Sweet Success: Thesis Defense on Striped Bass Takes the Cake

Jon and his thesis subject! (photo: D. Haas)

Congratulations to Ichthyology student Jon Walsh, who recently defended his thesis: “Habitat Use of Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis), estimated from otolith microchemistry, in the San Francisco Estuary, and its effect on total mercury and heavy metal body burden upon capture.”

Jon used the chemical composition of otoliths, or fish ear bones, to track where a fish had traveled throughout its lifetime in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.  He also looked at heavy metal contamination in the fish fillets and found high levels of mercury had accumulated in the fish.  Luckily, this striped bass cake creation by Diane Haas is mercury free!

What a catch! (photo: D. Haas)

Another Thesis Defense, Another Skate Cake

Megan with the cake version of her Master's thesis subject (photo: E. Loury)

Congratulations to Megan Witnon, the latest Ichthyology Lab graduate from MLML!  Megan defended her thesis this week titled “Age, growth, and demography of the roughtail skate, Bathyraja  trachura, from the eastern Bering Sea.”  And her defense wasn’t complete without another amazing cake creation from MLML food art extraordinaire Diane Haas.

Though Diane has dabbled in dessert skates before, this one really takes the cake!  The butterfly shapes represent the vertebrae sections that researchers like Megan and Diane use to tell the age of  skate.  The purple vertebra represents the end product of a chemical process called histology that Megan used to better see the age bands in the vertebrae.   Now that’s a doubly sweet success!

The Roughtail Skate as interpreted by Diane Haas (photo: E. Loury)

Drop-In to MLML Open House: The Art of Science… Or Is It the Science of Art?

MLML students play paint-by-number

Sometimes we all need a break from the daily grind.  What’s a good way to take a breather?  How about taking some time for arts and crafts!

These MLML students are taking some time after-hours to paint the aquarium scene for the 2009 puppet show.  MLML alumna Heather Hawk lent her expertise and drew the fantastic backdrop, then directed her peers to fill the corals in with the proper colors.

If you’d like to see the 2009 Open House puppet show featuring Harry Spotter, take a look here!

Aquarium scene backdrop

MLML Open House is Saturday, April 30 & Sunday, May 1

Tsunami Status at Moss Landing Marine Labs

Brynn Hooton-Kaufman

By Brynn Hooton-Kaufman, Phycology Lab

I went to bed last night with plans to wake up and go snorkeling in Stillwater Cove at 8 am this morning.  You might say those plans changed a bit when I got a phone call from my brother at 1:45 am.  Well, actually it was five phone calls, because it took me that long to shake off the cobwebs of sleep and realize he wasn’t pocket dialing me.  My thoughtful brother was up watching television, and had been alerted by the news to the disaster that had taken place in Japan.  He called to let me know that a tsunami was headed toward the west coast with an arrival time of approximately 7:30 am, and he was concerned since we are residents of Monterey.  Thankfully, we live high on one of the marine terraces in New Monterey, and I assured him that we would be safe from any floodwaters, and headed back to bed.

I immediately flipped on the television when I woke up this morning at 6, and started catching up on the news.  The dramatic videos from Japan were chilling, and showed the ocean washing over agricultural land, pouring through city streets, and creating whirlpools that entrapped boats.  The effects of the tsunami on Hawaii thankfully looked much milder, and the news didn’t report major damage from the flooding they experienced.  As for our tsunami forecast, the news crews were predicting waves of a few feet high to hit around 7:45.  I called my snorkeling buddy, updated her on the current events since she hadn’t seen the news, and we both decided that calling off the trip to Stillwater was a good idea.

I continued to watch the news, and when 7:45 rolled around, I was a little surprised not to see any changes on the beaches in the live-feed video.  I even started to wonder if canceling the trip to collect seaweeds had been a mistake.  But then I reminded myself, better safe than sorry.  I don’t want to be the student with poor judgement who thought it was more important to collect materials for an exam than to heed tsunami warnings, and get swept out to sea.  Besides, I reminded myself, tsunamis aren’t over in a blink of an eye; they can continue to have an impact for hours.

And it turns out that’s exactly what happened.  Pretty soon on the news, boats and docks were getting ripped from their moorings in Santa Cruz harbor, and were barreling into anything in their way.  MLML grad student Sara Hutto was high and dry, far from the dangers of the surge, but managed to catch these great photos:

Debris getting swept out of Santa Cruz Harbor (photo: S. Hutto)

As you can see, the current is moving quickly, and taking pieces of the harbor with it.  The tsunami was really interesting to watch.  It didn’t just move in once as a big surge, then drain back out, but instead it did this multiple times.  It was kind of like watching a dramatic tide cycle, all happening in twenty minutes or so, and then starting all over again.  

Feast Your Eyes on This

photo: E. Loury

While marine researchers, especially graduate students, are used to living on a budget, who says they can’t eat well in the field?  Students from a Chemical Oceanography class are treated to a feast aboard the R/V Point Sur during a research cruise.  It’s remarkable what grad students will do for the promise of food.

Against The Grain: Graduation and the job search

That's Master Brower to you - Jeremiah at his thesis defense.

Jeremiah Brower

by Jeremiah Brower, Geological Oceanography Lab

Greetings from your resident geologist blogger, who I’m happy to say is recently graduated!  This last year has consisted of me going to conferences, writing my thesis, RE-writing my thesis, RE-writing it AGAIN and then finally defending my thesis to the MLML faculty and my peers, parents and friends.  There was a lot of frantic writing followed by long periods of downtime while I watched the clock tick by and the end of the year get closer –  but overall it was a great experience and a incredible relief to finally get the thesis done!

The thesis was the main focus of my life for nearly 4 years and the defense on October 4th went incredibly well, but I have to say it was a bit anti-climactic to have a four year project summed up in a hour.  I also had to run back to work immediately after the defense, so the reality of my situation didn’t really sink until several weeks after the event. So the question now becomes “now what?”

How’s the View Up There?

(photo: H. Hawk)

Recent grad Heather Hawk snapped this photo while on a plane ride high above Moss Landing.  From way up here you can see Moro Cojo Slough in the foreground, snaking out into the harbor.  Surrounding the slough are fields of pickleweed, a wetland plant known for its tangy and salty ‘pickle’ flavor.  The power plant can be seen by the two towers on the right side of the photo, and the large white field is what’s left from the magnesium oxide plant. The break in the dunes to the left of the power plant was created by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1946 to create Moss Landing Harbor.  If you are interested in the history of Moro Cojo Slough, Elkhorn Slough and Moss Landing and would like to read more, take a look at the Elkhorn Slough Foundation website.

The Slippery Seaweed Commando Crawl to Glory

photo: E. Loury

Recent Invertebrate Zoology graduate Amanda Kahn completes the kelp crawl challenge during a past MLML Lab Olympics competition.  It has been said MLML students never graduate because we keep having too much fun…but Amanda proved it’s possible to do both!

Have Your Skate and Eat it Too

photo: E. Loury

Here’s another incredible, edible, and ocean-themed creation by Ichthyology student and food artist extraordinaire, Diane Haas.  Baked in honor of Simon Brown’s recent thesis defense, the cake depicts Simon’s two study species – the Berring Skate (top) and the Aleutian Skate (bottom).  The differences between the two skates are small, but accurately rendered!   Since this was a thesis about diet, it’s only fitting that there should be some “prey items” for garnish. Check out some of Diane’s other masterpieces featuring sharks and rockfish!

Thesis Defense Roll Call – Congrats from the Drop-In!

With one more semester over and the year drawing to a close, we wanted to take a look back at the amazing thesis defense lineup of the past fall.  We got to cheer on some of our great Drop-In blog contributors as they became newly-minted Masters.  While we’re excited for them in their new endeavors, fingers crossed that they will still write for us from time to time!   Get a load of all the intelligence pouring out of Moss Landing Marine Labs:

Jeremiah Brower, the sediment master

On October 4th, Jeremiah defended his thesis, entitled, “A study of storm-induced variations in the littoral sediment transport patterns of central Monterey Bay.” Read more about Jeremiah’s love of geology and all things to do with rocks on his student profile and his blog entries!

Danielle Frechette with a salmon - she studied both halves of a bird/fish predator prey interaction.

On October 26th, Danielle Frechette talked about tracking sea gulls tagged with radio transmitters as part of her thesis entitled, “Impacts of avian predation on juvenile salmonids in central California watersheds.”  Check out Danielle’s student profile and read her blog entries!

Mariah Boyle with a long-nose skate.

On November 2nd, Mariah Boyle described the food habits of the roughtail skate and its deepsea food web with her thesis “Trophic relationships of Bathyraja trachura and sympatric fishes.” Check out Mariah’s student profile and read her blog entries!

Amanda Kahn, an expert on deepsea sponges

On December 8th, long-time Drop-In blogger and resident sponge expert Amanda Kahn defended her thesis entitlted “Mitochondrial gene arrangement in sponges, with descriptions of two new species from the abyssal northeast Pacific.”  Check out Amanda’s student profile and read her blog entires!

On December 10th,  Simon Brown gave us a statistical rundown on skate diet in his thesis entitled, “Sources of diet variation in two abundant skate species from the northern Gulf of Alaska continental shelf.”  Congrats, Simon!

Heather Hawk shows off some historical abalone specimens.

On December 15th, Heather Hawk gave us the ins and outs of abalone genetics by defending her thesis entitled “Historic diversity of the endangered white abalone Haliotis sorenseni.” Check out Heather’s student profile here!

Congratulations to all of you, and thanks for sharing all of your stories on the Drop-In!