What does this mother lode of plates add up to?

ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S SATURDAY SCIENCE STUMPER:

The so-called “Lost Cities” at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean are limestone towers formed by deposits from alkaline hydrothermal vents — underwater geysers. NASA researchers propose that this might be the kind of place where life on Earth first arose and that other oceanic worlds, like Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus might have life originating from the same heat energy and chemical reactions. One building block of life plentiful around the vents is acetate, which is a vinegar-like liquid from which more complex compounds can be formed.

Join HarborLAB’s free Gantry Plaza Community Paddle tonight! Bob in your kayak in front of the incomparable Manhattan skyline and the growing Queens waterfront! Made possible by Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, and by HarborLAB sponsors like TF Cornerstone, UN Federal Credit Union, NY Waterway/East River Ferry, Rockrose Development, Arup, Con Ed, NRG Energy, NY-NJ Harbor Estuary Program, Citizens Committee for NYC, Sims Metal Management, Green Apple Cleaners, and the general public!

Oyster cage from the Billion Oyster Project aboard a HarborLAB boat, to be paddled from Governors Island to LIC.

Hunters Point Community Middle School teachers receive their oysters and prepare to place them off Socrates Sculpture Park. HarborLAB later introduced the school to NYC Parks authorities to relocate them at Hunters Point Park South.

HarborLAB periodically delivers cages of oysters to schools and community groups along the East River from the Billion Oyster Project’s headquarters at The Harbor School on Governors Island. When we return from camping overnight on Governors Island for City of Water Day, we’ll bring new oyster seeds to Hunters Point Parks Conservancy and local schools, as well as growing that at our own launch site on the Newtown Crreek!

Oysters once lined the bed of our harbor and were considered the finest in the world to eat. They were famed for growing “as large as dinner plates” too. But middens (piles of shells) reveal that even before Europeans arrived, oysters were smaller because the growing regional population of First Nations were harvesting them younger to keep up with demand. That problem greatly accelerated. Then raw sewage and industrial pollution rendered oysters unsafe to eat, while toxins and dredging eradicated them.

Today the Billion Oyster Project seeks to restore oysters to our urban habitat, though they remain unsafe for people to eat. Why? Because they support other wildlife and might perform environmental services like filtering water and weakening storm waves because rough seabeds dissipate energy from below. But challenges lie ahead. Even as sewer system improvements and regulation of toxins remove pollution from the harbor, global CO2 increases in the atmosphere get absorbed by the ocean where the chemical gets converted to carbonic acid. That makes it harder for shellfish like oysters to pull together the calcium and magnesium they need to grow. The Billion Oyster Project collects monthly oyster growth data from participants to study how the species is faring in varying local conditions today.

Hunters Point Community Middle School teaching staff and Principal Sarah Goodman with HarborLAB Operations Manager EJ Lee midway through an East River your. They met with Socrates Sculpture Park.

What is this mysterious “lost city” at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and what hidden history might it reveal to intrepid scientists, or at least their probes?

ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S SATURDAY SCIENCE STUMPER:

Smart public kayaking programs know to avoid our estuaries at times like last night, despite the temptation of watching the fireworks. That’s because rains, especially with flash flooding, overwhelm the sewers so fully that raw feces is dumped into our waterways. But along with fecal bacteria come pharmaceuticals and chemicals, including antibiotics. About 80% of American waterways contain traces of antibiotics. An amusing thought is, “Great, maybe the two will cancel each other out!” Not quite. Instead, diluted antibiotics stoke the evolution of resistant pathogens while harming bacteria that benefit the ecosystem.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have developed a nanofilter that mimics a pump that bacterial cells use to expel antibiotics but tweaked it to instead send those compounds into vesicles. Once stored, they can be gathered for recycling or disposal, the researchers note. Living organisms might be engineered to perform this task, and the materials captured might one day include hormones, heavy metals, and other contaminants. Very impressive and perhaps a real environmental benefit. But perhaps this line of research raises its own safety concerns about nanotechnology and genetically modified organisms being released directly into the environment or slipping out of sanitation plants.