Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology

The Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) is widely recognized for its contributions to marine biological studies in coral reef ecology, conservation biology, molecular evolution, aquaculture, biogeochemistry, bioacoustics and marine animal behavior, and physiology. Built on an island surrounded by coral reefs and close to deep ocean water, HIMB scientists are able to examine estuarine and coastal/pelagic processes that are important for global societies in the face of climate change and sea level rise.

Hawai‘i Ocean Time-series: The 250th Expedition

In March 2013, the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) program completed its 250th research expedition to its open ocean field site. After nearly 25 years of near-monthly sampling, the HOT program measurements serve as an important barometer of global change, providing unprecedented views on changes to the subtropical North Pacific Ocean. This program has been supported by research grants from the National Science Foundation.

The video is the National Science Foundation’s Science 360 video of the day for 25 April 2013!

Click on the preview image or the title to view the video in a pop-up window (you may need to turn off pop-up blockers). Please visit our video page to see more SOEST videos.

HNEI energy research at Kawaikini School classroom

Students at Kawaikini New Century Public Charter School in Lihu‘e, Kaua‘i, have the unique opportunity to learn in new classrooms that are themselves research and learning platforms. Two 1,200-sq. foot, state-of-the-art structures created by California-based Project Frog, Inc have been installed at the school for energy research lead by the Hawai‘i Natural Energy Institute (HNEI), testing the effectiveness of innovative energy efficient buildings powered by renewable energy. “Kawaikini values hands-on experiences as well as academics in the Hawaiian language and cultural learning environments that we create here. This building is a living model of sustainable design.” said Kaleimakamae Ka‘auwai, Executive Director of the School.

Read more about it in the UH Mānoa News; see also the SOEST press release PDF. Image courtesy of Project Frog; click on it to see the full version.

Scientists survey diseased reefs off Kaua‘i

A coral disease continues to attack brown rice coral off the island of Kaua‘i’s northern coast. Commenting on recent work off Hanalei by a team lead by Bernardo Vargas-Angel, a NOAA coral ecologist, HIMB assistant researcher Greta Aeby said, “The disease levels have gotten much higher than they were. We were seeing two or three colonies on all of our transects and now you’re counting five, six, ten colonies.” Vargas-Angel noted that, “Because it’s a rapid tissue loss disease you can see it spreading.” His four-person team surveyed 36 sites and found the white coral disease in every site.

Read more about it and see the video at Hawaii News Now; see also the related archived new item from October 2012, Image courtesy of Terry Lilley; click on it to see the full version.

More Hurricanes for Hawai‘i?

Only two hurricanes have made landfall in Hawai‘i during the past three decades, but that is likely to change. A study by IPRC postdoctoral fellow Hiroyuki Murakami, Meteorology chair Bin Wang, and Akio Kitoh, director of the Climate Research Department at Japan’s Meteorological Research Institute (MRI-JMA), shows a two-to-threefold increase in tropical cyclones approaching Hawai‘i by the last quarter of this century. Even though fewer tropical cyclones will form in the eastern Pacific in this model, we can expect more of them to make their way to Hawai‘i. The study appears in the 05 May 2013 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

Read more about it and see the video at Hawaii News Now; read more about it in Science Daily, Discovery News, LiveScience, RedOrbit, Science 2.0, UPI.com, the Summit County Citizens Voice, and the Honolulu Civil Beat. Image courtesy of NASA.

Please visit SOEST in the News: 2013 for archived news articles, with links to previous years.

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