandy strandings: the role of contingency in the beach biosphere

At irregular intervals over the past fifteen years I've been visiting the east coast beaches of New Zealand's Northland between Warkworth and Paihia. Although it's frequently good territory for finding shallow marine fauna via rock pools or along the tideline, a recent visit was enhanced by exciting finds unique in my experience. I usually expect to see the desiccated remains of common species such as sand dollars, scallops, whelks and assorted sea snails, but coastal storms just prior to my arrival brought an added bonus. Two days of exploration along three beaches was rewarded with a plethora of live - but presumably disorientated - creatures such as common sea urchins (Evechinus chloroticus) and large hermit crabs (Pagurus novizealandiae), along with some recently-deceased 5- and 7-arm starfish. As you might imagine, several species of seabird, notably terns and gulls, were having a gastronomic time of it with all these easy pickings.

At the nearby Goat Island Marine Discovery Centre run by the University of Auckland I told our marine biologist guide about my two daughters' attempts to save some of the homeless hermit crabs from the gulls by offering suitable shells as new abodes. The biologist responded with a story of a visitor who had thrown live starfish back into the water after a mass stranding. Someone else commented that his actions wouldn't make a difference; our guide said that as he continued throwing them, the man replied "It made a difference to that one...and that one...and that one..."

Sea urchin

Common sea urchin (Evechinus chloroticus)

Of course we cannot hope to make much of a difference with such good intentions: nature, after all, is essentially immune to human morality and empathy, with survival at a genetic level the only true sign of success. But do small-scale events whose aftermath I recently experienced - in this case a few days of stormy weather and the resultant strandings - have any long-term effects on the local ecosystem?

Apart from a mass marooning of the large barrel jellyfish Rhizostoma pulmo on a North Wales beach around thirty years ago, I haven't experienced anything similar before. But then until three years ago I didn't live near the sea, so perhaps that's not unlikely! There are fairly frequent news stories from around the world about mass whale or dolphin beachings put down to various causes, some man-made such as military sonar. But as these events involve animals larger than humans they make it onto the news: for smaller creatures such as the crabs and urchins mentioned above, there are unlikely to be any widely-disseminated stories.

7 arm starfish

Australian southern sand star (Luidia australiae)

It may seem improbable that the balance between organisms could be profoundly altered by local events, but it should be remembered that a few, minor, outside influences over the course of less than a century can wipe out entire species. For example, although the story of how a single cat was responsible for the demise of the Stephens Island wren around the start of the Twentieth Century is an oversimplification of the events, there is evidence that current human activity is inadvertently causing regional change.

One well-known recent illustration is from the Sea of Cortez, where too much game fishing, especially of sharks, may have led to the proliferation a new top predator, the rapidly spreading Humboldt squid. Estimates suggest that the current population in the region is over 20 million individuals (which suits the local squid-fishing industry just fine), but extraordinary considering none were known in the region before about 1950. Two-metre squid may not sound menacing compared to sharks, but the Humboldt squid is a highly-intelligent pack hunter with a razor-sharp beak and toothed suckers on its tentacles, so diving amongst them is probably not for the faint-hearted.

The TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey contained a good introduction to the five mass extinctions of the past 450 million years, but it isn't just these great dyings or even El NiƱo that can upset ecosystems; we may find out too late that relatively minor, local changes are able to trigger a chain reaction at a far wider level. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould repeatedly emphasised the importance of historical contingency and the impact of unpredictable, ad-hoc events on natural history. The modern synthesis of evolutionary biology includes the notion that speciation can result from isolation of a population within an 'island'. This latter differs from the strictly geographical definition: a lake, or even an area within a lake, can be an island for some species. If, for example, local changes cause a gap in the ecosystem, then this gap might be filled by an isolated population with the 'fittest' characteristics, in the sense of a jigsaw piece that fits the relevant-shaped hole.

Hermit crab

Hermit crab (Pagurus novizealandiae)

Back to the beach. American marine biologist Rachel Carson's 1951 award-winning classic The Sea Around Us contains an early discussion of the recycling of nutrients within the oceans, but we are now aware that the sea isn't remotely self-contained. My favourite example of an intricate web of land, sea and even aerial fauna and flora centres on the Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific Northern Line Islands. Various seabirds nest in the atoll's high trees, their nutrient-rich guano washing into the sea where it feeds plankton at the base of the offshore food chain. The plankton population feeds larger marine fauna, with certain fish and squid species in turn providing meals for the seabirds, thus completing the cycle. Such a tightly-knit sequence is likely to undergo major restructuring of population densities if just one of the players suffers a setback.

I appear to have followed Stephen Jay Gould's method of moving from the particular to the general and may be a little out of my depth (okay, call it a feeble attempt at a pun) but it certainly gives food for thought when local shallow marine populations appear to suffer after only a few days of mildly inclement weather. If there’s a moral to any of this, it’s that if natural events can affect an ecosystem in unpredictable ways, what havoc could we be causing, with our pesticide run-off, draining of water tables, high-energy sonar, over-fishing and general usage of the oceans as a rubbish dump? The details may require sophisticated mathematics, but the argument is plain for all to see.

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Mythbusting: bringing science into the arena

My elder daughter is a big fan of the Discovery Channel show Mythbusters, who have spent eleven years testing myths (and not a few Hollywood set pieces) via science, technology, engineering and frequent resort to high explosives. Therefore, as a birthday treat I recently took her to the live Behind the Myths tour, fronted by Mythbusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. Considering how macho the series frequently is - it's only female presenter, now left, is a vegetarian who was made to eat live bugs - it was interesting to see what and how the science was presented live.

In some respects it lived up to its reputation, with the hosts apologising for the lack of on-stage explosions but claiming their intentions were to 'blow the mind' instead of say, a pick-up truck or hot water cylinder. That's not to say that there weren't some fiery moments, including several montages of explosions and the infamous paintball machine gun aimed at someone wearing a suit of replica armour. Considering a large percentage of the audience consisted of pre-teens with their parents, the big bang elements were very much appreciated. But since the presenters have a special effects rather than science background, was there anything worthwhile beyond the showmanship?


Apart from a brief introduction to Newton's Second Law of Motion (force equals mass times acceleration, in case you weren't sure) there wasn't much of the classroom about the show. Except that for two hours Hyneman and Savage managed to painlessly convey a lot of scientific ideas. Examples included:
  • Archimedes' quote about using a lever to move the world was demonstrated via a fairground high striker and different sized mallets;
  • Perception, thanks to a point of view camera and some comedic cheating;
  • Tessellation and human mechanics, with four interlocked reclining men able to support their own weight when their chairs were taken away;
  • Friction via a circus-like stunt, in which Savage was lifted high above the stage thanks to the strength of interwoven telephone directories.
Although it might be quite easy to lose sight of the science behind all the razzmatazz, perhaps that was the point. These demonstrations reminded me of the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures, aimed primarily at 'young people' and barely a decade shy of being two hundred years' old. Unlike the television series, which has sometimes revisited experiments - occasionally reversing the original results in the process - the Behind the Myths tour was more a solid grounding in basic physics, with a little chemistry and biology thrown in. If anything, the most obvious outcomes would be to promote curiosity by recognising that science is deeply embedded in everyday life, and that exploring reality can be enormous fun.

The first section of the show had Adam Savage demonstrate juggling whilst explaining how he taught himself the techniques. Since his recollection discussed patience, perseverance and learning from your mistakes, you could say he was presenting in microcosm key elements of the scientific enterprise,' eureka' moments excepted.

I'm uncertain how many in the audience would cotton on to the science-by-the-backdoor aspect of the show. If anything, the children present may be more likely to want a career in movie special effects than in science, but the sense of wonder it generated may have also rubbed off on the adults present. Hyneman and Savage have become well-known enough in their support of STEM subjects and dislike of woolly thinking (take note, Discovery Channel , home of Finding Bigfoot) to have spoken at the 2006 annual convention of the US National Science Teachers Association, as well as presenting a demonstration to President Obama. That's no mean feat for a couple of special effects technicians with no formal science training. Let's hope that the some of the audience sees beyond the whizz bangs into the wonderful world that scientific exploration offers!