Annotated record of the detailed examination of Mn deposits from R/V Atlantis - Cruise 151 (Dec. 1947) in the Atlantic Ocean

One of the objectives of WHOI Atlantis Cruise 151, covering the period from 7 December 1947 to 18 June 1948, was to obtain as complete a sampling of the sea bottom of the Meditterranean and Aegean Seas as was compatible with the remainder of the scientific program. It was furthermore planned to make concurrent bottom photographs as a means for studying the correlation between bottom sediments and the morphology of the sea floor. The photographs also held the possibility of determining the presence of bottom fauna. The underwater camera used for this work was loaned to us by Dr. Maurice Ewing of Columbia University. As it was fitted with a one foot long coring tube at the base of its pole a majority of the bottom samples were obtained by the camera itself. On the way to Gibraltar, several bottom photos were taken in the Atlantic ocean. One of them was the deepest underwater photograph ever taken at the tima (3026 fathoms) showing a cluster of objects, some as much as 5 inches across on a clay bottom. These appeared to be manganese nodules, judging from their rounded and bulbous shape, especially the potato-like form of some of them. A core sample obtained at the same spot with a corer attached to the camera stand contained abundant manganese grains.

Data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification: environmental and experimental context of data sets and related literature

The exponential growth of studies on the biological response to ocean acidification over the last few decades has generated a large amount of data. To facilitate data comparison, a data compilation hosted at the data publisher PANGAEA was initiated in 2008 and is updated on a regular basis (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.149999). By January 2015, a total of 581 data sets (over 4 000 000 data points) from 539 papers had been archived. Here we present the developments of this data compilation five years since its first description by Nisumaa et al. (2010). Most of study sites from which data archived are still in the Northern Hemisphere and the number of archived data from studies from the Southern Hemisphere and polar oceans are still relatively low. Data from 60 studies that investigated the response of a mix of organisms or natural communities were all added after 2010, indicating a welcomed shift from the study of individual organisms to communities and ecosystems. The initial imbalance of considerably more data archived on calcification and primary production than on other processes has improved. There is also a clear tendency towards more data archived from multifactorial studies after 2010. For easier and more effective access to ocean acidification data, the ocean acidification community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the data archiving effort, and help develop standard vocabularies describing the variables and define best practices for archiving ocean acidification data.