We did not have any required class outings on Thursday or Friday 5/23-24, but the show went on. We spent about 3 hours on Thursday discussing community structure and function in the Bathypelagic (deep water) zone - a world largely of perpetual darkness, and another 3 hours or so the following day discussing the Bathybenthic zone (life on the bottom in the deep sea) - muds, oozes, hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, sea mounts...
The MBFE crew spent the rest of their time working on research-related activities.
But first...a bite of lunch in the OIMB Dining Hall:
Here are (L-R) Mackenzie, Lindsey, Blake, Ty, Patrick, and Dallas enjoying a soup, salad, and make your own sandwich lunch.
And at the next table Blake, Kristin, Bailey, and Jessica eat with a group of University of Oregon students. This happens all the time, and some of our students have made acquaintances and friends with the OU crew. I even heard that OU students have challenged our bunch to a game of volleyball sometime next week - weather permitting.
With lunch out of the way, MBFE students scatter to work on their projects.
Dallas and Blake discuss their work on how larval and juvenile crabs react to light, and the data they have already collected.
It's Daniel's shift to collect data on developmental stages of sea slugs. Two more of the sea slug group, Mackenzie and Elysa, do more background work. If I ever need either of these two, chances are good that I can find them in the library digging into the scientific literature on sea slug development. That's how you do science!
This is an interesting note, left above a bucket in one of the seawater tanks. It's important to use research specimens only once so that any prior experimental effects won't skew the results. The used individuals stay in the bucket until the end of the research day, and if Kristin and Lindsey don't need them for their seawater temperature experiments, Tony and Daniel take them back to the harbor where they were collected.
Here are a couple of other fun things from around the lab and nearby locations. The photo below shows a large number of crabs feeding on a large clam that was given to them for food. To give you an idea of scale, the crab shell is about 3" long. The clam was put into the crab holding tank around 11am, and by mid afternoon the crabs had eaten almost the entire thing (except the shell, of course).
When I took a walk along the breakwater last night just before sunset this harbor seal jumped up onto the floating dock in the marina...
...and I saw lots of these little sea gooseberries (Ctenophores, comb jellies) being washed ashore by small waves, after which they rolled down the beach toward the water, only to be tossed back up again.
Last night we had a beautiful sunset. This is a shot from the breakwater looking out to sea.
Stay tuned for more adventures of the first ever BYU-Idaho MBFE.
