Who ever thought science was boring and who could have imagined the fascinations revealed yesterday (7th March) to the biggest ever audience for the Open Day at Dunstaffnage at the Scottish Association of Marine Sciences (SAMS).

People of all ages, with and without scientific knowledge, got up (very) close to a bewildering variety of marine species and organisms, researches and kit.

They interrogated the staff and students manning the exhibits, watches videos on research projects and Arctic research expeditions, saw a collection of boys toys that would give Jeremy Clarkson food for thought, were awed at the serious purposes of these exhibits and got a glimpse of research on the move on SAMS research ships.

Children held sea urchins, watched Sea Cucumbers see off the opposition with a cloud of white gloop, guessed at the meaning of eco labels, fed ‘fish’ with their own colourings of the mesmeric variety of shapes of micro-algae and named six ground breaking ice-research buoys that they – and all of us – will be able to track on Google Earth for the next ten years.

Get your head around some of this:

• SAMS is the UK’s leading marine biology research establishment.
• It is the third biggest ice rsearch establishment.
• It has built, in Loch Linnhe – between the Isle of Lismore and the mainland, the largest artificial reef in Europe and possibly in the world. It can contribute to as varied fields as the development of surfing waves to lobster farming.
• Within a year it will mount a research expedition to the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean – the deepest place in the oceans and the lowest place in the world, at 11 kilometres. This expedition will see the first lander (a piece of equipment that lands on the sea bed to conduct various measurements) ever to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
• The SAMS community is multinational, with expertise from all over the world coming together at the Dunstaffnage HQ and with its scientists regularly leading and joining research teams of international composition.
• SAMS advises the Scottish Government.
• It works for the Food Standards Agency (FSA), monitoring water and marine organisms all around Scottish waters.
• It has developed the capacity to farm sea urchins
• SAMS main research ship, the RV Calanus, works mainly in Scottish inshore waters but goes as far out as the Tiree Passage and the Stanton Banks (south of the Outer Hebrides and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). This far out is at the extreme limit of the Calanus’s capacity.
• The Leverhulme Foundation funds an artist-in-residence at Dunstaffnage – Victoria Clare Bernie.

Perhaps the greatest privilege of the day was to see at first hand a large group of specialist scientists, at the top of their fields, working together with obvious enjoyment, energy and pride – and all able and interested to talk intelligibly to non-scientists. Now if bureaucrats and IT people could only do the same…

The poet WB Yeats said ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’ and the SAMS staff proved that one bigtime. It’s only those who don’t really know what they’re talking about – or who have little to say in the first place – who cannot or will not be plain speaking. Yesterday saw people find out about the most complex marine biology researches, understand what they were about and why they were important – and being utterly wonderstruck. Now that’s a class act.

From its base in Argyll, SAMS is leading international research in, among many other things, aspects of climate change and renewable energy development, including the production of biofuels. Everybody know that these two issues are among the hottest topics in the world today.

Research Cruises

The SAMS scientists call them ‘cruises’, but anything less like a cruise liner would be hard to find. Anuschka Miller, SAMS’ Press Officer and herself a scientist, descried life aboard a research ship as ‘like Big Brother – except that you can’t vote anyone off”. These are expensive and intensive expeditions where everyone’s work and careeers are on the line. Pressure on time and resources is quite extreme.Tensions can run quite high. Compatibility and tolerance are essential.

Packing for these cruises is not like throwing a few t-shirts, jeans and swimmers into a bag and taking off. All the equipment and all the materials needed have to be assembled and transported. If the smallest of insignificant things is not there, its absence can preudice an entire research opportunity. Annie Glud, a Dane working in the geochemistry lab and responsible for making the microbes the scientists use, is also responsible for packing for a lot of the research cruises. She says it is down to making careful and comprehensive lists and checking every item.

SAMS sometimes charters the research ice-breaking ship, the James Clark Ross, which normally works in the Antarctic and then has to come north to the Arctic which is the base for much of SAMS researches. The James Clark Ross has some of the UK’s most advanced facilities for oceanographic research. If the SAMS team does not need all of the places on the ship, these are offered to scientists with similar interests and projects from other interational ice  research establishments. With the ‘Big Brother’ factor in mind, it’s obviously important to make as sure as you can that all those on board will get on.

Arctic Ice Research

Led by Dr Jeremy Wilkinson (second row on the far left) , this project is about to deploy six specially created research buoys in the Arctic ice. These will take various measurements and transmit the data back to Dunstaffnage. The project is about mapping the movement of the Arctic ice and of the waters in its approaches. Over the ten-year lifespan of the buoys’ batteries, this work will tell us a lot about global warming, its impact on the ice fields and some of its consequences.

The buoys contain batteries capable of seeing them through the periods of 24-hour darkness to the point each year – for ten years – where the sun will charge their parallel solar batteries.

Dr Wilkinson will deploy the buoys, spend a month in the Arctic on oher research work ad then come back to Dunstaffnage where he will progressively track the shifting positions of the buoys and

This is the project where schools and children around Dunstafffmage are naming ech of the six buoys. Within two months, the SAMS website will carry a link to Google Earth, enabling each of these six buoys to be tracked by anyone. The children who named them will be able to follow their movements with the ice and in the water as the ice melts. Dr Wilkinson will then be going into local schools to keep them in touch with what the project is discovering.

The Mariana Trench Expedition

Led by Dane, Dr Ronnie Glud with Dr Henrik Stahl, both researchers in sediment bio-geochemistry, this expedition will fly out to Japa with its speciallty developed lander within the next twelve months. They will the charter a Japansese research ship with its own Remotey Operated Undersea Vehicles (ROVs), needed to manoevre the lander into the exact position it needs.

The project will lower the specially developed lander to the botto of the Mariana trench – a first in marine research – and the ROV will move it into the exact porition required and activate it by pressing on a special switch.

This lander (a benthic lander) has been developed and  equipped to withstand the huge pressures at 11 kilometres down. It aso carries special foam buoyancy to make sure it can be retrieved. Sometimes the weights that keep landers stable on the sea bed are abandoned as the lander is freed to return to the surface. Sometimes as in this case, the ROV will actually lift the lander to the surface, retrieving it in its entirety.

The interest of the Mariana Trench – and its neighbouring deep ocean trenches, is to test the logical theory that, with their steep sides, they may be repositories for all sorts of material sweeping across the ocean floor over countless centuries. The lander will be finding out what depth of sediment is down there at the bottom of the trench and what it is composed of. Dr Glud is one of the world’s leading scientists in this field and, with Dr Stahl, the project is likely is intended to add significantly to our knowledge of the evolving marine environment.

Renewable energy research

Some of the work being done with the artificial reef in Loch Linnhe will contribute strongly to the development of tidal energy harnessing and of offshore wind turbine installation. Much research in this field is designed to measure the destructive impact of invasive installations in the marine environment. As SAMS scientists point out, this specfic research is designed to test the rate and nature of recovery and even of new and positive developments from such installations.

Alongside this research, SAMS is leading a new research project commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).  This will explore the impact on marine species of the presence of undersea installations – both tidal turbine arrays and the foundations for offshore wind turbines. The research is based on developing the understanding of the soundscape that marine species already receive on passage through areas like, for example the Pentland Firth (which alone has 10% of Europe’s potential for tidal energy) and the changes made to that soundscape by the installation of tidal energy generation devices.

Sea Urchin Farming

Dr Adam Hughes leads research at SAMS into this development. The initiative is designed to achieve two parallel targets: creating multiple crops for fish farmers; and keeping the marine environment around such farms clean.

One problem with fish farms is that a fair amount of the feed misses the fish and drops through the cages to the sea bed – as do the excretions of the fish themselves. If sea urchins ca be farmed – and SAMS have now shown that they can – they will be the ideal parallel crop for fish farmers. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are not fussy eaters. and they are prized as a delicacy in many cuisines.  Restaurants pay high prices for them, so they would be commercially as well as ecologically valuable.

SAMS Past and Present

Dr Linda, Robb (well known in Argyll writing and drama circles), a marine ecologist who has been with SAMS through its evolution for one year after it began to its present eminence. She says that when the Marine laboratory was first set up, it had thirty of the houses in Dunbeg tied for its staff. That gives a real sense of how important it has always been.

It went through a period of stress when it looked likely to close, with its expertise moved to be centred elsewhere. The the embryonic University of the Highlands and Islands realised what a gem it had in its necklace of potential establishments around the edge of the Highlands and the decision was taken to star a degree in marine biology.

Dr Robb sees that as the turning point in a new life for what became SAMS and was taken forward energetically by a visionary director.

SAMS now has a new visionary director, Professor Laurence Mee who was appointed eighteen months ago and took up his post fully a year ago. Professor Mee brings to SAMS an enviale background in marine policy research – a field he will be responsibe for developing at SAMS – and experience as an adviser to Government.

He is clearly energised to the point of being galvanised by the stellar establishment he now leads. He speaks with enthusiasm not only of the expertise of his staff but of their passion for their work, the harmony in which they work together and of the buzz of the entire establishment.

He says that SAMS is pointing itself at the sort of development where, should it eventualy chose to do so, it could be floated on the stock exchange. Here is a serious research institution with its feet in the water, working on and with issues affecting the lives we will shortly lead as we face to up to our environmental responsibiities – a little late in the day – and with a muscular entrepreneurial drive. This is exemplary stuff for Argyll.

And Professor Mee could not be more right about the buzz that permeates SAMS. Students (like Kirsty Hill from Fort William and Chris McCaig from Glasgow – not the Oban tower), staff and technicians alike all evangelise for the privilege and opportunities of working together at SAMS. At least two current staff members have come through SAMS marione biology degree, underlining its potential for job creation.

Some last fun facts:

• Every second breath each of us takes is oxygen provided by micro-algae.
• Sea cucumbers are eatable marine creatures. (Although Dr Adam Hughes has not eaten one himself)
• The reproductive procedure of the barnacle could become a schoolboy fantasy.
• The ragworm manages to use two different clock systems simultaneously – the circadian clock (the 24 hour clock we share) and the tidal clock – it can only eat on the flooding tide. (Ask Dr Kim Last, whose work in this field is fascinating and will inform us about ourselves.)

A warning and request for your help to protect Scottish Aquaculture

Scotland is next in line for invasion by an alien species capable of wrecking havoc in the aquaculture that is so important to Argyll. A variety of Sea Squirt, Tunicate Didemnun, has been found at Malahide outside Dublin, then at Holyhead in Wales. While divers at Holyhead made successfully strenuous effort to eradicate, it would be naive not to realise that th species will come north to Scotland.

The Didemnum sea squirt clothes itself vertically around mussell ropes and horizontally on scallop beds. It does not suffocate either but its gloopy brown-into-orange downward trails are very hard to scrape off entirely. When mussells are harvested and scallops hand dived or dredged not all of what Dr Liz Cook descroibes as snot, can be cleared off tem. As the residue dries it literally stinks. Try selling seafood with this on board.

Dr Cook is asking everyone who spends time around Scottish shores, at marinas, pontoos and piers, on boats and cleaning their hulls, on mussell farms and oinviovled in harvesting scallops, to look out for the presence of this material. The snotty brown-orange trails can be anything form a few inches to a metre long.

If you see any evidence of anything you think might be this stuff, contatc Dr Liz Cook at SAMS (01631 559000) at once. Argyll and Scotland – simply cannot afford to let this species establish a presence here.

For Argyll’s film unit, led by John Fife Patrick, spent the day at SAMS and two short video news pieces are published here. See:

• Video News 1 SAMS marine biology Open Day
• Video News 2 SAMS marine biology Open Day

The photographs above, from the top, are reproduced here either with permission – as shown – of the copyright holder, Rebecca Martin or under the Creative Commons licence:

• Models of plankton made by children at Lochnell Primary School. Photo: Rebecca Martin
• Andreas Day educating For Argyll on micro algae. Photo: Rebecca Martin
• A little visitor cradles a sea urchin. Photo: Rebecca Martin
• Einstein Junior and barnacle fascination – with Dr Adam Hughes in attendance. Photos: Rebecca Martin
  
• RRS James Clark Ross in the Antarctic. Photo: Tom L-C, Creative Commons
• Dr Jeremy Wilkinson at SAMS with his six research buoys destined for the Arctic Ice. Photo: SAMS
  
• The science ROV ‘Hercules’ during a launch in 2005. Photo: Creative Commons
• Artificial reef in construction (SAMS ‘ artificial reef in Loch Linnhe was made from material from Glansanda Quarry). Photo: Creative Commons
  
• Sea urchin. Photo: Creative Commons
  
• Professor Laurence Mee, Director of SAMS. Photo: Rebecca Martin
• Job done. Photo: Rebecca Martin