Massive dock from Japan that washed ashore in Oregon. Photo by Oregon State Parks and Recreation Department.
At 66 feet long, 19 feet wide, and 7 feet tall, the massive dock that washed ashore on Oregon’s Agate Beach is larger then anything I have ever found on the beach. This dock is one of the first large pieces of debris to make it across the Pacific ocean from Japan after the earthquake and tsunami in March of 2011. According to news reports, the debris came from the northern Japanese city of Misawa, arrived almost nine months earlier than officials originally thought.
Hitchhikers from Japan made it alive and well despite the almost 5000 mile journey. Photo by Oregon State Parks and Recreation Department
But this dock did not arrive alone. Many organisms hitched a ride on this dock for the almost 5,000 mile journey across the ocean. Floating docks and other harbor structures provide habitat for many invertebrates and algae. The movement of these organisms to the Pacific Northwest, many of which are not native to this coast, may pose a threat to the diversity of native species that live there. To prevent these possible problems, scientists and managers took samples of organisms that arrived on the dock then scrapped the remaining organisms, buried them deep in the sand up the beach, and then used blow torches to dock to remove all remnants and reproductive material of the organisms.
Moss Landing diver holds a kelp crab that is eating the Giant Kelp being grown on the farm.
The Moss Landing Global Kelp Systems class was fortunate enough to dive in a kelp farm designed to grow Giant Kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera on lines. The kelp farm had large kelp crabs which aggregated because the kelp is their preferred food, similar to insects eating on our crop fields on land. The cute baby kelp is shown below growing on lines, hopefully they will not be eaten and make it to adulthood. It was an interesting experience seeing an underwater farm, its easier to farm in the water with kelp as the nitrogen fertilizer is naturally in the water!
“What have I done!?” This is my first thought as I plunge into the frigid waters at Stillwater Cove. Having just moved to Moss Landing after spending the past eight years in tropical Hawaii, this is my first chance to dive in California’s temperate waters. My dive computer reads a mere 54° F, but that can’t be right. This water feels much closer to freezing. Once I’m able to recover from the initial shock I realize that my arms just don’t bend the way they used to. This is mostly due to the 10 mm of neoprene wrapped around my body to help keep me warm. I used to be able to get away with just a 2mm top! I slowly become acclimated to the temperature and limited mobility and descend to the depths for my first glimpse into the kelp forest ecosystem.
photo: E. Donham
Unfortunately, today isn’t the greatest of visibilities. The water has a greenish hue and I’m not able to see beyond about 15-20 feet, but even so, there is still a lot to get excited about. Coming from the tropics where reef-building hard corals are the main attraction, it’s hard to believe that macroalgae could ever be so breathtaking. Some of the giant kelps at our dive site are over 60 feet tall, which makes it easy to see why people refer to their ecosystems as forests. I look closer and see small groups of juvenile rockfish intermingled within the kelp, utilizing its blades for shelter. The closer I look, the more I see, and I start to realize it’s going to take me awhile to learn what everything is, despite the lower species abundance and diversity compared to tropical coral reefs. It certainly doesn’t help that the muted colors here make differentiating between species tricky. We ascend to our safety stop and a sea lion swims in to check us out.
At the end of my dive day I look back and am once again reminded of why I decided to study marine science and I can’t wait to jump back in the water as soon as possible. Luckily for me, as a student of the Ichthyology lab, my advisor has decided to make biweekly dives a part of our education. Hopefully exploring California’s coastal waters will help in my search for a thesis topic.
Stillwater Cove is one of the best studied kelp beds in the world. Moss Landing Marine Lab’s very own Mike Fox is studying giant kelp growth in Stillwater. The R/V John Martin took a group out to tag giant kelp in order to more easily locate them when they go reproductive. Large blades called sporophylls cover the holdfast and make it difficult to see the tags, so we attached white lines to a nearby winged kelp algae.
Tag and line connecting this winged algae to giant kelp.
Mike Fox tagging kelp to be able to locate them after they get more reproductive.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months diving, tidepooling, and digging through rotting wrack on the beach in search of seaweeds. Sometimes I get skunked, driven out by the swell, weather, and even tsunamis. Sometimes I spend hours searching around, just to find that the seaweed I want isn’t even in season, and is nowhere to be found.
On the hunt for the elusive seaweed (photo: Z. Kaufman)
But we all know it’s the victories that count. When I march back up to the car, spoils of battle in hand, laden with the seaweeds to be used in the following week’s class, I’m pretty pleased with myself. And unfailingly, I run into someone on the way. ”What did you catch?” they usually ask.
“Seaweed!” I proudly announce, waiting for what will hopefully be an enthusiastic response. But usually, the responses fall a little flat. Often they come in a variety of “hmm, that’s interesting” or some sort of feigned interest. I can’t say I really blame them. Seaweed isn’t quite a trophy fish that you would pose with in a picture (although most phycologists have), and most people don’t have much experience with it.
My trophy Undaria photo (photo: K. Demes)
I didn’t have much experience with seaweed either before I started graduate school at MLML. To be honest, I really didn’t know what phycology was at all, even though I was joining the Phycology Lab. Kelp forest ecology was my main interest, and more specifically I wanted to study how organisms use kelp as habitat. If that was going to make me a phycologist, that was fine by me. (more…)
Too bad this algae is endangered because it's so neat, I want to see it more places!
On a recent Moss Landing Marine Lab field trip, the Biology of Seaweeds class went exploring north of the bay for different types of marine algae. The algae pictured here is a really tough one compared to the others. The Sea Palm, Postelsia palmaeformis, lives in the harsh crash zone of the intertidal. It loves intense wave motion and lives on hard red algae. Due to over-harvesting the little palm is now protected and illegal to collect. It looks like a nice view but I don’t think I could take the punishment of having this kind of beach-front property!
So far, this event has been the highlight of my graduate school career. I got to dive in the kelp forest tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The same tank that I stared into for hours as a kid visiting Monterey on summer vacation, thinking, “How amazing are the people who get to dive in this tank? They must have qualifications that I couldn’t even think of getting.”
Well, I guess I was wrong! I have earned those qualifications while in grad school at MLML. I’ve earned my open water diver, rescue diver, master diver, scientific diver, and Reef Check ecodiver certifications, all in the short three years that I’ve been a student. And, the Aquarium even asked me (okay, asked the MLML Phycology Lab, which I’m a part of) to help them by surveying the algae in their kelp forest tank!
Sonya and I working in the Monterey Bay Aquarium kelp forest tank
You see, some of the seaweed in the kelp forest tank is “planted” there by aquarium staff, but some of it shows up on its own. These “volunteer” seaweeds come through the aquarium’s seawater system as spores that settle and grow in the tank. The aquarium staff like to know who all of the critters inhabiting their tanks are, and that’s where the Phycology Lab comes in. Since we spend much of our graduate career studying and identifying seaweeds, we can survey the algae in the kelp forest tank pretty quickly and easily. And every few years, we get to!
I couldn’t help but chronicle this event on the GoPro underwater video camera that I got for Christmas. Why don’t you follow along with our dive, and I’ll explain what we’re doing. Jump on in:
In this first video we’re gearing up. Paul gets help putting on his dive gear from Mike- there’s no reason to risk pulling something with all of that weight before you even get in the water! Sonya takes the first steps into the tank, and Arley helps her out with her mask and passes her fins. And during the time that the camera is pointed down, I’m checking my gear, making sure my regulator and back-up works. Every good dive starts with good planning and safety checks!
Finally, it’s my turn to get in the water! Speedy Paul climbs into the tank, gears up, and eases in before me. I make my way down the steps and take a seat, where I can comfortably and securely put on my fins. Then my mask goes on, and Arley hands me the RPC – random point contact – bar and makes some final adjustments. Into the tank I go!
I submerge, and take my first look around the tank. It might be hard to believe, but diving in the aquarium was a little stressful at first. We had to stay far away from the glass because our tanks could chip or crack it, we needed to avoid making big fin strokes because we could tear out or damage the kelp, and with seven people and all of those fishes in an enclosed space, we had to keep from kicking each other!
You’ll see the white vertical line – this is our transect line that we sampled along. I waited for my partner Sonya, and she found the place along the line where we were to take our first sample. My job was to place the RPC bar on this spot, then hold the marks on the line up to the place on the rock where Sonya identified the algae growing there. That way, we sampled a random place each time.
Sampling went smoothly and I got some great video, up until the point where the camera decided to make a break for it! Here you can see that it falls off of my head, and spirals toward the kelp forest tank floor. Thankfully we were in an enclosed space, and Paul rescued the camera later on. I’ll be securing it to my buoyancy compensator next time I take it for a dive!
So, that concludes this adventure. Thanks for joining me on my dive in the Monterey Bay Aquarium kelp forest tank! I’ll be taking the GoPro with me on future dives, so stay tuned for more videos of my adventures as an MLML grad student.
No, this isn’t a deadly weapon. But it does have a blade, or actually, many of them! This is the end of a giant kelp frond, better known as the “scimitar” blade due to its resemblance. Here, new blades are formed. As the blade grows, it slowly tears itself away from the scimitar and becomes an individual blade. You can see several new blades forming in this scimitar blade, and the ones just to the left are the newest blades that have already separated.
Does the scimitar blade look familiar to you? Well, if you’ve ever visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium then it should be! The Monterey Bay Aquarium uses the scimitar blade as part of its logo, which you can see on their website.
Back from a day in the field, grad student Brynn Hooton points out the phycology lab’s research site out in the kelp bed. Stillwater Cove has been used for decades as the location of kelp forest research. Phycology lab students are frequent visitors; making a few dives here every month to conduct experiments on kelps.
Beneath the waves lies the stunning world of the kelp forest. This school of blue rockfish casts a mysterious shadow among the towering kelp plants. Unlike other species of rockfish that hunker down among the rocks, blue rockfish spend more of their time in the water column where they feed on plankton and jellyfish.
Welcome! Drop-in to the "real-life tales" of graduate students at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, and find out what being a marine biologist (or chemist or geologist or physicist...) is all about!
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