MBFE - Thursday 5/9 - MUD! And research proposals.

If this is Thursday, then it must be time to go play in the mud!

And that's just what we did.  Shortly after breakfast we booted up and strolled down the street, across the road and down onto the Charleston Harbor mudflat.  Luckily we had a warm, sunny day, though somehow it feels more appropriate to do this fieldwork when it rains. :-)

Here are is the group, divided into three field teams just getting started.  Their task for the day was to collect the data they needed to generate a vertical profile from the water's edge all the way to the high tide line, perhaps 200 meters away.  

To do this, they used the same equipment they used to generate the vertical profile along a rock shore, except that when they did that they collected data ever meter along the transect line.  But, here they collected data every 10 meters.

Walk, measure, dig, identify, move on...

Here are Victoria and Caleb on the poles, Anne taking notes and  Live and Jenn getting ready to play (er collect data) in the mud.

The next team had Sam and Eric on the poles, with Michelle, Ben and Matt getting ready to collect data.

And the last group had Emma and Maddy on the poles, and Hunter, Chey and Collin collecting data.

The students were surprised to find as many cool things as they did living in the mud, including worms, clams and mud shrimp.  Plus, at the water's edge there were many juvenile Dungeness crabs and some small flatfish as well.  Neat!

It took nearly three hours, but, THEY DID IT!  It really was a great day, and an experience the students will not soon forget.

Then, in the afternoon we spent another hour and a half discussing a case study of restoration ecology in the nearby South Slough National Estuary Research Reserve in preparation for our planned visit there the next day.

Thursday evening I met with each research team and we discussed the the feasibility of their plans.  Here's what they came up with:

Team 1: Jenn and Hunter - They propose to study the adhesive strength of high intertidal limpets on rocky shores as a strategy for avoiding being swept away by heavy wave action.

Team 2: Liv, Sam and Victoria - they originally planned to do a project involving the top predator sea star Pisaster, but since those sea stars are still recovering from the recent sea star wasting disease epidemic that hit the entire west coast a few years ago, they switched to doing a research project using juvenile Dungeness crabs to test their substrate preferences.

Team 3: Emma and Maddy - These two are going to do a population demographics study on the black turban snail, Tegula funebralis. They plan to collect data on their size and age between different locations.

Team 4: Michelle and Caleb - This team originally wanted to test adhesive power of the chiton Mopalis muscosa, but since switched to a population demographics study examining individual size by location.

Team 5: Collin and Chey - This team plans to do a variant on a study done in Great Britain testing the effects of a chemical on the feeding response time of the sea anemone Anthopleura elegentassima.  They are still working out the details, but they are leaning toward looking at the effects of sunscreen on these animals.

Team 6: Eric and Matt - This team is going to look at the inter-clonal fighting responses of the sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima.  Sort of a gladiator wars study.

Team 7: Anne and Ben - This team proposed to do a descriptive developmental biology study examining the timing of development of embryos of the high intertidal limpet Lottia digitalis.  That is, if they can get them to spawn.  We all have our fingers crossed. 

MBFE - Day 4 - MUD!!!

Remember when your mom told you not to splash in that puddle or to stay out of the mud and keep your clothes clean?  Today was the day that all went out the window.  Why?  The topic for the day was mud flat communities.  We spent the previous few days working in the rocky intertidal zone, but there's more to near shore marine communities than just rocky shores.

The crew spent the morning digging in and studying life in mud.

Our destination was the mud flat adjacent to the Charleston Harbor just upstream of the South Slough Bridge in Charleston, OR.  That's a convenient place to go since we just pulled on our boots, grabbed buckets, shovels and other gear, and took a nice half mile stroll to the mud flats.

The plan was to plot the vertical profile of the mud flat area from water's edge to the top of the flat. The class was divided into four teams who spent time digging in the mud every 5 meters along the 150 meter transect, observing what they saw, collecting specimens from their sites, and then sharing data with each other that evening.

Here are a few action shots from the day.

Here are several of the crew (L-R Courtney, Danielle, Jessica, Kelly (fore), Eileen (back), Skyler, Isaac, Jennifer, Rachel S, and Shannon).

Here are (L-R) Jennifer, Shannon, and Rachel getting into it.

Here are (L-R) Eileen, Skyler, and Isaac.  They loved to dig!    

Jessica and Danielle were not to be outdone.

They LOVED it!  Even though it was breezy and a bit rainy.  The crew found all kinds of clams, worms, and mud shrimp.  

We wrapped up the work day by attending the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology weekly seminar. The presenter this week was Dr. Yizhen Li of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Massachusetts.  He presented work he has done to help improve our predictions of harmful algal blooms (i.e., red tides) in the Gulf of Maine.  It was pretty impressive stuff.

It was Friday night, so it after dinner it was time to relax at least a bit.  Several members of the group decided to join Dr. Holyoak for a movie, "Guardians of the Galaxy."  It's a very silly but fun show. Some of the University of Oregon students who are studying here at OIMB were a bit envious that we had a professor-student movie night.

Stay tuned for more updates of activities and adventures of the Marine Biology Field Experience at OIMB.

Day 7 - Mud in the morning

Yep, today was "mud day".  And it started early...breakfast was at 6:30am?  Have you been wondering what the crew looks like that early?

Breakfast is served - 6:30am: The looks on Ty (far right) and Daniel's (next to Ty) faces are particularly telling.

So, with carbon consumed the crew headed over to the lab to boot-up, collect equipment and head for low tide.  Today we could walk where we were going...just about 5 mins from the lab, at the upper end of the South Slough.

I got to the lab before just about everyone else and discovered that a crime was being committed - a jail break!  One of the animals we collected yesterday was making a break for it!  It was a gumboot chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri)...hilarious.

This is where I found this chiton...making a break for the sea.

Once there I realized that the mud flat was just too broad for each team of four students to do their own mudflat vertical profile and survey of biodiversity, so we shifted gears and did one LONG transect, between 240-270 meters in length.  We started at the water's edge and a -0.7' tide and the teams laid out three 30m tapes end to end and got to work.

Here's the crew trudging across the mud flat...eager to get to work.

Here's the bottom end of the transect.  The line started at the waterline of the channel into Coos Bay.

L-R: Blake, Dallas, Tony, Bailey

Every 5 meters along the line students measured changes in vertical distance and then did some digging to look for representative animals in the mud - yum!  Look how black it is...lots of hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg gas) in there.

L-R: Blake, Tony, Bailey, Dallas

Here's another team working on their length of the transect.

L-R: Elysa (white boots), Lindsey, Kristin, Jessica (who can't keep her hands out of the mud)

Slowly but surely the work moved along.  It took over two hours to complete the project.

L-R: Lindsey, Kristin, Jessica, Elysa

You have to be careful not to break the shovel handles.

L-R: Daniel, Ty, Patrick.  Where's Mackenzie?  She was there.

Every turn of the shovel revealed clams, worms, and lots and lots of black mud - rich in H2S (hydogen sulfide = rotten egg gas).  Ah, the work, the smell, the joy!

They measured vertical elevation change every five meters, and dug into the muck to see what animals they could find every five meters as well.  It was a fantastic outing.  Once the team closest to the water was done they'd haul their 30m tape and gear to the head of the transect, lay it out, and get to work again.  About 2.5 hours later they were done.  That work was followed by about half an hour of rolling rocks in the upper intertidal zone while collecting small Hemigraspsis crabs.

They were tired, but mostly all smiles by the time we headed back to the lab to rinse gear.  Did I say I'm glad that we walked today...so the mud stayed in the great outdoors and not in the vehicles?

The class spent the rest of the morning working up data and developing a graph of the vertical profile of the mud flat with indications of the dominant species at each survey spot.

After lunch we gathered for a couple of hours of class where we discussed mud and estuary communities.  Here are a few shots to let you see what our teaching classroom is like.

LR: (front) Dallas, Ty, Tony, Mackenzie, Elysa, Lindsey (back) Daniel, Patrick, Jessica, Bailey, Blake, Kristin.  There are tanks along the side of the classroom where seawater is pumped into the lab so we can keep animals alive. Sweet!

It's hard to believe that we've been here nearly a week already, and at the same time, it's hard to believe that it's been only a week.

The class is gelling well, working hard, and having lots and lots of fun.  In fact, as soon as I signal a break during class so people can take a bathroom break, etc., they flock to the holding tanks along one side of our classroom to look at stuff there...it looks almost like a feeding trough!  Hilarious!  They are a great bunch.

This afternoon we attended the weekly OIMB seminar.  Then that night the crew gathered to watch a Shark Week special (their request) about some guy who can put sharks in a catatonic state.  If you ask me, he's completely nuts and will someday end up like Grizzly Man - eaten by the animals he loves.  Sigh.  We'll see.

Cheers.