MBFE - Day 21 - Out to sea

Days 19 and 20 were a Saturday and a Sunday, largely free time for members of the MBFE.  They did research that needed to be done and then enjoyed some down time.  We attended the Coos Bay Ward again and had a fun Home Evening.  Bri gave the thought.

Day 21 was full, full, full!

The morning of Day 21 each research team was back at it full steam.  Some members were working in the field, others in the lab.  I took time to touch base/check up on each group to make sure they were doing all right.

Just before lunch I crossed paths with "Captain Mike". OIMB's chief boat captain.  He told me that he could take our group out on the boat to do some bottom and plankton tows.  The weather was great. It was windy but sunny!  The MBFE crew's spirits were high as we boarded the RV (Research Vessel) Pluteus.  Pluteus is the name of sea urchin larvae.

Here's the group before we left the dock.

Here's the whole crew (L-R) Dr. H, Stephen, Wyatt, Katie (front), Janae (behind), Harrison, Courtney, Rob, Darby, Emily, Bri, Jay, Darren, Caitlin, Ashley.

Fifteen passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour, a three hour tour...(sound familiar?)

We had a great outing.  It was fun being on the water and the class really enjoyed seeing this aspect of marine biology.  We did a couple of bottom dredges and a couple of plankton tows.  

Here are a few shots of the crew while we were out.

Students were able to all the deck work while we were out.  In this shot Wyatt is running the winch and Courtney was monitoring the dredge during the tow.  (L-R) Rob, Bri, Wyatt, Courtney, Darren,  

(L-R) Bri, Wyatt, Courtney (foreground), Darren, Ashley, Caitlin and Stephen.

Another shot of the working deck (L-R) Katie, Rob, Darby, Janae, Emily, Bri, Wyatt.

You aren't surprised when a bottom tow produces a haul of sand dollars, but this time it offered up other sea change...looks like a sand quarter, a couple of sand nickels and a sand dime (Emily).

Harrison (foreground) monitors the dredge during another bottom tow.  Others are (L-R) Katie, Emily, Janae, Darren, Wyatt, Rob, Captain Mike, and Ashley. 

Also on deck are (L-R) Rob, Captain Mike, Ashley, Courtney, Stephen (back) and Bri (front).

It was fun to see what was in the bottom drags.  It's like Forrest Gump's mother says, "Life's like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." (L-R) Stephen, Ashley, Caitlin (fore), Courtney (back), Harrison (on the cable), Jay, Katie, Emily, Rob.

Stephen and Emily look at a sample from the plankton tow.  

Though we'd already had a busy day we pulled out the microscopes as soon as we got back to the lab to see what we could see.  It was a fantastic sample!

This shot highlights a couple of arrow worms - sharks of the plankton.

This was a real score.  I hadn't seen one of these in real life before - it's an Appendicularian.  It's a tiny tadpole shaped animal that's actually a distant relative of ours, it's an invertebrate Chordate.  It usually lives in a mucous house that it secretes, but it bails out when disturbed.  A plankton tow definitely counts as a disturbance!

This is a larval fish.  Larval fishes are TINY!

This was a great, though tiring day.  Missions accomplished!  The students (and I) loved it.

Day 4 - Of things small and most curious...plankton day

Not all class days can or should be 15+ hours long.  So today was a bit lighter.

The word for the day is “plankton”.  Plankton are little creatures so small or weak that they cannot overcome currents.  If you recall, at the end of Day 3 we collected 100s of larval crabs.  

Megalops stage of Dungeness crabs Cancer/Metacarinus magister

(c) 2013 Alan Holyoak 

The first order of the day today was to take a close look at those crab larvae and the juvenile crabs they metamorphose into…and there was a lot of metamorphosis going on.  This was a prime opportunity for the class to see things that few people ever see firsthand.  So with scopes on the lab benches and pencils at the ready, they dove into looking, drawing, and thinking about crabs. 

RL: Elysa and Mackenzie

Tony 

Blake and Kristin

 

 LR: Jessica, Bailey, Daniel, Dallas

Our teaching lab at OIMB

During the middle of this session Craig Young, Director of OIMB, popped in to see if we were here and how we were doing.  I’ve known Craig for, yikes, close to 30 years.  He has been inviting me to come to OIMB for the past several years.  I’m so glad that we finally made it.  Anyway…

After about an hour with the crabs it was time to move onto lecture material for the day.  We spent about the next 1.5 hours going over structure and processes of plankton communities including everything from marine viruses and bacteria to large plankton like krill and jellyfishes. 

With a good dose of theory in our bellies we needed a break, so we went on plankton safari to the Charleston, OR, marina, and with plankton net and dip buckets in hand we were off.

Unfortunately there were no jellies to be seen, so we had to rely on the plankton net for samples.   That’s OK, and we finished collecting samples just in time for lunch.

 Off to the Charleston, OR, harbor

Tony does a plankton tow. 

 The crew takes a look at life on the docks

After lunch we finished our lecture material for the day and walked down to the pier by the Boat House at OIMB to collect more plankton, we hoped.  Then it was time to go back to the lab.  Students pulled out the scopes and got to work seeing what they could see.  They say larval worms, snails, crabs, copepods, and barnacles, along with diatoms and other things.  It’s always an adventure to see what tiny creatures abound in a drop of water.

Off to the OIMB Boat House pier to do more plankton tows.

Lindsey take a turn collecting samples.  Blake and Tony look on.

That work went right up until dinner…and we had a short meeting to discuss the next few days.

We had a short group meeting at 7p to discuss the next few days.  There’s good news and there’s bad news.  The good news is that we will have negative low tides for the next several days.  The bad news is that tomorrow the low tide is at 6am.  Heh heh.  We plan to leave at 5:45 am to work this low tide.

By the way, the crew decided to head back to the harbor tonight to see if the megalops crab larvae are still there.  They might be a very nice little research organism for a team or two to work on.  

Oh well, if students wanted to sleep they could have stayed in Rexburg, because when the tide’s low we go!