Day 5 - When the tide is low...we go! Even at 5:45am

An early morning low tide series started today.  This posed a bit of a dilemma, however, since sunrise here was at 5:59am, and low tide was at 6:01am.  This meant that we needed to be at the shore as early as possible, but we couldn’t go too early or it would be too early to be safe.  So the crew gathered, bleary-eyed, but ready at 5:45am.

We were originally going south to South Cove at Cape Arago, but I realized that there was no need to go down there this morning to do what I had planned.  Instead, we just walked/stumbled to the beach just south of the Boat House at OIMB and onto the rocks there.  The -0.5’ low tide uncovered a nice little shelf that was covered with brown algae. 

Intertidal zone south of Boathouse Beach around 6am, OIMB

L-R: Bailey, Jessica, Tony, Ty

The morning’s work included laying down a transect line and collecting data that included the vertical profile of the intertidal zone and using quadrats to measure total percent cover of life every meter, as well as the dominant species in every quadrat – basically painting a picture of intertidal zonation there.

The group was divided into three teams of four students each, and they went to work.

Two teams of students collecting data near OIMB

LR: Mackenzie, Elysa, Daniel, Dallas

 Jessica making vertical profile measurement

LR: Daniel, Mackenzie, Dallas, Elysa

LR: Tony, Ty, Jessica, Bailey

LR: Lindsey, Kristin, Blake (fore), Patrick (back)

We worked, and when I say “we” I mean “they” worked for about two hours on the exercise.  Once that was over we all dragged ourselves back to the OIMB campus, about a 5-10 min walk and made our way to the Dining Hall where the most excellent Dining Hall staff had a breakfast laid out for us.  That was one quiet meal.  The crew was both weary and hungry.

There was no class meeting this morning, but students were assigned to work their data into a graph that indicated the profile and other data collected along their transects.  That took them the rest of the morning…pretty much right up until lunch.  In the meantime I met with Larry Basch, Director of Research for the South Slough National Estuary about what our group might do there later in our trip. 

After lunch we had a class meeting where we discussed some principles of research design, why we have tides, and a description of rocky intertidal communities.  We took a break in the middle, and we finally wrapped things up around 4pm.  Students were then on their own to explore possibilities for research, read, and relax (like that’s really possible!). 

After dinner some students headed back to the docks to collect more samples and think about research.  They collected something that I'd never seen before - at least this species - it's a sea butterfly.

The one they collected was more beat up than the one in this photo, but you get the idea.

In fact, no one I talked to, not other professors, not the Director of OIMB, no one, had seen this species before!  It's a cool one all right.

I know we have been here only 5 days, but it feels like we’ve been here and working a lot longer.

Tomorrow we hit the road early…as soon as we finish off a light breakfast at 6am.  Tomorrow we’re truly off to South Cove.

Cheers!

Day 3 - "Sleep is for tourists"

“Sleep is for tourists.”

That was the quote of the day on Monday 5/7.  We can all thank Bailey for that bit of wit. 

Where did the quote come from?...you may be wondering.  Monday was our first full work day of the MBFE, and we were all ready for it after a Saturday travel day and Sunday that was largely relaxing.  And so, Monday morning we dove right in.

Breakfast is served at 7:00 am in the Dining Hall, so MBFE students have to be up in time to get ready to come down and eat…so most students’ days are starting earlier than everyone else's at BYU-Idaho except the students working custodial.  Breakfast wound up between 7:30 and 8a, and class started at  9am.

We spent the entire morning on class related activities – course and program introduction, review of the syllabus, class expectations and projects, and receiving instruction on the proper care and feeding of compound and dissection microscopes.  Students also received direction on the formatting of lab notebooks, producing drawings for lab and field notebooks, etc. 

There were 15 min breaks thrown in here and there when students popped outside to take advantage of the nice weather and get in a little sand volleyball at the lab’s court.

OK…break for lunch.

The topic for the afternoon was an introduction to the marine environment…including an overview of the characteristics of water – because if you don’t understand water, you’ll never understand life in it – as well as other physical characteristics of the ocean. 

We broke at 2:30pm and reassembled about 30 mins later dressed in field gear…boots, buckets, etc.

It was time to students to start learning how to collect data.  Today’s exercise was a simple one.  Students broke into teams of 3.  Each team had a quarter meter square quadrat and a 10 cm x 10 cm quadrat, and a bucket.  We drove to South Bay at the Point Arago marine reserve and descended to the beach.

We reached the beach!

LR: Daniel, Dallas, Patrick, Tony, Mackenzie, Linsdey, Elysa, Blake, Jessica, Bailey, and Ty and Kristin (on the hill in the background) 

On our way to the rocks my path crossed that of a spear fisherman.  I asked if he'd had luck, and he asked what we were up to.  When he learned that our group was studying marine biology and where we were from he cocked his head to one side and said, "From Idaho!?  At least that's better than South Dakota."  Ha.  Good one!

Each team of students used their quadrat to measure the abundance of a species of their choice at 10 different locations.  Once they were done with that they were free to poke around, take photographs of interesting critters, and collect specimens to take back to the lab for identification.

 Students headed for the MBFE "Party on the Rocks"

Time to collect data and specimens to study

Then some students showed off their favorite finds.

Bailey shows off an awesome brittle star

Daniel poses with Pisaster ochraceus

Oh, yeah, we made and played horns made from Bull Kelp (Nereocystis) before we came back.  Several students jumped right in.

We made it back to OIMB just in time for dinner.

The group gathered in the lab after dinner and went to work identifying the specimens we brought back from today’s outing.  I slipped back to my cottage to work on some class teaching materials, so they were on their own. 

I popped by the lab a little while later – maybe 7:15p to see how they were doing, and they had generated a list of species they’d identified and written it on the chalk board.  They were all hard at it, and stayed hard at it until 9p when we went after crab larvae.. 

I had heard from a friend, Kevin Johnson of The Florida Institute of Technology, that there was an impressive swarming of Dungeness crab larvae around the lights on the docks in the Charleston, OR, harbor.  It was spectacular!  Well, for plankton, that is.  Like Kevin J said, I almost expected David Attenborough to appear and start narrating.  

There were literally 1000s of crab megalop larvae swarming under each of the security lights on the municipal docks.  We collected 100s of them easily to take back to the lab.  We also saw swimming worms in the water…some only 3-4” long and others 12-18” long.  We caught a few of the smaller ones with a dip bucket, but the larger ones eluded us.  Then my student assistant, Daniel, tried to catch one by hand.  We was successful…sort of.  It swam right at the surface near the dock, but when Daniel tried to lift it out of the water it fell apart in his hands and released a large cloud of sperm into the water.  By this time it was close to 10p so we headed back to the lab to take care of our baby crabs.

By this time the team had been at it for over 15 hours, and Bailey quipped, “Sleep is for tourists.”