Welcome to my blog. My name is William Saleu (aka. Wilz Kongo) and I am from Papua New Guinea. I am currently doing research at the Marine Conservation Molecular Facility of the Duke University Marine Lab alongside Kevin Zelino who blogs at Deep Sea News and Andrew Thaler, main author of Southern Fried Science.
BomaiCruz has been fairly quiet for some time now because Internet access in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is unreliable and very expensive. BomaiCruz has since joined Marengo Mining (PNG) Ltd and have been having relatively good Internet access but have been very busy to post anything. In the next few posts, BomaiCruz will try to get up to speed with at least one post every week.
BomaiCruz is now based in and has been living in Bundi, one of the most rugged and least developed places in PNG for the last two and a half months. Because of its location and the fact that it is not as developed as other parts of PNG, there are a lot of things here that I will post about that are not necessarily ’science’ but are more about the Bundi people. I will still try to get some science involved, especially for my science followers but I believe the mix I will be posting should give you a feel for life in Bundi.
Bundi is located on the highland fringes of PNG with Mt Wilhelm (PNG’s highest mountain) in the Simbu Province on its south and the Ramu plains to its north. Bundi is part of the Madang Province and has in recent years been in the lime-light of mining and mineral explorations in PNG with the recently commissioned Chinese-operated Ramu Nickel mine and Marengo’s copper and molybednum explorations.
Because of its location, the people of Bundi have always been the ‘middle-man’ between the highlands and coast. Traditionally, these people provided the link in the movement of shells and clay pots from the coasts to the highlands and bird of Paradise feathers from the highlands to the coast. Their links to the people of Ramu to their north and the Simbus in their south are still strong with intermarriages still common.
During a recent trip with colleagues to provide awareness to the people about company activities in their area, it became clear that the people of Bundi are a mix of highlanders and coastal dwellers residing in the same area. For instance, the further south we travelled, people spoke the Simbu language and when we went north, the language spoken was that of the Ramu while the people of Bundi had their own language – Gende, which was still different.
In places people refer to themselves as highlanders while in other areas (still in Bundi) people claim to be coastal dwellers who had moved into the mountains. How ever these people trace their origins is only understood by them.
I am privaledged to have lived with these people and seen for myself what they go through in their daily lives and will be posting about these beautiful and unique people’s way of life and environment.
The discovery of deep-sea dwelling extremeophiles is a fascinating tale to share. One of the earliest discoveries in this field was the discovery of Giant Tubeworms, Riftia pachyptila by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, using their deep-sea diving submersible, Alvin. Here we relieve the history of this momentous discovery.
Alvin Sets Sail
Alvin on one of its dives. Photo courtesy of Mark Spear, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
In 1977, a small team of marine biologists in the Pacific Ocean made a discovery that would change the world forever. Oceanography could not be any less like the cruise industry and conditions inside the underwater pod, Alvin were uncomfortable and cramped. But suddenly the sight of a previously unknown life form made it look like the greatest place on earth. Manning the pod that day were scientists Jack Corliss and Kathy Crane who were intending to navigate to the deepest part of this part of the ocean to see if they could answer some basic questions about the ocean’s chemical make-up and issues surrounding its temperature. They navigated the mother ship to an are of the Galapagos Rift in the eastern Pacific. Crane stayed onboard the ship, while Corliss, an Oregon State University geologist, climbed into the Alvin and began his descent into the deep. Crane, a graduate of the Scripps Institute of Iceanography was searching for ‘hydrothermal vents‘, underwater fissures in the earths crust that emit geothermally heated water.
Strange Sight
The team had spotted something anomalous that looked like clam shells on the imaging equipment, but thought little of it, joking that the shells had probably been thrown overboard by the Navy after a clam feast. But as Corliss got closer, he peered through the gloom to find that the clams were not only alive, but huge in size. Some were well over a foot long. Other life forms were living nearby, such as mussels and anemones, in an environment so inhospitable that no scientist had even considered it possible for life to exist. Corliss and his colleagues were amazed and delicately collected samples of all life forms they could see for further analysis. They named the area “The Garden of Eden“.
Corliss noticed, as he was collecting samples, a sea of worm-like creatures, white in color but with beautiful red-tipped plumes. They moved about in the water like plants, swaying and undulating, intrigued by the life-form, he took a sample. When the alvin surfaced, the team contacted Woods Hole to show biologists there what they had found. It was only then that they realized that they had come across a previously unknown life-form in the giant worms, one that was capable of surviving on pure hydrogen sulfide.
How on Earth do they Survive on Hydrogen Sulfide?
The team was delighted to have made such an amazing discovery and biologists at the Institute and all over the world began experimenting on the worms to try and find out how they managed to live in such a hostile environment that was totally devoid of light. The answer is that these tube-worms that can grow up to seven feet long live by a process called ‘chemosynthesis‘, which is the process of using bacteria to synthesize hydrogen sulfide, creating carbon compounds that the worms feed on. The bacteria that live inside the worms account for half the worms body weight. The worms have no digestive tract but use their red feather-like plumes to gather hydrogen sulfide from the geothermally heated water being emitted from the hydrothermal vents. Some oxygen is used in their respiration process, this they find dissolved in the water which was filtered down from the surface of the sea where light aids the production of oxygen.
New Frontiers
The discovery of life in such an extreme environment led to a new frontier in biological science and soon the Galapagos Rift was swarming with big name scientific institutions, all keen to be at the forefront of the new research area. Now the study of extremeophiles is popular amongst students and research scientists alike, but it all started with the Alvin and the Garden of Eden.
Video file
Follow this link to see the BBC video of tube worms in their natural habitat
I know by now my followers would have given up on me but is very hard to have good internet access where I am today and because of this I have been silent for too long. I have lots of interesting posts about science and conservation in PNG already typed and saved but i just can not get this thing to work here. My apologies to all my followers.
I always believed that Papua New Guinea (PNG) was one of the few places in the world today with its natural environment in tact and many people who have been to PNG will agree with me on this. Yet, in recent years,
our need for better livelihood has resulted in many decisions being made that in more ways than one will eventually lead to the destruction of PNG’s environment and all else that is associated with it.
someof the untouched coastlines of PNG that will be lost
For those who have been following my twitter feeds, you will know that I have just finished Acuostic Doppler Current Profiling (ADCP) of the Astrolobe Bay in Madang, PNG. Current profiling in the waters here range in depth from 200m to 1,200m and data generated will help support an application for another Deep Sea Tailings Pipeline (DSTP) in PNG. There is one already in place (yet to start disposing tailings) and there is one in operation in another mine in PNG and the main reason for this technique of tailings disposal stemmed from similar processes that were in place during the days of the Misima mine, another mine from PNG that ceased operations almost 10 years ago.
Now, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), under funding from the European Union were able to come up with a report in 2010 that the PNG government is banking all its decisions on in support of DSTP in
PNG and especially in the Astrolobe Bay. What the SAMS report is, is basically a review of all DSTP operations in other parts of the world and their pros and cons. It does not give much insight into DSTP operations in PNG and states very clearly that there was no environmentl monitoring at Misima so they could not refer to anything in that part, in other words, when misima was in operation, nobody cared about its impact on the environment, although they are using Misima as a model to back their report.
They report their findings on studies in other parts of PNG where DSTP was happening and it was clear that DSTP does impact the environment. Although the SAMS report was very broad, (all 295 pages of it) it did not present in detail the basics we wanted to know about the risks involved in dumping mine waste into the Astrolobe bay.
A decade earlier, the Evengelical Lutheran Church in PNG funded a similar study into the risks posed by the Ramu Nickel Project, the same project that is currently planning to dump 100 million tonnes of waste into the Astrolobe Bay. The Lutheran report, commissioned by the Mineral Policy Institute in Australia remains the best and most comprehensive report to date on the risks of DSTP in the Astrolobe bay. Since I started following
the matter, I am aware of two instances during which the Lutheran Church tried to present “their report” to the government of PNG but the government refused to accept it.
Turtle nestng beach, Cape Rigny
I was in the area where the DSTP pipeline will be draining into the sea and what made me feel so guilty about what we were doing was the sense of just how much the environment in the area will suffer as consequence of DSTP.
There are turtle nesting beaches in the area that will be lost as more and more maritime traffic comes into the area and when structures are built in the area to accomodate vessels that will be coming in. There are
fish spawning grounds for Baracutta, Mackeral and other reef fish that will be lost for the same reasons. The marlins and sail fish that we saw almost every day in the area will also be lost.
What can I do about all this? This is not going to be a win-win situation for all parties involved. At the end of the day, the PNG government gets its share of the minerals being harvested and the land owners get their
royalties while PNG loses its environment and ends up with more than one hundred million (100 000 000) tonnes of waste rock, slurry and chemicals at the bottom of the Astrolobe bay.
This will be the last post from India. It was truly an unforgettable experience. Many thanks too to Andrew and Amy for travelling half way across the world to see me here in India and same to Schery and Suzan for being my bestest friend for the 2 months here
Mining of precious minerals from the seafloor of Manus basin in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has recently been hot on the radar of this blog and on tweeter (for those who follow me @BomaiCruz) since the invitation to the licence granting ceremony in the mining haus was issued and the recent deferral of the project. I am not in PNG at the moment so it is quite hard to follow what is happening there but from latest intel gathered, landowners from the West coast and central New Ireland will be asking PNG’s Supreme Court system to stop any deep sea mining in the area until current mining laws governing sacred fishing grounds are properly interpreted.
Proposed mining sites and their location to the main island of New Ireland. Picture courtesy of Nautilus Minerals
It appears mining operations off the coast of New Ireland and East New Britain have been approved by the PNG national government, an act which has caused local and provincial leaders in the area to team up with the West-coast Central Seabed Mining Landowners Association to fight for benefits from the mining operations. Apparently, the MoA signed had three signatories, the state, the developer and provincial governments but did not include landowners (here on referred to as sea owners).
To explain about land ownership in PNG is in itself a separate post and for those of you interested to know more about this issue, you can read more here. I keep telling my friends in the United States that while land ownership is easier to understand because of land marks marking the boundaries of ones land, the sea is a totally different story. Land can be split up and owned by individuals but the sea can not, the sea is common to all who use it but we do have traditional leaders who manage these areas.
The West-coast Central Seabed Mining Landowners Association will be trying to see if PNG’s mining act will have a clause in it to let them claim something from the area to be mined. Spokesman for the group Roboam Paka said the group wanted to be part of the MoA citing that their rights to fish and sacred areas must be protected as their cultures were linked to the seas. This will not be easy as the mining act was set up after the 10 year civil war in Bouganville and it is based on terrestrial mining operations in PNG. Weather there is a clause for seabed mining or not will remain a mystery until I post an update soon.
The deep sea has once again revealed one of its many secrets, this time unveiling an intriguing new annelid, Teuthidodrilus samae, a.k.asquidworm. This unique creature was caught in 2007 at the western Celebes sea, a body of water surrounded by the Philippines to the north, Malaysia to the west and Indonesia to the south and also part of the coral triangle, an area of high diversity and endemicity of shallow water corals and fishes (Allen, 2008) and unique geological history recently identified as a Marine Protected Area.
This unique polychaete is also referred to as the squidworm because of the layout of its anatomy. A close look at the following pictures would help understand this. On the left is the common European squid (Loligo vulgaris) and on the right, we have the squidworm (T. samae). T. samae has chaetigers (segments bearing chaetae) that resemble the squid mantle, while its 4 pairs of branchiae, long blue or purplish-blue protuberances that are used for respiration and a pair of palps, elongated appendages whose functions include sensation, locomotion and feeding could easily be taken to represent tentacles and arms.
Common European Squid (Loligo vulgaris). Picture courtesy of Hans Hillewaert
T. samae a.k.a squidworm. Picture courtesy of Michael Aw
“the discovery of this genus is an example of the type of discoveries we can anticipate with continued exploration of the least known and largest habitat on earth, the deep water column.”
Karen Osborn, author of a recently published paper in Biology letters credited the discovery of this animal to the use of modern, versatile and mobile ROVs who are able to sneak up to these free swimming animals and catch them by suction. Without ROVs, the chances of capturing animals like these were much less as traditional sampling techniques were designed to collect either benthic (living on the seafloor) or pelagic (living in the water column) animals and often free swimming animals like these would escape collection devices towed on the seafloor or mid water nets that are not towed near the seafloor at great depths because of the risks involved (Robinson, 2004).
According to Karen, the discovery of this genus is an example of the type of discoveries we can anticipate with the continued exploration of the least known and largest habitat on earth, the deep water column.
References
Allen, G. R. 2008 Conservation hotspots of biodiversity and endemism for Indo-Pacific coral reef fishes. Aquat. Conserv. mar. Freshw. Ecosyst. 18, 541-556 (doi: 10.1002/aqc.880)
Osborn, Karen J., Madin, Laurence P., Rouse, Greg W. 2010 The remarkable squidworm is an example of discoveries that await in the deep-pelagic habitats Biol. Let. (doi: 10. 1098/rsbl.2010.0923
Last week I posted about the dumbest question I have ever heard from a college student. That post became my best post bringing in 5-times as many hits as I usually get in a day. To add on to that post, here is a picture of a male seahorse giving birth. Look closely at the mid left side of the picture, do you see the young seahorse being shot out from the fathers trunk?
Young seahorse being shot out of his fathers trunk. Picture courtesy of Lazaro Ruda, via Nat Geo
Meet Kristina Gjerde, international lawyer and advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet this wonderful woman and have an hour to sit with her and talk about the high seas. I also met her again in New York while I was at the United Nations Head Quarters in June to do my presentation on the International Seabed Authority‘s Endowment fund program.
Kristina is a woman with a very powerful message and thanks to the TED talk series, I have access to her talk that I am sharing. Please spare 15 minutes of your time to listen to her talks on the High Seas.
Ask any biologist why they chose biology and the 2 most common answers you’d get would be because they love animals and they love being out doors (although not usually in that order). Coming to think of it, the decision to be a biologist was not an over night decision but one that a person would have spent quite a considerable amount time thinking over so by the time that person finishes high school and is making the transition into college, he/she would already have known some basics about the kind of biology he/she was interested in studying. I had to open this post like this to make you see the stupidity in a question a student asked some 2 months ago.
In one of the many night walks to Carrot Island organised by Duke Marine Labs famous Dr. Dan, my good friend Andrew Thaler and I were ferrying a group of freshmen students across the Beaufort channel when one of them asked;
“Are seahorses real?
I always thought they were bits of seaweed that got broken off and carried away by currents.”
Seahorses are real things!
That question, to this day remains one of the dumbest questions I have ever been asked. If the person who asked that question is reading this right now, here is your answer buddy.
Sea horses are real. They are actually a kind of fish from the genus Hippocampus. The name hippocampus hails from the Greek language, ‘hippo’ meaninghorse and ‘campus’ forsea monster. They are mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world and prefer to live in sheltered areas like seagrass beds, coral reefs and mangroves. They turn on their bright colors when in new environments or during social moments.
One of their most interesting traits is that male seahorses are the are the ones that give birth. Yes, you read that one correctly and it is no mistake. Before mating there is a period of courtship that many scientists believe synchronizes them so the male can catch the eggs when the female releases them.
Seahorses can mate for up to 8 hours during which the male pumps water through the egg pouch on its trunk to show its emptiness. When the female is ready, she deposits her eggs into the males egg pouch where he will fertilize them and carry them around with him until the young are ready to be born.
