UH researchers make discovery about spiders

Sea spiders can grow to the size of dinner plates and can survive and thrive in Antarctic waters. These characteristics, two University of Hawaii researchers recently discovered, are hardly the most interesting thing about the unique arthropods.

Amy Moran, an associate professor of marine ecology and evolution, and zoology Ph.D. student Caitlin Shishido were part of a team of scientists that studied the creatures at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

The team found that unlike most animals, which extract oxygen from their environment through gills or lungs and move that oxygen through their bodies using hearts and blood vessels, sea spiders have no special features to take in oxygen and have hearts that are too weak to distribute oxygen through their bodies.

Instead, sea spiders, distant relatives of land spiders, take in oxygen through their legs and move it through their bodies while digesting food via contractions that extend to the end of each of their legs.

“We are really excited about these results because they show that sea spiders solve one of life’s biggest challenges — getting oxygen into the body and taking it where it needs to go — in a way that is new to science,” Moran said. “The next thing we would love to know is if this is unique to sea spiders or if other animals also use oxygen with their guts and we just never knew about it.”

Slowing cyclone packs 120 mph winds

Hurricane Fernanda remained a Category 3 storm with 120 mph winds Sunday as it slowed its pace westward toward Hawaii.

At 5 p.m. Sunday the center of the hurricane was 1,775 miles east of Hilo, and the system was moving west-northwest at 12 mph.

Still a major hurricane, Fernanda was expected to weaken to tropical storm status Wednesday, a day before it crosses into the Central Pacific.

On Sunday, hurricane-force winds extended 30 miles from the center, and tropical storm-force winds extended out 105 miles, the National Hurricane Center said.

HAWAII ISLAND

Court dates set for 48 hikers over July 8 trespassing cases

Forty-eight adults cited this month for trespassing on state land on Hawaii island are due to appear before a judge in August and September.

They face fines of $150 when they appear in District Court in Waimea on one of five dates: Aug. 8, 15 and 29, and Sept. 12 and 19, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports.

The hikers were cited July 8 for venturing into the closed Kohala Forest Reserve and Kohala Restricted Watershed.

A Department of Land and Natural Resources statement on July 8 said 49 adults were written citations, but department spokeswoman Deborah Ward called that a “miscount.” Fourteen juveniles also were found trespassing during a sweep by DLNR Division of Conservation and Resource Enforcement officers, officials said, but hikers younger than 18 were issued written warnings.

Steve Bergfeld, Hawaii island branch manager for the Division of Forestry and Wildlife, said access to the Department of Agriculture’s Upper Hamakua Ditch Trail, also known as the White Road hike, was closed to the public after the 6.7-magnitude Kiholo earthquake on Oct. 15, 2006, which was followed by an additional 6.0-magnitude shake just seven minutes later. The quakes caused at least $200 million in property damage.

Bergfeld said the forest reserve “suffered damage including cracks in the trail.”

Although illegal, the hike has been popularized via social media. One YouTube video shows the trail at one point coming within a foot or two of a precipitous drop of hundreds of feet into Waipio Valley. Hikers are shown walking lengthwise, tightrope style, over foot-wide metal pipes and sloshing through a small cavelike opening in the earth to reach a water flume on the Kohala Ditch that drops diagonally 35 feet into a small, shallow pool — the destination for most who take the illegal hike.

They then slide down the flume at what appears to be breakneck speed, ending in a splashdown.