Coastal State Series

Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film, The Birds, was inspired by a bizarre event in Monterey Bay in 1961 where crazed birds were seen crashing into buildings, cars, and street signs. The culprit: domoic acid, a neurotoxin produced by a specific species of phytoplankton that, if ingested, can cause animals to become disoriented or have seizures. In humans, it can also cause seizures as well as short-term memory loss or worse in severe cases.

In 2016, an unprecedented harmful algal bloom with detectable levels of domoic acid spanned across New England, prompting a recall of over 5 tons of potentially infected shellfish in Maine and the first-ever bay-wide closure for shellfishing in Rhode Island as a precaution although toxicity never reach harmful levels. The presence of domoic acid also led to another closure of shellfish harvesting in Narragansett Bay the following year. The cause of these events remains unknown, and the implications for local economies and human health prompted research to better understand and monitor Pseudo-nitzschia, the genus of plankton responsible for producing domoic acid.

“Pseudo-nitzschia have been detected for over 50 years in the Narragansett Bay Long-Term Plankton Time Series but have only been a problem recently,” says Dr. Bethany Jenkins, associate professor of cellular and molecular biology at the University of Rhode Island. “What caused these events is unknown: whether an environmental factor altered the physiology of endemic Pseudo-nitzschia or new toxin-producing strain(s) were introduced.”

Speakers, Dr. Bethany Jenkins, associate professor and marine microbial ecologist, and Ph.D. candidate Alexa Sterling from the University of Rhode Island, as well as Dr. Colleen Mouw, associate professor at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, will discuss their research investigating the various strains of Pseudo-nitzschia and real-time characterization of phytoplankton communities in Narragansett Bay that allows for a rapid field response to target harmful algal bloom events as they occur.

 

This free webinar is part of the annual Coastal State Discussion Series hosted by Rhode Island Sea Grant and co-sponsored by the Rhode Island EPSCoR C-AIM Consortium, the University of Rhode Island’s College of Environment and Life Science, and University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

Rhode Island is long overdue for a major hurricane. Even a brush with Superstorm Sandy in 2012, which caused $11.2 million in damages and left 122,000 Rhode Islanders without power, was not a worst-case scenario, but a reminder of our exposure and vulnerability. And a record-setting hurricane season in 2020 with 30 named storms, 12 of which made landfall in the U.S., was another reminder of how a changing climate makes rising seas and storm-flooding more devastating. 

Storm surge barriers, levees, and other coastal flood protection megaprojects are being investigated as strategies to protect U.S. cities against devastating coastal storms and rising sea levels. But these projects are large-scale and complex, often taking years to decades to complete and costing billions of dollars with long-lasting impacts on the economy, environment, and society. Additional layers of social conflict and other political factors also cast doubt on their status as practical climate adaptation options. 

Dr. Paul Kirshen, professor of climate adaptation at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Dr. D.J. Rasmussen, an engineer and climate scientist who recently graduated from Princeton University’s School of Public Policy & International Affairs, will discuss the technical, environmental, economic, and political factors of why some coastal flood protection megastructures break ground in the U.S. while others do not, using Boston Harbor and Rhode Island’s Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in Providence–the first gated hurricane-protection structure in the U.S.– as case studies.

This free webinar is part of the annual Coastal State Discussion Series hosted by Rhode Island Sea Grant and co-sponsored by the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Institute, Marine Affairs Department, and The Policy Lab at Brown University.

An unprecedented harmful algal bloom that spanned from Long Island to Maine in 2016 prompted a recall of over 5 tons of potentially infected shellfish in Maine and the first-ever bay-wide closure for shellfishing in Rhode Island.

Researchers across the region have since been focused on better understanding the species that drive harmful blooms and the types of toxins they produce, such as domoic acid, which is a that can infect shellfish and be harmful to consumers.

Rhode Island Sea Grant hosted a virtual Coastal State Discussion led by Dr. Matthew Bertin, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Rhode Island, who discussed ongoing work investigating why these organisms produce harmful toxins and how these compounds can be leveraged into potential drug leads for either treatment of the disease or new drugs.

“The 2016 event and the continued detection of domoic acid in the bay suggest that either species composition has shifted to more toxic strains of these species, or environmental conditions have made resident species more toxic,” says Bertin. “An increase in bloom events and domoic acid production represents a significant risk to the state’s shellfish industry and local populations as domoic acid is responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning.”

In addition to studying the human and environmental impact of toxins such as domoic acid, Bertin and his colleagues have also been studying two cyanobacterial communities, Microcystis and Trichodesmium, in a search for new therapeutic lead molecules that could treat neuroinflammation, which is a driver in diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

“In four years, we have discovered over 30 new-to-science molecules, many with promising biological activities,” he says.

The Block Island Wind Farm tested the feasibility of offshore renewable energy in the United States. Since it became operational in 2016 with five turbines producing 125,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually, proposals for the development of other wind farms at two or three times the capacity have cropped up along the eastern seaboard.

And while offshore wind farms harness renewable energy, there are still questions about the environmental and social impacts of such wind farms, including on recreation and tourism.

“There are very different ideas of how the wind farm works, the politics that are behind it,” said Amelia Moore, assistant professor of marine affairs at the University of Rhode Island, as quoted in the Block Island Times.

Moore and colleague David Bidwell, assistant professor of marine affairs at URI, as well as Tiffany Smythe, assistant professor of maritime policy at the United States Coast Guard Academy, will discuss their collaboration looking at the Block Island Wind Farm’s impacts on recreational fishing and tourism.

The goal of their work is to provide a greater understanding of the impacts from offshore wind farm development to aid decision-makers, scientists, and developers interested in offshore wind farm planning, research, and permitting processes throughout the United States.

An unprecedented toxic algal bloom from Long Island to Maine in 2016 led to the first-ever shellfishing ban in Narragansett Bay. After five tons of shellfish were recalled in Maine that September, a rapid increase in a certain species of algae that produces a neurotoxin, which can infect shellfish, was observed outside of Newport Harbor the following October.

Researchers from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) will discuss how Rhode Island Sound may be linked to these harmful algal blooms in the bay.

Since the 2016 bloom was concentrated in the mid- and lower bay, with its longest duration in the Sound, one theory is that nutrients, such as nitrogen, are being funneled into the bay that can trigger algal blooms.

“One of the important things missing is the water coming in from the shelf. There’s a deep pool of nitrogen [offshore] in the bottom water in the summer,” said Dr. Christopher Kincaid, a GSO researcher who specializes in circulation dynamics. The knowledge gap, he says, is understanding the nitrogen budget and figuring out if, and how, this nitrogen-rich bottom water offshore is making its way to the surface waters in the bay where it can fuel harmful algal blooms. “We need a true nitrogen budget to understand circulation patterns and how that impacts the ecosystem.”

Monitoring stations have also been set up near the mouth of the bay by Dr. Lucie Maranda and her colleagues to test for the presence of the algal species that produce the neurotoxin, domoic acid, and how much, if any, is present.

Speakers:

Christopher Kincaid
(GSO) Professor of Oceanography specializing in marine geophysics and circulation dynamics.

Lucie Maranda
(GSO) Research scientist specializing in biological oceanography and ecosystem dynamics.

Dave Ullman
(GSO) Research scientist specializing in physical oceanography and circulation dynamics.

Kevin Rosa
(GSO) Ph.D. candidate specializing in marine geophysics and numerical modeling.

While nitrogen, which is found in fertilizer, is essential to plant growth, it can become too much of a good thing. When nitrogen from fertilizers or even sewage enters our waters, it can accelerate plant growth that can suffocate marine life and degrade the quality of our waters.

Dr. Robinson Fulweiler, a research scientist from Boston University who specializes in nitrogen dynamics, and her team have been comparing how nitrogen is cycled through various oyster habitats and how different farms at different ages impact this cycle to better understand how oysters can potentially offset too much nitrogen in the environment.

“Over the last several years, we have measured [nitrogen] cycling through oyster habitats in Narragansett Bay and Ninigret Pond,” she says, explaining this includes oyster farms, natural and restored reefs.

Their initial findings show oyster farms may alter the way nitrogen is removed from the environment and may serve as a potential means for removing excess nitrogen. Fulweiler’s research also shows that when compared to other animal production, such as beef and poultry, raised oysters have less than one percent of the greenhouse gas cost.