Oil detection - picture by CSIRO

Scientists of the CSIRO have come up with a revolutionary new way to quickly detect and find out how much petroleum hydrocarbons (which you get from crude oil) is present in soil, silt, sediment, or even rock.

This new technique to detect oil was developed with the aid of the waste technology specialist Ziltek Pty Ltd. What makes this new technique so revolutionary is that scientists are now able to detect and find out how much oil there is in a specific area by using a hand-held infrared spectrometer. This means no more bothersome tests, or taking samples and engaging in arduous processing practices.

This technique is not only useful for finding new sources of oil, but it can also be useful when it comes to assessing and monitoring those places where off-shore oil spills have occurred, or even assessing sites where urban redevelopment is planned.

“Petroleum hydrocarbons are a valuable resource, but can also be pretty nasty environmental contaminants,” explains Sean Forrester, a CSIRO scientist.

“They can remain in the environment for extended periods of time and can be harmful to wildlife, plants and humans. Better tools to detect them makes a rapid response possible.”

The technique developed utilizes infrared signals to detect petroleum and hydrocarbons in samples collected from sites of interest.
“The ability of this new technique to rapidly detect the presence of contaminants at the site has the potential to provide significant cost advantages, in terms of reduced testing costs and the avoidance of delays.” Mr Forrester concluded.

Tiger Prawn

The boys in white lab coats over at CSIRO and in the prawn industry have managed to breed and improve upon Black Tiger Prawn, and they are producing bumper crops in aquaculture farms and have been winning awards.

These prawns are so good in fact, that they have even won FIVE gold medals at the Sydney Royal Easter Show for the past two years running, including “Champion of Show” which happens to be the most decorated award possible.

The boys in white over at CSIRO’s Food Futures Flagship have tweaked the Black Tiger Prawn DNA, to make sure that the breeding program they have running captures the elite of the group and boost performance of their stocks every breeding season.

For the past several years, about fifty percent of all the prawns sold in Australia were imported from other countries such as Vietnam and China, so developing a local prawn which breeds in captivity is an extraordinary gain for both the local prawn industry and hungry consumers wanting to buy local seafood.

Dr. Nigel Preston, leader of the CSIRO Food Futures Flagship, had this to say about this exquisite prawn. “The new prawn’s yield has exceeded all our expectations. The average industry productivity for farmed prawns is only five tones per hectare, so this year’s average yield of 17.5 tones per hectare is a major leap forward, these huge yields can be replicated year after year which means consistent supply of a reliable and high quality product – all vital factors for the long-term growth and prosperity of the Australian prawn farming industry.”

Aquaculture has yielded approximately 17.5 tones per hectare, more than double the average production in the industry, all thanks to Dr. Preston’s super prawn. Several of the ponds produced 20 tones per hectare, and one even produced a record breaking yield of 24.2 tones per hectare.

Theorists say that if the rest of the Australian Black Tiger Prawn industry followed suit, and adopted this new DNA tweaking technology, Australia’s production could more than double, adding a $120 million boost to the annual value of the industry by the year 2020.

Mr. Nick Moore, general manager of Gold Coast Marine Aquaculture, had this to say about this revolutionary new prawn, and about Dr. Preston’s work.. “Thanks to outstanding work by the staff here, aided by close collaboration with our partners at CSIRO, we have just finished a prawn breeding season that can only be described as staggering, not only have we achieved national and international yield records with no reduction in quality or taste, these prawns are grown in a specially designed, environmentally sustainable production system. This production system and the new breeds have produced a perfect prawn with beautifully textured meat, rich color, robust size and a great taste. The awards (Sydney Royal Easter Show) are professionally judged on many criteria including size, color, taste and texture, so the results speak for themselves.”

With predictable output, and supped up prawn.. Australia is set to make its mark on the prawn industry.

At a meeting in Paris last month, the General Assembly of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) agreed to introduce a new thermodynamic description of seawater. The new description will be based on a new salinity variable called Absolute Salinity.

“Scientists will now have an accurate measure of the heat content of seawater for inclusion in ocean models and climate projections,” said Hobart-based CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship scientist Dr Trevor McDougall. “Variations in salinity and heat influence ocean currents and measuring those variations are central to quantifying the ocean’s role in climate change. The new values for salinity, density and heat content should be in widespread use within 18 months.”

Salinity is measured using the conductivity of seawater, a technique which assumes that the composition of salt in seawater is the same all over the world – which it isn’t. Salinity varies throughout the world’s oceans and for over one and a half century, scientists have been searching for the ‘magic formula’ for measuring salinity.

“The new approach, involving Absolute Salinity, takes into account the changes in the composition of seasalt between different ocean basins which, while small, are a factor of about 10 larger than the accuracy with which scientists can measure salinity at sea,” Dr McDougall explained.

During recent years, massive jellyfish congregations have appeared along the Northeast U.S. coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Mediterranean, in the Black and Caspian Seas, and in South-East Asian coastal waters.

“Dense jellyfish aggregations can be a natural feature of healthy ocean ecosystems, says Dr Anthony Richardson of the University of Queensland, but a clear picture is now emerging of more severe and frequent jellyfish outbreaks worldwide.”

A new study by Richardson and his colleagues at the University of Miami, Swansea University and the University of the Western Cape, presents convincing evidence that these massive jellyfish populations are supported by the release of excess nutrients from fertilisers and sewage, and that fish populations depleted by over-fishing no longer are capable of keeping them in check.

“Fish normally keep jellyfish in check through competition and predation but overfishing can destroy that balance,” Dr Richardson says. “For example, off Namibia intense fishing has decimated sardine stocks and jellyfish have replaced them as the dominant species. Mounting evidence suggests that open-ocean ecosystems can flip from being dominated by fish, to being dominated by jellyfish. This would have lasting ecological, economic and social consequences.”

In addition to this, the distribution of many jellyfish species may extend as a response to global warming and an increased water temperature could also favour certain species by augmenting the availability of flagellates in surface waters.

The study, which was lead by CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, has been published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

You can find more information about CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship here:

450 pound blobs filling up the Sea of Japan

The changing ecosystems affect a long row of different jellyfish species, but some of the most spectacular jellyfish congregations observed during recent years have involved the Nomura jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai) living in the Sea of Japan (Also known as the East Sea). This colossal species, which can reach a size of 2 metres* across and weigh up to 220 kg**, is also present in the Yellow Sea as well as in the rest of the East China Sea.

After becoming a major problem in the region, the Nomura jellyfish population is now combated by a special committee formed by the Japanese government. Killing jellyfish or ensnaring them in nets will however only prompt these animals to release billions of sperm or eggs; aggrevating the problem rather than reducing it. Coastal communities in Japan have started to harvest jellyfish and sell them as a dried and salted snack, and students in Obama, Fukui have started making jellyfish cookies and jellyfish-based tofu.

* circa 6 feet 7 inches

** circa 450 pounds

Vast amounts of creatures looking like jelly balls have begun to appear off the eastern coast of Australia, and researchers now suspect that these animals may help slow down global warming by moving carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean floor.

The proper English name for this “jelly ball” being is salp. A salp is a barrel-shaped free-floating tunicate that moves around in the ocean by contracting and relaxing its gelatinous body. Just like the other tunicates, the salp is a filter feeder that loves to eat phytoplankton and this is why it has caught the attention of scientists researching global warming.

Phytoplankton are famous for their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the top level of the sea, and a salp feasting on phytoplankton will excrete that carbon dioxide in the form of faeces. The faeces will drop to the ocean floor; thus lowering the amount of carbon dioxide present in the upper part of the ocean. Since the carbon dioxide found in this level of the sea chiefly hails from the atmosphere, phytoplankton and salps are a great aid when it comes to removing carbon dioxide from the air. Salps will also bring carbon down to the ocean floor when they die, which happens fairly often since the life cycle of this organism is no more than a few weeks.

Salp species can be found in marine environments all over the world, but they are most abundant and concentrated in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica where it is possible to encounter enormous swarms of salp. Over the last 100 years, krill populations in the Southern Ocean have declined and salp populations seem to be replacing them in this cold ecosystem. According to researcher Mark Baird of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO), the amount of salps in the waters off Australia are also on the increase, at least according to a survey carried out last month by CSIRO and the University of New South Wales.

While salp may help slow down global warming, their increase may also cause problems. Salp has a fairly low nutrient content and salps replacing nutrient rich krill in the Southern Sea may therefore prove detrimental for oceanic animals higher up in the food chain.

Australian scientists have now completed an 18-month long project aimed at scientifically describing sharks and rays, using traditional techniques as well as modern DNA sequence analysis. The ambitious project has resulted in over 100 species of sharks and rays being properly classified, which is equal to about one third of Australia’s known sharks and rays.

Southern Dogfish Image credit – CSIRO

Over 90 of the new species had already been identified by Dr Last and Dr Stevens in their book “Sharks and Rays of Australia” from 1994, but remained undescribed and without scientific names.

Many of the new species are endangered in the wild, such as the Maugean Skate and the Southern Dogfish, and having them properly classified and named is important for future monitoring and conservational work. The new descriptions and names will be included in a revised edition of “Sharks and Rays of Australia” which is planned for release in 2009.

Maugean Skate Image credit – CSIRO

The 18-month long study was backed by CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship. National Research Flagships are large-scale multidisciplinary research partnerships and the National Research Flagships program is one of the biggest scientific research endeavours ever undertaken in Australia.

If you’re interested in the Wealth from Oceans Flagship, you can find more information here. http://www.csiro.au/org/WealthOceansFlagship.html