A recently discovered species of crab is one of the weirdest farmers you will ever meet. Kiwa puravida, a species of “Yeti crab,” lives near undersea methane vents and cultivates bacteria on its hairy arms and then eats it.
Andrew Thurber, a marine ecologist with Oregon State University, first discovered the crabs near Costa Rica in 2006. He and his colleagues’ research appeared recently in the journal PLoS One, in an article entitled “Dancing for Food in the Deep Sea: Bacterial Farming by a New Species of Yeti Crab.”
Nature reports that Thurber initially set out to research undersea methane and hydrogen sulfide seeps, and encountered the crabs waving their claws over the vents. The Yeti crabs, named for their unusual white arm covering, have claws that are covered in a bacteria that “derive energy from the inorganic gases of the seeps.” The crabs then use their “comb-like mouthparts” to eat the bacteria from their claws.
Thurber said in a press release, “We watched the crabs wave their claws back and forth in fluid from a methane seep, and rather than trying to capture bacteria, it appeared that they were providing food to the bacteria already growing on their claws.” He added, “There isn’t sufficient food that deep that is derived from the sun’s energy, so vent and seep animals harness chemical energy released from the seafloor.”
Scientific American reports Kiwa puravida is the second named species of Yeti crab after Kiwa hirsuta, which was discovered in 2005 near Easter Island.
Below, check out a video of the Yeti crabs in action.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — After Costa Rica’s Turrialba volcano awoke last year from more than a century of sleep, Jorge Andres Diaz reckoned it was a fine time for a picnic on the slopes of the 11,000-foot gas-spewing mountain.
His wife, Ana Gabriela Chaverri, thought the idea was a bit mad — but, then again, Diaz always likes to get what seems a little too close to the hot mouth of active volcanoes.
“In situ” volcano measurement — a hairy endeavor that involves sampling gases and particles right as they shoot out of a crater — is a life study for the Costa Rican physicist. The closer he gets to the volcano, he believes, the closer he comes to the data that can ultimately predict eruptions.
Material emitted from volcanoes hints at what’s going on down below, says Diaz. If hot magma is stirring underground, he says, that changes the composition of gas and ash flowing up above. Better understanding of the makeup of those signals would perfect prediction capabilities, helping authorities warn nearby residents when to evacuate and airlines when to reroute their planes.
Diaz’s wife may take solace in his latest strategy.
He has begun sending small, unmanned aircraft to hover over Turrialba, keeping him at a safer distance from the volcano, still fuming since its ash eruption in January last year.
The Vector Wing 100, Diaz’s 8-foot-by-5-foot aircraft, is a high-density foam wing that contains an advanced computer system that can be programmed to cruise the volcano, snap photos, take video in color or infrared, and collect data on the composition of the volcanic plume.
Coupling the in situ data collected by the Vector with analysis made by remote sensors and satellites in space, Diaz aims to map out a clearer picture of plume activity and composition. The study could greatly improve the way scientists predict which way volcano plumes will move, potentially saving lives and money.
In April 2010, the menacing cloud that spread from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull Volcano grounded some 100,000 flights across Europe. Airlines said that they lost over 1.3 billion euros (then $1.7 billion), according to The Economist.
“The Icelandic eruption demonstrated the lack of validation that they have on satellite information,” said Diaz, who believes that some of the flight cancellations might have been avoided with the right technology in place.
“The images showed part of the volcanic plume, but they were worried about what they could not see. What is the concentration of that plume? At what point does it fall below the detection limit of the instrument? The only way to know is by in situ measurement,” he added.
Diaz’s seeming obsession with on-the-ground data has roots in breakthrough research he conducted in 1998 at Kilauea, Hawaii.
It was common practice for investigators to bottle up gas samples and take them back to a laboratory to be examined, but ferrying samples around provided incomplete results, Diaz explains.
Helium, which could be a key indicator for predicting eruptions, is so light that it slips through the container seal before reaching the lab.
Diaz’s stroke of genius: bring the lab to the volcano.
He took the concept of the mass spectrometer — an instrument that measures the composition of samples and weighs up to 100 kg — and built a miniature, portable version. Bringing it to Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano to sample chemicals at the site, Diaz wowed volcanologists, won awards and even caught NASA’s eye.
After earning his PhD from the University of Minnesota, he took on post-doctoral work in 2000 with the Kennedy Space Center, using the device and his plume-savvy to detect hazardous gases at a spaceship launch site.
“There were very few ‘post-docs’ at NASA from this area of the world,” he said proudly during a recent interview at his lab at the University of Costa Rica.
Diaz was determined to bring his fine-tuned knowledge back to Costa Rica, home of hundreds of volcanoes, about a half-dozen of which are active.
He began studying his country’s volcanoes from above, first on the NASA WB-57 that flew about 12,000 feet over the mountain, and later on a smaller aircraft known as a Cessna that came within 5,000 feet.
But Diaz wanted to get closer.
When Turrialba erupted last year, dozens of nearby residents were evacuated.
Diaz put on a protective mask and went along with a team of researchers, including a NASA investigator, to monitor the activity near its vent.
“It was very dangerous, you could see the ground shaking,” Diaz said. “It’s like a jet engine, in terms of the noise you hear, and it’s just degassing from the magma. And you say, if that’s the amount of gas coming out, imagine how much magma is below that.”
“He’s very brave,” David Pieri, investigator of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said of his Costa Rican volcano research partner. “It comes with the territory of being a volcanologist. You want to get the data, and it’s always a calculated risk.”
At that point, Diaz knew the risk had grown very high. He wanted to continue to monitor the volcano but without having to set foot so close to a potentially damaging ash eruption, or worse. Pilots refused to fly him near the plumes, afraid of crossing through particles that could wreck their aircraft engines.
Diaz needed smaller, inexpensive aircraft — and a way to cut out the pilot.
He unveiled his robotic VW-100 in October and put the video of its test flight to the Top Gun theme “Danger Zone”:
The university purchased the UAV from Maryland Aerospace for $40,000. Now Diaz is working on a new model that would slash the price to $2,000.
That’s probably a good thing. Diaz has crashed his plane 20 times already, so destroying the current model would put a serious dent in his research budget.
At the very least, perhaps there’s some reassurance in knowing that no men will have been harmed during the study of that volcano.
Costa Rica is fulfilling its commitment to be friendly to the environment! Anyone who has visited the Central Valley knows how strong the wind can be and now Costa Rica has decided to harness that wind and turn it into energy.
Workers are constructing the first wind farm in the country’s Central Valley near Santa Ana, just south of San Jose. The project is expected to become operational in August 2012, according to CNFL, a subsidiary of ICE, and will produce enough electricity to power about 6,000 residences.
Meanwhile, Blue Power & Energy has signed a US$80 million financing agreement with Banco Internacional de Costa Rica (Bicsa) for completion of a wind energy project in Nicaragua. The farm will be able to generate 39.6 MW of clean energy, providing annual savings of $22 million, said Energy Minister Emilio Rapaccioli.
Travelling is not always for the faint hearted. I found this out the hard way during my four month trip around the world last year with my friend Rachel. What follows is the first of my honest, not-found-in-Lonely-Planet accounts of travelling, detailing all we experienced on a single day as we journeyed through Costa Rica, from a hostel in the capital, to a sea turtle-conservation project deep in the Caribbean jungle…
After an early start one morning, Rach and I found ourselves hanging out in the hostel kitchen, packing up a highly nutritious breakfast/brunch/lunch/general daily food-ration of Pringles and Mediterranean herb crackers, in order to fuel us as we cracked on with our day of intense travelling.
The first part of our journey was a coach to Sixaola, a small village on the East Coast of Costa Rica which would take six delightful hours. For the most part this drive was fairly pleasant, interspersed only with a small and gratuitously angry man demanding to see our tickets literally about once every 10 minutes, as if we could somehow have leapt off the bus and swapped places with a ticketless hooligan in between times.
As the journey wore on, we began to pass through some highly questionable living arrangements, otherwise referred to as ‘towns’. This sowed a seed of panic in my mind, as we had been told to get a taxi from Sixaola to the beach itself – a mode of transportation which appeared very much absent from the ramshackle, rustic scenery that whizzed by. When we eventually arrived in Sixaola, my fears were proved vaild. We alighted next to a highly suspicious looking Panama border, standing in a dusty dirt track surrounded by bags, and a cellophane-encased pillow that Rachel had for some reason insisted on buying. Seeing nothing vaguely resembling a taxi in the surrounding area, we decided the best thing to do in the circumstances would be to stand still and argue. Presently, a kindly man cruised over and asked if we were looking for a taxi. Despite every morsel of information I had ever read about taxi caution and safety, we gladly confirmed that a taxi was indeed exactly what we desperately wanted. He seemed to acknowledge this, but then just wandered off, leaving us alone and confused by the roadside.
What felt like an eternity later, he returned with some highly jovial individual driving a pick-up truck. As much as this seemed like a well-seasoned recipe for mugging/general advantage taking, we slung our bags in the back, and clambered into the sweltering cabin. A few minutes of stunted Spanish conversation followed, which consisted mainly of the driver continually yelping ‘vamos Gandoca!’
Happily trundling along the track over hearty potholes and string bridges, the heat from the sun slowly melting the plastic covering on Rachel’s pillow onto my leg, we spied a large family waiting outside a dilapidated house by the roadside, waving the truck over. After an indiscernible conversation between them and the driver, they proceeded to clamber into the back of the truck with our bags and settle themselves down. The rest of the journey to Gandoca was spent in a concerned manner, constantly checking out the old rear-view mirror for any signs of bag-rummaging or valuable-stealing. Once they were dropped off we only had to stop for a large Iguana sunning itself in the middle of the path, which had to be forcibly shooed away by the driver with an angry yell.
After about a thousand hours, we arrived at what looked like a beach, but could see literally nowhere that vaguely resembled a conservation centre. Tired, hungry and overheated, we aggressively asked the man why he had not taken us to the address provided. He insisted that he had. This argument went on for several fractious minutes, interrupted only by me threatening to ring the language school who had organised the trip, and then realising there was no signal available whatsoever, until he sighed, flopped his considerable bulk back into the cab, and drove us about five minutes further down the road to some kind of deserted bar. Presently, a portly man in a G-Unit t-shirt bowled out, and informed us that the station was but 50 metres from where we had just pulled up. We then found ourselves jolted suddenly backwards by our jovial driver reversing at high speed back down the path.
Once we had eventually located the station and been met by Christine, one of the staff members, we were given some more amazing news by her – ‘Er, we didn’t actually know you guys were coming… you can share a room with Abby?’ And lo and behold, we were shoved unceremoniously into what can only be described as two bunk-shelves in the corner of someone else’s shed. After being left alone, we settled down on our bags, and wondered what on earth would become of us next.
After an angry and panicked conversation, Rach and I decided to make the best of a bad situation and headed cautiously over to dinner in the vain hope that we would not have to sit, surrounded by a fog of anxiety, on a lonely table. Dinner was rice and beans, something that would become pretty much the main feature of our lives as the days of turtle conservation passed by. Luckily, a sprightly young Dutch boy by the name of Elias decided to take pity on us at the dinner table and so our time was spent generally chatting to him and comparing English and Dutch culture.
Soon after this, Rach and I received our turtle-saving training and were then sent on our merry way to our first night patrol. Night patrol, a hellish ordeal disguised as a worthwhile, animal conservation exercise, comes in 4 hour shifts at either 8pm or 12 midnight. It consists of a group of volunteers/staff/locals ploughing up and down the beach in the wet, fly-infested sand mounds, until that hallowed moment when a turtle is spotted, flippering its cumbersome way up the beach to lay some eggs. I was put on patrol with our unwitting roommate Abby, and Jairo, one of the locals. After about a million silent years of trudging through silty textured sand dunes, Jairo spotted a tortuga. He instantly handed me a pair of latex gloves and a plastic bag and shoved me towards the nest with an encouraging grunt of ‘venga!’ At first, the task of bag-holder, watching as the turtle deposited her future offspring into my plastic sack, seemed like the most magical experience possible. However, as time wore by and the eggs kept coming thick and fast and my arms became less and less alive by the second, the awe was very much bleeding, slowly but surely, into intense pain. Only Jairo’s spindly weight leaning across me to grab the full bag caused me to snap back to reality from a pain-induced stupor, and soon we were back on the beach again.
By the time I returned, blistered, exhausted, aching and covered in sand at 4am, a nice clean bed was the only thing that could heal the pain. I then remembered that I had no such thing, and instead was forced to clamber in the dark under my shoddily erected mosquito net, on to a damp mattress that had become all the more uncomfortable due to the fact that the middle slat of the bed had fallen out, causing a dip in the mattress line for a delightful pile of sand to collect in. What tomorrow would bring, lord only knew.
The journey from my home in Hawaii to San José, Costa Rica, was fraught with the usual assortment of international travel woes – a delayed flight, a missing piece of luggage containing expensive diving equipment and a bit of a mix-up involving my ride from the airport.
None of those problems were insurmountable. And nearly 24 hours after leaving Honolulu, I was in a comfortable bed in the guest room of my friend Avi Klapfer, owner of the Undersea Hunter Group, a pre-eminent adventure dive operator based in Costa Rica that would be providing its DeepSee submersible and her mother ship, Argo, for a diving expedition to Cocos Island.
The expedition is part of One World One Ocean, a nonprofit media campaign initiated this year by MacGillivray Freeman Films, known for giant-screen educational offerings like “To Fly.” The idea is to harness the power of film, television and new media to jump-start a global movement to restore oceans to health.
The campaign will involve traveling to more than 40 locations and all five oceans over the next four years, using cutting-edge IMAX and 3-D digital film technologies to tell the most compelling ocean stories. My role is twofold: I’m both a scientific adviser to the project and an active participant in the expeditions, which will allow me to conduct my own research.
Although I wear many hats, I primarily consider myself an ichthyologist and a taxonomist. As an ichthyologist, my research is focused on fish — particularly coral-reef fish. As a taxonomist, my job is to discover and describe new species and study their evolutionary relationships as well as document their distributions — both geographically and in terms of specific habitats where each species is found. In essence, I am…read more
Costa Rica-based Undersea Hunter Group, one of the world’s preeminent adventure dive operators, is supplying its DeepSee submersible and her mothership Argo for the voyage, making two dives a day to depths of up to 1,800 feet. The subs will allow OWOO to provide its audiences with an unprecedented look into the biodiversity of Cocos Island.
Following a 36-hour trip from San Jose, Costa Rica to Cocos Island, the OWOO team successfully completed three days of diving. They are joined by filmmaker Howard Hall and ichthyologist Dr. Richard Pyle aka the “fish expert.”
Shaun MacGillivray, producer at MacGillivray Freeman Films and managing director of One World One Ocean, provided insight into the beauty of Cocos Island and the first day of diving at the Everest wall, a unique seamount teeming with marine life.
“Cocos Island feels and looks like the setting of Jurassic Park. Uninhabitable. Prehistoric. Natural. Lush. While the island itself is beautiful, its underwater world is even more stunning,” said MacGillivray. “As filmmakers, we’ve been amazed at the process of launching a sub, which is a mammoth structure weighing more than 15,000 pounds. It’s definitely given us a whole new appreciation for scientists who do this on a routine basis.”
Beyond the idealized capsule of the resorts, there lies a whole other side of Costa Rica as filmmaker Todd Bieber discovered when he and his girlfriend visited the Nosara Wildlife Rescue, a side not dressed up by the tourist industry but where those devoted to wildlife do their part to rescue animal victims of modernity.
Many of the monkeys in Bieber’s short film, Encounters with Orphan Monkeys, are left to fend for themselves when their mothers mistake the many uninsulated power lines in the country for natural features and die. Though many of the babies can’t be saved, they do what they can for those who survive.
There hasn’t been a serious eruption from Costa Rica’s Arenal Volcano since 1998, although a steady emission of steam is a constant reminder of its potential to erupt again.
For scientists from the University of Costa Rica, those emissions and other atmospheric markers can now be studied in detail, thanks to a low-cost unmanned aircraft.
The quadro-copter is programed to fly over volcano craters looking for signs of increased volcanic activity.
Researcher Javier Bonatti and electrical engineer Leandro Garcia developed the UAV.
Bonetti says it’s ideally suited to the needs and budget of developing nations like Costa Rica.
[Dr. Javier Bonatti, Cicanum Researcher]:
“Firstly, these investigations can be carried out using satellite images or photographs taken from aerial transported platforms but the costs are very high. This allows us to take a more detailed look of the phenomenon at a very low cost, which only includes the cost of the helicopter.”
The UAV’s four rotors provide stability as it gathers data with on board cameras, and equipment designed to detect the presence of gases such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
Any increase in gas levels detected after long-term monitoring, could indicate an imminent eruption, and give authorities more time than ever before, to warn nearby communities.
Leandro Garcia says the UAV has yet more potential.
[Leandro Garcia, Electrical Engineer]:
“We would also like to adapt temperature, acidity and humidity sensors to the helicopter because it has USB ports which allow us to connect these devices.”
Unmanned drones are becoming indespensible tools in many branches of environmental science.
Bonatti and Garcia say that in their particular branch, the UAV could be the difference between life and death for those living in the danger zone.
San José Costa Rica.The Experimental Station “Los Diamantes”, in Limon, will soon be declared to be the first Government owned farm to reach a net zero carbon footprint. Its main objective is to reproduce the model in other farmlands throughout the country.
“Los Diamantes is the best experimental station owned by the agricultural public sector, not only because of its extension, but also because of its own richness and biodiversity. That is why we are certain that it will be the first experimental station in the country to become and get certified as carbon neutral”, said Tania López, Vice-minister of Agriculture.
The centre has an extension of 890 hectares and is located in a transition area between the tropical wet forest, the tropical moist forest, and the tropical rainforest.
The farm also constitutes a valuable biodiversity reservoir, contributing to the region’s sustainability. Its resources include a wide variety of plants and animals (vertebrates and invertebrates); and germplasm banks, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
To declare Los Diamantes as carbon neutral, scientists will measure Greenhouse Gas (GHG), nitrous oxide, methane and carbon emissions per year.
“The station is a benchmark for environmental investigation, and education, as well as for scientific tourism, and other eco-systematic services in the country and around the world,” said José Rafael Corrales, Executive Director of the National Institute for Agricultural Technology Exchange (INTA).
Corrales also confirmed that the station’s environmental benefits will be promoted, through a communication strategy, in the surrounding areas, to raise awareness among people, organizations and institutions.
Scientists at Los Diamantes develop genetic improvement programs in papaya, guava, pejibaye and cas plantations. They also evaluate promising materials extracted from tropical roots, fruits, and banana; and study management practices in palmetto, fruits, and other tropical crops.
Other experimental stations, such as Los Diamantes, can be found in Cañas, Potrero Cerrado, Oreamuno, Cartago and in Quepos.
The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) pointed out that these types of developments reduce emissions and GHG, which damage the environment.
The University of Costa Rica (UCR) is currently promoting their own Institutional Program of Integrated Environmental Management (ProGAI) to be declared carbon neutral.
“It is an effort to prevent the consequences of the greenhouse effect,” said Jose Francisco Diestefan, biologist at UCR. “The University is aiming to have net zero carbon footprint very soon,” he added.
You’ll be following in Richard’s footsteps as you visit the Nectandra Institute, Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, Arenal Volcano National Park, and Tortuguero National Park. And you’ll do so with Costa Rica Expedition’s legendary master naturalist-guide, Carlos Gómez, and with Felipe Arias, the uncanny wildlife trackers featured in Richard’s PBS special.
Fourteen departures are scheduled for the coming year, beginning with Dec 17-25, 2011.
He instantly handed me a pair of latex gloves and a plastic bag and shoved me towards the nest with an encouraging grunt of ‘venga!’ At first, the task of bag-holder, watching as the turtle deposited her future offspring into my plastic sack, seemed like the most magical experience possible. However, as time wore by and the eggs kept coming thick and fast and my arms became less and less alive by the second, the awe was very much bleeding, slowly but surely, into intense pain. Only Jairo’s spindly weight leaning across me to grab the full bag caused me to snap back to reality from a pain-induced stupor, and soon we were back on the beach again.
The centre has an extension of 890 hectares and is located in a transition area between the tropical wet forest, the tropical moist forest, and the tropical rainforest.
