The importance of ageing – how is a skate like a fine wine? (or not?)

Count them bands - looking at a vertabra from a skate's backbone gives clues about its age

Congrats to Shaara Ainsley of the ichthyology lab who recently defended her thesis and joined the ranks of many other recent MLML grads!   Here Shaara shares a bit about her research, and addresses that all-important question: what does it mean to “age” a skate? (aka a flat shark…)

Shaara Ainsley

by Shaara Ainsley, Ichthyology Lab

For my thesis, I studied the life history characteristics of a skate from Alaska, Bathyraja interrupta, commonly known as the Bering skate. Knowing the life history of a species of fish is important because fisheries managers use the information to determine whether a fish is vulnerable to overexploitation, or can be fished at a certain level to maintain a healthy population.

So what are “life history parameters,” and how do we study them? From a fisheries management perspective, it is important to know how long the fish lives, how big the fish can get, how many offspring the fish can have, and how often it can reproduce. Estimating the age of an individual fish is at the heart of a life history study. In fisheries biology lingo, this is called “ageing” a fish. Ageing (spelled with the “e”) does not mean that we make the fish older, nor does it mean that we set it aside for a few years like a fine wine! It means that we are looking at structures in the body of a fish that can give us clues about how long the fish has been alive.

Size matters - getting the samples of the smallest/youngest individuals is important for an age-and-growth study

Just like trees, fishes deposit rings or “bands” in their bones. Specifically in boney fishes, such as a rockfish, you can look at the ear bone (or “otolith”) and count the bands to estimate the age. In sharks, skates and rays, which are cartilaginous and do not have boney structures, we can count the bands deposited on their vertebrae. There are many additional aspects of a fish’s life history that are important to management, however the majority of my research has focused on the age and growth of skates. Through my research, I have estimated that the Bering skate can live to at least 22 years old, which is an average life span compared with other skate species.

What is the hardest part about studying how old these skates get?  Stay tuned to find out!

Support Oceans in the Classroom – Add a Drop to Donor’s Choose

Erin Loury

by Erin Loury Ichthyology Lab

Your $10 could solve science illiteracy!  OK, it would at least be a step in the right direction.   Why? Because $10 (and change) will pay for one subscription to Current Science magazine for Mrs. L’s class in Michigan.  “Breaking Science News” is the last project we need to fund to wrap up the Ocean Bloggers Ocean in the Classroom Initiative! The project only needs $177 more to bring exciting, current science to the hands of low-income students.   Your $10 may just seem like a drop in the bucket,  but the great thing about $10 is that you probably won’t miss it.   In fact, Dr. M at the Deep Sea News is so sure you can spare $10 that bad things will happen otherwise.

Put fun science in the hands of kids! Donate today!

Still not convinced?  Well here’s my “Let me tell you why I gave $10″ spiel.  I gave $10 to this project simply because I think communicating science is just as important as doing science itself.  We won’t be able to keep doing all the cool research we do if the population at large doesn’t understand why it’s important, or why they should care (or fund us).

Getting my hands on a similar type  of current events glossy when I was in 6th grade  was one of those world-expanding events that totally turned me on to learning.   Help make science tangible, relevant and fun for these kids in Michigan by showing them it’s part of their world!

OK, that’s my soap box.  Bottom line: even penny-pinching grad students can spare $10 for a worthy cause.   The Ocean Bloggers in The Classroom Initiative has been a smashing success so far, with 7 out of 8 great projects fully funded already (chest waders, coral reef flip-books, a salt water invert tank, and more)!  We are just $177 short.    So drop in and drop that $10, $20 or $200 today and make a difference!

Into the storm

Photo: K. Benoit-Bird

…Our research cruise on the Gold Rush got off to a bumpy start.  We were delayed in leaving Dutch Harbor after working to attach the acoustic equipment, rig up our nets, and wire our electronic devices into the ship’s circuitry.  All this had to be done before hitting the seas to gather any data, but it was tough to know that the clock was ticking.

So, we were impatient when we heard that the ocean would be rough, and we decided to motor out anyway and get going on our course.  As it turned out, we probably should have stayed in port, gone for beers and a hotel room, and waited for the water to calm down; We did not collect much usable data during that first 72 hours anyway!

A good sign of our impending experience was the ship’s barometer.  Keep in mind that anything under 29.92 is considered, on average, a “low” pressure event, and is likely associated with stormy weather…

Photo: C. Waluk

The waves and wind slammed us as soon as we rounded the last point of land and pushed into the open Bering Sea waters.  The ship pitched and plunged, leaving us weightless, even as we braced and grabbed with our hands.  Everything that was not bolted or strapped down began to slip, slide, and slam every which way.  The Gold Rush turned into the storm, facing torrents of spray and heaving mountains of slate gray water.

Photo: N. Jones

Up and up we would rise, pushing through choppy, liquid cornice crests, only to plunge steeply into dark troughs.

The height of the ship's rail is approx. 15' above waterline...

Even the captain, Bert Ashely, who has 30 years’ fishing experience in the Bering Sea, marveled at how unseasonably rough these waters were:  seas of perhaps 12-18’, and winds a sustained 40+ knots.

Photo: N. Jones

Photo: N. Jones

Blog entry: Nate Jones

And yet, it was the middle of summer…

This was how I spent my July 17^th and 18^th.

Donors Choose – and we choose marine science!

Amanda Kahn

by Amanda Kahn, Invertebrate Zoology and Molecular Ecology Lab

A major part of science is collaboration, because some projects require more effort, resources, or people than one lab can handle.  Collaborating allows us to tackle bigger projects and tasks than what would otherwise be possible.  The folks at Deep Sea News organized a collaboration with many other marine science blogs to sponsor support of K-12 marine science education.  Deep Sea News, the Drop-In, Southern Fried Science, Blogfish, Oyster’s Garter, Echinoblog, Cephalopodcast, The New Blue, The Right Blue, Natural Patriot, and Malaria, Bedbugs, Sealice, and Sunsets have all banded together to support Donors Choose, a website that allows teachers to ask donors to fund special projects for their classes.  We worked together and chose some of the marine science projects most in need, and now we’d like to collaborate with you to get those projects funded!  Check out the list of projects here: Ocean Bloggers Oceans in the Classroom Initiative.

Discovering a New Species of Ghost Shark

The Eastern Pacific Black Ghost Shark: a new species of chimaera described by MLML student Kelsey James (photo by K. James)

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: describe a new species unknown to science.  That’s exactly the mission a few MLML students undertook last spring in a class on systematics.   Systematics is the study of how all living things on earth are related to each other through evolutionary relationships.  It involves figuring out how species are grouped together in these relationships, and identifying what makes species different from one another – a lot like a detective piecing clues together.

Ichthyology student Kelsey James recently cracked the case of of the Eastern Pacific black ghost shark.  This fish is a new species of chimaera, which is a cartilaginous fish related to sharks and rays.  Although scientists collected a specimen in Baja California in the 1970s and thought it was a new species, the fish languished in a jar for years waiting for someone to take the time to investigate it (a story all too sad and true for many new species out there).  After Kelsey’s close examination, she and other scientists decided it was indeed different from other chimaeras, and gave it the scientific name Hydrolagus melanophasma in a recent publication.

According to Kelsey, the process of describing a new species is actually fairly straight forward.  “First you have to look at everything closely related to it in the same genus, and then decide why it is or isn’t an already described species,” she said.  Sometimes it’s easy to see that a species looks different from others, but describing why it’s different in terms of body measurements (like fin size and spacing, jaw length, etc.) can be much harder to explain.  “The hardest part for me was describing a few good key characteristics that anyone could use to identify this species, which is called a diagnosis,” she said

What made the project particularly exciting for Kelsey was that MBARI (the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) had ROV footage of her species swimming around at 1500 m in the Gulf of California (video above).  “It is spectacular to see this creature in action,” she said after watching their tapes.  “The differences between the preserved specimen, which I had been looking at for 2 months, and the live one were astounding.”

In addition to being published in the scientific journal Zootaxa, the story has created a lot of media buzz, garnering press time from the Smithsonian, Wired Science, National Geographic, and even a German website. Not bad for a class project!

Bumpy Bering Sea Summer

Don’t trust that twinkle in Jacques Cousteau’s eye!

Jacques Cousteau

Photo: Amanda M.

And, don’t be fooled by the idyllic photo that my friend Amanda M. took at her field site on Palmyra Atoll…

I’m here to remind everyone that Marine Science is not always bikinis, cocktails, warm sand, and sunsets.

(hmmm… should I have read the fine print before signing up?  Shelby, do you need a field assistant in Panama?).

There is much to be studied in the cooler latitudes, and the abundance of marine birds and mammals truly defies description.

Photo: NOAA / NMML

Perhaps the greatest challenge in working at high latitudes is the weather.  Specifically, what the weather can do to you while you’re working on the ocean!

Research time at sea is always an adventure, and usually it is a grand and engaging one at that.  But it can also be tiring, physically uncomfortable, and monotonous… or even a little too thrilling!  A friend of mine that sails frequently describes long ocean crossings as “days of boredom interrupted by moments of absolute terror”.

This summer I spent another 28 days out on the Bering Sea, studying the foraging ecology of seabirds and fur seals.  This was the second and final summer of data collection for my thesis work, which is funded as a component of the North Pacific Research Board’s Patch Dynamics Study http://bsierp.nprb.org/focal/patch.html.

I spent my time on the contracted vessel R/V Gold Rush, which is a 99’ trawler that spends most every day of the year working in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Seas.

Photo: L. Whitman

As you might expect, this ship is sturdy, well-maintained, and operated by a very skilled and competent crew.  Nonetheless we did encounter some ocean conditions that slowed our progress and reminded us just how small we were…

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Nate Jones

Science in the Tropics – Positive Relationships of Panama’s Corals

Getting up close with corals (and their symbionts) long enough to do research requires some SCUBA time.

Shelby Boyer

by Shelby Boyer, Invertebrate Zoology Lab

Believe it or not, heading off to an exotic, remote field site is not uncommon for scientists. For me, this site is the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute located on the Pacific Ocean side of Panama. I came all the way here to study corals and their interactions with endosymbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) that live inside of coral tissues. This relationship only occurs in warm, clear tropical waters near the equator.

Zooxanthellae, like all other algae, make energy from sunlight and pass some of that energy to the coral they live inside of. In return the zooxanthellae are provided with a place to live and some nutrients from the coral. When there is a positive benefit for both organisms, scientists call it a mutualism. I am just getting started on my research here and will be updating the blog as it gets going!

A Fish Cupcake Creation

China rockfish: another sweet and fishy creation by Ichthyology student Diane Hass (photo: E. Loury).

by Erin Loury Ichthyology Lab

The queen of marine creativity stikes again! Diane Haas, an Ichthyology Lab student (who you may know as creator of some sweet, toothy shark cupcakes) crafted this vision in frosting for labmate Tom Wadwsorth’s thesis defense last week.  The lucky subject?  A China rockfish (Sebastes nebulosus).  What a delicious complement to Tom’s thesis, “Trends in Abundance Surveys of Nearshore Rocky Reef Fishes in Central California 1959-2007.”  Congrats, Tom, and two thumbs up to Diane!  (Oh, would this cake qualifiy as sustainable seafood?)

An actual factual China rockfish (Sebastes nebulosus) - how does Diane's artistry measure up? (photo: N. Yochum)

Are you FishWise? Check this Sustainable Seafood blog

Mariah Boyle

by Mariah Boyle, Ichthyology Lab

At MLML, many graduate students need an outside job to help pay the bills while working towards their degree. My outside job that gives me  a different perspective on the oceans –  I work at FishWise, a non-profit sustainable seafood consultancy in Santa Cruz, that helps seafood producers, distributors, and retailers source and sell more sustainable products. Working with seafood consumers and the seafood industry allows me to apply my background of research in fish science (ichthyology) to the real problems facing our oceans today like contaminants, overfishing, and pollution.

Sure we all think about the oceans when we pick up litter off the beach or don’t pour anything down the street drains that lead to the oceans, but what about when we shop for groceries? It is time we all took responsibility for what seafood we eat, whether in the grocery store or at a nice seafood restaurant.

Now there is a new blog that can help you do just that! FishWise has launched a blog on our website to help consumers think more critically about the seafood they eat.

Take this seafood quiz to learn if you are FishWise!

1.    What is more sustainable, farmed or wild salmon?
2.    True or False: Fish can live to be 100 years old.
3.    True or False: Some catch methods, like bottom trawling, have high amounts of bycatch, even including turtles!

To learn more about the above questions, check out our blog to read the full stories and become FishWise (check the comments section below for the answers).

The FishWise blog covers such topics as farmed versus wild salmon, fishery-specific problems, fish-farming practices, and new fish science!

Want to do even more? Shop at a FishWise member retailer to support stores that source more sustainable seafood. All FishWise member retailer partners label the sustainability of their seafood right on their seafood signs!

Is your local grocery store not FishWise yet? Tell them to go to www.fishwise.org to learn more!

Quiet times in the hallways of MLML

Amanda Kahn

by Amanda Kahn, Invertebrate Zoology and Molecular Ecology Lab

Summertime at the labs is an industrious time, with many of us working hard on our thesis projects while we don’t have to worry about classes. Our time here at MLML is divided into two major stages: the stage when we take classes like oceanography, laboratory techniques, and background classes (like marine botany or a class about birds, turtles, and mammals), and the stage when we work on our own research project. The class stage is really important–it allows us to choose what field interests us, and what kinds of research are going on in that field. We take the classes so we can learn about a field and start asking questions. We keep asking questions and learning more until finally our questions can’t be answered–because the answers haven’t been figured out yet. That is where the thesis research comes in!

Once we come up with a question that is interesting to us and unknown in the world so far, then we design a research project and follow the steps of the scientific method to address that question to the best of our abilities. It’s a little sample of what scientific research is like. From doing a thesis project, we students can figure out if we are interested in becoming scientific researchers or if we prefer non-research science pursuits.

Even if a student ultimately decides not to go into research, however, everyone conducts research while they are here at MLML. That is why the hallways are quiet right now–everyone is holed up in their labs working on their research projects, or sitting at home reading about possible project ideas.

Or, the hallways may just be quiet because it’s summer and the beach is only a 5 minute walk away…

 

It's hard to keep working when the beach is so close by! Credit: Amanda Kahn 2006