A 4-H youth development program changes perceptions, making students insiders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics Role models, often parents or other close family members, serve as crucial sources of inspiration for students engaged in making career choices in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), according to research studies. A big part of what Janice McDonnell is doing with a program known as Rutgers 4-H STEM Ambassadors is to connect students without a STEM role model in their families or communities with working scientists. McDonnell is an associate professor and Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Agent in the Department of 4-H Youth Development, at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS). She runs the program, funded by Bristol Myers Squibb, with Chad Ripberger, the county extension department head of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Mercer County. McDonnell discussed the importance of the STEM Ambassadors program. Full article at Rutgers News

This article was authored by Grace Saba, associate professor, and Josh Kohut, professor,  faculty in Rutgers University’s Center for Ocean Observing Leadership (RUCOOL) in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. From late April to late September, Rutgers researchers used underwater robots, called gliders, to track ocean water quality along the New Jersey coast. Through a series of glider deployments, water quality measures of oxygen concentrations and pH were mapped from surface to bottom along the New Jersey coast. From August through September, much of the bottom water sampled from Sandy Hook south to Tuckerton, and from nearshore (15 meter, or 50 feet, water depth) to deeper depths (60 meter, or 200 feet, water depth), exhibited dissolved oxygen concentrations less than 5 mg/liter and pH values less than 7.75. Coast-wide, hypoxic levels of dissolved oxygen (concentrations < 3 mg/liter) were observed at shallower, more inshore locations. In addition to low pH measured in bottom waters, which is indicative of ocean acidification, aragonite saturation state (a relevant metric for biological impacts of ocean acidification) was calculated to be < 1 in several locations. Normal, more optimal levels in seawater typically include dissolved oxygen concentrations > 7 mg/liter, pH of 8.1, and aragonite saturation states > 3. Saba and Kohut discuss the implications for their summer observations of low dissolved oxygen and pH off the coast of New Jersey, and offer some next steps in their research. Why are these values concerning? As is true for land animals, oxygen is essential to ocean animals. Dissolved oxygen concentrations at or below 5 mg/liter is considered problematic for marine life. Although concentrations between 3-5 mg/liter may not be low enough to directly cause death in many marine animals, research focused on New Jersey species has identified other negative impacts such as reduced metabolism, feeding, growth, and reproduction at these levels. Lower hypoxic concentrations of dissolved oxygen (< 3 mg/liter) have been directly associated with mortalities in some organisms in New Jersey and in other coastal regions around the world. Increased carbon dioxide in seawater leads to a series of chemical reactions that increases the acidity of the ocean (measured as a reduction in pH) and reduces carbonate ions that are vital to the production of shells and other protective structures of marine animals (made of calcium carbonate, such as aragonite). As such, aragonite saturation state is used as an indicator of ocean acidification because as the ocean absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, both pH and aragonite saturation state decrease, and can lead to reduced survival, calcification rates, growth, and reproduction in marine animals. When aragonite saturation state is less than 1, shells and other calcium carbonate structures begin to dissolve, but some organisms become susceptible at levels below 3. Any one stressor may not itself be an issue due to the resiliency of many coastal species to fluctuating natural environmental conditions. However, when more than one stressor occurs simultaneously, an organism may become unable to fully withstand changes. The impacts of multiple stressors occurring simultaneously on organism health is much less well known. The co-occurrence of low dissolved oxygen and pH may exacerbate negative responses in organisms, or increase their susceptibility to either or both oxygen and pH.   Left: Mission tracks of three gliders (ru28, ru39, ru40) deployed off the coast of New Jersey in August and September. Gliders ru39 and ru40 were deployed as a pair along the same mission track. All gliders had sensors measuring temperature and salinity. Gliders ru28 and ru40 each had an additional sensor measuring dissolved oxygen (no pH or aragonite saturation state), and glider ru39 had an additional sensor measuring pH (no dissolved oxygen). Right: Locations of hypoxic levels of dissolved oxygen (magenta; < 3 mg/liter) and low aragonite saturation state (cyan; < 1) measured along the glider mission tracks and locations of reported fish, lobster, and/or crab mortalities (red X).   Complete cross-sections of dissolved oxygen concentrations (left top and bottom), pH (right top), and aragonite saturation state (right bottom) measured along the mission tracks during the deployments of the three gliders (ru28, ru39, ru40) during August and September. Dissolved oxygen concentrations between 3-5 mg/liters are expressed as orange & yellow, and hypoxic concentrations < 3 mg/liter are expressed as red. pH values < 7.75 and aragonite saturation states < 1 are highlighted in cyan.   Reports of fish, lobster, and crab mortalities During the time when low dissolved oxygen and pH were observed, numerous mortalities of fish, lobsters and crabs within the sampling area were reported. The mortalities were observed in bottom waters primarily off the coast of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and included the Mud Hole, as far east as Lillian wreck, and southward in Sea Girt and Axel Carlson Reefs and the surrounding areas. Mortalities were reported for American lobsters, Jonah crab, Atlantic rock crab, spider crabs, black sea bass, and tautog were reported not only in pots where trapped organisms would not have been able to escape poor conditions, but also on the open bottom. This observation suggests that if low dissolved oxygen and/or pH were indeed the culprit for these reported mortalities, the area may have been extensive enough that they could not escape in time. Mortalities associated with low dissolved oxygen in New Jersey coastal waters or other locations is not new. The most extreme hypoxic event documented in the State occurred during the summer of 1976, whereby mass mortalities of marine organisms occurred over a 12,000 km2 area. More recently, numerous fish, lobster, and crab mortalities were associated with low dissolved oxygen in Cape Cod Bay in September 2019, and hypoxic conditions have been identified as the culprit of mortalities and changes in bottom water communities in the Gulf of Mexico’s notorious summer-time ‘Dead Zone’ since the beginning of annual observations that started in 1985. What causes low dissolved oxygen and pH in bottom water? A common seasonal phenomenon in New Jersey coastal shelf waters is strong summer stratification whereby cold water near the bottom is capped off by

For being selected as a 2024 NCAR Advance Studies Program Bridge program! In the month long program she’ll get to spend a week at NCAR exploring research collaborations and opportunities for the future!

The ocean has a way of upending expectations. Four-story-high rogue waves peak and collapse without warning. Light bends across the surface to conjure chimeric cities that hover at the horizon. And watery wastelands reveal themselves to be anything but. So was the case for the scientists aboard the USS Jasper in the summer of 1942. Bobbing in choppy seas off the coast of San Diego, California, acoustic physicist Carl F. Eyring and his colleagues, who had been tasked with studying a sonar device the navy could use to detect German submarines, were sending sound waves into the deep. But as the echoes of their tests came reverberating back, they revealed a puzzling phenomenon: everywhere the ship went, the sonar detected a mass nearly as solid as the seafloor, lurking about 300 meters or more below the surface. Even more mysterious, this false bottom seemed to shift over the course of the day. People had their theories—shoals? faulty equipment?—but apart from registering the anomaly, scientists let the mystery slide. (There was, after all, a war on.) It wasn’t until 1945, when oceanographer Martin Johnson dropped nets into the Pacific to take a closer look, that the culprit was definitively unmasked: a vast cloud of marine animals, most smaller than a human hand, that moved from the deep ocean to the surface and back every day. Since the 1940s, scientists have been unpicking the mysteries of this vertical migration and the creatures taking part in it. Until recently, research focused on zooplankton and other small organisms, neglecting their larger predators. But technological advances have made it possible to look up the food chain in that migrating cloud to examine the variously stealthy, strange, and slimy fish of the mesopelagic zone, the marine “twilight” area between roughly 200 and 1,000 meters deep, where the last rays of surface light penetrate before dissipating into the absolute dark of the sea below. And that research has started to reveal something as significant—and mysterious—as the migration’s first documentation by scientists: by moving carbon through the ocean, migrating fish in the twilight zone, which are thickly distributed enough to have once fooled a sonar, may also play an important role in stabilizing the climate. Researchers are now attempting to quantify how much carbon the fish in one of the planet’s most unexplored ecosystems are cycling from the ocean’s surface to the deep sea. The inaccessibility of these fish makes this work more challenging than conventional fisheries research, but there’s an urgency nonetheless: the same technological progress that makes it possible to study mesopelagic fish is also making it more enticing to harvest them, even as climate change threatens to reshape the ecosystem. Mesopelagic fish are not yet commercially exploited, though projects are underway to investigate the marketability of the species and the best methods for harvesting them. Scientists working in this area are, therefore, in the rare position of being able to assess potential impacts from fishing before they happen. But with so many unknowns, the question remains: can they do it in time—for the fishes’ sake and our own? Full article at Hakai Magazine

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — What does the future hold for food security through agriculture and marine technologies? New Jersey high school students will discover the answers as part of an innovative USDA-funded 4-H afterschool program that provides youth with immersive science learning through digital storytelling, made in trusting partnership with Rutgers scientists. Faculty and researchers from the departments of Plant Biology and Marine and Coastal Science (DMCS) at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS) and the Department of 4-H Youth Development at New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), in collaboration with Carlton College’s Science Education Resource Center (SERC), have been awarded a four-year $748,698 USDA NIFA Food and Agricultural Non-formal Education Program grant to make this project a reality. Starting this fall, the grant, “Food, Agriculture, and MarinE (FAME) 4-H Ag Tech Program,” will support 100 underserved high school youth to direct and produce short Food Systems Solution Science video stories as part of a 4-H positive youth development afterschool program. This program builds upon the innovative science-in-action video storytelling model developed at Rutgers, as well as the recent community impact of our science-in-action film, Fields of Devotion, and the success of the RUCAFE FAME pilot project. Through a positive 4-H youth development model, the students will be fully supported to create their original short science video stories. Their student-authored stories will feature one or more STEM topics narrated from the youth’s own agrarian/fishing/food production and food preparation perspective and expertise. The youth-directed science video stories will explore research involving plant genetics and a wide range of agricultural technology, including gene editing, automation in phenotyping and genetic analyses, robotics, and aquaculture to develop climate resilience food crops for farmers and shellfish for fishers. Additionally, innovative greenhouse designs and indoor food cultivation techniques will be explored. These stories, once complete, will be shared with their communities and beyond. The project is led by Distinguished Professor Jim Simon in collaboration with Rutgers co-principal investigators Dena Seidel, science communication researcher, Marissa Staffen,  4-H agent, RCE of Essex County, Xenia Morin, associate teaching professor at SEBS, and Oscar Schofield, Distinguished Professor and chair, DMCS. Rutgers has partnered with Kerry Vetch and Ellen Iverson at Carlton College’s Science Education Resource Center (SERC) for program evaluation. This funding highlights the four pillars of Rutgers-New Brunswick Academic Master Plan: community engagement, innovative research, student success and scholarly leadership. –Rutgers University Full article at Morning AgClips

Assistant Teaching Professor Alexander López and Associate Dean Evelyn Erenrich host an exhibitor booth for Rutgers University at the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) National Diversity in STEM Conference in Portland, Oregon this past week. They were joined by Associate Dean Kinna Perry, Deputy Director Christine Zardecki, and many current students. With over 6000 students, presenters, and exhibitors, the conference boasted the largest attendance for its 50th anniversary. Students and professionals from all stages, drawn by the iconic glider RU01, flocked to the Rutgers booth to hear about the exciting oceanographic research ongoing at RUCOOL & DMCS, as well as the many opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to get involved.

On October 28, 2003, the Rutgers University Center for Ocean Observing Leadership (RUCOOL) deployed Slocum Glider RU03 from the Rutgers University Marine Field Station (RUMFS) in Tuckerton, NJ on Rutgers first underwater glider mission across the New Jersey continental shelf.  The transect would come to be known as the Tuckerton Endurance Line. Since that first deployment 20 years ago, RUCOOL has conducted over 650 Glider missions, has flown underwater over 340,000 km (over 8 times around the world) and has has been at sea for over 17,700 days (nearly 50 years).  Glider missions have taken Rutgers scientists, researchers and students to all 7 ocean basins and both polar seas. Up to date statistics can be found here. Congratulations to all of RUCOOL for making the Jersey Roots, Global Reach slogan a reality.