Long before scientists and astronauts from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency descended on the B.C. Cariboo in search of microbialites — a potential clue to life on Mars — there was Doug Pemberton and the Vancouver Pescaderos Dive Club.
It was a hot day in the mid-1980s when Pemberton and his club were driving home from a dive at Adams Lake.
"It was stinkin' hot and we thought, 'Let's go for a swim somewhere.' We pulled over and jumped in the water."
They'd picked Pavilion Lake, midway between Cache Creek and Lillooet, and soon discovered something strange in the water.
One member said, 'Hey, there's coral growing here."
"What are you talking about?" Pemberton recalled saying.
"No, really, there's coral."
They returned to their vehicle, got out their scuba gear and went for a dive to a depth of close to 20 metres.
"Holy crap, it looked like brain coral," Pemberton concluded.
He said the club took some samples and sent them to the University of British Columbia "to a freshwater biologist or something" for identification, but got back a rather deflating letter. "He seemed to think that they were just calcium carbonate. So we left it at that."
Several years later, all that changed.
The scientific community realized there was, indeed, something very important about those formations in Pavilion Lake.
"All of a sudden it was life on Mars and all this kind of stuff," said Pemberton, who is vice-president of the Artificial Reef Society of B.C. "I said, 'What are you guys talking about?'"
The structures found by Pemberton and the Pescaderos were, in fact, calcium carbonate, but they also contained single-celled microbes, which makes the structures different from lifeless stalactites or stalagmites found in caves.
Microbialites represent some of the earliest remnants of life on Earth, common 540 million to 2.5 billion years ago.
Today, they are found in environments often too harsh for most organisms, which makes those at Pavilion Lake, as well as Kelly Lake — 20 kilometres to the northwest, and the current focus of scientific research starting this week — so interesting.
Years after the Pescaderos divers' find, the official "discovery" of microbialites at Pavilion Lake was announced in a paper in the journal, Nature, in October 2000, based on the exploratory work of Harry Bohm, then of the underwater research lab at Simon Fraser University, and John Pollack, a Nelson, B.C.-based surveyor and Explorers Club member affiliated with the Underwater Archaeological Society of B.C.
"Pavilion is a classic case of a major discovery hiding in plain sight for decades," said Pollack, who is strongly connected with the scientific community.
NASA and several academic institutions in the U.S. and Canada participated in that paper and the official identification of the microbialites.
"I guess it just depends how curious you are to follow up on something," offered Darlene Lim, a NASA research scientist specializing in freshwater systems. "It really is an interesting story of exploration."
When Lim joined NASA in 2004, she was tasked with revisiting Pavilion Lake. Researchers scoured all the lakes within a 30-kilometre radius of Pavilion Lake that year but could only confirm more microbialites at Kelly Lake.
With funding from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, scientists conducted research at Pavilion Lake from 2008 to 2010, utilizing two one-person submersibles to go where scuba divers could not. Pavilion Lake is 65 metres deep and located at an elevation of more than 800 metres, factors that impose limitations on divers.
Starting this week at Kelly Lake, about 350 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, scientists are continuing their research into whether microbes or chemical reactions are responsible for creating the coral-like structures. One possibility, Lim explains, is that cyanobacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis are responsible by "forcing out the precipitation of calcium carbonate."
Studies of the structures so far suggests evidence of biological influence on the surface, "but as you go lower, deeper into the structures, that biosignature disappears. It's still outstanding what the dominant mechanism was that created these structures over time."
The research has direct relevance to the potential discovery of microbialites in space, including asteroids en route to Mars — and whether they could hold evidence of life.
"Where did these microbialites come from, what's their interaction with time, the role with groundwater, all kinds of questions," said U.S. astronaut Mike Gernhardt, who is making his fourth visit to B.C.'s Cariboo — the same number of times he's been in space.
"On one dive, I found a huge microbialite, totally inconsistent with what people thought the growth rates could be and the age of the lake. It had been nucleated on this huge rock. It was 30 feet long and 25 feet high, and looked like a big bunch of bananas."
He added: "There's all these lakes in the world, why these ones with microbialites? There's only a few places in the world where they've found them, and here they're just abundant.
"Probably because it's fairly arid, not a lot of (surface) groundwater run-off, not a lot of nutrients, fish or multi-cellular life, which we figure led to the demise of microbialites that used to dominate the oceans."
Gernhardt said that although his research at Pavilion Lake and Kelly Lake is conducted underwater, it has a direct connection to future work, potentially with a land-based roving vehicle on a future space mission.
"It's very much analogous to the way we'd do this on a lunar or Mars mission," he said, noting he's focusing on specific communications scenarios. "It's real world-class science."
The University of B.C.'s role is to test samples of the microbialites to determine exactly what kind of microbes — such as bacteria, viruses, diatoms, phytoplankton — are at play and how the composition might vary at different depths.
When the Vancouver Sun visited, Professor Curtis Suttle, associate dean of research in the faculty of science, arrived with a plastic cooler full of microbialites hived off by scuba divers at a depth of 25 metres.
Even the water at that depth has been pumped to the surface so that the microbes can remain in a natural condition until they are handed off to a team headed by research scientist Amy Chan to be dipped in liquid nitrogen for transport to UBC for further testing.
"I think it's pretty clear that microbes are inherently responsible for the growth of these structures," Suttle said. "But I'm not sure we can go as far as saying that we could not have these structures formed without microbes. That's the question."
Gernhardt is hopeful that funding can be found to continue the research, which has provided an astronaut with four tours of space a new and exciting way of looking at Earth, not from a space ship but from a submersible craft.
"You fly it with your feet, and that leaves your hands free to check the life-support systems, to control the manipulator, to operate the sonar.
"It's been one of the coolest things I've done at NASA — not as cool as flying in space, but we were truly seeing things that human eyes had never seen before.
"In that sense, it was very much like discovering life on another planet."
Author: Larry Pynn | Source: The Vancouver Sun [July 20, 2011]
 |
| A team of Canadian and U.S. scientists, including from the Canadian Space Agency and NASA, have been researching microbialites at BC's Pavilion Lake and switching to nearby Kelly Lake. Microbialites are among the earliest remnants of life on Earth; research into them can shed light on future potential discoveries elsewhere [Credit: Donnie Reid] |
"It was stinkin' hot and we thought, 'Let's go for a swim somewhere.' We pulled over and jumped in the water."
They'd picked Pavilion Lake, midway between Cache Creek and Lillooet, and soon discovered something strange in the water.
One member said, 'Hey, there's coral growing here."
"What are you talking about?" Pemberton recalled saying.
"No, really, there's coral."
They returned to their vehicle, got out their scuba gear and went for a dive to a depth of close to 20 metres.
"Holy crap, it looked like brain coral," Pemberton concluded.
He said the club took some samples and sent them to the University of British Columbia "to a freshwater biologist or something" for identification, but got back a rather deflating letter. "He seemed to think that they were just calcium carbonate. So we left it at that."
Several years later, all that changed.
The scientific community realized there was, indeed, something very important about those formations in Pavilion Lake.
"All of a sudden it was life on Mars and all this kind of stuff," said Pemberton, who is vice-president of the Artificial Reef Society of B.C. "I said, 'What are you guys talking about?'"
The structures found by Pemberton and the Pescaderos were, in fact, calcium carbonate, but they also contained single-celled microbes, which makes the structures different from lifeless stalactites or stalagmites found in caves.
Microbialites represent some of the earliest remnants of life on Earth, common 540 million to 2.5 billion years ago.
Today, they are found in environments often too harsh for most organisms, which makes those at Pavilion Lake, as well as Kelly Lake — 20 kilometres to the northwest, and the current focus of scientific research starting this week — so interesting.
Years after the Pescaderos divers' find, the official "discovery" of microbialites at Pavilion Lake was announced in a paper in the journal, Nature, in October 2000, based on the exploratory work of Harry Bohm, then of the underwater research lab at Simon Fraser University, and John Pollack, a Nelson, B.C.-based surveyor and Explorers Club member affiliated with the Underwater Archaeological Society of B.C.
"Pavilion is a classic case of a major discovery hiding in plain sight for decades," said Pollack, who is strongly connected with the scientific community.
NASA and several academic institutions in the U.S. and Canada participated in that paper and the official identification of the microbialites.
"I guess it just depends how curious you are to follow up on something," offered Darlene Lim, a NASA research scientist specializing in freshwater systems. "It really is an interesting story of exploration."
When Lim joined NASA in 2004, she was tasked with revisiting Pavilion Lake. Researchers scoured all the lakes within a 30-kilometre radius of Pavilion Lake that year but could only confirm more microbialites at Kelly Lake.
With funding from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, scientists conducted research at Pavilion Lake from 2008 to 2010, utilizing two one-person submersibles to go where scuba divers could not. Pavilion Lake is 65 metres deep and located at an elevation of more than 800 metres, factors that impose limitations on divers.
Starting this week at Kelly Lake, about 350 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, scientists are continuing their research into whether microbes or chemical reactions are responsible for creating the coral-like structures. One possibility, Lim explains, is that cyanobacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis are responsible by "forcing out the precipitation of calcium carbonate."
Studies of the structures so far suggests evidence of biological influence on the surface, "but as you go lower, deeper into the structures, that biosignature disappears. It's still outstanding what the dominant mechanism was that created these structures over time."
The research has direct relevance to the potential discovery of microbialites in space, including asteroids en route to Mars — and whether they could hold evidence of life.
"Where did these microbialites come from, what's their interaction with time, the role with groundwater, all kinds of questions," said U.S. astronaut Mike Gernhardt, who is making his fourth visit to B.C.'s Cariboo — the same number of times he's been in space.
"On one dive, I found a huge microbialite, totally inconsistent with what people thought the growth rates could be and the age of the lake. It had been nucleated on this huge rock. It was 30 feet long and 25 feet high, and looked like a big bunch of bananas."
He added: "There's all these lakes in the world, why these ones with microbialites? There's only a few places in the world where they've found them, and here they're just abundant.
"Probably because it's fairly arid, not a lot of (surface) groundwater run-off, not a lot of nutrients, fish or multi-cellular life, which we figure led to the demise of microbialites that used to dominate the oceans."
Gernhardt said that although his research at Pavilion Lake and Kelly Lake is conducted underwater, it has a direct connection to future work, potentially with a land-based roving vehicle on a future space mission.
"It's very much analogous to the way we'd do this on a lunar or Mars mission," he said, noting he's focusing on specific communications scenarios. "It's real world-class science."
The University of B.C.'s role is to test samples of the microbialites to determine exactly what kind of microbes — such as bacteria, viruses, diatoms, phytoplankton — are at play and how the composition might vary at different depths.
When the Vancouver Sun visited, Professor Curtis Suttle, associate dean of research in the faculty of science, arrived with a plastic cooler full of microbialites hived off by scuba divers at a depth of 25 metres.
Even the water at that depth has been pumped to the surface so that the microbes can remain in a natural condition until they are handed off to a team headed by research scientist Amy Chan to be dipped in liquid nitrogen for transport to UBC for further testing.
"I think it's pretty clear that microbes are inherently responsible for the growth of these structures," Suttle said. "But I'm not sure we can go as far as saying that we could not have these structures formed without microbes. That's the question."
Gernhardt is hopeful that funding can be found to continue the research, which has provided an astronaut with four tours of space a new and exciting way of looking at Earth, not from a space ship but from a submersible craft.
"You fly it with your feet, and that leaves your hands free to check the life-support systems, to control the manipulator, to operate the sonar.
"It's been one of the coolest things I've done at NASA — not as cool as flying in space, but we were truly seeing things that human eyes had never seen before.
"In that sense, it was very much like discovering life on another planet."
Author: Larry Pynn | Source: The Vancouver Sun [July 20, 2011]