Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Sea life illustrator Karen Jacobsen goes deep

Deep-sea expeditions explore the origins of life on Earth, and elsewhere


By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

The Alvin, a deep-sea submersible, is deployed from the R/V Atlantis to study hot springs at the bottom of the ocean. Photo by

Some artists work at an easel in their studio, others from photographs or en plein air on roadsides or in fields to capture the essence of a landscape. Hailey-based artist Karen Jacobsen travels by deep-sea submersible to the most inhospitable places on Earth to paint her subjects.

"I didn't want a job stuck at a desk," Jacobsen says. "I wanted to be an expedition illustrator in the field with scientists. I guess I was born about 300 years too late."

As a natural science illustrator, Jacobsen continues a tradition that began centuries ago. She travels with scientists who capture newly discovered animal species, rendering a detailed likeness of each creature with an artist's brush.

For 20 years Jacobsen has been working in collaboration with oceanographers who study the unique ecology of environments surrounding hydrothermal vents at the deepest parts of the ocean. These studies may ultimately shed light on the origins of life on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere in the universe.

Jacobsen earned degrees in fine arts and science communication at the University of California in Santa Cruz before pursuing her dreams. She eventually found work with oceanographer Cindy Lee Van Dover, director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory.

"Karen is an artist who at the drop of a hat would leave work and family to join an oceanographic expedition for weeks on end," writes Van Dover in "Beyond the Edge of the Sea: Diversity of Life in the Deep-Ocean Wilderness."

The book was published last year to coincide with an exhibition of the same name that features Jacobsen's artwork and the work of oceanographers who continue to discover new species where life was once thought not to exist at all.

"Beyond the Edge of the Sea" is a traveling exhibition on display at the Pennsylvania State Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum through August. In 2011, it will be up at the National Science Foundation headquarters in Arlington, Va.

The exhibition will feature 86 of the more than 400 illustrations Jacobsen has done from her submarine adventures, including the first drawings of the bizzare-looking "yeti crab," Kiwa hirsuta, discovered at a deep-sea mussel bed on the Pacific Antarctic Ridge near Easter Island.

"It was an exciting time on the boat," recalls Jacobsen. "I got to hold it and see it. It had no eyes."

So why is the work of an artist still necessary on an expedition, despite the advances in modern photography?

"It's an aesthetic thing," Jacobsen says. "An illustration is more subjective than a photograph. It can be more effective in representing an animal outside of its natural environment. I add to the subject my perception and comprehension of the natural history of the subject."

David Nateman, former director of the North Carolina Maritime Museum and a contributor to the exhibition book, says Jacobsen's subjective and detailed perspective is valuable in ways that photography is not.

"Karen is able to highlight features that are lost in the photograph. At the same time, she can leave out details that are distracting."

Since 1991, Jacobsen has joined Van Dover and others on five deep-sea voyages and 12 cruises in Alvin, a small, deep-sea submersible, to discover and study the unusual collection of creatures that live around hydrothermal hot springs at some of the deepest, darkest places in the sea. The animals that Jacobsen paints would never survive a trip to the ocean surface. Since many of the species are new to science, detailed illustrations can complement photographs in the process of taxonomic identification.

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Hydrothermal vents were discovered by scientists in Alvin in 1977 while diving nearly 8,000 feet on the East Pacific Rise near the Galapagos Islands, off the west coast of South America. Scientists soon found that the food chain of animals that surround these steaming vents is not based primarily on green-plant photosynthesis, as in other ecological zones.

Some vent organisms, such as giant tube worms and clams, rely instead on "chemosynthesis," a unique and complex chemical reaction and symbiosis involving rare species of bacteria that can synthesize life-producing energy and organic carbon from the hydrogen sulfide, methane and oxygen that spew from the vents.

The discovery of an ecosystem that does not derive its energy source primarily from photosynthesis caught the attention, and some of the funding, of scientists looking for signs of life beyond the Earth's biosphere.

The NASA Astrobiology Institute, as well as the National Science Foundation, have been sponsors of the expeditions described in "Beyond the Edge of the Sea."

John D. Rummel is an ecologist who once led NASA's astrobiology program. In "Beyond the Edge of the Sea," he describes the role of deep-sea vent biologists in "weaning the astrobiology community away from attempts to discover photosynthetic organisms on Mars."

"With lessons from studying deep-sea vents, we begin to understand that Earth life can live in abundance in places that humans consider 'extreme,'" Rummel writes.

Because the larval forms of some animals that live around deep-sea vents are capable of crossing cold, anaerobic distances on the bottom of the ocean, some scientists think they may provide a microcosm for life as it may disperse around the universe.

Jacobsen also does illustration work in conjunction with NASA and its ongoing astrobiology research program. She will present that work at the Astobiology Science Conference in Houston, Texas, in April, but so far has not been invited to join researchers in outer space.

"I don't think my watercolors would stay in their palette in zero gravity," she says with a laugh.

But Jacobsen is hoping to join crews on a redesigned Alvin submersible, scheduled for operation by Feburary 2012. The trip will once more take her to places unfrequented by human beings. She will descend more than two miles into the sea for up to eight hours at a time. Only someone with Jacobsen's enthusiasm for discovery would enjoy the trip.

"It's fantastic," she says. "We find new species every time we go down."

Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com




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