ANCHORAGE, Alaska (26 Sep 2004) -- Two marine biologists who went searching for a sunken tool in Prince William Sound last summer instead discovered new undersea habitat littered with strange corallike plants. Katrin Iken, an assistant professor at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, had been cleaning a small strainer when she accidently dropped it overboard. Their boat, the Tempest, had just anchored in Herring Bay off Knight Island to avoid bugs and let a crew of students and scientists sort samples gathered earlier in the day. "A sieve is worth about $75, so we wanted to get it back," said Brenda Konar, an associate professor at UAF's School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and staff scientist with the West Coast and Polar Regions Undersea Research Center. "But the students were joking that we dropped it on purpose so we'd get out of the work." Sometimes playing hooky pays off. The two women donned Scuba gear and quickly found their sieve in dim light about 60 feet down. But Konar was shocked when she also spied gobs of pink tumbleweeds about the size of pingpong balls stretching off in every direction. "I just picked one up and showed it to her," Konar said. "Then I just started grabbing and putting them in goody bags. It was just like an Easter egg hunt -- I kept looking for bigger ones and prettier ones." In an extraordinary splash of luck, Konar and Iken had swum across a colony of hard red algae never seen before in Alaska, discovering a possible new species and a previously unknown marine habitat. Analysis by experts in Mexico and California has since confirmed them as rhodoliths -- plants that roll like tumbleweeds in beds used as nurseries by scallops, shrimp and other invertebrate critters. Although rhodoliths date back 55 million years and can be found in other parts of the ocean, no one suspected that they grew any closer to Alaska than British Columbia. Konar, who has been diving and researching in Alaska for 15 years, had studied them in Baja California in Mexico but had never seen them here. "This is the first time I've come across something that nobody has never seen before, which to me is mind-boggling when you think of how much work has been done in the area," Konar said. "It shows that there is an awful lot more to learn, even in places like Prince William Sound." When they made the find, Konar and Iken were conducting an international Census of Marine Life at various Sound locations, sponsored locally by a project with the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Along with Iken and the students, Konar measured the rhodolith bed almost 200 feet over a sandy bottom. Lots of tiny creatures lived amid the rhodolith arms. The scientists gathered several dozen samples for study. "They were very pink," Konar said. "They looked like toy jacks scattered all over the sand, all different shapes and sizes." The exact location, a few hundred yards from shore in Herring Bay, will remain secret until biologists can return to do more research, Konar said. | | Coral-like algae were discovered this summer in Prince William Sound. Rhodoliths are sea-floor plants that build habitats used by fish and other critters, kind of like coral. They're common in the Baja but were unknown in Alaska until these were discovered by accident in June by UAF marine divers. (Photo courtesy of SFOS) The bay was hit hard by drifting oil from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and has long been important habitat for marine mammals and sea birds. A proposal to anchor a commercial outpost selling gas and supplies to recreational boaters near the entrance of the bay is now under review by state and federal agencies. Rhodoliths form hard structures similar to coral. Found deeper than any other algae, the slow-growing plants use photosynthesis to produce food while creating a sort of natural "refuge" that enables young invertebrates such as scallops and clams to anchor in places with no hard bottom. One of the Sound's rhodoliths is similar to a species in the North Atlantic Ocean, while a second type doesn't appear to match any other known species, according to rhodolith expert Rafael Riosmena-Rodriquez, of the Autonomous University of Baja California Su in La Paz, Mexico. More analysis needs to be done, but Konar said Riosmena-Rodriquez now wonders whether one of the Alaska species might actually be the origin of other Atlantic rhodoliths. "If these beds are anything like those elsewhere in the world, there are likely critical habitat for associated species, and there are probably more new species in them than just the rhodoliths," added Mike Foster, professor emeritus at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory in California, in a statement released by Alaska Sea Grant. "Such discoveries also send an important message about how little we know about the sea." The surprising find could add more urgency to a broader debate over the impact of bottom trawling and other commercial fishing gear on sea floor life. Over the past three years, Alaska scientists using deep diving submersibles have documented cold-water coral gardens and new species growing near the Aleutian Islands. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will grapple with an analysis of a detailed plan to protect essential fish habitat during its meeting in Sitka in early October. The Fairbanks scientists say they now need to find out whether there are other rhodolith beds in the Sound or elsewhere, collect more samples and figure out what role they play in the local marine ecosystem. "There's no way that there's only one little isolated bed in Alaska," Konar said. |
