BACKGROUNDER

Japanese space capsule carrying pristine asteroid samples lands in Australia

Japan has done it again

By Mike Wall 

The return capsule of Japan's Hayabusa2 asteroid-sampling mission streaks through Earth's atmosphere shortly before landing on Dec. 5, 2020.
(Image: © JAXA)

For the second time ever, humanity has brought asteroid samples down to Earth.

A small capsule bearing pristine pieces of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu touched down early this afternoon (Dec. 5) within the remote and rugged Woomera Prohibited Area, about 310 miles (500 kilometers) northwest of the South Australian capital of Adelaide.

The samples were snagged millions of miles from Earth by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, which studied the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) Ryugu up close from June 2018 to November 2019.

Related: We may be in a 'golden age' of sample-return space missions

More: Japan's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission in pictures

Hayabusa2's predecessor was the first to haul space-rock samples home, delivering pieces of the stony asteroid Itokawa in 2010. But the original Hayabusa (Japanese for "peregrine falcon") returned less than 1 milligram of material. Hayabusa2's bounty is expected to exceed 100 mg (0.0035 ounces), and its samples come from a very different kind of asteroid — a primitive "C-type" space rock rich in water and carbon-containing organic compounds.

"The materials that formed the Earth, its oceans and life were present in the primordial cloud from which our solar system formed. In the early solar system, these materials were in contact and able to chemically interact within the same parent objects," Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials wrote in an overview of Hayabusa2.

"These interactions are retained even today in primitive bodies (C-type asteroids), so returning samples from these bodies for analysis will elucidate the origins and evolution of the solar system and the building blocks of life," they added.

Having the samples here on Earth is key; scientists in well-equipped labs around the world can scrutinize the cosmic rock in far greater detail than Hayabusa2, or any other probe on its own in deep space, ever could. The returned material's purity is also a major selling point. Researchers already have access to many meteorites, but these "free samples" of asteroids have been significantly altered by their trip through Earth's atmosphere and their time on our planet's surface.

Asteroid Touchdown! Watch Japanese Probe Collect Samples

A long journey

The 1,340-lb. (690 kilograms) Hayabusa2 spacecraft launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the rugged Ryugu on June 27, 2018, kicking off an epic exploration campaign.

Hayabusa2 observed Ryugu in detail and also deployed multiple miniprobes onto the asteroid's surface — several tiny, hopping rovers and a microwave-sized lander called MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout), which was provided by the German Aerospace Center in collaboration with the French space agency CNES.

The main Hayabusa2 spacecraft made two trips of its own to Ryugu's surface, both times to snag samples. During the first of these operations, in February 2019, Hayabusa2 scooped up some surface material. In April of that year, the spacecraft fired a 5.5-lb. (2.5 kg) copper projectile at Ryugu, blasting a 33-foot-wide (10 m) crater into the asteroid's surface. Then, that July, the probe swooped down and collected some of this recently excavated dirt and rock.

Hayabusa2 kept these two samples separate, so scientists will be able to compare material from two very different environments — Ryugu's surface, which is weathered by space radiation, and the asteroid's more protected depths.

Related: Touchdown! Incredible photos show 2nd asteroid landing by Japan's Hayabusa2
.
See JAXA's Impactor Descend to Asteroid Ryugu Surface

With these samples secured, Hayabusa2 left Ryugu in November 2019 and headed home. On Nov. 26 of this year, when Hayabusa2 was about 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) from Earth, the probe fired its engines in a key trajectory-refining burn. The maneuver put Hayabusa2 on course toward a 6-mile-wide (10 km) slice of sky over Woomera — the precision equivalent of targeting a ladybug from 0.6 miles (1 km) away, JAXA officials wrote in a post-burn update.

Hayabusa2 released the 16-inch-wide (40 centimeters) return capsule on Friday night (Dec. 4), at a distance of about 137,000 miles (220,000 km) from our planet, JAXA officials said. The main spacecraft then conducted another engine burn to head away from Earth, for its work is not done: JAXA recently approved an extended mission for Hayabusa2, which will fly by the small asteroid (98943) 2001 CC21 in 2026 and rendezvous with yet another space rock, 1998 KY26, in 2031.

But the return capsule, which has no propulsion system of its own, kept barreling toward Earth. It hit the atmosphere at 12:28 p.m. EST (1728 GMT) today, at an expected speed of roughly 26,840 mph (43,190 kph). The little craft deployed its parachute a few minutes later, when it was about 6 miles (10 km) above the ground, and touched down around 12:47 p.m. EST (1747 GMT; 2:47 a.m. JST and 4:17 a.m. local Australian time on Dec. 6), JAXA officials said.

Recovery crews headed out in a helicopter to search for the capsule, ultimately spotting it at 2:47 p.m. EST (1947 GMT).

After securing and inspecting the craft, Hayabusa2 team members will transport it to JAXA's Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center in Japan. This facility, which was completed in 2008, was designed specifically to house and study cosmic material brought home by space missions.

Some of the Ryugu material will then make its way to labs around the world, where scientists will study it for clues about the solar system's early days and the rise of life on Earth.

Pieces of heaven: A brief history of sample-return missions

Spacecraft collects asteroid bits in amazing views from approach to stow

A golden age of sample-return missions

Several other spacecraft will soon follow Hayabusa2's lead, bringing their own pieces of heaven down to Earth.

China's Chang'e 5 lunar lander, for example, scooped up pristine material from the moon's surface this week. This sample is scheduled to land in Inner Mongolia on Dec. 16 or Dec. 17. And in October of this year, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft snagged a big sample of another carbon-rich near-Earth asteroid, the 1,640-foot-wide (500 m) Bennu. OSIRIS-REx's return capsule will land in Utah in September 2023, if all goes according to plan.

The goals of Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx are broadly similar, and the two mission teams have been working together extensively over the past few years to help achieve them. That collaboration will extend to the sharing of samples after touchdown, members of both teams have said.

In addition, the first stage of a complex, long-term campaign to haul Mars samples to Earth kicked off this past July with the launch of NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, which will land on the Red Planet in February 2021. Among the life-hunting rover's many tasks is the collection and caching of several dozen samples, which NASA and the European Space Agency will work together to bring home, potentially as early as 2031.

JAXA is working on its own Mars sample-return project — a mission called Martian Moons Exploration (MMX), which is scheduled to launch in 2024. MMX will grab samples of Phobos, one of the Red Planet's two small moons, and bring them to Earth for analysis.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:10 p.m. EST on Dec. 5 to report that the Hayabusa2 team had found the return capsule.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Hundreds have died from COVID-19 in Texas jails and prisons — some while awaiting trial

Author of new report on prison death rates calls on state to release inmates who pose no risk to safety

As It Happens: CBC Radio · Posted:  November 17,2020

Part of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's William G. McConnell Unit in Beeville, Texas. (Eric Gay/The Associated Press)

Read Story Transcript

A new study out of Texas shows the "devastating toll" the COVID-19 pandemic is having on people who are incarcerated or employed at jails and prisons, says the lead author.

People in Texas are 490 per cent more likely to contract COVID-19 if they're behind bars, and 140 per cent more likely to die from it, according to the report from the University of Texas at Austin.


At least 231 people have died from COVID-19 in Texas correctional facilities, the report found. That number includes correctional staff, inmates convicted of crimes, and people still waiting for trial. In one prison, six per cent of the population has died.

"The numbers are shocking on their face, but none of this was really a surprise," lead author Michele Deitch, a professor of public affairs who specializes in correctional oversight, told As It Happens guest host Nil Köksal.

"At the start of the pandemic, experts had been warning that prisons and jails were going to become Petri dishes for the spread of the coronavirus. And our numbers bear that out."

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says it has enacted "robust measures" to fight the spread of COVID-19 in its facilities, including widespread testing, but that such efforts are a challenge in a state with the highest prison population in the country.
Inmates feel 'like sitting ducks'

Deitch says she has spoken to many inmates during the course of her research, as well as family members of those who have died.

"We were familiar with some of the conditions that they've been experiencing. I think that it's a time of real fear for people inside. They can't control their own environments, and many of them feel like sitting ducks," she said.

"When you know that people on your cellblock or in your dormitory are ill, you think it's just a matter of time before you're going to become ill as well."

She cited crowded conditions and a lack of access to high-quality medical masks, proper hygiene products or hand sanitizer as contributing factors.

"You've got dorms that are tightly packed. People are together all the time in day rooms or in lines to take showers or get pills from the pill line or to go to the chow hall to get food. You can't get away from other people, and that puts them at tremendous risk," she said.

"They really are feeling like they are being, you know, abandoned in their ability to protect themselves."

Inmates from El Paso County detention facility work loading bodies wrapped in plastic into a refrigerated temporary morgue trailer in a parking lot of the El Paso County Medical Examiner's office on Nov. 16. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

It's a grisly picture that's become all too common in correctional facilities in the U.S., Canada and around the world during the pandemic.

Between March and April, the federal government and several provinces worked to reduce the number of people behind bars in Canada through early release and extended parole, but outbreaks are popping up again in facilities across the country.

In the U.S., several states, including California and New Jersey, have released inmates at unprecedented levels in the face of the disease. It's something Deitch would like to see Texas do as well.

"I think that our research has really raised a lot of questions, and for that matter, the virus has revealed a lot of issues that have long been a source of concern for observers. And one is: are we locking up too many people?" she said.

"Nobody is talking about releasing anyone who would be a risk to public safety. I think it's so important to make that clear. There are a lot of people who are locked up who do not present a current risk."

Outbreak at Calgary jail is a 'horror show,' staff union claims, as COVID cases increase to 124 

Saskatoon Correctional Centre inmates say not enough being done to protect them against COVID-19

She noted, for example, that many of those who have died in Texas facilities have been elderly patients. The Duncan Unit, a prison that houses geriatric inmates, lost six per cent of its population to the disease.

What's more, more than half of all those who died from COVID-19 were eligible for parole, and the vast majority of those who died in county jails had not yet been convicted of any crime.
Texas touts its 'aggressive' testing policy

The study found that COVID-19 rates are particularly high in Texas facilities, noting that inmates in the state have tested positive at a rate 40 per cent higher than the national prison population.

But Jeremy Desel, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), told As It Happens that statistic — and the study as a whole — fails to adequately take into account the state's "first in the nation, sustained, and aggressive mass asymptomatic testing campaign."

A Bureau of Federal Prisons truck drives past barbed wire fences at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas. (L.M. Otero/The Associated Press)

The TDCJ has tested 65,000 employees and 219,000 inmates so far, he said, and facilities with high populations of elderly prisoners are tested weekly "to ensure the best possible medical decisions and placement of inmates can be made."

The department, he said, has partnered with two health-care facilities to "provide a high level of care to those struggling with this illness."

Asked about the possibility of releasing more inmates during the pandemic, Desel said those decisions fall under the purview of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Deitch said the testing levels in Texas are "a very positive step and something that the agency should be commended for," but that the high testing "cannot explain the high number of deaths, which is really the focus of the report."

The death rate among Texas inmates is 35 per cent higher than the rest of the U.S. prison population, the report found.

She says more needs to be done to protect inmates, correctional staff and people who live in communities with prisons and jails — both inside Texas and without.

"I think that this is going to be a national phenomenon because there is no bright line between our prisons and jails and the rest of our communities," she said.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 11.2 million people in the U.S. have been infected with COVID-19, and at least 246,400 have died, according to a New York Times database.

Over the past week, there has been an average of 150,265 cases per day, an increase of 81 per cent from the average two weeks earlier, the Times reports.

"If the virus is spreading that rapidly and surging in our communities, we can expect to see that follow in our prisons and jails," Deitch said. "The numbers are going to be catastrophic if we don't take steps."

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview with Michele Deitch produced by Chris Harbord.

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As Trump pushes for a record number of federal executions, Sister Helen Prejean warns of his 'unwieldy power'

Prejean has fought against the death penalty for more than 40 years

RIGHT TO LIFE;

END THE DEATH PENALTY

CBC Radio · Posted: Dec 04, 2020

Sister Helen Prejean, who advocates for the abolition of the death penalty, is working to exonerate Brandon Bernard, who is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 10 despite protestations from the prosecutor who successfully fought to keep him on death row. 

(Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

The U.S. federal government, under President Donald Trump, plans to execute five people before the end of his term on Jan. 20.

That includes Brandon Bernard, a Black man, who has spent 20 years on death row for his role in the brutal killings of Todd and Stacie Bagley in 1999. He is scheduled to be executed Dec. 10.

Five jurors who voted to convict him now say he should be given clemency, and a former federal prosecutor who earlier successfully fought to keep Bernard on death row, agrees.

If Bernard is executed, he will be the ninth person put to death by the U.S. federal government in the past six months. Only three people have been executed federally within the last 50 years.

In July, Trump reinstated the death penalty at the federal level after a 17-year pause on the punishment. Last month, the U.S. Justice Department published new rules that would allow federal executions by electrocution and firing squad, set to take effect Dec. 24. Meanwhile, president-elect Joe Biden has said he will work to end the death penalty when in office.

Sister Helen Prejean, whose book inspired the film Dead Man Walking, has spent more than four decades fighting against the death penalty, and recently, working to exonerate Bernard. She spoke with Day 6 host Brent Bambury about the case and the Trump administration's support for federal executions.

Here is part of that conversation.

Until this year, there has not been a federal execution in the United States since 2003. The Trump administration has executed eight people since this summer, and they are set to execute five more before Jan. 20. Why do you think this is happening now?

If you want to see a clear, bright, line-in-the-sand indication of how the death penalty is capricious and does not work and cannot be entrusted to officials to carry out, this is an example.

For 17 years, no federal executions. In July, we did hear President Trump kind of vamping up his law-and-order message — force using force — and he's talking more and more in that rhetoric.

So it's not surprising that because he has the power to take life, he could just simply say, "Pick out these people on death row and let us execute them," Attorney General Barr does his bidding, and they start killing people.

What's faulty from the very beginning in the Supreme Court decision to put [the] death [penalty]back was they had a very fuzzy criteria: only the worst of the worst. Nobody knows what that means, and they leave it to the discretion of prosecutors to decide when they go for death.

When they don't, Trump has decided to go for death ... and there's nothing to stop him.

The U.S. federal government has scheduled executions for five death row inmates to take place before Jan. 20, when Joe Biden will in inaugurated as U.S. president. The Department of Justice has also changed rules allowing for executions by electrocution and firing squad, set to take effect Dec. 24. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

Popular support for the death penalty in the United States has been going down, and there are a lot of states now that just don't execute people anymore. You seem to be moving this issue — you and other activists — where you wanted it to go. But is that changing now?

Of course it is. We had the smallest number of executions in 2019 than we've had since '83, only seven executions. This unwieldy power that Trump has, he will have killed 13 people [by the end of his term].

But it is changing. Executions are down. Prosecutors aren't seeking death. Jurors aren't giving death. Innocent people [are] later exonerated.

This is an amazing statistic, but for every 10 people, of the 1,500-plus people we've executed ... one person has had to be freed [from death row]. That's how broken this thing is, and the people are getting it.

Last week, Trump's Department of Justice filed an amendment that would expand the methods that can be used in federal executions. It could bring back electrocution. It could bring back the firing squad. Why do you think that is significant, and why is it happening now?

When someone who prides himself on using force to get what he wants done, he may think lethal injection looks too weak — let's have a firing squad. That's what's so wrong about putting this kind of power in the hands of a man like Donald Trump.

Here's a fact: nobody is executed unless a prosecutor or district attorney seeks it all the way through to the very end. If they do not seek death, people don't die. And look at that unwieldy power in the hands of frail human beings, politically driven, partially seeing.

We can never allow them to have that power. And please, God, these lives could be spared. But I'm really scared for the people involved in this because it all hangs with Donald Trump.

 

Prejean has advocated for the abolition of the death penalty for more than 4 decades. 

(Tim Boyle/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

Do you think that there is a chance that Brandon Bernard will escape the death penalty?

Here's the thing: You have to stand up for what you believe and you have to speak the truth. No matter what the others do, you have to do that.

I feel for that prosecutor. There was a cry for the death of this young man ... and the prosecutor [recently] said, I was not as strong in my conviction as I should have been. I didn't listen to my conscience and I went along.

Also five of the nine jurors who were still alive just said they never got real information about Brandon. He wasn't one of the people that did crimes and was going to be violent in the future. He has the best record in prison — the warden speaking for him.

And here's what's so cruel and terrible about the death penalty. When you decide that you are going to end a human being's life, you cut off all chance of their changing, nor do you even recognize how they might have changed from the time they did a crime as an 18-year-old to who they are now.

That development of life doesn't matter to you, and God, that's such a sin and it's so wrong. And that's why we have to work and change it.

Written by Jason Vermes. Produced by Pedro Sanchez.

Why is the world so beautiful? An Indigenous botanist on the spirit of life in everything

‘Western science is a powerful way of knowing, but it isn't the only one says Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Tapestry CBC Radio · Posted: Nov 27, 2020 

Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. She is a member of the Potawatomi First Nation and she teaches at the State University of New York in Syracuse. (Dale Kakkak)


Tapestry 47:01 Why is the world so beautiful? An Indigenous botanist on the spirit of life in everything


What would moss do?

Robin Wall Kimmerer posed the question to her forest biology students at the State University of New York, in their final class last March, before the pandemic sent everyone home.

The answer was at least as useful as anything to be found in the glut of how-to-survive COVID stories that would follow over the next nine months:

Give more than you take


Be patient when resources are scarce


Find creative ways to use what you have

"Mosses have this ability, rather than demanding a lot from the world, they're very creative in using what they have, rather than reaching for what they don't have," Kimmerer told Tapestry.

"When there are limits, the mosses say, 'Let's be quiet for a while. Abundance, openness, water, will return. We'll wait this out.'"

Kimmerer is a plant ecologist, writer, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY and a member of the Potawatomi First Nation.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants is published by Milkweed Editions. (Milkweed Editions)

Her 2013 book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants , became a surprise bestseller. Readers around the world warmed to Kimmerer's view of the world, and to the way she blends the study of botany with Indigenous lore. The book made it to the New York Times bestseller list in February.

"As a scientist, I have been trained to refer to our relatives, the plants and the animals … the water and the Earth herself as ' it,'" she explained, contrasting what she learned studying the Potawatomi language.

"What I came to understand was that in Potawatomi languages, we characterise the world into those who are alive and the things which are not. So we speak a grammar of animacy," said Kimmerer. "And that's because in the beautiful verb-based language, a language based on being and changing and agency … the whole world is alive."

Kimmerer, said she was driven to study botany because of the central question in her heart: "Why is the world so beautiful?"

To her earliest academic advisors, this was decidedly not a welcome line of research.

"Well, it took a long time to pick myself back up," Kimmerer recalled. "I became very quiet. I felt like, oh, I had made a tremendous error."

Kimmerer noted that she wasn't the first one in her family to have traditional forms of knowledge ridiculed and dismissed.

"[It] was not unlike my grandfather's first day of higher education, because he was one of the children who was taken from his family as a little boy and brought to our residential school… And so my adaptation responses as a young student was to get very good at what they said was science."

Kimmerer often says that, although she is a plant biologist, she cannot hear the phrase "natural resources" without feeling profoundly uneasy. And she has an idea for a potential replacement: Earthly Gifts.

As an example, Tapestry asked Kimmerer how she would go about cutting flowers to bring into her home.

"I would greet those flowers and say how beautiful they are. I'm so grateful that you're growing here. And, you know, my mom's coming over and I want to cheer her up. May I cut some flowers to bring your beauty to her in our house?" explains Kimmerer.

"If the answer is yes ... I would cut them and give a gift in return and bring them in."

Music in the show

Sarah Fraker worked with Robin Wall Kimmerer and composer Asha Srinivasan to create a new piece of music based on the book Braiding Sweetgrass.

"I just had this idea that the voice of the oboe could be combined with natural sounds and also electronic sounds to create this really evocative, rich soundscape," says Fraker.

New 3D map of the Milky Way continues a quest that began in Canada

Bob McDonald's blog: The map includes data from more than 1.8 billion stars

Bob McDonald · CBC Radio · Posted: Dec 04, 2020 
 

This map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by ESA's Gaia satellite

 (ESA / Gaia / DPAC)


The European Space Agency released the latest data from its Gaia spacecraft this week showing the positions of 1.8 billion stars in our galaxy and the directions they are moving. It is the latest in a series of measurements that go back almost a century, when a Canadian astronomer made the first discovery of the movement of stars in the Milky Way.

The universe is full of galaxies which show up as beautiful spirals or other odd shapes in telescopes, but there is one galaxy we don't have a picture of and that is our own Milky Way. That's because we live inside it and it is far too large to step outside and see what it really looks like.

Stand on the street outside your home at night and try to see the shape of your city or town. You can only see nearby lights from street lamps and buildings. To see the whole town you would have to fly above and look down from an airplane.


Unfortunately, there is no airplane — or rocket for that matter — that can fly high enough to get a view of the Milky Way. But astronomers have found other ways to determine its shape and motion through the cosmos.

Perspective from within the Milky Way

In 1918 the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, B.C., opened with what was, at the time, the biggest telescope in the world — a 1.83 metre diameter beast.

Between 1928 and 1935, Canadian astronomer John Stanley Plaskett used the telescope to measure the motions of stars in the Milky Way.

This observation dome holds the 100-year-old, 1.8-metre Plaskett telescope at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, B.C. (National Research Council of Canada)

Plaskett was the first to show that the Earth is about two-thirds of the way out from the centre of a great pinwheel galaxy spanning 100,000 light years across and takes 220 million years to turn once.

That's one big galaxy.

A modern perspective

The Gaia mission is the latest and most precise measurement of stellar motion in the Milky Way, including the path of our own Sun around the galactic centre. It also found a swarm of stars above and below the main disc that could be the result of a collision with another galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago.

The information gathered by Gaia, which will continue its survey for another four years, will form a fundamental knowledge base that will be used to study galactic evolution and the forces that keep them together.

Data from ESA's galaxy-mapping spacecraft Gaia suggests galactic disc of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is not flat but warped upwards on one side and downwards on the other.

 (Stefan Payne-Wardenaar / Robert Gendler / ESO)

While 1.8 billion stars is an impressive number, it is only about about one per cent of all the stars in the galaxy, so there is still a long way to go before we get a complete picture of our city of stars.

This long quest to know our home galaxy is also testament to Canada's contribution to astronomy, which has been at the forefront for more than a century.

The instrument that Plaskett used is still operating today, and you can even take a virtual tour of it. Canadian astronomers continue to work with it and other major telescopes around the world.

Understanding our place in the galaxy

Knowing the true nature of the Milky Way may not seem to have much relevance here on Earth, and it certainly won't affect the weather tomorrow, but it is part of our long search to know our place in the universe.

It's taken centuries to discover the shape and size of planet Earth, to develop the technological prowess to see it from space, and to make robotic explorers to explore the other planets in our solar system. During that time we've also been finding our place in the galaxy and the universe.

It's fundamental science — knowledge for the sake of knowing — and that has never been a bad thing.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob McDonald is the host of CBC Radio's award-winning weekly science program, Quirks & Quarks. He is also a science commentator for CBC News Network and CBC-TV's The National. He has received 12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
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The economic loss of Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory is already being felt. It's also very personal

By Fernando Alfonso III, CNN

Updated Sun December 6, 2020

(CNN)Junellie González Quiles peered into her first telescope when she was 10 years old and what she saw were stars, planets, and a doorway into a world of science made possible by Puerto Rico's iconic Arecibo Observatory.

Observatory astronomers once brought some telescopes to a summer camp she attended as a girl growing up in San Juan, part of one of Arecibo's various educational programs -- the future of which are now unclear.

The observatory has been an integral part of the island's education, science and business sectors that islanders and experts contend must be rebuilt after the US National Science Foundation decided in late November to decommission and disassemble Arecibo through a controlled demolition due to irreparable damage. That damage, sustained this summer, resulted in its 900-ton equipment platform collapsing last week.

Junellie González Quiles is one of thousands of Puerto Rican students to visit the Arecibo Observatory since it was commissioned into service in 1963.

Using the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe, González Quiles, now a 24-year-old doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University studying exoplanets in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, shared how the observatory affected her life while growing up in the island's capital.

"The Arecibo Observatory being in Puerto Rico has inspired us Puerto Ricans to pursue scientific knowledge and it taught us that not even the sky is our limit," González Quiles told CNN over email. "We can go beyond. The impact that it has had on the education system in Puerto Rico and the training it has provided for many scientists has been very significant. The Arecibo Observatory is the science icon for Puerto Rico and we take pride in it because of its impact on Puerto Rico and the world."




The economic impact of losing the observatory

The Foundation for Puerto Rico has been intimately involved with Arecibo and studying the economic influence the observatory has had on the community.

The foundation was founded as a nonprofit in 2011 and works to create opportunities that drive social and economic development in Puerto Rico, with a focus on the visitor economy.
The observatory attracted roughly 50,000 students and 50,000 other visitors on average each year before Hurricane Maria, said Carlos Ayala, a program manager for the Foundation for Puerto Rico's Bottom Up Destination Recovery Initiative.

The end is near for famed Arecibo Observatory's damaged telescope

Ayala spent six months living in Arecibo in 2019 to study the visitor economy of under-served communities on the island. What he learned was how each non-student visitor to the Arecibo region spent approximately $171 daily and lodged in the area for five to seven days, he said.
"The region will suffer because a 50,000 drop (in visitors) is notable," Ayala said

Mestizo Café and Supermarket Samcoop 4 Calles are two of the many local businesses that have relied on a steady stream of observatory tourists. Its closing has already hurt business, cafe owner David Gonzales told CNN on Friday over the phone.

"The count of clients has gone down," Gonzales said. "The observatory closing is having an impact because people would come to visit the area and spend time in the town of Arecibo. Arecibo does not have too many places to visit; the observatory was the most important attraction."

Puerto Rico Fast Facts

This was a similar situation at the supermarket. Manager Neysha Berenice Domenech said many tourists would stop at the store to pick up drinks and snacks on their way to the observatory.

"Now we are going to have less people, which is very sad after having the observatory for many years and it being one of the biggest ones of the world," Domenech told CNN over the phone. "It was very important for the Puerto Rican people."

Tourism is a crucial sector for the island which in 2018 reported a 43% poverty rate, according to the US Census. In 2017, tourism made up approximately 7% of the island's GDP, according to an analysis by the Foundation for Puerto Rico.

The observatory itself employs roughly 130 people who largely live in and around Arecibo, said Ray Lugo, the observatory's principal investigator and the director of the University of Central Florida's Space Institute. There will be no changes to their roles for the foreseeable future, Lugo said.

A scientific marvel that educated the masses

The observatory, which was featured in the James Bond film "GoldenEye" and the sci-fi movie "Contact," has been helmed by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1970.
Lugo was the author of the grant proposal to the NSF which awarded the University of Central Florida operational control of the Arecibo Observatory in 2018, he said. Since then, the university has been responsible for maintaining the facility, conducting and coordinating scientific research, and running education programs, he said in a phone interview.

A look at the Arecibo Observatory's platform. This is what collapsed last week.

The scientific research conducted at the observatory falls into three main categories: radio astronomy (the collection of radio signals from things like stars and planets), planetary radar group (which works closely with NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program), and atmospheric science (involves experiments where the upper atmosphere is heated up and probed), Lugo said.

So far this year, research at the observatory had characterized the spin, rotation, and shape of 67 asteroids before an auxiliary cable came loose from a socket on one of the site's towers in August, Lugo said.

This research adds to a litany of scientific accomplishments at the observatory, including its assistance in discovering the first binary pulsar in 1974 (which led to the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics). The observatory has also supported NASA's Viking mission, which produced the first radar maps of Venus' surface and spotted the first exoplanet in 1992.

This aerial view shows the damage at the Arecibo Observatory after one of the main cables holding the receiver broke in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on Dec. 1, 2020.

To date, the research conducted at the observatory has helped roughly 400 students around the world earn doctoral degrees, Lugo said.

Despite the heavy damage to parts of the telescope, much of the observatory's research will continue using other hardware on site and through analyzing huge stockpiles of data already collected, Lugo said.

The observatory has partnered with the Ana G. Méndez University System to educate students of all ages. One of the crown jewels of its educational programs is its Arecibo Observatory Space Academy where students are brought on-site to conduct research alongside field professionals. González Quiles participated in the program in 2013.

"The experience at the Arecibo Observatory was incredible, it was my first time doing scientific research," González Quiles said. "During my time at the academy, we worked on projects that aimed to fulfill one goal, which was to design a space settlement for the NASA Ames Space Settlement Design Contest. I worked on the aerospace engineering for the design."

Ayala was also one of the scores of Puerto Rican students to visit the observatory when he was a young student. He lamented the thought of children not being able to visit it.

"Losing this important asset, it's really a tragedy for the public school kids," Ayala said. "Most of the kids in Puerto Rico can't go to a space camp in the United States and can't get access to that scientific knowledge."

Charting a path to the Arecibo Observatory's future

Restoring the Arecibo Observatory to its former glory is not enough for Annie Mayol, the president and chief operating officer of the Foundation for Puerto Rico.

Mayol believes that improving the roads leading to a rebuilt observatory and adding things like a small hotel on site will draw more visitors.

"We are about asset rehabilitation and we're about sustainable tourism," Mayol said. "It's about making sure that we support our science, our community and our students who actually grow and use this as an inspiration."

Mayol is hopeful that the incoming Biden-Harris administration will "be looking at Puerto Rico with a different eye" and allocate federal funding to rebuild the site.

A petition titled "Rebuild the Arecibo Observatory" was launched on Dec. 2 and has since collected more than 39,000 digital signatures as of Sunday morning. It calls on "Congress to allocate funding to build a new Arecibo radio telescope with greater capabilities than the previous telescope -- to maintain American leadership in planetary defense, astronomy, and ionospheric studies; and to inspire a new generation of scientists."

Over the past few months, Lugo said he has met with 25 members of Congress and the governor of Puerto Rico to advocate for rebuilding the observatory.

Lugo estimates that it would cost $400 million to rebuild the Arecibo Observatory.
"We are working very hard on Arecibo model 2," he said. "There is already a movement and it's going to build momentum over the next couple of weeks."

CNN's Melissa Macaya and Ashley Strickland contributed to this report.

Christian actress Letitia Wright deletes social media after criticism over anti-vaccination video

Sun 06 Dec 2020 by Press Association

Photo Credit: Ian West/ PA Wire/PA Images

Christian actress Letitia Wright appears to have deleted her social media accounts after she was criticised for sharing a video questioning the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The Black Panther star, 27, sparked controversy after tweeting a video called Covid-19 Vaccine: Should We Take It? from On The Table, a YouTube discussion channel.

Wright faced a fierce backlash from fans on social media as well as her Marvel co-star Don Cheadle, who described the video as "hot garbage".

The video appears to have since been removed from YouTube, while Wright's Twitter handle now shows the message "This account doesn't exist," and her Instagram says: "Sorry, this page isn't available."

Addressing the criticism in a post on Twitter before the account was removed, she wrote: "My intention was not to hurt anyone, my only intention of posting the video was it raised my concerns with what the vaccine contains and what we are putting in our bodies. Nothing else."

In an earlier post, Wright appeared to claim she was being "cancelled" for asking questions of the vaccine.

The video in question saw presenter Tomi Arayomi speak at length about his personal feelings about the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

He said: "I am just a big sceptic of needles and vaccinations in general, I think the body should be able to produce the right antibodies to fight things."

He added: "We can just get that (the vaccine) out there and hope it doesn't make extra limbs grow, hope to god you don't develop children that have 11 fingers and 12 toes, we are hoping for the best.

"We have seen vaccines do damage before."

The description of the video said "Tonight I'm talking about Luciferase, the ingredient allegedly being added to the Covid vaccine to detect those who have not taken it.

"Luciferase, named by its founder after Lucifer???

"Now this is only partially true on a fact check, but we explore this and more On The Table."

Arayomi was described as "an internationally received and recognised prophet, speaker, author and founder of RIG Nation, a media platform with the Christian mission established since 2007 to train people to become prophets and prophets to be people".

Wright, who most recently starred in Sir Steve McQueen's Small Axe film Mangrove, received a barrage of criticism for sharing the video alongside a prayer hands emoji.

When one fan warned her "they are going to make an example out of you", she replied: "Make an example out of me for asking if something is right for my body before taking it. Interesting world we live in."

When another follower told her she was upsetting people, she wrote: "Not my intention to make anyone upset. Nor am I saying don't take it. I'm just concerned about what's in it that's all. Isn't that fair to question or ask?"

After replying to a string of followers criticising her post, she wrote: "If you don't conform to popular opinions. But ask questions and think for yourself....you get cancelled."

Marvel fans shared Wright's post with her co-star Cheadle, who plays James Rhodes/War Machine in the film series.

He wrote: "Jesus... just scrolled through. Hot garbage.

"I would never defend anybody posting this. But I still won't throw her away over it. The rest I'll take off Twitter. Had no idea."

Lord, please help us to discern what is true and what is false.

Please give us revelation when we have questions.

Be with Letitia now as she's dealing with all the backlash from her post.

Amen. 

Pray for this issue

44 people are praying for this news article

Article by Press Association

'Black Panther' star under fire after sharing anti-vaccination video

CNN Tonight

"Black Panther" star Letitia Wright is facing a social media backlash after sharing concerns and conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines on Twitter. https://www.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2020/12/05/letitia-wright-black-panther-twitter-anti-vaccination-video-take-this-ctn-vpx.cnn

Letitia Wright - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letitia_Wright

Letitia Michelle Wright (born 31 October 1993) is a Guyanese-British actress. Beginning her professional career in 2011, she has played roles in Black Panther and several British TV series, including Top Boy, Coming Up, Chasing Shadows, Humans, the Doctor Who episode "Face the Raven" and the Black Mirror episode "Black Museum"; for the latter she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.

Coasts drown as coral reefs collapse under warming and acidification

ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CORAL REEF STUDIES

Research News

 

IMAGE: REEFS WILL STRUGGLE TO KEEP UP WITH THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY OF WARMING AND OCEAN ACIDIFICATION. THE IMPACTS BY THE END OF THE CENTURY INCLUDE 'INSIDIOUS AND ACCELERATED LOSS OF COASTAL... view more 

CREDIT: KRISTEN BROWN.

A new study shows the coastal protection coral reefs currently provide will start eroding by the end of the century, as the world continues to warm and the oceans acidify.

A team of researchers led by Associate Professor Sophie Dove from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at The University of Queensland (Coral CoE at UQ) investigated the ability of coral reef ecosystems to retain deposits of calcium carbonate under current projections of warming and ocean acidification.

Calcium carbonate is what skeletons are made of--and it dissolves under hot, acidic conditions. Marine animals that need calcium carbonate for their skeletons or shells are called 'calcifiers'. Hard corals have skeletons, which is what gives reefs much of their three-dimensional (3D) structure. It's this structure that helps protect coasts--and those living on the coasts--from the brunt of waves, floods and storms. Without coral reefs the coasts 'drown'.

A/Prof Dove says the amount of calcium carbonate within a coral reef ecosystem depends on the biomass of hard corals. But it also depends on the combined impact of warming and acidification on previously deposited calcium carbonate frameworks. She says the results of the study indicate the rate of erosion will overtake the rate of accretion on the majority of present-day reefs.

"Today's Great Barrier Reef has a 30% calcifier cover," A/Prof Dove said.

"If CO2 emissions aren't curbed, by the end-of-century a 50% calcifier cover is required to counter the physical erosion they face from storms and wave impacts," she said.

"In addition, more than 110% calcifier cover is needed to keep up with the minimal levels of sea-level rise."

However, A/Prof Dove says both of these scenarios are unlikely because high amounts of hard corals perish with intense underwater heatwaves. Previous studies show marine heatwaves will become chronic in the warmer months of an average year under unmitigated CO2 emissions.

The study was published in today's Communications Earth & Environment, just after the IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3 rated the Great Barrier Reef as 'critical'.

A/Prof Dove and her team built experimental reefs closely resembling those of shallow reef slopes at Heron Island on the southern Great Barrier Reef. For 18 months, they studied the effects of future climate scenarios on the ecosystem.

"What we saw was the insidious and accelerated loss of coastal protection under unmitigated CO2 emissions," said co-author Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, also from Coral CoE at UQ.

"Under current projections, reefs will not simply adapt. Chronic exposure to the combined impacts of ocean warming and acidification will weaken reefs. They won't be able to re-build after disturbances such as cyclones, nor will they keep up with sea-level rise--possibly for thousands of years," said co-author Dr Kristen Brown, also from Coral CoE at UQ.

This means many coastal areas currently protected by calcareous coral reefs will no longer be so, impacting coastal infrastructure and communities.

"The combined impact of warming with the acidification of our oceans will see more than the collapse of ecosystems," A/Prof Dove said.

###

PAPER

Dove S, Brown K, Van Den Heuvel A, Chai A, Hoegh-Guldberg O. (2020). 'Ocean warming and acidification uncouple calcification from calcifier biomass which accelerates coral reef decline'. Communications Earth & Environment. DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-00054-x

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Arctic Ocean: climate change is flooding the remote north with light – and new species

Carlos Duarte, Adjunct Professor of Marine Ecology, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Dorte Krause-Jensen, Professor, Marine Ecology, Aarhus University, Karen Filbee-Dexter, Research Fellow in Marine

At just over 14 million square kilometres, the Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans. It is also the coldest. An expansive raft of sea ice floats near its centre, expanding in the long, cold, dark winter, and contracting in the summer, as the Sun climbs higher in the sky

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© (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) 

A boat navigates at night next to large icebergs in eastern Greenland.

Every year, usually in September, the sea ice cover shrinks to its lowest level. The tally in 2020 was a meagre 3.74 million square kilometres, the second-smallest measurement in 42 years, and roughly half of what it was in 1980. Each year, as the climate warms, the Arctic is holding onto less and less ice.

The effects of global warming are being felt around the world, but nowhere on Earth are they as dramatic as they are in the Arctic. The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than any other place on Earth, ushering in far-reaching changes to the Arctic Ocean, its ecosystems and the 4 million people who live in the Arctic.

This story is part of Oceans 21

Five profiles open our series on the global ocean, delving into ancient Indian Ocean trade networks, Pacific plastic pollution, Arctic light and life, Atlantic fisheries and the Southern Ocean’s impact on global climate. All brought to you from The Conversation’s international network.

Some of them are unexpected. The warmer water is pulling some species further north, into higher latitudes. The thinner ice is carrying more people through the Arctic on cruise ships, cargo ships and research vessels. Ice and snow can almost entirely black out the water beneath it, but climate change is allowing more light to flood in.
Artificial light in the polar night

Light is very important in the Arctic. The algae which form the foundation of the Arctic Ocean’s food web convert sunlight into sugar and fat, feeding fish and, ultimately, whales, polar bears and humans.

At high latitudes in the Arctic during the depths of winter, the Sun stays below the horizon for 24 hours. This is called the polar night, and at the North Pole, the year is simply one day lasting six months, followed by one equally long night.

Researchers studying the effects of ice loss deployed moored observatories – anchored instruments with a buoy — in an Arctic fjord in the autumn of 2006, before the fjord froze. When sampling started in the spring of 2007, the moorings had been in place for almost six months, collecting data throughout the long and bitter polar night.

What they detected changed everything.

© Michael O. Snyder

 The polar night can last for weeks and even months in the high Arctic.
Life in the dark

At that time, scientists assumed the polar night was utterly uninteresting. A dead period in which life lies dormant and the ecosystem sinks into a dark and frigid standby mode. Not much was expected to come of these measurements, so researchers were surprised when the data showed that life doesn’t pause at all.

Arctic zooplankton — tiny microscopic animals that eat algae — take part in something called diel vertical migration beneath the ice and in the dead of the polar night. Sea creatures in all the oceans of the world do this, migrating to depth during the day to hide from potential predators in the dark, and surfacing at night to feed.

Organisms use light as a cue to do this, so they shouldn’t logically be able to during the polar night. We now understand the polar night to be a riot of ecological activity. The normal rhythms of daily life continue in the gloom. Clams open and close cyclically, seabirds hunt in almost total darkness, ghost shrimps and sea snails gather in kelp forests to reproduce, and deep-water species such as the helmet jellyfish surface when it’s dark enough to stay safe from predators.

For most of the organisms active during this period, the Moon, stars and aurora borealis likely give important cues that guide their behaviour, especially in parts of the Arctic not covered by sea ice. But as the Arctic climate warms and human activities in the region ramp up, these natural light sources will in many places be invisible, crowded out by much stronger artificial light.

© Muratart/Shutterstock 

The northern lights dance in the sky over Tromsø, Norway.

Artificial light

Almost a quarter of all land masses are exposed to scattered artificial light at night, as it’s reflected back to the ground from the atmosphere. Few truly dark places remain, and light from cities, coastlines, roads and ships is visible as far as outer space.

Even in sparsely populated areas of the Arctic, light pollution is noticeable. Shipping routes, oil and gas exploration and fisheries extend into the region as the sea ice retreats, drawing artificial light into the otherwise inky black polar night.

© Michael O. Snyder

Creatures which have adapted to the polar night over millions of years are now suddenly exposed to artificial light.

No organisms have had the opportunity to properly adapt to these changes – evolution works on a much longer timescale. Meanwhile, the harmonic movements of the Earth, Moon and Sun have provided reliable cues to Arctic animals for millennia. Many biological events, such as migration, foraging and breeding are highly attuned to their gentle predictability.

In a recent study carried out in the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, between mainland Norway and the north pole, the onboard lights of a research vessel were found to affect fish and zooplankton at least 200 metres down. Disturbed by the sudden intrusion of light, the creatures swirling beneath the surface reacted dramatically, with some swimming towards the beam, and others swimming violently away.

It’s difficult to predict the effect artificial light from ships newly navigating the ice-free Arctic will have on polar night ecosystems that have known darkness for longer than modern humans have existed. How the rapidly growing human presence in the Arctic will affect the ecosystem is concerning, but there are also unpleasant questions for researchers. If much of the information we’ve gathered about the Arctic came from scientists stationed on brightly lit boats, how “natural” is the state of the ecosystem we have reported?

© Michael O. Snyder 

Research in the Arctic could change considerably over the coming years to reduce light pollution.

Arctic marine science is about to enter a new era with autonomous and remotely operated platforms, capable of operating without any light, making measurements in complete darkness.

Underwater forests

As sea ice retreats from the shores of Greenland, Norway, North America and Russia, periods with open water are getting longer, and more light is reaching the sea floor. Suddenly, coastal ecosystems that have been hidden under ice for 200,000 years are seeing the light of day. This could be very good news for marine plants like kelp – large brown seaweeds that thrive in cold water with enough light and nutrients.

Anchored to the sea floor and floating with the tide and currents, some species of kelp can grow up to 50 metres (175 feet) – about the same height as Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London. But kelp are typically excluded from the highest latitudes because of the shade cast by sea ice and its scouring effect on the seabed.

© Ignacio Garrido/

Arctic Kelp Badderlocks, or winged kelp, off the coast of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic.

These lush underwater forests are set to grow and thrive as sea ice shrinks. Kelp are not a new arrival to the Arctic though. They were once part of the traditional Greenlandic diet, and polar researchers and explorers observed them along northern coasts more than a century ago.

Some species of kelp may have colonised Arctic coasts after the last ice age, or spread out from small pockets where they’d held on. But most kelp forests in the Arctic are smaller and more restricted to patches in deeper waters, compared to the vast swathes of seaweed that line coasts like California’s in the US.\

© Ignacio Garrido/

Arctic Kelp The polar night can last for weeks and even months in the high Arctic.

Recent evidence from Norway and Greenland shows kelp forests are already expanding and increasing their ranges poleward, and these ocean plants are expected to get bigger and grow faster as the Arctic warms, creating more nooks for species to live in and around. The full extent of Arctic kelp forests remains largely unseen and uncharted, but modelling can help determine how much they have shifted and grown in the Arctic since the 1950s.

© Filbee-Dexter et al. (2018) Known locations of kelp forests and global trends in predicted average summer surface temperature increase over next two decades, according to IPCC models.

A new carbon sink

Although large seaweeds come in all shapes and sizes, many are remarkably similar to trees, with long, trunk-like but flexible bodies called stipes. The kelp forest canopy is filled with the flat blades like leaves, while holdfasts act like roots by anchoring the seaweed to rocks below.

Some types of Arctic kelp can grow over ten metres and form large and complex canopies suspended in the water column, with a shaded and protected understorey. Much like forests on land, these marine forests provide habitats, nursery areas and feeding grounds for many animals and fish, including cod, pollack, crabs, lobsters and sea urchins.

© Ignacio Garrido/ArcticKelp 

Kelp forests offer lots of nooks and crannies and surfaces to settle on, making them rich in wildlife.

Kelp are fast growers, storing carbon in their leathery tissue as they do. So what does their expansion in the Arctic mean for the global climate? Like restoring forests on land, growing underwater kelp forests can help to slow climate change by diverting carbon from the atmosphere.

Better yet, some kelp material breaks off and is swept out of shallow coastal waters and into the deep ocean where it’s effectively removed from the Earth’s carbon cycle. Expanding kelp forests along the Earth’s extensive Arctic coasts could become a growing carbon sink that captures the CO₂ humans emit and locks it away in the deep sea.

What’s happening with kelp in the Arctic is fairly unique – these ocean forests are embattled in most other parts of the world. Overall, the global extent of kelp forests is on a downward trend because of ocean heatwaves, pollution, warming temperatures, and outbreaks of grazers like sea urchins.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not all good news. Encroaching kelp forests could push out unique wildlife in the high Arctic. Algae living under the ice will have nowhere to go, and could disappear altogether. More temperate kelp species may replace endemic Arctic kelps such as Laminaria solidungula. 

© Ignacio Garrido/ArcticKelp 

A crab finds refuge on Laminaria solidungula

But kelp are just one set of species among many pushing further and deeper into the region as the ice melts.

Arctic invasions

Milne Inlet, on north Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, sees more marine traffic than any other port in Arctic Canada. Most days during the open-water period, 300-metre-long ships leave the port laden with iron ore from the nearby Mary River Mine. Between 71 and 82 ships pass through the area annually, most heading to — or coming from ports in northern Europe.

Cruise ships, coast guard vessels, pleasure yachts, research icebreakers, cargo supply ships and rigid inflatable boats full of tourists also glide through the area. Unprecedented warming and declining sea ice has attracted new industries and other activities to the Arctic. Communities like Pond Inlet have seen marine traffic triple in the past two decades.

© Kimberly Howland 

Passengers from a cruise ship arrive in Pond Inlet, Nunavut.

These ships come to the Arctic from all over the world, carrying a host of aquatic hitchhikers picked up in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Dunkirk and elsewhere. These species — some too small to see with the naked eye — are hidden in the ballast water pumped into on-board tanks to stabilise the ship. They also stick to the hull and other outer surfaces, called “biofouling.”

Some survive the voyage to the Arctic and are released into the environment when the ballast water is discharged and cargo loaded. Those that maintain their hold on the outer surface may release eggs, sperm or larvae.

Many of these organisms are innocuous, but some may be invasive newcomers that can cause harm. Research in Canada and Norway has already shown non-native invasive species like bay and acorn barnacles can survive ship transits to the Arctic. This raises a risk for Arctic ecosystems given that invasive species are one of the top causes for extinctions worldwide.

Expanded routes

Concern about invasive species extends far beyond the community of Pond Inlet. Around 4 million people live in the Arctic, many of them along the coasts that provide nutrients and critical habitat for a wide array of animals, from Arctic char and ringed seals to polar bear, bowhead whales and millions of migratory birds.

As waters warm, the shipping season is becoming longer, and new routes, like the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route (along Russia’s Arctic coast), are opening up. Some researchers expect a trans-Arctic route across the North Pole might be navigable by mid-century. The increased ship traffic magnifies the numbers and kinds of organisms transported into Arctic waters, and the progressively more hospitable conditions improve their odds of survival.

Prevention is the number one way to keep invasive species out of the Arctic. Most ships must treat their ballast water, using chemicals or other processes, and/or exchange it to limit the movement of harmful organisms to new locations. Guidelines also recommend ships use special coatings on the hulls and clean them regularly to prevent biofouling. But these prevention measures are not always reliable, and their efficacy in colder environments is poorly understood.

The next best approach is to detect invaders as soon as possible once they arrive, to improve chances for eradication or suppression. But early detection requires widespread monitoring, which can be challenging in the Arctic. Keeping an eye out for the arrival of a new species can be akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, but northern communities may offer a solution.

Researchers in Norway, Alaska and Canada have found a way to make that search easier by singling out species that have caused harm elsewhere and that could endure Arctic environmental conditions. Nearly two dozen potential invaders show a high chance for taking hold in Arctic Canada

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© Shutterstock The red king crab was intentionally introduced to the Barents Sea in the 1960s, but is now spreading south along the Norwegian coast.

Among these is the cold-adapted red king crab, native to the Sea of Japan, Bering Sea and North Pacific. It was intentionally introduced to the Barents Sea in the 1960s to establish a fishery and is now spreading south along the Norwegian coast and in the White Sea. It is a large, voracious predator implicated in substantial declines of harvested shellfish, sea urchins and other larger, slow moving bottom species, with a high likelihood of surviving transport in ballast water.

Another is the common periwinkle, which ruthlessly grazes on lush aquatic plants in shoreline habitats, leaving behind bare or encrusted rock. It has also introduced a parasite on the east coast of North America that causes black spot disease in fishes, which stresses adult fishes and makes them unpalatable, kills juveniles and causes intestinal damage to birds and mammals that eat them.

Tracking genetic remnants

New species like these could affect the fish and mammals people hunt and eat, if they were to arrive in Pond Inlet. After just a few years of shipping, a handful of possibly non-native species have already been discovered, including the invasive red-gilled mudworm (Marenzellaria viridis), and a potentially invasive tube dwelling amphipod. Both are known to reach high densities, alter the characteristics of the seafloor sediment and compete with native species

© Kimberly Howland A cargo ship passes through Milne Inlet, Nunavut.

Baffinland, the company that runs the Mary River Mine, is seeking to double its annual output of iron ore. If the expansion proceeds, up to 176 ore carriers will pass through Milne Inlet during the open-water season.

Although the future of Arctic shipping remains uncertain, it’s an upward trend that needs to be watched. In Canada, researchers are working with Indigenous partners in communities with high shipping activity — including Churchill, Manitoba; Pond Inlet and Iqaluit in Nunavut; Salluit, Quebec and Nain, Newfoundland — to establish an invasive species monitoring network. One of the approaches includes collecting water and testing it for genetic remnants shed from scales, faeces, sperm and other biological material.

© Christopher Mckindsey

 Members of the 2019 field team from Pond Inlet and Salluit filter eDNA from water samples collected from Milne Inlet.

This environmental DNA (eDNA) is easy to collect and can help detect organisms that might otherwise be difficult to capture or are in low abundance. The technique has also improved baseline knowledge of coastal biodiversity in other areas of high shipping, a fundamental step in detecting future change.

Some non-native species have already been detected in the Port of Churchill using eDNA surveillance and other sampling methods, including jellyfish, rainbow smelt and an invasive copepod species.

Efforts are underway to expand the network across the Arctic as part of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Invasive Alien Species Strategy to reduce the spread of invasive species.

The Arctic is often called the frontline of the climate crisis, and because of its rapid rate of warming, the region is beset by invasions of all kinds, from new species to new shipping routes. These forces could entirely remake the ocean basin within the lifetimes of people alive today, from frozen, star-lit vistas, populated by unique communities of highly adapted organisms, to something quite different.

The Arctic is changing faster than scientists can document, yet there will be opportunities, such as growing carbon sinks, that could benefit the wildlife and people who live there. Not all changes to our warming world will be wholly negative. In the Arctic, as elsewhere, there are winners and losers.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jørgen Berge receives funding from the Norwegian Research Council (300333).

Carlos Duarte receives funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Independent Research Fund of Denmark.

Dorte Krause-Jensen receives funding from various governmental research funds, such as the Independent Research Fund, Denmark, and private research funds, including the Velux Foundations.

Karen Filbee-Dexter receives funding from ArcticNet, the Norwegian Blue Forest Network, the Australian Research Council, and the Norwegian Research Council (BlueConnect).

Kimberly Howland receives funding from Fisheries and Ocean Canada; Natural Resources Canada and Polar Knowledge Canada.

Philippe Archambault receives funding from ArcticNet.