Titanic Centennial: commemorating nature and mankind's hubris

On Sunday, April 15th, I will be attending the West Coast Explorers Club Annual Dinner. As a member of the Explorers Club, I enjoy the opportunity to meet with professional, amateur, and armchair explorers to discuss topics ranging from Arctic expeditions to tribal cultures to ocean mysteries. Part of the evening will include an award presentation to renown National Geographic photographer Emory Kristof.

But on this particular evening, there will also be time to contemplate an historic tragedy that took place in the wee hours of the morning of the same day, 100 years ago. As midnight approached on April 14, 1912, 100 years ago the luxury ocean liner, Titanic, had an unexpected encounter with nature that would seal the great ship's fate in less than three hours. A glancing blow along an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland started a sequence of events that led to one of the greatest maritime tragedies of all time.

Most of us know the particulars - we've read the stories, seen the long parade of television programs, and watched the movies, particularly James Cameron's blockbuster film of the same name. With all tragedies there are questions to be resolved and the Titanic surely had its fair share of riddles and mysteries, many of which have been solved but some still persist to this day.

There have been several Titanic-related news items that have appeared recently, timed I'm sure with the upcoming centennial. One has to do with questions regarding the Titanic's captain's seemingly casual response to reports of approaching icebergs. Captain Edward Smith was the most experienced captain in the White Star Line and many have wondered why he never took the reports more seriously and initiated corrective measures. One rumor was that he was under pressure to remain under full speed, a directive coming from J. Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star Line and a passenger on the fateful voyage. But Capt. Smith was a master of transatlantic crossings and knew the risks involved.

Now, research that will appear in the April issue of Sky & Telescope presents astronomical evidence to show that possibly Capt. Smith was acting in accordance with his past experience with the occasional iceberg but could not have foreseen the ice that was moving into the normal shipping lanes because of an unusual occurrence that took place four months before. According to a team of forensic astronomers from Texas State University, a very rare and close juxtaposition of the sun and the moon to the earth in January of 1912 produced exceptionally high tides that could have dislodged icebergs normally originating in Greenland but which get stuck in shallower waters off of Newfoundland.

"The lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic," said David Olson, Texas State University physicist, one of the leaders of the research.

Long before I was a diver, long before the magnitude of the Titanic disaster really meant anything to me, this ship fascinated me. As a boy, I read my parent's copy of A Night to Remember by Walter Lord over and over. And when I was older, particularly around the time that Dr. Bob Ballard found the Titanic's final resting place, my fascination grew and I collected books and videos on the subject. In fact, during one boring stretch of recuperation from some surgery, I whiled away the hours building a model of the Titanic - before and after - using two model kits, one of which I fabricated into the wreck using many of my books' photographs and drawings as a guide.

And like many scuba divers, I find diving on wrecks to be an otherworldly experience. There is something intriguing when you come upon a wreck. It seems so out of place; it's not supposed to be here, it should be gliding across the surface above. And yet, here it is, slowly being consumed by nature. Wrecks can become beautiful artificial reefs, providing a wide variety of sealife with a new and unexpected home. They can also be a hazard for divers who penetrate the hulls if they drop their guard for even just a moment. And as we have all seen with ships like the Exxon Valdez, they can be deadly to marine ecosystems.

In the grander scheme of things, like Titanic, wrecks also serve as reminders as to the limits of our mastery of the natural world. When Titanic slipped beneath the surface of the icy North Atlantic with a rush of escaping air and the groans of twisting metal, taking over 1,500 lives with it, it became a tragic symbol of industrial and technological arrogance and of an upper class/lower class society at the time whose have and have-nots ultimately meant nothing in those freezing waters.

One hundred years later, Titanic rests in two main pieces with debris strewn across a wide area (recent pictures from RMS Titanic Inc, the salvage owners, have been assembled into a startling mosaic of where the ship lies today). With its iron being consumed by microorganisms and bacteria, some say it won't be much longer before the once majestic profile will collapse into rubble.

But what Titanic represented back then - the pride, the achievement and the hubris and folly - is that still with us today? This great ship is a constant reminder that without acknowledging nature, we are masters of nothing. Nature provided the raw materials to build the Titanic, and it would seem that when mankind was at its industrial and technological zenith in self-serving luxury, nature reared up and acted swiftly to remind us who is truly the master of our domain. And since that cataclysmic moment, it has slowly been taking those resources back.

A lesson to be learned - again and again? A warning once more gone unheeded? Will our fate be, ultimately, not that different from that of the great ocean liner that passed into maritime history 100 years ago tonight?

Source: Reuters
Source: Los Angeles Times

Microbes: new life forms on Earth and perhaps beyond

Bacteria, microbes, single-cell organisms - the planet is teeming with them, literally in the billions. There are tens of thousands in a single drop of seawater and, worldwide, they constitute the greatest biomass on Earth. If their numbers are an indication of success then perhaps that success is due to both the simplicity of their existence and their ability to adapt to changing environments.

Two recent announcements regarding these tiniest of creatures caught my eye (no pun intended) because they had to do with the aquatic world and involved places I've been or would very much like to be.

Bacteria that challenges our notions of life
In the arid, alien-like landscape of Mono Lake, researchers have found bacteria that has adapted to an arsenic-rich environment. What is most unusual in this adaption was that the bacteria incorporated arsenic into its basic metabolic structure, replacing phosphorus. This is rather unique as phosphorus is one of nature's building blocks for all living things. Scientists have long held that carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus are the basic elements of life as they help make up nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and other fundamental components of all living matter.

However, researchers from Arizona State University have found in the water of Mono Lake, in east central California, bacteria that has exchanged phosphorus for the more prevalent arsenic, thereby challenging our notions of what constitutes what or where life can exist either here on Earth or elsewhere.

"At the moment we have no idea if life is just a freak, bizarre accident which is confined to Earth or whether it is a natural part of a fundamentally biofriendly universe in which life pops up wherever there are Earth-like conditions," said Paul Davies, the Arizona State University and NASA Astrobiology Institute researcher.

The researchers are very cautious not to draw too many conclusions from this preliminary research. Though the implications are tantalizing, with the possibility of life forms on other planets based on a totally different structure than what exists on Earth, there is still a considerable amount of work to be done before scientists decide to re-define our established notions of what constitutes life. Still, it makes you wonder just what our planetary probes in space should be looking for.

John Elliot, a UK researcher who has been involved in the search for extraterrestrial life, said, "It starts to show life can survive outside the traditional truths and universals that we thought you have to use... this is knocking one brick out of that wall."

Microbes that went down with the ship, way down
Ever since I read my parent's original copy of A Night to Remember by Walter Lord when I was a child, I have had a soft spot for anything Titanic. I'm not alone in this fascination with the great ocean liner that epitomized both man's industrial might and arrogance. But while the name and the vessel represent all things huge, scientists also study some of the wreck's smallest features - like a new form of iron-eating bacteria.

The genus Halomonas covers salt water bacteria that slowly breakdown metals, typically leaving behind evidence of their handiwork in the form of long, trailing icicle-like structures known as rusticles. Covering the Titanic along its hull and decaying metal superstructure, rusticles form a bizarre wintry scene to remind us of the cold depth 2.5 miles below the surface where the ship lies in two great pieces.

Reported in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, researchers from universities in Ontario, Canada and Seville, Spain have discovered a new bacteria, named Halomonas titanicae, by studying rusticle samples taken by the Russian submersible, Mir 2, back in 1991. Cultured in the lab from the 19-year old samples, these bacteria are of interest beyond just the fascination in lifeforms that are able to survive in some of the planet's harshest environments. The fate of offshore oil and gas pipelines at the hands of these metal-devouring microbes is an important area of research, particularly in the aftermath of this year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Additionally, understanding how these smallest of creatures can breakdown and possibly "recycle" some of mankind's largest structures could assist in developing safe and effective disposal methods of ships and oil rigs.

From the deepest depths of the ocean to perhaps beyond the stars, life continues to show scientists that it has a tenacious drive to survive, adapting to its surroundings sometimes in the most fundamental of ways.

Read about the arsenic bacteria in BBC News.
Read Titanic microbe study in the IJSEM journal.

The Mir Submersibles: a fascinating undersea history now in print

As a member of the Explorers Club, I have had the pleasure and honor of meeting many accomplished scientists and explorers covering a range of scientific disciplines, from oceanography to astrophysics. This past Friday, I attended the West Coast Annual Explorers Club Dinner and had the chance to meet Dr. Anatoly Sagalevich, the chief pilot and head of the Russian Deep Manned Submersible Laboratory, home of the Mir ("Peace") submersibles. He was being honored by the Explorers Club with their annual Ralph B. White Award for Oceanographic Exploration and Conservation of the Seas.

From discovery of deep ocean geothermal vents to sunken naval vessels, from multiple trips to the Titanic (including supporting director James Cameron in the filming of both Titanic and Ghosts of the Abyss) to a controversial planting of the Russian flag under the ice at the geographic north pole - for over 20 years the Russian submersibles Mir I and II have been dependable research platforms for scientific research organizations worldwide.

Now the exploits of these famous submersibles and their captain are available in print. The Deep: Voyages to Titanic and Beyond, written by Anatoly Sagalevich and Paul Isley III and available through Amazon.com, is a fascinating accounting of the Russian submersible program, beautifully illustrated and translated from Anatoly's original Russian edition.

Understanding the ocean's complexities and secrets is always fascinating. Understanding how this research is accomplished can be equally fascinating. A beautiful coffee table book, The Deep: Voyages to the Titanic and Beyond is a testament to man's need to explore and learn.