Distinguished Speaker Series: Johanna Gutleben
May 6 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
The Ocean Institute’s Distinguished Speaker Series, presented by the Nicholas Endowment, brings interesting innovations, real-world research, exotic experiences, and delightful discoveries to the surface through powerful presentations from an ocean of experts. Speakers present on a variety of topics ranging from ocean researchers, ocean authors, ocean artists, and ocean athletes.
Light snacks & Refreshments available for purchase at event.
Distinguished Speaker: Johanna Gutleben
Description: Decaying barrels on the seafloor linked to DDT contamination have raised concerns about the public health implications of decades old industrial waste dumped off the coast of Los Angeles. To explore their contents, we collected sediment cores close to five deep-sea barrels. We measured the concentration of DDT and its breakdown products. Our results suggest that barrels were not the source of DDT contamination. However, sediments collected through white halos surrounding three barrels were enriched in calcite and had elevated pH. There, microbial communities were low diversity and dominated by alkalophilic bacteria adapted to high pH. A solid concretion sampled between a white halo and barrel was composed of minerals that form at high pH. Based on these findings, we postulate that leakage of containerized alkaline waste triggered the formation of mineral concretions and raised the pH of the surrounding sediment pore water. This selects for microbes adapted to extreme alkalinity and precipitated “anthropogenic” carbonates. These “white halos” serve as a visual identifier of barrels that contained alkaline waste, that have unforeseen, long-term consequences for marine communities in the San Pedro Basin.
Wednesday, May 6
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Doors open at 5:30pm, talk begins at 6:00pm
$10 – General
FREE – Members
FREE – Students (with Valid ID)
About Johanna:
Johanna Gutleben received her BSc degree in Environmental, Engineering and Biotechnology at the applied science university MCI in Innsbruck, Austria. She continued her MSc studies at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and at AgroParisTech, France. Johanna joined a PhD research program at Wageningen University, NL in the Laboratory of Microbiology studying the microbial diversity and biopharmaceutical potential of marine sponges. Currently, Johanna is a researcher in the lab of Paul Jensen in the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine. at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Here she focuses on deep-sea microbiology, exploring the biodiversity and biopharmaceutical diversity of various deep-sea biomes, and studying the effects of human pollution on deep-sea ecosystems. She participated in several research expeditions, where she collected and processed hundreds of samples from various deep-sea environments. After bringing them to the lab she studies them using molecular biology and likes to share her results in colorful figures and presentations. In her free time, Johanna is an avid freediver and scuba diver, enjoys surfing, beaching and everything else ocean related.
