Chronicles of a Curious Beachcomber

by Angela Szesciorka, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

A few Sundays ago — Super Bowl Sunday, in fact — I took a three-hour walk along the beach at Fort Ord in Monterey, CA with Don Glasco, a systems engineer and former cartographer.

This wasn’t a leisurely pursuit, but my volunteer service to the Sanctuary Integrated Monitoring Network’s (SIMoN) Coastal Ocean Mammal and Bird Education and Research Surveys, also known as Beach COMBERS.

I meet Don at Fort Ord Dunes State Park in Marina around 9 a.m. After downing the last of my coffee, we head out into the foggy morning.

Don Glasco referring to the almighty bird book to identify an unknown species by its toes.

That’s a Moray!

The exciting thing about science is we still have so much to learn about the natural world, new discoveries are being made all the time.  Rita Mehta at UCSC has been studying eels, specifically their pharyngeal jaws (see a video here), which are a second set of jaws that help the eels eat larger prey.  Recently MLML helped UCSC researcher Rita Mehta and others to determine how many California moray eels are in an area of Catalina Island, part of the channel islands archipelago.  Further, they are interested in growth of individuals and movement.  They had help from people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with using Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags, acoustic tags and acoustic receivers to address eel growth and movement.

UCSC researchers Ben Higgins and Leith Miller measure a California moray.

Using traps, eels would be raised to the boat then a series of body measurements and total weight were taken, they would be PIT tagged and released in the area of capture.  If they caught an individual again who had previously had a PIT tag, they could use the body measurements from before and compare them to the current measurements to learn  how much they grew in that time period.

Eels were caught and then brought to the boat for measurements using these traps.

To learn more about eel movement, a subset of eels had an acoustic tag surgically implanted into them.  Acoustic receivers were deployed at each cove which would detect the surgically implanted acoustic tags in the eels, if they were nearby.  They believe that moray eels may go out to feed during night but not much is known.  In two weeks, with over 300 unique eels measured and PIT tagged, you could imagine how dramatic and important an impact they have on the ecosystem!

Acoustic receivers were deployed in each cove to aid in understanding moray eel movement.

Fish Feeding Frenzy

In the southern California bight, the channel islands archipeligo sits in warm subtropical waters brought north along the coast from Mexico to the islands.  Toward the east, Santa Catalina Island supports many different fishes living in these warm waters.  On a recent thesis sampling trip, frenzied fish behavior was observed.  Similar to people gathering at a popular eatery, small orange cigar shaped fish called Senorita, and speckled kelp bass, schooled near disturbances created by divers.  You may see the small grayish crab in the photo just underneath the fish’s mouth (see below).  These fish would say that algae mats provide a home for many tasty invertebrates!

Happy World Ocean Day June 8th 2012!

Help create a wave of change this World Ocean Day!  Today is a day to spread the word about conservation and our responsibility of improving the health of the ocean.  To find out ways to celebrate go to worldoceans.org.  Today I am continuing to make a lifestyle change and rode my bike to get to the UC Santa Cruz library to study and make this post!  Celebrate in your own way to rise up and be the voice of the ocean!

It’s Whale Soup Out Here!

Looking for whales in Monterey Bay

Ok, so it’s not literally whale soup out here, but Monterey Bay has been full of humpback whales for the past few weeks.  Casey Clark, a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Labs, has been taking advantage of this opportunity to investigate migrations and feeding behavior humpback whales in this region.  Each whale’s tail (known as a fluke) has a unique pattern of black and white markings and scars, which can be used to identify individual whales, much like fingerprints are used to identify humans.  As part of his research, Casey has been photographing the flukes of whales encountered in the bay and referencing them to a catalog to determine when and where they have been seen in the past.  Spring and summer are great times to see humpback and blue whales in Monterey bay, so keep your eyes out for a glimpse of these huge marine mammals!

Last look at a humpback whale.

Chilean Columns of Basalt!

The characteristic hexagonal pattern of the basalt columns form after the rock cools.

While on a beach down in Chile, South America the Moss Landing Marine Labs Global Systems class stumbled on a series of interesting rock features.  The low silica rock of Chile flows easily and comes from molten lava, when it cools it contracts and forms.  These cracks that form from cooling are roughly 6-sided, or hexagonal, and can form huge columns as seen at California’s Devils Postpile National Park.  We took the liberty of testing the rock’s structural integrity while trying to climb these amazing columns.  The columns seem man made, but knowing some basic geology helps to determine the origin, even when in another hemisphere from home.

You can tell these columns shifted after the time they were created by the way they tilt to the side.

 

Magical isotopes: Where Did Your Food Come From?

Chilean and American students combine forces to process green algae samples for isotopic analysis.

The Moss Landing Marine Labs Global Kelp Systems class went to Chile and learned to process samples of algae and invertebrates to get carbon and nitrogen isotopes.  These isotopes were collected to help scientists learn about the impact of creating a kelp farm where kelp would not have been otherwise.  Algae and inverts have different isotope signals, so isotopes can help in tracking where nutrients go.  What did this kelp crab have for dinner?  Looks like algae from the kelp farm!

Different red algae samples for isotope analysis.

 

These inverts were collected in the kelp bed to track where kelp nutrients go.

 

Farming Underwater in Chile, South America

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!

Baby kelp, they are cute!

A Very Science Halloween

By Michelle Marraffini Invertebrate Zoology

Saturday night Elkhorn Yacht Club graciously hosted MLML’s annual Halloween party!  This year’s party included a great number of science themed pumpkins and costumes.   Each lab is given a pumpkin the week prior to the party and asked to carve it as part of a contest.  The entries also included underwater pumpkins from the dive class.  I got the opportunity to tag along with the Scientific Dive class this past Friday and carve one of my own.  My dive partner Kristin and I struggled to hold the very buoyant pumpkin still at 20 feet depth, while we took turns using our dive knives to carve shapes into our pumpkin.  Can you guess what it is?  (Hint: we are both in the invertebrate zoology lab).

Photo by: M. Marraffini

The Invertebrate Lab’s offical pumpkin, for the contest, was a carving of a cuttlefish (Photo below with one of our new students Catherine Drake).  The results from the contest have not yet been tallied but in my opinion it was the best (I may be a little biased in this area).  I just heard the results are in…we did win the pumpkin carving contest!

 

Photo by: M. Marraffini

The party also included costume contests for best costume, most scientific, best faculty costume, best group costume, funniest costume, and scariest costume.   There was some stiff competition this year for most scientific including a costume of an electrophoresis gel (gel used view products from polymerase chain reaction used to amplify DNA), a whale fall costume complete with whale skeleton and invertebrates that live on or near the bones, the rocky intertidal with a limpet, barnacle and ochre seastar, a blue crab lifecycle, and a bacterial culturing experiment.   Below is a picture (Photo by Diane Wyse Physical Oceanography Lab) of the invertebrate lab’s rocky intertidal group costume, while it looked pretty good and we did not win the group costume contest. There’s always next year.  Happy Halloween!

 

Photo by: Diane Wyse

Licking rocks?

Arch at Panther Beach made of sandstone.

During the MS 141 Geologic Oceanography field trip on monday October the 10th, I learned something new about a place I have been visiting for years.  Panther Beach is about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz and a diverse, dynamic beach to visit.  With a huge sandstone arch and places to boulder and rock climb it has much to offer and changes with the seasons as the sand is removed during winter and deposited back during summer.  Little did I know, but a rock outcrop I had walked by for years was composed of mud and many, many diatoms, tiny algae phytoplankton which are made of silica and leave behind their skeleton when they pass away.  If you were to lick a fresh portion of this rock it seems like the rock is sticky, this is because of the many tubes of the diatom skeletons creating suction on your tongue!!!  The study of rocks definitely rocks!

Mudstone made of diatoms and of course mud.