Dr. Edith (Edie) Widder decided she wanted to be a marine biologist when she was just 11 years old. But by the time she was in graduate school studying neurobiology, she had essentially given up the idea of fulfilling her childhood dream because of the lack of job opportunities for scientists in these fields.

Then, a chance encounter with a colony of jellyfish led Widder to her own career path investigating bioluminescence, the generation of light by living things, and building the instruments to study it and other undersea phenomena. One of the most remarkable pieces of equipment designed by Widder, who is now the president and senior scientist at Florida’s Ocean Research & Conservation Association, is the Eye-in-the-Sea, a unique, unobtrusive camera that sits on the sea bottom and records the never-before-seen behavior of marine animals.

How did you get involved in ocean research?

For my Ph.D. thesis I was measuring the electrical activity that triggers light emission from a bioluminescent dinoflagellate. As I was nearing the completion of my degree, my major professor wrote a grant for an instrument for measuring the color of very dim light flashes from bioluminescent animals. Because I have always been attracted to hi-tech instrumentation, I kept tinkering with this instrument, until I became the lab expert. At that point, he suggested I tag along on some marine biology trawling cruises and measure the colors emitted by different bioluminescent organisms. I was thrilled. Suddenly, I was doing what I had always dreamed of doing: going to sea on exploratory expeditions!

Dr. Edith (Edie) Widder inspects the Eye-in-the-Sea

The animals brought up in the nets were fantastic, and their light-producing capabilities were incredible. I was enthralled, but I still didn’t see how I could carve a career out of this new passion. One of the research cruises I participated in was organized by Dr. Bruce Robison — currently at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) — to test a diving suit called WASP, which had been developed for use by the offshore oil industry as a tool for ocean exploration. [The suit is big enough inside that there is a display of dials, gauges, and switches in front of the wearer's face.] I wanted to see for myself what bioluminescence in the depths of the ocean actually looked like, and Bruce gave me that opportunity. But first I had to qualify as a pilot, and one of the requirements was to be able to [screw a bolt into a large metal] shackle underwater using [only the manipulator claws of] the Michelin Man arms of the suit. The trouble was that my arms were too short, so I had to figure out a way to do it by manipulating the claws with my fingertips and switching back and forth between one arm and the other.

My dives in WASP were a life-changing experience. During my first open ocean dive, I went down to 800 feet and turned out the lights. I knew I would see bioluminescence, but I was totally unprepared for how much. It was incredible! There were explosions of light everywhere, like being in the middle of a silent fireworks display.

Were any of those dives especially noteworthy?

During one dive, I was using a light meter to measure the penetration of sunlight in the water. I was at a depth where the sunlight had almost disappeared and I had my head down looking at the red LED readout of the light meter display when suddenly the whole inside of the suit seemed to explode with blue light. It was so bright I could see all the dials and gauges inside the suit without a flashlight. I thought it was an electrical arc from something malfunctioning with the 440V that powered the suit. But it wasn’t electrical; it was biological. I had brushed against one end of a siphonophore chain, a colony of jellyfish more than 30 feet long. [Jellyfish in the subclass Siphonophorae connect into long chains, which can be over 100 feet long.] By bumping it I had stimulated its bioluminescence.

And that’s what got you hooked on ocean research?

Yes. I knew this is what I had to study, and it didn’t matter that there was no clear career path to do it. I had questions … Who’s making the light? How much light? How many organisms? Why? And, most importantly, why aren’t more scientists studying this? … and I wanted answers. I knew how much energy — the currency of life — that was required for an organism to produce light, so my subjective impression was that this has to be one of the most important processes in the ocean.

I’ve spent much of my career working with engineers to design and build the instruments I needed to answer my questions. Along the way I’ve been lucky enough to make some thrilling discoveries about who was making all that light and why, and also about what a useful tool bioluminescence is for figuring out how animals are distributed in the ocean and for monitoring the health of marine ecosystems.

When did you get the idea for Eye-in-the-Sea?

I have made hundreds of dives in submersibles, with each dive holding the promise of seeing an organism or a behavior that no one has ever seen before. But I have always wondered about the animals and behaviors that we’re not seeing because our bright lights and loud thrusters scare them away. So I decided to develop an unobtrusive camera system that used red light — which is invisible to the animals — and that was powered off a battery so that it could be left to sit quietly on the bottom of the ocean. I also wanted to test an idea for an unusual kind of lure that imitated a bioluminescent display I believed might be very attractive to large predators.

How long did it take to develop the system?

I first tried to get funding in 1994. The trouble is that it’s virtually impossible to get a grant unless you can tell the granting agency what you are going to discover. Since I had no idea, it wasn’t funded. I finally put it together with bits and pieces that we had around the lab, and a few small pots of money for different parts of the system. We had the prototype Eye-in-the-Sea developed as a student project for the Harvey Mudd College Engineering Clinic program in the fall of 2000. They produced a desktop version of the camera system. Then I got money from NOAA [the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration] to build the camera housing and the frame, and I got MBARI, where I’m an adjunct, to buy the underwater battery. We used MBARI’s ship and remotely-operated vehicle for preliminary testing of the system in Monterey Canyon in 2002.

What has been the most exciting discovery made by the system?

I had wanted to place the Eye-in-the-Sea at an oasis on the bottom of the ocean, in some site rich with life that was likely to be patrolled by large predators. The first time I got to test the camera at such a place was in 2004, in the north end of the Gulf of Mexico, at an amazing location called the brine pool. This remarkable oasis is an underwater lake of water so salty and dense that it forms a pool on the bottom of the ocean. Methane, bubbling up through the pool, feeds a community of mussels and clams and other organisms that rim the shore. We placed the camera on the edge of the shore and left it there overnight. The first four hours of recordings showed fish swimming in front of the camera, apparently unperturbed by the red lights. Then, after four hours, the electronic jellyfish lure was programmed to come on for the first time. Just 86 seconds after it went into its pinwheel display mode, I recorded a squid over 6 feet long. It was not just any squid, but a squid so new to science that it cannot be placed in any known scientific family! I couldn’t have asked for a better proof of concept.

This August, we had an expedition to the Bahamas. We only had three deployments of the camera system during a nine-day cruise, but it was incredible how much we saw. We observed as many as nine different species of deep-sea shark, including a seven-gill shark, and the never-before-seen behavior of giant six-gill sharks rooting the sediment, presumably to scoop up pill bugs. We know so little about deep-sea sharks, especially about their normal behavior, that these recordings are scientific gold. As humans reach deeper into the ocean to feed a hungry planet, many of these deep dwellers are in danger of being wiped out. Their growth and reproduction are often too slow for them to be fished sustainably. We need to know about their life histories and behaviors in order to protect them.

Also on that cruise we recorded more bioluminescence than I’ve ever seen before with the Eye-in-the-Sea. Especially exciting was a series of displays that seemed to be triggered by the electronic jellyfish lure. It seemed like we were talking to something. We just don’t know what we were saying.

What does the future hold?

It’s going to be amazing when we have the Eye-in-the-Sea installed on the cabled network in Monterey Canyon. We’ll be collecting data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Instead of brief and infrequent glimpses, we are going to have a window into the deep sea that will be open around the clock, for months at a time. There is no telling what we may see.

A wisp of steam curls lazily above the volcano’s peak. The ground murmurs and groans. The mountain’s slopes bulge ominously. Is the volcano ready to blow? Or is it just restless, and years — or perhaps centuries — away from a potentially dangerous eruption?

Scientists working in Hawaii and elsewhere are using more sophisticated tools than ever to try to predict the behavior of volcanoes. NATURE’s Violent Hawaii offers a glimpse of some of these tools, such as special scoops to collect lava samples. But volcanologists have a lot more gear stored in their toolboxes. Here’s a sampling:

Tiltmeters

Scientists use tiltmeters to measure extremely subtle changes in a volcano’s slope. An increasingly steep side, for instance, can indicate a buildup of gas and molten rock inside the mountain, making it swell. Modern tiltmeters can detect a change of just one part per million; that’s equivalent to being able to detect someone lifting the end of a half-mile-long board just one millimeter — or about the height of a dime.

Gas Samples

A geologist cools a sample of molten lava in a can of water.

The gas emanating from a volcano’s vents and crater can tell scientists a great deal about what is happening deep beneath the earth. Changes in concentrations of carbon and sulfur gases might signal the arrival of a new batch of magma, or molten rock. The amount of malodorous hydrogen sulfide gas may also indicate an impending eruption.

Obtaining gas samples can be dangerous. A spectrometer — an instrument that analyzes light coming through a volcanic plume — allows scientists to conduct a study from a safe distance. Since each type of gas emits its own distinctive light signature, researchers are able to identify what is coming out of the volcano. In 1991, such gas analysis tools helped researchers predict the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, saving countless lives.

Thermal Imagers

Special cameras carried by aircraft or satellites can take pictures of the heat emitted by volcanoes. These “thermal images” help researchers identify new lava flows (which are hotter) and older, cooler ones.

Seismic Monitors

Monitoring a mountain’s seismic activity was one of the first methods used to predict volcanic eruptions. An increase in earthquakes can be a sign of an impending eruption. Researchers use seismic monitors to track the many small tremors that occur around a volcano. Modern seismometers can record the intensity, escalation, and epicenters of earthquakes. In Hawaii, researchers have more than 60 seismic monitoring stations on the Big Island alone.

Radar Mapping Instruments

Radar mappers carried by aircraft and satellites produce remarkably detailed three-dimensional maps of the Earth’s surface. They help researchers predict where lava flows might travel — or predict the path of the incredibly dangerous steaming mudslides produced by some volcanoes. Local officials can then use this information to evacuate threatened areas in the event of an eruption.

If spider silk came out of a factory, it would be hailed as one of the greatest inventions of all time. Delicate yet amazingly sturdy, strong yet stunningly beautiful, it is a material that brings life and death. A spider’s silk is a web of contradictions and a scientific mystery still waiting to be solved.

As NATURE’s True Adventures of the Ultimate Spider-Hunter shows, spiders use their silk in dazzling ways — from building webs that telegraph the presence of trapped prey to creating barriers against unwanted visitors. Overall, the world’s spiders produce at least seven different kinds of silk, with most species producing five to six types. Silk threads are manufactured in special glands and then extruded from “spinnerets,” which control the thickness. Some spiders have several pairs of spinnerets, each producing a different kind of silk.

In Spider-Hunter, viewers see how spiders put different silks to use. In one scene, a female Tucson blond tarantula weaves a silky cover over her burrow in an attempt to rebuff an amorous male tarantula. Unfortunately, he doesn’t take the hint, and ends up getting eaten. “I’m afraid this male got his female, but not in the way that he was hoping,” says the show’s resident spider expert, Martin Nicholas.

Martin Nicholas examines a golden orb-weaving spider’s web.

Other spiders use a special silk to wrap up precious cargo — their eggs. Egg-case silk protects against predators and parasites. Another kind, called dragline silk, is used to build webs and essentially acts like telegraph wires. The vibrating silk tells the spider exactly where a potential meal has hit the web. This silk is five to six times stronger than steel and can be stretched up to 40 percent of its length without breaking.

In southern Mexico, Nicholas introduces viewers to the golden orb-weaving spider, believed to spin the world’s strongest silk. It can stop a buzzing bee in mid-flight and trap small birds. To demonstrate its toughness, Nicholas throws a ping pong ball into a golden orb’s web. The silk stretches, but doesn’t break. Indeed, Nicholas says that if human spinners were able to weave a thick rope from the golden orb’s silk, it would be strong enough to lift a jumbo jet.

In hopes of learning how to synthesize the strong, supple material, researchers have been trying to unlock the biological secrets of silk. Several teams have sequenced genes that enable spiders to manufacture the substance. One day, those genes might be engineered into cells that are cultured in giant vats and used to make spider silk on an industrial scale.

Some scientists have already learned to synthesize small quantities of silk in the laboratory. Biologist Uri Gat of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, for instance, put one spider silk gene into caterpillar cells and produced vials of tough but elastic thread. Other researchers, at Nexia Biotechnologies near Montreal, Canada, put spider genes into the cells that goats use to produce milk. The result was milk laced with molecules of supple silk many times stronger than steel. Potential uses include super tough fabric for bulletproof vests and extremely strong thread for surgeons.

Not all silk researchers are using genetic engineering. Some are chemists trying to mimic the chemical reactions that produce silk molecules. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, teams of chemists are experimenting with the polymers that give silk its flexibility and durability. So far, however, they’ve had trouble accomplishing what a spider does with apparent ease. Indeed, some spiders can produce yards of silk a day, as they constantly reweave and repair their webs.

So, for the time being, spider silk remains a scientific mystery and a marvel of nature.

Can the King of Beasts be copied? That is the question some conservationists are pondering as lion populations dwindle worldwide. They say cloning — using advanced biological techniques to create genetic duplicates of existing lions — could become part of the effort to save the big cats. Other experts, however, are skeptical. Cloning lions would be difficult and expensive, they argue, adding that it won’t really solve the major problems facing the big cats, such as habitat loss. For the moment, they say, the money would be better spent on more traditional conservation efforts.

It’s a debate that couldn’t have even occurred a decade ago. Cloning a mammal was beyond the reach of science until 1996, when researchers managed to create a cloned sheep named Dolly. Since then, scientists have learned how to clone a host of other mammals, including mice, sheep, cows, dogs, and small cats. In 2002, scientists in Texas announced that they had cloned a domestic cat. They named the genetic replicate kitten “CC,” for “carbon copy.”

The breakthrough got some cat conservationists thinking. Cloning, they realized, could be a way to preserve the gene pool of dwindling cat populations, and perhaps create robust animals that could eventually be returned to the wild. In theory, genes could even be taken from the frozen tissues of dead animals, then reintroduced into populations through cloning. In essence, the dead could “walk again.”

In 2003, one conservation center began to follow through on these ideas. In New Orleans, the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species succeeded in cloning the first African wildcat, the bigger, wilder cousin of the common domestic cat. Eventually the team produced seven clones. Then, in 2005, the researchers went a step further. Two of the clones were allowed to mate, producing eight kittens. The births confirmed the idea that maybe, someday, cloned animals might be used to repopulate endangered species.

“We couldn’t be happier with these births,” Audubon researcher Betsy Dresser said at the time. “By improving the cloning process and then encouraging cloned animals to breed and make babies, we can revive the genes of individuals who might not be reproductively viable otherwise, and we can save genes from animals in the wild.”

Ultimately, she said, similar techniques might be used to reinvigorate populations of endangered small cats, such as Asia’s fishing cats and India’s rusty spotted cat, the world’s smallest feline. “The goal is to use whatever tools we can to help boost these populations,” explained Dresser. She cautioned, however, that while cloning could help conservation, “no single approach is going to solve the incredibly complex problem of disappearing wildlife.”

That complexity has helped spark controversy in India, where in 2004 scientists announced ambitious plans to clone the highly endangered Asian lion. Fewer than 300 are believed to exist, and the small group of Indian researchers said they wanted to spend $1 million to clone and restore the big cats.

The announcement drew criticism from conservation groups, who said the project raised false hopes. One problem, they noted, is that even if scientists succeeded in cloning the lions, their natural habitat is rapidly being lost to farms and development. “We spend millions of rupees trying to clone…lions, but where will we put them?” Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India asked reporters.

In addition, experts predict that cloning a lion won’t be easy. The vast majority of cloning experiments end in failure, they say, noting that it took more than 300 tries to create Dolly the sheep. Adding to the challenge is the fact that every mammal species has its own biological quirks when it comes to reproduction. Cloning a dog proved far more difficult than cloning a cat, for instance, because of some details of its reproductive biology.

In India, lion cloning advocates predict those technical problems will be overcome. So far, however, no scientist has succeeded in cloning one of the big cats. For the moment, weighing the potential risks and benefits of making copies of the King of Beasts remains a mostly hypothetical debate.

They are the superhighways of the sky. Biologists call them “flyways,” and each spring and fall billions of birds hit these atmospheric roads for their annual migrations, which can stretch thousands of miles. The sandhill and whooping cranes seen on NATURE’s Flight School, for instance, travel up to 2,500 miles each way on their migrations, following the same flyways first pioneered thousands of years ago by their ancestors.

In general, flyways follow major landforms, such as mountain ridges, coastlines, or river valleys that act as natural funnels. And while every type of bird may have their own route, many birds use the same general channels. In North America, for instance, scientists recognize four major flyways: the Atlantic, the Mississippi, the Central, and the Pacific. Birds typically move north and south along these routes between their breeding grounds in Canada and the northern United States, and their wintering grounds in South and Central America.

Overall, about 80 percent of the some 650 species of birds that nest in North America migrate along these flyways — and the few remaining whooping cranes are part of the seasonal traffic jam. Each spring, the small flock of wild whoopers that nests in Canada’s Northwest Territories embarks on its 2,500-mile flight south to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. The journey takes up to 3 weeks. Now, as seen in NATURE’s Flight School, conservationists are using ultralight aircraft to help establish a new migrating flock that will travel between Florida and the upper Midwest. There is also a non-migrating flock of whooping cranes in Florida.

Operation Migration’s whooping cranes migrated from the Midwest to Florida.

While it might seem like the cranes fly a long way, their trip is nothing compared to the annual migration undertaken by the arctic tern. Each year, the small seabird takes a round trip that can top out at more than 20,000 miles, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again. Other sea birds routinely fly more than 10,000 miles on their migrations.

Each species handles their annual trips a bit differently. Some cut the journey up into short hops, flying low, and stopping frequently to rest or feed. Others, like many cranes, are able to use wind currents or “thermals” of hot air to soar vast distances. Some may fly as high as 30,000 feet to get the best breezes or to cross mountains. While some fly during the day, many others travel only by night.

In recent years, scientists have perfected the art of using radar and tags that transmit signals to satellites as they track birds on their remarkable journeys. This technology allows the researchers to see exactly where the birds are going, and how long it takes them. It also helps conservationists identify key resting and feeding grounds in need of protection.

The tracking studies even provide opportunities for the public to have a bit of fun by following specific birds through Web sites. Scientists studying satellite-tagged albatrosses in the Pacific, for instance, recently sponsored the “Big Bird Race,” which allowed gamblers to place bets on which bird would reach the destination first — with the profits going to albatross conservation. “Who knows, if enough money is raised with the “Big Bird Race” then maybe albatrosses may one day outnumber horses,” says Gemma Brass of Ladbrokes, the U.K.-based betting company that sponsored the race.