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soundings )) Live Giant Squid Caught on Video for the First Time. During a dive near the Ogasawara Islands in the Pacifc, scientists captured footage of a giant squid in its natural habitat���a frst for this species whose previous sightings have been limited to beachings or rare landings by fshermen. The crew of scientists, which included marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder, marine biologist Steve O���Shea and zoologist Dr. Tsunemi Kobodera of the National Science Museum of Japan, made six recordings at 700 meters depth from the Triton submersible and with the Medusa camera system, a midwater version of Widder���s Eyein-the-Sea camera. The fve recordings from the Medusa, suspended on 700 meters of line by a foat at the surface, were less than a minute each; the one from the Triton ran 23 minutes. Both methods deployed an optical lure, another one of Widder���s designs, called the e-jelly. These lures mimic the bioluminescent fashes that deep-sea jellyfsh emit when they���re under attack by predators, who in turn become the giant squid���s prey. The biggest challenge was developing ways to explore unobtrusively, Widder said. ���Getting the illumination just right so that you can see the animal without being seen is incredibly diffcult because the long wavelengths you need to use in order to be unobtrusive are absorbed so quickly by seawater. That���s why we needed to use super-intensifed cameras���in order to compensate for that fact.��� The four-year project was fnanced by the Discovery Channel and Japanese broadcaster NHK. )) Top US Science Offcials Leaving Posts in February, March. Secretary of the U.S. Interior Ken Salazar, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Director Marcia McNutt, and Under Secretary of U.S. Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco announced in January they will be stepping down from their respective posts. McNutt planned to leave in February, and Salazar will leave at the end of March to return to his home state of Colorado. Salazar established the frst U.S. program for offshore wind leasing and permitting in U.S. oceans, and transformed the former Minerals Management Service into the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which then split into the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement in 2011. REI CEO Sally Jewell has been nominated as his successor. At USGS, Suzette Kimball will take over as acting director, and Bill Werkheiser will be acting deputy director. McNutt wrote in an e-mail to USGS employees that she is timing her departure so she could witness the launch of the Landsat 8 satellite, scheduled for February 11. )) Mississippi River Remains Open as Dredge Work Continues. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects the Mississippi River water levels will remain high enough to sustain the authorized 9-foot-deep commercial navigation channel between St. Louis, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois. A drought in the Midwest has caused the river���s water levels to dip, and a further lack of rain could render it unnavigable. The Corps is deepening the channel and planning to remove rock formations ahead of the worst-case scenario, which would halt barge traffc and billions in commodities such as corn, grain, coal and petroleum. Low waters are allowing the Corps��� contractors to remove an estimated 890 cubic yards of limestone from the river bottom through excavation. The removal will reduce the risk to vessels in the channel during low water. Dredging has been ongoing since early July to preserve the channel, as well as continued surveys and channel patrols to keep commerce moving on the middle Mississippi. )) Navy���s LCS ���Not Survivable,��� According to DOD Report. Based on a review of design requirements, the U.S. Navy���s littoral combat ships (LCS) are not expected to be survivable, meaning they are not expected to maintain mission capability after taking a signifcant hit in combat, a Department of Defense (DOD) report found. The ships��� survivability features do not include those necessary to conduct sustained operations in its expected combat environment. The report cites cracks in the hull and superstructure of LCS-1 and repairs to LCS-2 because of aggressive galvanic corrosion in the vicinity of water jets. (Production changes were made to LCS-3, which has not exhibited cracking.) DOD agreed to defer the total ship survivability trials (TSSTs) from LCS-1 and -2 to LCS-3 and -4, which affords the Navy time to complete pretrial damage scenario analysis. DOD also agreed to defer the shock trials from LCS-3 and -4 to LCS-5 and -6, resulting in a one-year delay. LCS-1 is scheduled to head to Singapore in March, meaning it will be deployed without undergoing TSSTs, Wired reported. Additionally, the AQS-20A mine-hunting sonar system exhibited contact depth localization errors, exceeding Navy limits in all operation modes, and encountered false contacts in two of three search modes during testing. The Navy is developing a preplanned product improvement to correct this. )) Garbage Patch Found in South Pacifc Ocean. Scientists have documented the frst evidence of an ocean garbage patch, or an accumulation of plastic pollution, in the South Pacifc subtropical gyre. The research team, led by 5 Gyres Institute, conducted the frst sampling of the South Pacifc Subtropical Gyre for marine plastic pollution from March through April 2011. Starting from Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile, samples of the ocean surface were collected every 50 nautical miles westward to Easter Island, then to Pitcairn Island, totaling 48 samples along a 2,424-nautical-mile transect. The route was selected based on an ocean current model developed by Nikolai Maximenko of the University of Hawaii that predicts accumulation zones for foating debris. The expedition recorded increased density of plastic pollution, with an average of 26,898 particles per square kilometer and a high of 396,342 particles per square kilometer in the center of the predicted accumulation zone. The team���s work was published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin in January. n www.sea-technology.com FEBRUARY 2013 / st 9