A Taste of Sustainability

A former student of mine, Rhyn Cheung, has written an article for Prime (the Daily Bruin's lifestyle magazine), on sustainable seafood options in Los Angeles. I'll have to check out the 1$ oyster bar. 

Humpbacks

There's been an abundance of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) feeding in the waters just off of Bamfield this year. We were very excited to spot a group as we were headed back to lab after finishing our fieldwork. Approaching cautiously and staying a safe distance away, we were able to observe them for quite a while (see here for whale-watching guidelines) and take some pictures with a good telephoto lens. We sometimes cynically call whales and other sea mammals "charismatic megafauna" because of the attention they get as compared to other organisms, but the truth is we get as excited to see them as anybody.

The whales were feeding by circling around their prey underwater while blowing small bubbles from their blowholes. The small bubbles make a "fence" that herds the fish inward and towards the surface. At the end, the whale swims up from below, opens wide, and gulps down some yummy fish. The two pictures above show a whale bursting out of the water after swimming up through its prey. You can see the water gushing out of the sides of the whale's mouth as it closes in the top photo. Cetacealab has a nice description of their feeding behavior.

We watched the whales for about half an hour, before heading back to lab for our own lunch. The whales were a nice reward for a cold, wet early morning in the field.

Taken with a grain of Salt.

A heavy rain pounds the ground, fueling plants and animals with an essential of life, but excess water from the rain makes its way across rocky shores coating the intertidal with pure water and   Clean rainwater can be a refreshing drink to us, but for marine animals used to more saline water, it can become a physiological nightmare.

Question 1:

How does our charismatic and diverse intertidal community respond to these bursts of rainfall?  It’s like asking how people in different cities of the world respond to the air quality… The air in Bamfield sure is sweet, perhaps we’re happier as a result when we come to Bamfield.

Question 2:

Marine environments near out-flowing rivers are constantly in flux.  Freshwater from the river is constantly mixing with ocean water, creating an environment different than regions away from rivers.  Are our intertidal friends different here?  Are people that grow up in smoggy cities physically different than people that grow up in the countryside?  Do they act differently?

The annual sea star righting trials hopes to shed light on these questions!  More details next time.

Oh Canada :)

     My name is Adrian Salinas and I am an undergraduate at Cal State University of Los Angeles. I was invited to come to the Bamfield Marine Science Center located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia this summer by Dr.Robles, a well known person at this station. We have been here for 2 weeks out of the 8 weeks we are scheduled to be here for.
  It is my first time out of the country, as well as first time away from home for this length of time. So far it has been great. It is way different from Los Angeles. There is so much green and wild life.
   Bamfield is a pretty small town that is usually loaded with students and researchers from a lot of different places. It feels pretty good to meet different people especially the locals who are so friendly and welcoming.
  Just the other day it was Canada Day. The town had a parade and a little concert to celebrate. We participated in the events and had a great time. Now whenever i look at a calendar i no longer have to wonder what the Canadians do on Canada day anymore.
  Some of the activities that i have done were things like fishing, hiking, and field work. The fishing was pretty awesome. I almost caught a salmon, but it got away. Gary on the other hand caught some pretty crazy things. He caught an octopus and a rock fish, which were released after they were observed. After awhile with out catching anything i finally got a tug on my line. It was a flat fish which i decided that we keep and cook it. The fish tasted pretty good.
   Hiking the West Coast trail was an adventure. There were these huge ladders that we had to climb and go down in order to continue onto the trail. They were pretty scary when going down, but the views were worth it. One thing about the trails though is that they are filled with swamps of mud everywhere. i think that added to the adventure though. We got to this one cliff that was off trail and ended up looking out to a near by rock that was filled with sea lions and further out we caught glimpses of whales, but we could not identify what kind of whales they were.
    The field work is comprised of us waking up at different times depending on the tides. We go out to these sights on islands, where there are muscle beds. The purpose of going out to the different sites is to set out these things called Drogues, they measure the wave velocity during the tide series. There are premarked spots that are used to attach and drill the Drogues in. Then for about 4 days we go out and measure how far the stopper on the Drogue has moved. I think the best part of doing this is getting to explore the different tide pools from time to time because you never know what you will get to see. Just today i got to see this Chiton that is named Gumboot, it was pretty huge and another day we got to see a sun star, it gets pretty interesting.
    I still have a couple of weeks left so there will be more to add to the list later.
   

Back in BC

We arrived back in Bamfield for our summer field season. Actually, most of the crew has been here for over a week and already worked through a tide series putting out the dynamometers we worked so hard to calibrate over Thanksgiving. The rest of the crew, including me, arrived last Thursday.

Today was my first day back in the field, and while I don't enjoy the alarm going off at 4:00AM, the beauty of the area more than makes up for it. Jenny and I went to look for mussels that we had tagged last summer. You would think that an organism that glues itself down would be pretty easy to find year after year, but mussels move around much more than they are given credit for as "sessile" animals. Luckily they don't usually move that far, so if we tag a mussel and accurately record the its position we have a pretty good chance of finding it again ... assuming it hasn't been swept away in a storm.

We've noticed that in the middle of very thick beds, small clumps of mussels (about a foot wide) will start to protrude out of the otherwise level mussel bed. We call these clumps "hummocks." We've been curious as to whether mussels in these hummocks are more likely to get ripped off of the bed by storm waves than those in the flatter, more uniform portion. In a way, these hummocks might unintentionally protect the bed as a whole, by letting some mussels get ripped away, but leaving the rest of the bed intact. 

To try and test the hypothesis that mussels in hummocks are more likely to be lost than those in the "flat" part of the bed, we tagged 40 mussels at one of our field sites, 20 in hummocks and the other in flat area. We tag them by etching a letter into the shell with a dremel, putting superglue in the groove, then blowing chalk dust on the mussel. It's a mess when you are doing it, but in the end you can get a nice durable tag.

We also put a small notch in the shell to measure growth. Mussels grow from the end you see pointing up (technically, it's the rear-end of the mussel, even though it's the end pointing up out of the bed). The notch leaves a little scar in the shell, and its distance to the edge of the mussel indicates growth.

To record position, we measured the distance to each mussel from two fixed points on shore with transect lines (=very long measuring tape). It's a nice, low tech method that is surprisingly accurate. We also took measurements with surveying equipment to put the data into a GIS system. However, the measuring tape method lets us find the mussels without having to haul out the survey equipment.

After all that, we were excited to find mussels again after a year. Of the 20 mussels in the flat area, we found eight. We found none of the hummock mussels. In some cases, we could clearly see where hummock has been ripped of the bed (but the mussels underneath were still there). It's encouraging data, but we'll keep checking over the summer to be as sure as possible we've found all the tagged mussels we can.

Happy Thanksgiving (American)

It doesn't look like much, but it was really a great meal.

Not just for field work: Dynamometers and a cyalume glowsticks make a festive holiday centerpiece.  

Seven meter swells kept us off the water today. We're hoping for a quick trip out to the sensor buoys tomorrow morning.

Location, Location, Location!

Bamfield is a small fishing town on the west-end of Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. The air here is clean and crisp, sweet from the surrounding rainforest. The people are weathered from the cold, but warm and close, people you'd have over for dinner. Most of Bamfield's inhabitants commute to work on on a boat. It's hard to get around without one. Some of Bamfield's inhabitants even include bald eagles, black bears, sea lions, seals, and other interesting little critters.

We conduct our research through the Bamfield Marine Sciences Center, but the magic really happens out on the mussel beds found across Barkley Sound. You can find us jetting around to different mussel beds across the sound, but as of this year, we've launched new buoys.

The buoys have sensors on them to help us take salinity and temperature readings in the water. By having the buoys at strategic points across the sound, we can track changes in the water throughout in the year. In particular, we want to see how rainfall and freshwater runoff affect salinity across the sound.

Pulling up buoys. The sensor is in a housing attached to the chain.

Considering the huge downpour of rain and hail since we got here, we should be getting some interesting results.

We're waiting for better waves to work the mussel beds.