presence
10-22-2014, 08:00 AM
WASTEBOOK 2014
Synchronized
Swimming for Sea
Monkeys
$307,524
Kids around the world are disappointed to learn that the sea
monkey family in the advertisements is a little different than
the result.
Sea Monkeys have captivated Americans for generations and now scientists are trying to determine the impact of the
swirl created by the synchronized swimming of these tiny sea creatures may have on the flow of the ocean.
Sea Monkeys are guided to swim in a synchronized direction
in this tank to measure the swirl of their collective motion.
Sea Monkeys have captivated Americans
for generations. The novelty pets, which are
tiny brine shrimp, have been regular features
on toy store shelves and advertisements on the
pages of comic books since the 1960s. NASA
even launched Sea Monkeys into space with
John Glenn in 1998.
Cartoon-style ads for pet Sea-Monkeys
promise that you can learn to “make them ap
pear to obey your commands, follow a beam
of light, do loop-the-loops and even seem to
dance when you play” music.
The New York Times says it is “sort of true” that Sea Monkeys
can be trained because they do follow light.
With the financial support of three govern
ment agencies, researchers put these claims
to the test and essentially choreographed a
laser guided synchronized swim team of Sea
Monkeys as part of a study to measure the
swirl created by their collective movements.
Flashing blue and green laser lights lure
the aquatic creatures to move in the same di
rection within an aquarium. “The green laser
at the top of the tank provides a bright target”
as “a blue laser rising along the side of the
tank lights up a path to guide them upward.”
The spinning of “silver-coated hollow glass
spheres” in the water is tracked with “high-
speed camera and a red laser” measures how
the Sea Monkey’s “swimming causes the sur
rounding water to swirl.”
“Coaxing Sea-Monkeys to swim when
and where you want them to is even more dif
ficult than it sounds,” said John Dabiri, one of
the project’s researchers and a professor at
California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
“It turns out that the collective swim
ming motion of Sea-Monkeys and other zoo
plankton—swimming plankton—can generate
enough swirling flow to potentially influence
the circulation of water in oceans,” according
to the researchers. They conducted a similar
study with jellyfish in 2009 and reached similar
conclusions showing “small animals can gen
erate flow in the surrounding water.”
“Adding up the effect of all of the zoo
plankton in the ocean—assuming they have
a similar influence—could inject as much as a
trillion watts of power into the oceans to drive
global circulation, Dabiri says. In comparison,
the winds and tides contribute a combined two
trillion watts.”
But “some oceanographers are skeptical of
the claim that the movements of organisms con
tribute significantly to ocean circulation” because
“it’s a conceptual leap to go from a tankful of
Sea-Monkeys to oceans filled with plankton.”
Christian Noss, an environmental phys
icist at the University of Koblenz-Landau in
Germany, is “not convinced the effect would
scale up from the laboratory to the ocean.” He
acknowledges “the study was well designed”
but notes “unlike water in a small tank, water in
the ocean is often stratified, with denser layers
lying underneath lighter ones. Noss’s work with
another tiny crustacean, known as Daphnia,
showed that stratified conditions dampened
the mixing produced by these animals.”
The Sea Monkey researchers are planning
more realistic studies, such as using “a tank
with increased water density at the bottom,
which imitates real-life ocean conditions.”
Dabiri also “plans to test the stratification
question and hopes to perform the same ex
periments at a larger scale in the ocean.”
Of course, the subjects of this study are
not actually monkeys with fins and gills, but
rather brine shrimp, which were given the
moniker “Sea Monkeys” because their tail re
sembles a monkey’s tail.”
The tiny animals
are about half an inch long with “about 10 small
leaf-like fins that flap about.”
The Sea Monkey study was funded by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office
of Naval Research with support from the U.S.-
Israel Binational Science Foundation.
The NSF
funding is part of a $307,524 collaborate research
grant that runs through February 2015.
With kits available online and many toy stores, you can try to train your own team of
synchronized swimming Sea Monkeys for as little as $12
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=6932c44c-6ef4-491d-a0f1-078b69f1f800
Synchronized
Swimming for Sea
Monkeys
$307,524
Kids around the world are disappointed to learn that the sea
monkey family in the advertisements is a little different than
the result.
Sea Monkeys have captivated Americans for generations and now scientists are trying to determine the impact of the
swirl created by the synchronized swimming of these tiny sea creatures may have on the flow of the ocean.
Sea Monkeys are guided to swim in a synchronized direction
in this tank to measure the swirl of their collective motion.
Sea Monkeys have captivated Americans
for generations. The novelty pets, which are
tiny brine shrimp, have been regular features
on toy store shelves and advertisements on the
pages of comic books since the 1960s. NASA
even launched Sea Monkeys into space with
John Glenn in 1998.
Cartoon-style ads for pet Sea-Monkeys
promise that you can learn to “make them ap
pear to obey your commands, follow a beam
of light, do loop-the-loops and even seem to
dance when you play” music.
The New York Times says it is “sort of true” that Sea Monkeys
can be trained because they do follow light.
With the financial support of three govern
ment agencies, researchers put these claims
to the test and essentially choreographed a
laser guided synchronized swim team of Sea
Monkeys as part of a study to measure the
swirl created by their collective movements.
Flashing blue and green laser lights lure
the aquatic creatures to move in the same di
rection within an aquarium. “The green laser
at the top of the tank provides a bright target”
as “a blue laser rising along the side of the
tank lights up a path to guide them upward.”
The spinning of “silver-coated hollow glass
spheres” in the water is tracked with “high-
speed camera and a red laser” measures how
the Sea Monkey’s “swimming causes the sur
rounding water to swirl.”
“Coaxing Sea-Monkeys to swim when
and where you want them to is even more dif
ficult than it sounds,” said John Dabiri, one of
the project’s researchers and a professor at
California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
“It turns out that the collective swim
ming motion of Sea-Monkeys and other zoo
plankton—swimming plankton—can generate
enough swirling flow to potentially influence
the circulation of water in oceans,” according
to the researchers. They conducted a similar
study with jellyfish in 2009 and reached similar
conclusions showing “small animals can gen
erate flow in the surrounding water.”
“Adding up the effect of all of the zoo
plankton in the ocean—assuming they have
a similar influence—could inject as much as a
trillion watts of power into the oceans to drive
global circulation, Dabiri says. In comparison,
the winds and tides contribute a combined two
trillion watts.”
But “some oceanographers are skeptical of
the claim that the movements of organisms con
tribute significantly to ocean circulation” because
“it’s a conceptual leap to go from a tankful of
Sea-Monkeys to oceans filled with plankton.”
Christian Noss, an environmental phys
icist at the University of Koblenz-Landau in
Germany, is “not convinced the effect would
scale up from the laboratory to the ocean.” He
acknowledges “the study was well designed”
but notes “unlike water in a small tank, water in
the ocean is often stratified, with denser layers
lying underneath lighter ones. Noss’s work with
another tiny crustacean, known as Daphnia,
showed that stratified conditions dampened
the mixing produced by these animals.”
The Sea Monkey researchers are planning
more realistic studies, such as using “a tank
with increased water density at the bottom,
which imitates real-life ocean conditions.”
Dabiri also “plans to test the stratification
question and hopes to perform the same ex
periments at a larger scale in the ocean.”
Of course, the subjects of this study are
not actually monkeys with fins and gills, but
rather brine shrimp, which were given the
moniker “Sea Monkeys” because their tail re
sembles a monkey’s tail.”
The tiny animals
are about half an inch long with “about 10 small
leaf-like fins that flap about.”
The Sea Monkey study was funded by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office
of Naval Research with support from the U.S.-
Israel Binational Science Foundation.
The NSF
funding is part of a $307,524 collaborate research
grant that runs through February 2015.
With kits available online and many toy stores, you can try to train your own team of
synchronized swimming Sea Monkeys for as little as $12
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=6932c44c-6ef4-491d-a0f1-078b69f1f800