Bigelow Scientist Dr Balch Bigelow scientist Dr. William Balch and researcher associates Dave Drapeau and Bruice Bowler outside the portable 8'x8'x20' laboratory. (Photo Lisa Kristoff)

Dr. William "Barney" Balch, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratories for Ocean Sciences, was recently awarded a NASA grant for $800,386.

Dr. Balch wrote the grant to further fund three additional years of coordinated ship (Bigelow) and satellite (NASA) measurements of carbon, and its effects on marine life, in the Gulf of Maine. The specific area in the Gulf is a straight line between Portland and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

Bigelow founder and senior research scientist Charles Yentsch began obtaining samples (chlorophyll, salinity and temperature) from this route in the 1970s.

Today, Bigelow researchers conduct another dozen, or more, readings.

The NASA project is called "Gulf of Maine North Atlantic Time Series (GNATS)," and defined as, "integrated trends in the ocean carbon cycle."

This piece will explore the different forms of carbon, the sources, and how it is stored and the possible effects of that storage on the marine environment.

"A greater awareness of the carbon. started with Kyoto (the Kyoto Protocol United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held December 11, 1997)," said Balch. "After that people began realizing that the carbon dioxide in the air was increasing."

The carbon studies conducted by Dr. Charles Keeling, beginning in the mid-1950s at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, demonstrated an annual large scale cycle in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with higher concentration in the northern hemisphere in winter and lower concentration in summer.

The summer decrease was, in part, due to "net uptake" of CO2 by vegetation. The net production of CO2 in the winter was due to loss of leaves by deciduous land plants and less sunlight for photosynthesis. However, these increases and decreases were more or less balanced. The major factor, which contributed to the long-term increase in CO2, was the burning of fossil fuels.

Since Keeling's groundbreaking work, scientists the world over have begun tracking the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, its sources and sinks.

"The conundrum was, however, that we knew precisely how much fossil fuel was burned," said Balch. "And the rate of increase of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere was about half of what it should be based on the burning of fossil fuels. So, where was it going?"

Scientists began wondering exactly how much CO2 was being absorbed by photosynthesis and where else could it be going.

The answer: the sea.

According to NASA's Web site, http://science.nasa.gov, "…48 percent of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is sequestered into the ocean."

And becomes part of what is called the "biological pump." Balch described the pump this way: "Carbon is absorbed into the sea as CO2 by gas exchange. Microscopic plants, the phytoplankton, then consume it through photosynthesis. When these plants die, or are eaten by the insects (zooplankton) of the sea, their carbon ultimately sinks to the ocean floor as organic debris, fecal pellets, etc. where most of it is reconverted back to CO2 by marine bacteria. A tiny amount of the initial sinking carbon gets buried in sediments."

The ocean floor, stirred by currents, will eventually send the carbon back up to the surface and into the air. Balch said it could take several thousand years for that deep CO2-rich water to bet back to the surface of the ocean again.

If the levels of stored carbon in the ocean floor continue to elevate - what then? If surface plant production stops, will the pump stop? And, what is the effect of different types of plants on the speed of the pump?

Carbon in the atmosphere comes in two forms.

Black carbon is basically organic and is produced from plants and living organisms. This carbon is the source of coal and oil.

White carbon is essentially inorganic carbon from the shells of small plants and animals that live in the sea such as coccolithophores (round plants covered with limestone plates) or single-cell animals. Both of these groups are abundant in the Gulf of Maine.

"Organic carbons also enter the ocean via the state's many rivers, originating from soil-bound organic matter (humic material) that leaches out of soils like brown tea from a tea bag, particularly in years of heavy precipitation" Balch said. "This dissolved carbon can also be a source of carbon in the marine environment for bacteria and some plants."

"Dissolved organic carbon fuels bacterial growth. Colored, dissolved organic matter also absorbs the same color of light that plants need for photosynthesis, robbing plants of needed light, continued Balch. "It's not the quantity of carbon, it's the quality of the carbon that is important. The quality and which organism is eating which plants that is the important part."

Additionally, it is possible for too many nutrients to be washed into coastal waters from agriculture or leaching fields which can encourage the growth of "nuisance species" such as "Alexandriuma," the toxic Red Tide that devastates shellfish beds.

"It is entirely possible that entire regime shifts in the phytoplankton could occur causing some phytoplankton classes to become more dominant. This has already been observed in the Pacific Ocean," said Balch.

In the Gulf of Maine, Balch and research assistants Bruce Bowler, Dave Drapeau and Emily Booth are trying to determine if carbon fixation (either as organic or inorganic matter) is changing. If it is, the ramifications are huge for all life in the Gulf.

The research is conducted aboard "ships of opportunity:" ranging from a lobster boat, research vessels or ferries. Aboard a lobster boat or research vessel the route takes approximately two-and-a-half days.

On a ferry such as the Scotia Prince, the round trip takes 22 hours and on the high-speed catamaran ferry, The CAT, 11 hours.

On larger ships of opportunity, the Balch team uses a mobile laboratory built out of a standard shipping container and is equipped with sophisticated, scientific instrumentation such as the FlowCAM microscope.

The FlowCAM microscope, created by Fluid Imaging of Edgecomb, invented by Chris Sieracki, a former Bigelow employee, contains a fluorescence detector and can record images of hundreds of cells contained in seawater per minute.

Working with satellites requires the highest precision. Bigelow must be traveling "the line" when the satellite passes over - which takes about four minutes, from horizon to horizon near mid-day. Good overpasses happen every two out of three days, and hopefully this occurs while the sun shines.

In Maine typical weather conditions are cloudy, foggy or hazy skies 80 to 90 percent of the time, making simultaneous ship and satellite measurements a challenge.

NASA's ocean color satellites estimate chlorophyll and the size of various ocean carbon pools to determine the health of the marine life below.

NASA's satellite measurements must penetrate the earth's atmosphere that is scattering and absorbing light and end up with photos and readings that can be carefully calibrated and validated to standardized measurements made on ships.

Bigelow's ability to get out to sea on a clear day in fairly short order made them appealing to NASA and was a big plus toward Bigelow Laboratories for Ocean Sciences receiving these grant monies.