Kelly: Good evening everyone.
We're pleased to have you join us
for our annual Seaside Chats Speaker Series
about ocean topics associated with
Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary
and the Gulf of Mexico.
We're also part of the National Marine Sanctuary
Webinar Series and the NOAA Science Seminar Series.
During the presentation,
all attendees will be in listen-only mode.
You're welcome to type questions for the presenter
into the questions box at the bottom of the control panel
on the right-hand side of your screen.
You may also let us know about
any technical issues you are having,
we'll be monitoring incoming questions and technical issues,
and we'll respond to them as soon as we can.
In addition,
we encourage you to close all other programs
you may have open on your computer
or any non-webinar tabs on your internet browser.
The reason for this is our speaker
will be sharing several video clips this evening,
and they are based on old, high eight video
from many years ago and they may have some difficulty
coming across the internet.
So the more you can close down
before we get to those parts of the presentation,
the better chance of better quality for those videos.
We are also recording this session
and we'll post the recording
to the National Marine Sanctuaries
and Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary websites.
We'll notify registered participants via email
when these recordings are available.
And for those of you who are interested,
we have a document of links to additional resources
on today's topic in the Handout pane of the control panel,
simply click on this item to download it.
Hello everyone, my name is Kelly Drinnen
and I'm the Education/Outreach Specialist
for Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
I'll be facilitating today's webinar from Dickinson, Texas.
Also with me today is Kelly O'Connell,
another staff member who will be helping me
with the backend administration of this webinar.
In 1972, the United States ushered in
a new era of ocean conservation
by creating the National Marine Sanctuary System.
Since then, we've grown into a nationwide network
of 15 national marine sanctuaries
and two marine national monuments,
that in total conserve more than 620,000 square miles
of spectacular ocean and Great Lakes waters.
That's an area nearly the size of Alaska.
And these marine protected areas are like national parks,
they're just simply underwater.
The National Marine Sanctuaries Act
gives NOAA the authority to designate special areas
of the marine environment as National Marine Sanctuaries.
It also mandates that the
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
conduct research, monitoring, resource protection,
education, outreach, and management
of America's underwater treasures
to preserve them for future generations.
In addition to being places for recreation and research,
national marine sanctuaries are also living classrooms.
This is where people can see, touch, and learn
about the nation's great lakes and ocean treasures.
This webinar series is just one part
of that national education and outreach effort.
The Seaside Chats series is hosted
by Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary,
the only marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico.
This sanctuary consists of 17 banks,
or small underwater mountains, that are home
to some of the healthiest coral reefs in the world,
amazing algal sponge communities,
and deep reef habitats
featuring an abundance of black coral and gorgonians.
We invite you to learn more about us
by visiting the sanctuary website at flowergarden.noaa.gov.
Today's presentation focuses on exploration
in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico
before the Flower Garden Banks ever became a sanctuary.
For three decades between 1960 and 1990,
researchers explored the reefs and fishing banks
off Texas and Louisiana using scuba tanks and submarines.
They even contemplated installing an underwater habitat
that would allow them to live and work underwater
for extended periods of time.
All this was done largely to satisfy their curiosity,
but also to protect and conserve.
And then, in 1992, we established a sanctuary.
Join us for a trek down memory lane with Tom Bright,
the person of interest in this photograph,
and the person considered to be the Father
of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
Dr. Thomas J. Bright retired in 1994
from his position as professor of oceanography
with Texas A&M University,
where, as a biological oceanographer,
he specialized in coral reef ecology.
He has performed reef studies in Florida, The Bahamas,
Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Arabian Gulf,
and has visited Red Sea and Pacific Reefs.
During his 25 year tenure at Texas A&M,
Dr. Bright supervised the research
of more than 20 graduate students
and produced over 50 scientific papers,
25 research project reports,
and 15 professional meeting abstracts.
In 1974, he edited a book
on the biota of the Flower Garden Bank Reefs
in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico
and is co-author of a 1985 book
describing the biology, geology, and hydrography
of regional hard banks and coral reefs.
In addition to qualitative survey methods,
he utilized quantitative non-destructive sampling techniques
involving underwater photography,
high resolution underwater video,
direct counts and measurements, and passive acoustics
to assess coral populations, growth rates, reproduction,
recruitment, diseases, mortality, and recovery.
Laboratory analyses were accomplished
by computer imagery of photographic and video data
and appropriate statistical applications.
In pursuit of these efforts,
he has employed scientific diving techniques,
participated in three missions
in manned underwater habitats,
and been an observer or pilot
on several research submarines.
Dr. Bright was a certified research
submersible pilot for the Diaphus
and holds certificates of training and participation
in the NOAA aquanaut program, including rebreather training.
In the 1950s, he served as an engine man
on the US Navy submarine Trumpetfish based at Key West,
which is where he first dove on coral reefs.
After retirement from Texas A&M,
he and his wife, Cindy,
sailed to the Western Caribbean in their ketch, Tempest,
and for a time, managed a marine research station
for the Wildlife Conservation Society
at Glover's Reef, Belize.
Welcome, Tom.
Tom: Well, hi.
So what else is there to say? I think you've given it all.
(Kelly laughs)
-: All right- (Tom speaks indistinctly)
Lemme hand over control.
Tom: Hang on. Show my screen.
-: Yes.
Tom: All right, okay. (Tom laughs)
Here we are.
-: We're not seeing the right screen yet.
We're seeing your desktop.
Tom: Okay, all right.
Lemme try that.
How's that?
-: Nope, still seeing your desktop.
Tom: Hmm.
Um, webcam.
-: I see you now.
-: Yeah?
-: Yep.
But we're not seeing your show, your program.
Try restarting,
try restarting your PowerPoint.
-: All right, hang on.
You don't see anything there, huh?
-: Nope.
-: You can see it on my computer,
but we're not seeing it on your computer.
-: Okay, go up to the sharing bar on the control panel
and where it says Show Screen,
there's a little drop down there.
Maybe you just need to choose
which screen you're showing us?
-: Main screen, screen two.
-: Yeah, pick which one it has...
Can you tell which one your presentation's on?
It should light up the one that...
When you hover over it,
it should light up which screen you wanna show.
-: Main screen?
My screen?
Main screen.
Well- -: Nope.
-: Beats me.
-: All right,
try closing your PowerPoint and then reopening it.
-: All right.
-: These things happen.
-: Yeah, they do.
-: We were fully prepared and then...
Oh wait, everybody else is telling me,
other people are telling me they saw your screen.
Okay, hold on.
-: Hmm.
-: Cynthia Palmer, could you let me know,
do you still see his screen?
-: It should be, say, "Exploring A Future Sanctuary."
-: They're seeing your mountains.
You're seeing screensaver.
-: Geez.
All right.
Screen two.
-: Is your PowerPoint open again?
-: I haven't got around to closing it again.
-: Oh, okay. -: So hang on.
-: All right, I'm gonna...
Hold on, I'm gonna take control back for a moment
and then I'm gonna pass it back to you
and see if that works.
Sometimes it just takes a little switching around.
Did you get the popup that says Show My Screen?
-: (indistinct) screen.
-: Okay.
All right, now we just need you to
put it into Slideshow Mode.
All right, perfect.
You're set. -: How about that?
Well, amazing. (laughs)
You know, when I retired, I did not have internet,
nor did I have a cell phone.
And then I sailed away and it took us a while to catch up.
So, this is not surprising. (Kelly laughs)
Anyway, all right, let's get going.
You're seeing my little introductory thing here.
Now, what I think I need to do
is to tell you about the two projects
that we got started with at the Flower Gardens.
And we weren't the first ones.
All right, there we go.
These pictures are from a 1963 publication
by Dr. Thomas Pulley of the Houston Natural History Museum.
And I think they're the first pictures
that were published from the Flower Gardens.
And these came out in a publication
that he did called Texas to the Tropics.
And he made trips out to the Flower Gardens
throughout the 1960s with sport divers
and made collections for his museum and so on.
And I think you can probably still see 'em at the museum.
Any rate, he was the first one to actually confirm
that there were viable tropical Atlantic coral reefs
at the Flower Gardens.
Okay, I'm finally figuring out how this thing works.
Now, the next step was in 1971,
a fellow graduate student of mine.
Well, by that time I had my PhD
and he was still a graduate student, Serpel Edwards,
under the direction of Dr. Richard Rezak, Dick Rezak,
who later became my partner in one of these big studies,
produced a dissertation called
Geology of the West Flower Garden Bank.
He described the geological facies, the structure,
the basic carbonate biology, corals,
and calcium carbonate producing organisms
like calcareous algae.
And he and I were friends
and I think he's the one that got me interested
in the Flower Gardens to begin with.
So we got interested in the Flower Gardens and...
Okay, this is one of those videos.
This is one of the first trips
we ever made out there as a bunch of biologists.
In 1970 we made a trip out to the Flower Gardens
on the research vessel Orca operated by Texas A&M.
And we had these scooters that were really neat,
you just zip around the reef,
check things out, it was quite fun.
Manta rays were there, at the time, they were
coming in there, I'm sure, for centuries, millennia.
And the work we were doing then was interesting.
John Irving with the engineering department
had some racks that he put out to test corrosion
and deterioration of various kinds of materials.
This is Dr. Tom Bright, a young professor,
He's trying to listen to fish underwater,
not very successfully
because of the noise of the ship and everything.
Also dipped up a lot of sargassum.
We were collecting organisms for a project
that desired to analyze the tissues
of some of these creatures
for heavy metals and contaminants,
pesticides and such.
This was about the time the world was starting
to recognize that we need to pay attention
to the environment.
This a slipper lobster we captured,
we were all so interested in finding out what was there.
Another part of that study that related
to the environmental concerns was Dan Taylor here,
taking livers out of fish to analyze for heavy metals,
particularly mercury.
And he also speared a bunch of fish to do the same thing.
And the only reason he was spearing them
was to take them as samples.
Okay, about that time I met up with these guys,
Denny Bowman, in the beard, and Bob Alderdice,
they're with University of Texas Marine Biomedical Institute
down in Galveston.
And they had this organization that Bob had started up
called the Flower Garden Ocean Research Center, FGORC.
And he had big plans for FGORC.
They wanted to put a research platform
right on top of the reef.
And he envisioned using ships and submersibles
and ROVs, remotely operated vehicles,
and particularly desired to put a manned underwater habitat
down so researchers could research the reef,
diving on some of the deeper parts.
And it turns out that his project
got sort of nicknamed the Texas Tektite.
And Texas Tektite because the habitat
that he wanted to put down at the Flower Gardens
was the Tektite II underwater manned habitat,
which was at that time in the US Virgin Islands
sponsored by NOAA and NASA
and hosting missions by researchers
who came in and got trained
and went out to research, do their research on the reefs.
And so they were tuned into underwater habitats.
And coincidentally,
Bill Schroeder, one of the graduate students, and I
had landed a 1970 project in the Tektite habitat.
And so we went down to the Virgin Islands
and we were studying fish sounds underwater.
And here's a video that,
well, it was a movie we took and I turned it into a video
sort of describing what the system was and how it worked.
NOAA Scientists in the Sea Program,
Tektite II in the US Virgin Islands
sponsored by NOAA and NASA.
Tom Bright and Bill Schroeder
had a mission to study fish sounds.
Job side support includes decompression chambers
and diving bells.
We took rebreather training using silent rebreathers
because we were studying sounds.
This is the Tektite from the top
and then you swim in the bottom.
We get supplied from the surface by pressure cooker.
Bill Schroeder was the cook,
he put stuff in and warmed it up,
things got really hot down there.
comfortable
Chuck kept us alive,
he's putting baralyme into the scrubber.
Baralyme absorbs CO2 and that takes it outta the air,
and at the same time, oxygen is bled in as we breath it out.
And the rebreather works about the same way,
but at a smaller scale.
Rebreathers are quiet, they don't put out any bubbles.
Reefs are noisy so we put hydrophones
in cracks and crevices where the fish were
and recorded them.
Note the sign, "In case of fire, break glass."
(fish swishing water)
Well, after that, FGORC,
Bob Alderdice, gave me 5,000 bucks
to recruit a bunch of graduate students
to go out with 'im and try to figure out
what organisms occupied the reef
and how they were distributed in it.
And this is the group, fine group.
They all went on to careers in various different pursuits
in academia, government, and even the oil industry.
But we used this vessel, the Miss Freeport, mostly.
Bob rented the Miss Freeport.
But we used several different kinds of vessels,
including the Orca that A&M operated.
Went to sea with decompression chambers,
compressors, scuba tanks, zodiacs, and so on.
This is Ken Yoakum and Bob Alderdice's secretary
trying to talk over a running compressor.
We also had opportunity to use the Nekton Gamma submersible
to track across the reef and bank,
but for the most part,
the work was done by graduate students in scuba gear.
We made about 17 cruises with FGORC
and we did all sorts of observations, primarily sampling,
but also the photographic measurements and so on.
And got our systems started.
Finally, we published the results in a book
called Biota of the West Flower Garden Bank,
which had about 360 species of creatures
that we discovered and described.
And it also included a description of the zonation
and the community structure and so on.
So that was pretty much the end of that study,
but it wasn't the end of the studies that we did.
There are, as I said,
about 31 of these fishing banks
on the outer continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico.
And half of them are, or more than half of 'em
are now included in the sanctuary.
But up until just a couple of years ago,
there were only two or three banks in the sanctuary,
but it expanded.
But most of these banks,
particularly the ones off of Northern Texas and Louisiana,
are associated with salt domes.
And salt domes are frequently associated
with stratographic traps for oil and gas.
So the petroleum industry was quite interested.
And if you know anything about the northwestern Gulf,
it has a higher concentration
of offshore production platforms
than anywhere else on the planet.
But the continental shelf is,
I guess, property of the United States government.
And the US Bureau of Land Management,
Outer Continental Shelf Office in New Orleans, at that time,
had responsibility for managing
the resources on the continental shelf.
And of course the petroleum is a resource.
So they divided the shelf up
into a several hundred lease blocks
that were to be leased to the oil and gas industry
for development.
All of the 31 banks that I just described earlier
were in these lease blocks, one way or another.
So the other thing that they were responsible for
was considering the impact of offshore development
on sensitive biotic communities or other resources.
And so what the Outer Continental Shelf Office did
was issue a request for proposals
to study all of these fishing banks,
their structure, their geology, their hydrography,
and their biology, importantly.
And it was gonna be a pretty big contract.
And of course, FGORC, that I described earlier,
was sort of in the catbird seat to get the contract
because they'd been on it with us.
And they went for it, but before the contract was awarded,
something went haywire in the Marine Biomedical Institute,
some kind of disagreement, I actually don't know what,
but Bob Alderdice resigned.
And when he resigned, FGORC dissolved.
So, FGORC did not get the contract,
nor did they ever proceed to build a research platform
on the reefs or anything else they had aspired to do.
But with them out of the picture,
Texas A&M Oceanography department and our group
was sort of left as an alternative and we got the contract.
And I was the initial principal investigator,
but I'm not a geologist, I'm not a physical oceanographer.
So, I went out and enlisted Dick Rezak,
and we ultimately got Dave McGrail involved,
Dick being a geologist and McGrail being the hydrographer.
Well, this was around 1972, '73.
And at the same time, coincidentally,
the oceanography department had acquired
a brand new research vessel called the Gyre,
which you see up here in purple in the upper left.
Also, they acquired a two-man research submersible
called the Diaphus
and we fit that into the contract very nicely.
Our two-man research submersible, Diaphus,
operated by the Texas A&M University Oceanography
Department. It had a four foot wide acrylic dome in front
we could take videos and pictures
and make observations from.
It could go to 1200 feet, but we never took it past 600.
Pretty tight inside, room enough for two people,
but not much more.
Rather effective.
It allowed us to study the reefs and banks
in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico for about 10 years.
And how we did that,
we took the submarine down to the base of the bank,
down here in the lower right.
And then, we'd travel up the bank all the way to the crest,
and on the way we'd be taking photographs
and motion pictures and videos
and making observations, taking notes,
and recordings and such,
all to be incorporated in the reports
to the Outer Continental Shelf Office in New Orleans.
Basically, what we saw, of course, at the Flower Gardens,
which was the most complexly structured of all the banks,
the high diversity coral reefs at the crest,
from maybe 60 feet down to about 160.
From 160 down toward the edge of the bank,
there was a large platform covered with algal nodules,
pictured over here, the middle picture,
fish-sized nodules that are secreted by calcium carbonate
producing red algae, coralline algae.
And scattered among all those nodules
were big populations of sponges
and various other invertebrates and fish
and even some corals from up above.
So further down, around 225 feet,
we started seeing populations of antipatharians,
they're kind of feathery creatures
that are attached to the bottom,
they're related to black corals.
This was our antipatharian zone.
And going right on down to the base of the bank,
the very base, we got into drowned reefs.
The drowned reefs were kind of patch reefs
and apparently viable coral
or coralline algae reefs back in the days
when the sea level was much lower
and they were closer to the surface
and the Flower Gardens were islands.
So, we did these transects, several of 'em at all the banks,
each bank we did several transects
and we wrote it all up,
we drew these block diagrams for each of the banks.
And then, about after a decade or so doing this,
we summarized it all in this book,
Reefs and Banks of the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico.
Dick Rezak did the geology,
Dave McGrail did the hydrography, and I did the biology.
But the basic information that BLM wanted
was something that they could use
to create protective stipulations in these leases
that they were going to put up for sale
to the oil and gas industry.
And so, we came up with this environmental prioritization
scheme based on the structure of the bank,
the biotic communities and their distribution on the bank,
the positions of the banks
on the continental shelf and so on.
Of course, the most sensitive were the reefs,
the banks that bore the living coral reefs,
and also the banks that bore the algal sponge zones.
These were the basic reef building communities.
And the other types of banks in different positions
on the shelf exposed to different environmental conditions
were ranked at a different priority.
And the least sensitive that we considered
were the ones way far south that were low relief
and almost constantly exposed
to turbid water and sedimentation,
we considered them the least threatened
by any such activity.
But at any rate,
the BLM used that information to generate some regulations
and promulgated stipulations in these reefs.
The most important of which, I think,
were what were called the No Activity Zones.
Basically, all the banks had a zone of no activity,
which incorporated the bank itself.
And no oil wells, no activities,
no anchoring by the oil and gas industry,
and nothing to do with fishing and other sport diving
and all that stuff, just oil and gas.
And they also created buffer zones,
where they devised techniques
that were considered to be protective of the banks
and the communities on the banks.
For instance, near the East Flower Garden,
where ultimately a platform went in,
they had to shunt their cuttings down
into what was called a nepheloid layer,
which was a basically an almost permanent turbid layer,
hugging the bottom at the depths of over 200-300 feet.
And Dave McGrail had determined that
if it ever gets in that nepheloid layer,
it's not gonna get back up on the bank
and up on the reef building communities.
Anyway, they were happy
with those pieces of information
and all these regulations still exist,
they're still in the lease stipulations.
But so most of the work that we did though,
at the Flower Garden itself, was not done by submersible.
Although we did use submersibles
at the Flower Garden coral reefs,
most of the work was done
by graduate students in dive rigs.
Greg Boland here being one of the key guys
that did a tremendous amount of work for this project.
Some of the things that we did by diver
was establish photographic transects.
And this was back in the mid-seventies,
but we were able to make pretty accurate
photographic transects.
We didn't have digital cameras,
we had to bring the film back into the lab
and one of my students, Chris Combs, developed them all,
and then another student, Steve Viada,
stuck 'em all together
and they were able to recognize the species of the corals,
measure their living area
as compared to the non-living area,
and came up with a pretty darn good estimate
of the population levels and percent cover of the corals
throughout the reef back in those days.
And we did a ton of these transects in the process.
We cored some of the corals to look at accretionary growth.
And you can see here,
if you look at the centimeter scale down there
and compare it to the year marks up on top of the cores,
you can see about what they would,
their growth rates accretionly, upward, on a yearly basis.
We also established some repetitive stations
that we could come back to year after year
and look at encrusting growth.
The last thing was, with the cores, was accretionary growth,
encrusting growth was growing sideways
and we thought this was a good indication
of health of the coral heads and maybe of the reef.
Also considered the competition
between the different kinds of corals
that were growing adjacent to one another.
Corals compete with one another for space.
This is our pipe monster, we had a time lapse camera in it.
We could leave it overnight, we could leave it for hours,
we could leave it between cruises.
And we got some pretty cool little snips.
We also were able to do fish counts and so on using it,
but that was, you know, that's a little more complex.
But here's one of our little clips.
Montastraea cavernosa feeding at night.
Note the polyp in the upper left with the long tentacles,
he's sweeping around maybe being more efficient
and they're gonna close up here due to some disturbance,
but then come right back open.
Diadema, the black urchin.
Note that he's feeding on the algae and epifauna
in the space between the two colonies of living coral.
This, I think, cleans up that space
to allow for settlement and growth of corals.
There goes a slipper lobster.
Yeah, High Island A389,
it's a, Mobil put in a platform
a couple of miles southeast of the East Flower Gardens.
And they operated for quite a few years, it's gone now.
I think they cut it off at some depth below,
it's a diving attraction, I guess.
Anyway, but while it was there,
they, Mobil, allowed us to come aboard and do some work.
They flew us out in helicopters,
we went out on service vessels
and you can see in the picture on the bottom,
the basket that we stand up in,
put the life jackets on, put all our gear in it,
and then the guy with the crane
would've hoisted us up onto the platform,
it was pretty cool.
They gave us a place to sleep and fed us,
and we did a couple projects there.
One of 'em was,
we collected a bunch of coral eggs
during one of the mass spawning events
that Steve Gittings talked about a couple of weeks ago
and brought it aboard the platform
and we could look at the eggs under microscope
and watch 'em develop and so on.
And you can't do that on a rolling ship, it's impossible.
So the stable platform was a great place to do that.
I was able to take some of 'em home
or some of them back to the lab
and they settled out or a few of 'em settled out
and formed little spat, coral spat,
right in the sample bottle over a period of time.
This is the list of the students that were involved,
the graduate students involved
in that Topographic Features Study,
that's what the study was called,
Topographic Features Study.
And a lot of 'em are still around and still involved.
All of 'em made theses or dissertations
partially or totally based on observations
they made during this Topo Features Study
in pursuit of their advanced degrees.
A really great group of people
and without the graduate students,
none of these studies could happen.
They did the work.
Here's a couple of 'em,
fresh out of the water last century.
Jim Kendall,
I think now he's in his second go round as,
what do they call him?
Chief Manager of the Bureau of Offshore...
I don't know what it means, it's B-O-E-M.
It's what the BLM turned into
after it turned into Minerals Management Service.
Anyway, Jim's the boss in the Gulf of Mexico
and this is his second go round.
And in between, he was up in Alaska.
The other guy without the shirt, of course,
if you saw him a couple of weeks ago, Steve Gittings,
he's the Science Coordinator nationwide
for the entire National Marine Sanctuaries Program.
Here's a few more. (Tom laughs)
This is one of my favorite pictures, I had to show it.
There are graduate students there
and there's a professor there, taking a well deserved nap.
The guy with the fist is Rusty Putt,
the guy with the club is Ron Britton,
and the guy with the camera is Rob Abbott.
Nowadays, Rusty and Rob are both retired
after long, successful careers
as environmental advisors in the petroleum industry.
And they're still around.
Okay, I almost have time to finish up here.
Probably the most memorable experience
that I had during all of these studies was in 1976
when I was piloting one of the geology graduate students
across the reef, on a transect of the reef.
And in the process,
we drove up on this depression at the edge of the bank.
And you can see it here,
just to the left of our little inset
that has the submarine in it.
And the depression turned out to have a lake in it
that was about,
I would say a foot deep,
maybe a little more in the middle, of brine,
highly saline brine that has seeped out
of the bank into this depression,
run over into a canyon,
downhill through the canyon
as a mixing stream of brine and overlying seawater,
and then out onto the surrounding sand bottom.
And this was a pretty unique phenomenon for us at the time.
In fact, it's about the same time they discovered
some of the deeper brine seeps out
in 1700 and 2000 feet of water.
But this one's shallow, we could get to it,
and we visited it over and over in the next several years.
And this is sort of an overview
of the plan view of the thing,
we called it Gollum's Lake,
Gollum after this creature in the movies.
Anyway, and then Gollum's Canyon and so on.
But then we had some place names that (indistinct),
the overflow, right where it flowed out
and down into the canyon, into the stream,
and we had a corner pool where some of it collected.
And then there's some markers
like Chimney Rock, Boulder Two,
and then there's a place where the reef constricts
and the flow kind of gets funneled through there.
And then there's another marker rock
we call Cottonwick Rock.
And then there's a couple of old anchors
that have been there ever since we saw it first,
ever since 1976.
And here's a video of it.
This is a brine lake.
Brine, about five times saltier than normal seawater.
An ROV taking pictures landing in the brine
stirs it up into the normal seawater, it mixes,
and it's all refracting.
The shore line of the lake is occupied by sulfur bacteria.
And you can see here where the ROV
is creating an internal wave
at the interface of the brine and the seawater.
You can also see white flakes floating
at the surface of the brine,
those are sulfur flakes
produced by the sulfur bacteria at the shoreline.
(indistinct talking)
What happens is the sea water percolates down
through the coral reef (indistinct)
to the salt underlying it about 35 meters down,
(indistinct), then by gravity,
flows down and out from the sea.
You see the flakes falling down?
Those are chunks of the bacterium.
Bacteria are producing organic matter,
which is flowing down the stream
and reaching the biota of the rocky (indistinct),
the sediments in the stream.
About at this point, Chimney Rock,
there's a very high population of gnathostomulids,
small microscopic jaw worms.
They're tolerant to high brine and hydrogen sulfide,
but the other organisms that are typically in the sand,
aren't and they're more or less blocked out.
This is an example of the flow rate in 2013,
about the same as it was in 1976.
Now another group of organisms
that are pretty prevalent in this is nematodes.
In fact, over 20 nematodes species, new to science,
were found in this brine seep during our studies.
This is toward the bottom of the Gollum's Canyon stream,
where it flows out onto the surrounding sand bottom.
It was there in 1976.
(indistinct talking)
This anchor was there in '76 as well.
Okay, here's some photographs that I put together
to compare that '76 and '93
and I think I'm gonna have to leave it there.
I don't have time for the rest of it,
but if you're interested in talking more
about the brine seep, I'd be happy to.
Kelly: Well, thank you Tom.
Absolutely fascinating.
I love hearing the names of all these people
that we now have banks named after,
that are now part of the sanctuary.
I hope the rest of you are catching onto that too.
And right now,
we have about 10 minutes to take questions from Tom.
So if you do have questions,
please type them into the question box
in the Control Panel on the right-hand side of your screen
and we will prioritize those and share those with Tom.
Whatever we do not finish,
we will try to do our best to answer after the fact.
But no promises there. We'll do our best.
So Tom, the first question is from your former student,
Steve Gittings,
"Your descriptions of the banks in the set 1970s
still serve as the baseline for their characterization.
Was your ability to describe the environment
a natural talent
or is it something you learned in some way?"
-: A natural? Huh hmm. (Kelly laughs)
You know, I liked to do drawing in high school,
what they call it, mechanical drawing?
And in fact, my brother got a job with Grumman
as a mechanical artist,
a mechanical drawing artist as we started,
he ended up a really big wheel and now retired in Florida.
But I think maybe it runs in the family.
My mother did painting and my wife does painting,
but some of this may be genetic. (Tom laughs)
Anyway, I kind of think those diagrams that we drew
kind of hark back to a penchant
for mechanical drawing and such,
but at the same time they were a good tool
to use to convey the information
to somebody that probably didn't get it,
if it was all just words.
I dunno, Steve, I also learned a lot along the way.
It's a combination.
Kelly: Wonderful.
So somebody else is wondering,
"How long would some of those explorations take?"
I'm assuming that like, when you're in the ROVs and such,
about how long were you down for each trip?
-: Yeah, they would take up to three or four hours,
depending on what we wanted to do on a particular trip.
I think Greg Boland when he took the Johnson Sea Link
down into the brine seep, spent four hours on it.
Well, we spent the same amount of time in the Diaphus sub
and I would say typically anywhere from two to four hours
would be a good dive duration.
Kelly: Wow, that's a long time to be in a tin can.
(Kelly and Tom laugh)
All right, "Who wrote and presented the proposal
for a sanctuary here at the Flower Garden Banks?"
-: Hmm.
Who wrote it?
I don't know.
I think the original people who made the original proposal
was a Houston Underwater Club.
I think.
Now, one thing about the whole situation was,
I wasn't really tuned into all the politics
and so on going on.
We were just feeding information into the system.
And there's a guy writing a book about this, Alan Wilde,
and he covers all of this stuff.
So when he publishes the book,
you'll be able to read all about it.
But I do think it was the Houston Underwater Club
that got it all started.
Of course, that was not successful and we had to go again.
And then,
the sanctuary program asked me to head an evaluation panel
to identify and evaluate potential sites
in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jim Ray was on that.
And what we produced was a list of locations
and the Flower Gardens was at the top of it.
But that wasn't really a proposal,
it was just the work that we were charged to do.
Now, I'd rather refer you to Alan Wilde
as the expert to figure that out,
who wrote the next proposal.
We did contribute
to the environmental impact statement considerably.
That's all I have.
Kelly: I would think contribute
is an understatement, Tom.
But yes, Tom was critical in a lot of the information
that went into the environmental impact statement.
But yes, we are working with Alan Wilde
on a history book about the sanctuary.
So, hopefully you'll be hearing from us about that
within the next year or so.
All right,
I think we've got time for at least one more question,
maybe two.
Next question:
"Have you had a chance to come back
to compare the conditions of the reef
from the research done in the 1970s
to the current conditions now?"
-: You know who's doing that?
It's the sanctuary staff.
One of my dear friends
and very productive member of that staff
was Emma Hickerson.
She recently retired.
She has been replaced by an equally effective
and efficient individual, Michelle Johnston.
The sanctuary staff is doing all they can
to keep track of the population levels out there.
They produce periodic reports
on the status of the sanctuary, which are quite excellent.
And I'm not involved anymore.
When I retired, Cindy and I got on our sailboat
and sailed off to the Caribbean
and got involved in reefs down in Belize and so on,
it kinda took us on a different adventure.
But the sanctuary staff took it from where we left off
and they're carrying on as we speak.
They probably have a cruise scheduled out pretty soon.
So I think it's in good hands.
Kelly: Thank you, Tom.
I think we have it in good hands as well.
Folks, we do publish those reports to our website
at flowergarden.noaa.gov.
Look in the Science Reports section,
you can see what we do annually
for our long-term monitoring.
Right now that's East and West Flower Garden Bank
and Stetson Bank,
but with the addition of all these new banks
into the sanctuary,
we'll probably start doing the same kinds of things
at those areas sometime in the next few years.
Well Tom,
I think that's gonna wrap up what we have time for,
for questions.
Folks, if your question did not get answered,
it looks like we only have a few more
that we need to get to, so Tom, I may email those to you
and see if we can get some more responses
to send out to people after the fact.
Right now, I am going to switch back over to my screen
and we will wrap things up here.
My screen showing yet?
What's going on here?
Let's see.
Yes, you all are seeing my screen. Okay.
So everyone, thank you for attending
this Seaside Chats presentation
on Exploring A Future Sanctuary.
This is the third in a series of our four presentations
that we offered this month.
So please be sure to sign up
for the one more remaining presentation
next Wednesday, February 22nd.
We'll be hearing about the use of environmental DNA
to help us learn more about organisms in the deeper,
less explored part of our sanctuary,
parts that usually require submersibles,
the mesophotic zone.
So please join us
and Luke McCarton will be speaking about that next week.
And as I said,
depending on the number of questions remaining,
we will attempt to get those answered for you
after the webinar ends and then email out the responses.
If you would like to learn more on your own,
we have provided a document full of resource links
in the Handouts pane of the Control Panel.
And now would be an excellent time to download that,
if you haven't done so yet.
And as always, we welcome your feedback and questions.
You can submit input by replying to the follow up email
you'll receive after the webinar,
or by emailing us at flowergarden@noaa.gov.
Today's presentation has also been part
of the National Marine Sanctuary Webinar Series
and while Seaside Chats last just one month,
our National Webinar Series continues throughout the year
to provide you with educational and scientific expertise,
resources, and training
to support ocean and climate literacy.
Be sure to check the website for recordings of past webinars
and a schedule of what's to come.
And if you don't get it off the screen here,
that is also in the handout.
As a reminder,
we will share the recording of this webinar
via the National Marine Sanctuaries Webinar Series website
and the Flower Garden Banks
National Marine Sanctuary website.
Following this webinar,
attendees will receive a PDF copy
of a certificate of attendance
that provides documentation for one hour
of professional development for today's presentation.
This includes our Texas CPE provider number
for those of you who are Texas educators.
If you are an educator outside of Texas,
please use this certificate to help
get your hours approved in your district.
And if you require any additional information,
please contact me at flowergarden@noaa.gov.
There will also be a short evaluation
following today's presentation.
Please complete this survey
immediately after signing off the webinar.
It should only take about three minutes to complete
and we greatly appreciate any feedback
you are willing to share.
Thanks again to Tom Bright for a great presentation
about Exploring a Future Sanctuary.
And it was definitely a pleasure to have you this evening.
Tom, we had so many people online who you talked about,
we learned about the banks
that are named after these people,
it was just a wonderful time having you here.
Tom: Well, I appreciate it.
Make sure you check out the nematodes in the brine seep,
we all had worms named after us.
Kelly: Oh really?
Okay, that's new information.
Tom: Yeah, (laughs) I'll send you a list.
Kelly: Okay, and I can include that in-
Tom: Yeah, you need a worm named after you,
if wanna be a true biologist.
Kelly: Okay. (laughs)
And thanks to all of you out there
for taking the time to join us this evening.
This concludes today's webinar.