Inside the Oregon lab trying to change people's minds about sharks
Pulling a seven-foot shark out of the water to flush its stomach is just another day at the office for marine scientists at Oregon State University, who have spent years trying to change public perception about the sea creatures.
Under the leadership of Dr. Taylor Chapple, scientists at the Chapple Big Fish Lab spend their time studying more than 300 sharks of varying species in Washington state's Willapa Bay, just north of the Oregon border.
By examining a shark's stomach contents, researchers like Jessica Schulte can better understand the animal's health and also the water quality in the bay. A healthy shark means a healthy ocean.
"We actually collect the stomach contents of the shark by basically puking it," Schulte told CBS Saturday Mornings.
The sharks are released shortly after being caught and studied, and their stomach contents are taken back to the lab.
While the sharks in Willapa Bay make up just a portion of the shark population worldwide, these scientists are learning essential information about the broader health of the ocean.
Trying to change people's minds about sharks has been difficult, given the fish's reputation.
"It's been hard to get people excited enough to support it," Chapple says.
"People are interested in sharks, they like to watch a show about sharks," he says, but "when it comes to people opening their wallet to support the research, it's difficult."
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The bacteria convert methane and hydrogen sulfide from cold seeps — cracks in the seafloor that leak these compounds as fluids — into energy and food that the host animal can use, allowing organisms to live in zero-sunlight conditions. The discovery suggests that these communities might also exist in other hadal trenches, Du said, opening opportunities for further research into just how deep these animals can survive. After analyzing sediment samples collected from the expedition, Du and her team said they detected high concentrations of methane. The find was surprising, since deep-sea sediments normally contain very low concentrations of the compound. The scientists hypothesized that microbes living in the ecosystem convert organic matter in the sediments into carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide into methane — something the researchers didn't know microbes could do. The bacteria living inside clam and tube worm species then use this methane for chemosynthesis to survive, Du said. There was another revelation, too. Scientists previously thought chemosynthetic communities relied on organic matter — such as from dead organisms and drifting particles from living species — that fell from the ocean's surface to the floor. But this discovery, Du said, reveals that these methane-producing microbes are also creating a local source of organic molecules that larger organisms such as clams can use for food and energy. Methane, as a carbon-containing compound, is part of the carbon cycle. So, this discovery also indicates that the hadal trenches play a more important role in that cycle than previously thought, Du explained. Scientists have long understood that methane is stored as compressed fluid deep in the subduction zone, where tectonic plates meet below the ocean floor, which ultimately releases through 'cold seeps' at the bottom of hadal trenches. 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In an age of widespread biodiversity loss, the finding highlights the importance of new technology that can withstand high pressure in deep-sea environments to document undiscovered organisms, said Weston, who is part of a team actively exploring the deep-sea offshore from Argentina. Even though the hadal trenches are remote, they aren't completely isolated, she added. Weston and her colleagues discovered a newfound species in 2020 in the Mariana Trench named Eurythenes plasticus for the microplastic fibers detected in its gut. And near Puerto Rico, Weston newly identified an isopod that exclusively eats sargassum, a type of abundant seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean that can sink to the ocean floor in just 40 hours. 'The deep ocean is very connected to what's happening on the surface,' she said. Research on deep-sea ecosystems is only a few decades old, and the technology for new discoveries is improving. But Du added that it's important for different countries and scientific disciplines to collaborate on future efforts. The Global Hadal Exploration Program, which is co-led by UNESCO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aims to do just that by creating a network of deep-sea scientists from multiple countries. Du hopes she and her team can learn more about hadal trench ecosystems by studying how these species have adapted to such extreme depths. 'Even though we see the hadal trench as a very extreme environment, the most inhospitable environment … (chemosynthetic organisms) can live happily there,' Du said. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
