At the Business End of a Sea Turtle

Catcher in the sand: Deasy Lontoh counts a leatherback sea turtle's eggs while she lays them on a beach in Indonesia

Deasy Lontoh

by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

Greetings from Papua! I’m back to study leatherback sea turtle reproduction for my thesis, this time for three and a half months. There are no hatcheries this year so I have to count turtle eggs as they are dropped into the nest while the females are laying.

When a female leatherback digs her nest, I dig a body pit for myself directly behind her.  My body pit must be deep enough so I can comfortably place my hands underneath the female’s cloaca throughout the laying process. I tally the number of yolked and yolkless eggs in my head, and pass some eggs to a partner who measures and weighs them.

The eggs have to be returned into the nest before the female covers her nest, so we work very efficiently. Oftentimes the female drops more than one yolked egg at a time. Typically she drops the yolkless eggs at the end of the laying process, but sometimes she drops them at the same time as the yolked eggs. To keep the egg counts straight, my partner and I hardly talk to each other during sampling.  It’s definitely a handful!

Read more about Deasy’s sea turtle work in Indonesia:

• Turtle Talk from the Tropics
• Meeting the giants – measuring up to a nesting leatherback
• Turtle Power: Paddling 12,000 miles across the Pacific

Squat Lobster Caviar

photo: E. Loury

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

This bright white crustacean is a squat lobster pulled from the deep during a government fishing survey in southern California.  Squat lobsters aren’t actually lobsters at all (they’re more closely related to porcelain crabs and hermit crabs), and are much smaller than lobsters (note my finger in the photo below).  Their tucked-under abdomens and extended claws always make me imagine them doing some kind of yoga pose.  Flipping this one over indicated that it (or rather, she!) was closely guarding a clutch of bright red eggs.  Holding them close is probably a good idea – they look like they’d make a tasty snack for some predator swimming by!

Clearly this one is a female! (photo: E. Loury)

So Why Bother Studying Seaweeds, Anyway?

In a final act of futility, I search a cave for the seaweed I can't find (photo: Z. Kaufman)

Brynn Hooton-Kaufman

By Brynn Hooton-Kaufman, Phycology Lab

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. 

Come Dive Along With Us at Catalina Island: Eggy Encounter

Moss Landing Marine Labs Diver and Graduate student Paul Tompkins shows excitement after viewing a wide expanse of squid eggs at Big Fisherman's Cover, Catalina Island.

Diving in the marine reserve at Big Fisherman’s Cove near USC Wrigley Institute, diver Paul Tompkins observes squid eggs which span his entire view.  This does not happen often according to the people working and living at the Marine Science Center.  The squid and eggs are rarely this shallow and may be caused by colder than normal temperatures brought by La Niña.

Squid eggs span the horizon at Big Fisherman's Cove, Catalina.

What’s in a Mermaid’s Purse?

photo: E. Loury

Some lipstick, a hair brush…and oh look, a baby skate.  Colloquially known as “mermaid’s purses,” these structures are actually the egg cases of some sharks and skates.  The size of the one above, caught during a fish trawl survey,  is a dead give away that it came from a big skate (Raja binoculata) because it’s just so, well, big.   The adults can grow up to six feet long, and the largest described was just under eight feet.   Big skates are one of the few skate species that can have more than one embryo per egg case.  It could make a fetching clutch when the skates are done with it – you know, with something in hues of say seaweed and seashell…

Whale Feeding and Breeding and Migrating – Oh My!

 

A humpback whale in Kodiak, Alaska (photo by Casey Clark)

Casey Clark

By Casey Clark, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

Each year, humpback whales migrate between their feeding areas in high-latitude places such as Alaska, California and Antarctica to their breeding areas in more tropical regions such as Mexico, Hawaii, Central America, and the South Pacific.  This means that during the winter, all of the animals should be in the breeding area and none should be in the feeding area.  It turns out that this isn’t true.  All around the world, people have seen humpback whales in feeding areas during the winter when they are expected to be in the breeding area.  This leads to the following questions:  Who are these animals that spend their winters in the feeding area?  Are they mostly males? Females?  Juvenile animals?  Why would they give up their chance to reproduce for the year?

It was these questions that led me to choose my project.  For my master’s thesis at Moss Landing Marine Labs, I will attempt to answer at least some of them.  To do this, I will look at the animals off the coast of central California, an important feeding area for humpback whales that breed off the coast of Central America.  I will be looking at the sex-ratio (the number of males present compared to the number of females present) and the proportion of juvenile animals (the number of young animals compared to the number of adult animals) in this area throughout the year.  By seeing how the sex-ratio and the proportion of juvenile animals change from summer to winter, I will be able to determine who is using the area in the winter.  For example, if the sex-ratio is 1:1 in the summer (1 male present for every 1 female present) and 1:2 in the winter (1 male present for every 2 females present), I will know that there are more females than males using this area in the winter.

 

Humpback whale in Kodiak, Alaska (photo by Casey Clark)

The different sexes and age groups of humpback whales are known to migrate to the breeding area at different times.  Adult males are the first to begin the migration to the breeding area, followed by non-pregnant females, juvenile animals and finally pregnant females.  This pattern would suggest that female animals in the late-stages of pregnancy remain in the feeding area longer than most other whales.  This theory is supported by observations from the feeding area and during migration, but it has never been confirmed that pregnant females remain in the feeding area longer than most other members of the population.  I will test this theory by determining the pregnancy rates of females found in the feeding area in the late fall and early winter.  If a greater proportion of these females are pregnant than would be expected, this theory would be confirmed.  The identification of this area as critical habitat for these pregnant whales would have profound implications for their conservation and management.

 

Casey and his sampling crossbow

Stay tuned to find out how I find the whales, and then collect samples with a crossbow!

Happy Octopus Day from MLML: Eight-armed babies and fish octo-snacks

One for the octopus baby album! (photo: S. Ainsley)

Erin Loury

by Erin Loury, Icthyology Lab

Put your tentacles up – it’s Cephalopod Awareness Days 2010, everyone!  Fellow marine scientist blogger Danna Staff (a cephalopod enthusiast and newly-minted Ph.D. from Hopkins Marine Station) is hosting this week’s festivities at her Cephalopodiatrist blog.  I figured it would be fitting to celebrate October 8th, Octopus Day, MLML-style with a tale of two Erins and their eight-armed encounters.

The first is a repost about Erin Jensen’s octopuses. Erin defended her thesis in April, titled “The Effects of Environmental Enrichment and Problem-Solving on the Brain and Behavior of Octopus rubescens.“  While she spent most of her time stumping octopuses with mazes and food puzzles, and subsequently dissecting their brains, she also moonlighted in octopus husbandry – or at least, attempted to.  When one of her octopus test subjects wiggled its way out usefulness in her experiment by promptly laying eggs, Erin realized there was little she  could do but enjoy just how goshdarn cute they were. While none of the babies survived past a few days, we did get some video of them doing their bouncy thing – check out the full post here.

And then there’s me, the second Erin.  We in the fish community can appreciate cephalopods as much as anyone.  Even fish love cephalopods – they make great snacks!  Here’s a photo straight from the gopher rockfish gut files, aka my thesis on gopher rockfish diet.  Though true octopus lovers may shed a tear at this assortment of consumed critters, consider that an animal’s ecological role is also worthy of celebration.  So here’s to a tasty link in the food chain!

 

Delicious and nutritious: little octopods from the guts of gopher rockfish. (photo: E. Loury)

 

Studying a Softball-sized Snail with a Pregnant Foot

Snails living on and around hydrothermal chimneys in complete darkness provide excellent material for startling scientific discoveries (Photo taken by ROV Jason II, Dr. Charles Fisher, Chief Scientist)

Kyle Reynolds

By Kyle Reynolds, Benthic Ecology Lab

Can you imagine being pregnant in your foot?  That’s just one of the fascinating things I discovered about the snail species I studied for my thesis.  I studied animals at hydrothermal vents (seafloor volcanoes) and the adaptations they’ve made that help them cope with their harsh environments.  Specifically, I looked at two species of snails that live about 1.5 miles deep in the southwestern Pacific at a hydrothermal vent system near Tonga and Fiji.

These snails get as big as softballs when full-grown and have evolved many ways to deal with life in a chemically toxic volcanic world.  My thesis focused mainly on reproductive adaptations, and I was able to find many of those.  Not only have they wrapped their larvae in protective coatings, they also house them for a short time in a pouch in their foot!  Like I said – pregnant in your foot!

Hangin' at the vent: These black snails and a variety of neighbors make a living in a harsh environment (Photo taken by ROV Jason II, Dr. Charles Fisher, Chief Scientist)

This research was challenging on many levels.  First, since I was studying something so far away from California and so deep in the ocean, I had only one chance to get the samples I needed and there was no guarantee they would be reproductively mature.  With the expense of the research vessel, the submersible robot needed to collect samples at that depth, and the many crew members needed to run everything, these types of expeditions are much too costly to repeat.   So I had one shot to get it right!

Also, I was studying animals that had very little previous research done on them (in fact, no one had ever studied their reproductive systems before) so I had very little guidance and often had no clue what I was doing!  It took many visits with experts in many fields before I was able to piece the clues together and see the true picture of the bizarre mechanisms these animals were using to give their babies the best chance at survival.

For me, it was the challenge of this research that was most rewarding in the end.  There is nothing like being the first person in the world to discover something!  That’s what science is all about.  More details to come on all of the crazy adaptations we found in these alien snails…

Spawn, Coral, Spawn!

The coral Montastrea spawning. Orange bundles of sperm and eggs are released within a few minutes of each other all over the reef. (Photo: Edgardo Ochoa)

Shelby Boyer

by Shelby Boyer, Invertebrate Zoology Lab

Timing is everything when it comes to coral spawning – spawning occurs once a year and is when corals synchronize the release of bundles of eggs and sperm into the water.   In one of my first  weeks in Panama, I was invited to help two coral researchers, Dr. Nancy Knowlton and Dr. Don Levitan, with an experiment on coral spawning.

Dr. Knowlton and Dr. Levitan have been studying a reef on the Caribbean side of Panama for eight years and have found that the colonies will spawn within minutes of the exact same time every year. By releasing their eggs and sperm at the same time, coral gametes have a good chance of coming in contact with one another for successful fertilization. Different species spawn at different times so that they have the best chance of only encountering eggs and sperm that they are compatible with.

To study this phenomenon, I went with a group of about 8 researchers, both professors and graduate students. We hopped on boats just before sunset and headed out to our field site at in island about a mile off of the coast of Panama. The spawning occurs at night so special preparations were necessary for us to dive in the dark and see them.  All of the divers had flashlights but these only help you see a short distance. Before dark we got in the water and set up a line of glowsticks underwater so that we would be able to orient ourselves in the dark. From the boat it looked like an underwater rave!

When the time drew near, we all donned our scuba gear and each went to a section of the reef where we watched for the spawning. For the first 20 minutes or so, we just waited…..and waited….and waited….

Soon, I started to notice some of the coral polyps getting swollen on top and some of the bundles showing through the mouth of the coral. This is called the setting phase. Within 5-10 minutes of setting, the colonies released all of their eggs at the same time in a big sheet. The little yellow bundles floated slowly to the surface where they would pop open to release the eggs and sperm in a big gamete soup! At the same time that the corals started to release the bundles, other activities started on the reef. Worms, seastars, fishes and other organisms appeared and took advantage of an easy, slowly floating meal. I even felt little nibbles on my hands (nothing painful or that broke the skin) from so many hungry predators in the water. The presence of all these predators could be another reason for synchronous spawning: if you put thousands of bundles in the water at the same time, there are just too many for predators to eat.

Shelby collecting corals in style!

It was a really exciting opportunity for me to accompany these researchers and I learned so much about coral spawning myself. I was able to make really positive connections with the professors and other graduate students that I will most likely see again as I continue my career as a coral researcher. Stay tuned over the next few months for updates on my own work.