Our First Trip North

After delicious pie Tuesday night and some good old fashioned bonding, we started discussing the inverts Wednesday morning. After learning about the phyla Porifera, Cnidaria, and Ctenophora, we entered the laboratory for the first time. Here we cleaned and set up the tanks for organisms collected from our first two excursions. 

Our first stop yesterday afternoon was the Newport docks. The sun was out as we lay down on the docks to discover and capture some of the invertebrates that live beneath the wood. After the docks, we loaded our new friends into our vans and made our way to Boiler Bay. Even though the tide was not extremely low (only 0.11m) we were able to collect sea stars, chitons, urchins, crabs, limpets (like the keyhole limpet on the left), and many other invertebrates. Luckily, the clouds didn’t open until we were back in the vans heading to Newport to place the organisms in the laboratory tanks for observation and sketching.

A Surprisingly Sunny Beginning...

Hatfield!! 

Wow. We’re finally here at Hatfield and starting our awesome term of marine biology. This past weekend has already seen an immense amount of rain which we thought would continue all week, but our first day of class proved to be a beautiful day. We were able to take a tour of HMSC, and board the Oceanus, a research vessel which is replacing the Wecoma, and we had our first lecture. 

Today we were scheduled to hike up to Cascade Head, but due to rain, the trip has been postponed. Too bad during our lunch break the rain cleared up and made it a perfect day to go hiking. Ah well... Instead we had another lecture where we started into marine invertebrates and walked over to the Oregon Coast Aquarium (which was pretty awesome!). While there we saw many invertebrates including moon jelly polyps, sea cucumbers, and a White Knight nudibranch. The birds and the sea lions were also enjoying the sunshine.

We’re looking forward to an excellent discussion on the Northwest Coast with pie tonight!

It's almost here!

Welcome to Marine Biology 2012! Hope everyone is ready for the start of marine inverts: ready to learn more about invertebrates than you'd ever dreamed and see invertebrates you'd never imagine!

Pycnogonid (sea spider) from Boiler Bay 2011

 See you next week! - Sally and Allie

Hello, Goodbye!

Well after a whirlwind of introductions to new topics, new places, and new people, our time at Hatfield has come to a close and it is time to say goodbye. The sense of impending goodbyes would be ignored for most of the week though, because it was results week! And it was time to wow past and present marine biology instructors with our super awesome research projects!

After spending Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday frantically finishing our papers or doing that one last statistical analysis, or putting in that extra slide, Friday came and it was time to present our groundbreaking scientific research to the world!

Sally started the research symposium with a look back at the 30 years of Marine Biology 450. Melissa's mom graciously made a cake for the birthday celebration, and for that we thank her! It was delicious!

Alex Gulick, Kelsey McCoy, and Sarah Vojnovich (who managed not to fall down during her presentation-- just kidding Sarah! ), took a look at the Social behavior of the saddleback clownfish, Amphiprion polymnus, and found that they have preferred group sizes among other interesting behaviors.

Jessie Johnson, Vathani Logendran, and Cela Sibley tethered crabs and observed their mortality due to predation by marine birds.

Erin Bruce and Casey Pollock found that bay pipefish don't readily change their color, but found there may be habitat preference. 

Cynthia Sells looked at the relationship between benthic biomass and dungeness crab landings. Her research didn't seem to suggest that there was a relationship, though it was very interesting.

Amanda Brunner, Lisa Neyman and Emily Pickering looked at predatory avoidance behaviors by a marine snail, Littorina sitkana, and found that clumping may be a response to predators in the near vicinity. 

Steven Van Auken and Allan Chan found that stronger magnetic fields showed greater effects on degree of rotation and total distance traveled in giant pacific chitons, Cryptochiton stelleri.

Reed Norton worked in a NOAA laboratory under Dr. Tom Hurst, and found that acidifying oceans may have negative consequences for size at hatch of some walleye pollock larvae. However, some fish did not show any effects of the low pH waters.

Paul Dixson and Stephen Nelson found a possible link between the color of Pisaster ocraceus and mussel consumption.

Karl Biederbeck also looked at Pisaster and its diet, but found when starved, they move higher in the intertidal.

Wendel Raymond and Melissa Errend took advantage of some artificial tide pools at Boiler bay to determine the effects of a simulated extinction event on sculpin metapopulation dynamics. What they found was that sculpins will recolonize evacuated pools, significantly after 2 days from the removal.

And with that, the research symposium was drawn to a close, and our term at Hatfield was over. We'll miss the early mornings on the tide, and the late evenings in the library, but we'll always be thankful for the opportunity! Goodbye Hatfield!

Marine Conservation Week
Monday 5/23 

              After a week of research we all buckled down and headed back to lecture.   This week we learned all about conservation science and policy, starting with a lecture on the current state of the oceans, followed by one on the effects of climate change and how it affects the oceans.   After listening to all the doom and gloom we had lunch, and plunged back into our lectures on emerging ocean uses.  We covered ways the ocean can provide energy by harnessing the wind, waves and tides.  Then, we learned about the importance of sustainable aquaculture. We ended the day by choosing parters and topics for our presentations at the end of the week.     

Tuesday 5/24 

               The day began with a lecture on marine reserves and protected areas,  and began discussing  proposed marine reserves in Oregon.  Then, we got to hear from Alix Laferriere and Melissa Murphey about their work on marine reserves for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.   They covered not only the science behind setting up reserves, but the policy work behind setting it up.  It is impressive the progress that has been made towards setting up marine reserves in Oregon.  Especially since it involves the combined efforts of fishermen and scientists (who admittedly do not always get along), as well as numerous non-profit, and government agencies.  After lunch we heard from Karen McLeod about her work with COMPASS, the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea, and the work they do connecting scientists and policy makers.  After this we had a discussion on the importance of reaching out to the community and sharing scientific findings.  I think this was a great discussion and many of us now understand that although it is important to be knowledgeable understand the scientific process, science really only helps society when scientists are able to explain what their research means and understand how it actually effects peoples lives.  

Wednesday 5/24 

            Field Trip! Today we loaded up the vans and headed south to Cape Perpetua where Paul Englemeyer took us on a tour around Ten Mile Creek Sanctuary.  He covered a range of topics including the proposed marine reserve, water quality and how it affects the environment, and seabird ranges and habitats.  We headed to the top of the cape and made a pit stop to learn about research efforts in the creek, and take some awesome pictures! What a view from up there! Then we headed of to meet a fisheries technician who was sampling one of the fish traps.  We got to play with some fish and some of us were even brave enough to let the lamprey suction its jaw-less mouth to our hands!  At our final stop we learned about the habitat restoration work being done at the sanctuary, where trees had been brought in by helicopter in order to restore the creeks ecosystem.  Paul explained to us that even though large trees live at the most 300 years, dead trees continue to play a role in the ecosystem and create habitat for various birds and mammals and fish as the go from standing, two slowly being knocked over, and rolled into streams and eventually washed out to sea by storms. Each stage of its path towards the ocean it plays a different role whether its rotting holes are nest for certain birds, or providing a resting place to block strong river currents in the winter that would otherwise flush little salmon into the ocean before they are ready.  Truly fascinating!

Thursday 5/25

              The day started out with rain as we listened to a lecture on fisheries, before taking a trip to the docks to hear from Laura Anderson and Charlie Branford from Local Ocean Seafoods about the fishing industry, from the ocean to the shop. Laura runs Local Ocean and takes pride in that it only serves fish from sustainable sources. They took us for a tour of the fishing docks, and we got to meet some hard-working fishermen and hear them talk about their jobs. It sounds like fishing is a rough business but most of them seem to love what they do.  We then had a delicious lunch at Local Ocean before our final lecture on fisheries management tools.  Once we made it back to HMSC most of us spent the rest of the day finishing our presentations for the next day.

                                                                                   Friday 5/26
                Today we gave our presentations! Some of us were nervous, but luckily unlike next week’s presentations which is in front of an audience of family members and real scientists we only had to present to our classmates.  The presentations were very interesting and diverse.  We learned a lot from each other about things such as climate change, the shark fin trade, ocean medicines and noise pollution.  It seems there is lot more to ocean conservancy than what one might have guessed.  With such a complex set of problems it can sometimes be easy to feel pessimistic about the oceans futures.  But in our presentations many of us also presented some wonderful ideas for how to manage these future and current issues.  It is good to know that for many of us we are in field that yields us not only great opportunities to do what we love, but to also contribute to something greater than ourselves.  Good work guys!