Shannon Johnson, MBARI

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - October 18th, 2018

Hosted by the Invertebrate Zoology & Molecular Ecology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

(or Watch it Live here!)

Open to the public

Bolinopsis (Ctenophora: Lobata) are common, relatively large, and abundant comb jellies found throughout the world ocean. Bolinopsis infundibulum is thought to occur in most northern latitudes, and B. vitrea in tropical latitudes. Sequence data from conservative loci such as 18S rRNA revealed little to no differentiation within the genus and is unresolved for lobate ctenophores in general. In contrast, sequence data from the mitochondrial locus Cytochrome-C-Oxidase subunit I, (COI) revealed species-level differentiation amongst ocean basins for both taxa. Sequence data from the 28S rRNA, Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rRNA, and Histone-3 (H3) nuclear loci, also confirmed patterns of species-level differentiation. Sequences also revealed a new lineage of Bolinopsis from the Pacific Ocean. Bolinopsis n.sp. included two closely related, yet distinct mitotypes that were sympatric in the Monterey Bay, California (USA). The sympatric lineages were often collected together and did not segregate by depth or geography.  Nuclear genomic RAD sequencing on a small subset of individuals revealed potential cytonuclear disequilibrium and hybridization between the two mitotypes, lending evidence to the presence of a cryptic species complex. Further genomic sequencing and Sanger sequencing, coupled with morphological investigations are underway to determine if genetic differentiation is reflected phenotypically.

Irina Shilova, Second Genome

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - October 25th, 2018

Hosted by the Chemical Oceanography Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

(or Watch it Live here!)

Open to the public

Irina Shilova is a Microbial Ecologist and Bioinformatician with advanced education in Molecular Biology and Microbiology and extensive experience in the field, lab and meta‘omics data analysis. She has developed and implemented novel molecular tools and informatics approaches to study responses of microbial communities to environmental stimuli. Irina is dedicated to mentoring and science outreach and passionate about the microbial world and striving towards constant improvement and learning.

Differential effects of nitrate, ammonium and urea as N sources for microbial communities in the North Pacific Ocean

Nitrogen has long been known to limit phytoplankton growth and productivity in large regions of the oceans. Likewise, the form and supply of N are important controls on microbial community composition, activity and ultimately ecosystem function. However, the effect of different chemical nitrogen species on complex natural phytoplankton communities in the open ocean is not well-known. We investigated the effect of nitrate, ammonium, and urea on microbial and phytoplankton community composition (cell abundances and 16S rRNA gene profiling) and functioning (photosynthetic activity, carbon fixation rates) in the transitional zone of California Current system and oligotrophic waters of the North Pacific Ocean. All nitrogen substrates tested significantly stimulated phytoplankton growth and productivity. Urea resulted in the greatest (>300%) increases in chlorophyll a and productivity at two experimental stations, largely due to increased abundances of Prochlorococcus. Two abundant clades of Prochlorococcus, High Light I and II, demonstrated similar responses to urea, suggesting this substrate is likely an important N source for natural Prochlorococcus populations. The timing and magnitude of response to nutrient amendments varied with geographic location due to the differences in phytoplankton community composition and nutrient status among and within these communities. Finally, both the oligotyping approach applied for 16S rRNA gene sequences and the gene-targeted transcription (microarray) approach showed that sub-populations of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus had different responses to nitrogen sources. Our results provide support for the hypothesis that changes in nitrogen supply would likely favor specific populations of phytoplankton in different oceanic regions and thus, affect both biogeochemical cycles and ecological processes.

Lindsey Dillon, Science and Justice Research Center, UCSC

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - November 1st, 2018

Hosted by the Fisheries & Conservation Biology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

(or Watch it Live here!)

Open to the public

Lindsey Dillon is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. She received a PhD in Geography in 2014 and held a postdoctoral fellowship in American Studies. Her works looks at the intersection of urban geography, environmental justice social movements, and the politics of knowledge. At UCSC she serves on the steering committee of the Science and Justice Research Center.

Environmental Justice at the Hunters Point Shipyard

This talk explores the politics of environmental data at the Hunters Point Shipyard, in southeast San Francisco. The shipyard is a Superfund site and currently undergoing cleanup and redevelopment as a landscape of condominiums, offices, and waterfront parks. The construction activity produces health hazards for the neighboring Bayview-Hunters Point community, which has struggled against environmental racism for decades. I explain environmental data justice (a concept I am helping to develop with other colleagues, based on our work advocating for better data practices under the Trump administration) and I explore whether and how this applies to a particular case in Hunters Point: the attempt to demolish Candlestick Park by exploding it, and the political organizing that stopped this from happening.

Nancy Caruso, Get Inspired, Inc.

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - November 8th, 2018

Hosted by the Phycology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

(or Watch it Live here!)

Open to the public

Nancy is a Virginia native with a B.S in Marine Biology with an emphasis in aquaculture and chemistry. Early in her career, Nancy worked in the aquaculture industry and for a local public aquarium. Wanting to do more conservation work within her community, Nancy left the aquarium to build a program to restore Orange County, California’s decimated kelp forests.  With help from magazine and newspaper articles, as well a television and radio, Nancy has helped to bring the message of the importance of kelp forests along our coast to millions. The Orange County Ocean Restoration Project has taught 5000 students how to grow giant kelp in their classrooms that was planted in the ocean by 250 trained volunteers and now there are giant kelp forests in areas that had been barren for more than 25 years.  To continue her work, Nancy started a nonprofit organization called Get Inspired!  She continues to restore the kelp forest ecosystem and has taught 5000 more kids to grow white seabass in their classrooms which are released annually to their ocean habitats in the restored kelp forests.  Get Inspired! is dedicated to Inspiring stewardship and curiosity for the natural world through the exploration of science. Nancy has just begun a massive 10 year project to restore green abalone with the help of public aquaria, museums, and 36,000 southern California students in their classrooms.  This project will educate millions of people about how, in one human lifetime, we nearly ate the abalone to extinction and how we can all work together to bring them back.

Changing the World: Ocean restoration with citizen scientists

An evolution in science has occurred; the public wants to be part of it.  It is the era of “Citizen Science”.  They are interested in science, hungry for data, and want to “do” something to affect change.

Get Inspired’s mission is to inspire stewardship and curiosity for the natural world through the exploration of science.  We are all part of the problem, we try to make everyone part of the solution.

Through hands on ocean restoration projects in Orange County, California, we have restored the kelp forests, we are working to increase the numbers of white seabass, and we are restoring reproductive populations of green abalone.  Overall, 10,000 people have directly grown these organisms, been trained to outplant and monitor them in the ocean, and millions more have been educated about our efforts through outreach and media.  Students care for the organisms in classroom nurseries with a full year curricula centered on ocean chemistry, ecology, and biology of the species.   In order to have lasting change, behaviors and attitudes must evolve and we believe having a stake in the success of these restoration efforts is the solution.

Tien-Chieh Hung, UC Davis

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - November 29th, 2018

Hosted by the Ichthyology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

(or Watch it Live here!)

Open to the public

Prof. Tien-Chieh Hung works in the area of aquacultural engineering including computational fluid dynamics, biomimetic particle filtration system design, recirculating culture system design, cultural technique development, and fish behavior. He has been working with listed fish species since 2008 and is Director of the Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory and manages the refuge population of the delta smelt. His current study is focusing on the fish culture technique improvement, marking method development, domestication effects on the captive fish, and integrated aquaculture.

The development of delta smelt hatchery and the use of cultured fish for conservation purposes

The UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory (FCCL) has started the delta smelt hatchery program since 1996 in response of the decline of their population in Delta. The fish is known for their fragile and sensitive to the environment, and they were federally listed as threatened and as endangered by the state. It took about 10 years for the FCCL to develop a reliable culture method for the delta smelt, and since then, the FCCL has been further developing a genetically managed refuge population of the fish. Currently the FCCL is housing the 11th generation removed from the wild. With the potential need of future reintroduction of delta smelt, the FCCL is now working with collaborators on the fitness of captive fish to the wild.

Susanna Blackwell, Greeneridge Sciences

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - November 29th, 2018

Hosted by the Vertebrate Ecology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

(or Watch it Live here!)

Open to the public

Dr. Blackwell has been working with large marine vertebrates for nearly 30 years - northern and southern elephant seals, Baltic grey seals, albacore tuna, Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tuna, bowhead whales, and narwhals, to name a few.  In the early stages of her career she was involved in the design and manufacture of several types of seal data loggers, recording parameters such as depth, temperature, heart rate, swim speed, activity levels, and bioluminescence.  She joined Greeneridge in May 2000 and has since collected and analyzed acoustic data on man-made sounds, such as those produced by impact and vibratory pile-driving, airgun pulses, and numerous construction activities, to assess their range and impact on marine vertebrates, mostly marine mammals.  More recently she has combined these two interests—in collecting data using tags and in assessing the effects of man-made sounds on marine animals—to examine how East Greenland narwhals react to sounds from airgun pulses, which are used the world over in seismic exploration for oil and gas.  She is the lead author of 12 refereed journal articles and a co-author in 31 others.  She is a member of the Acoustical Society of America (and a Fellow since 2008), the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and Sigma Xi (National Society for Scientific Research).

What's Next After an MLML Degree?

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - December 6th, 2018

Hosted by the Pacific Shark Research Center & Biological Oceanography Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

Open to the public

A panel discussion about career paths with MLML alumni:

Zan Armstrong, Freelance Data Visualization Engineer

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - January 25th, 2018

Hosted by the Phycology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

Open to the public

Zan Armstrong is a data visualization engineer and designer. Her work includes creating custom visualizations, both static and interactive, for analysts and scientists to enable them to make new discoveries in their data. She is most interested by identifying what characteristics of the data might be most analytically/scientifically important, and finding ways to reveal those characteristics visually. Zan also enjoys finding other ways to see familiar data that reveals a different perspective or illustrating situations in which the "obvious" understanding of the data is misleading or masks some deeper truth.

Same Data, Different Visual Forms: Data Visualization for Scientific Discovery

Picking the visual form for a data visualization is a decision about what part of our data we care most about. Should we highlight outliers? Focus on the densest parts of the data? Ignore numbers under a certain threshold? Look at values or differences? The right form depends on what we believe is most important to see. Zan Armstrong will describe the thought process behind data-driven design decisions from her work and share her 5 top recommendations for making more effective visualizations for scientific discovery (including code snippets in R and/or Python).

Allen Andrews, NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - February 1st, 2018

Hosted by the Ichthyology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

Open to the public

Allen Andrews joined the Life History Program of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in 2009.  He came to Hawaii from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) in California where he operated the Age and Longevity Research Laboratory for 12 years.  He earned a M.S. degree in Marine Science from MLML in 1997 and in 2009 he finished a Ph.D. in Ichthyology and Fisheries Science at Rhodes University, South Africa.  His dissertation presented validated age and growth of the Patagonian toothfish (Chilean sea bass) and orange roughy. 

His area of expertise involves age estimation and validation of fishes and invertebrates using growth zone counting and radiochemical techniques (i.e. lead-radium dating) and bomb radiocarbon dating.  Recent works involved bomb radiocarbon dating of several shark species, the endangered white abalone, hawksbill sea turtle, and fishes of Indo-Pacific regions.  Allen's work with the Life History Program at NOAA Fisheries began with applying these techniques to dating opakapaka (Hawaiian pink snapper), and has continued with applications to other fishes of the Hawaiian Archipelago, as well as national and international collaborations on fishes and corals of the Gulf of Mexico, Great Barrier Reef, and Mediterranean. As an Affiliate Faculty member of the Oceanogrpahy Department and the Marine Biology Graduate Program at University of Hawaii, Manoa, Allen has fostered research with students involving deep-sea fishes and tropical snappers. Other interests are with photography, astronomy, and world travel. For more information please visit: “astrofish.me”

Bombs and blue marlin (Makaira nigricans) — confirmation of rapid growth

Longevity of blue marlin (Makaira nigricans) remains unresolved. Use of fin spines and sagittal otoliths for age reading has led to unconfirmed longevity estimates of close to 20 years.  Age validation has been elusive because large individuals are rare and a technique that can be applied to the structures that provide estimates of age was absent. Use of otolith chemical signatures has been limited by sagittal otoliths that are very small—whole otolith mass of adult blue marlin can reach 10 mg for the largest fish. Recent advances in the detection limits of radiocarbon (¹⁴C) with accelerator mass spectrometry—coupled with recently acquired knowledge of marine bomb ¹⁴C signals spanning the tropical Pacific Ocean—have led to an opportunity to age blue marlin from small amounts of otolith material. In this study, otoliths from a recently collected 1245 lb. (565 kg) female blue marlin at 146 inches (3.71 m) lower jaw fork length were analyzed for ¹⁴C. Using a series of deductions in the bomb ¹⁴C dating method the age of this “grander” blue marlin was confirmed.

Danuta Wisniewska, Hopkins Marine Station

Moss Landing Marine Labs Seminar Series - February 8th, 2018

Hosted by the Vertebrate Ecology Lab

MLML Seminar Room, 4pm

Open to the public

Danuta Maria Wisniewska is a bioacoustician and foraging ecologist interested in how marine animals negotiate their surroundings and forage in their heterogeneous and rapidly changing habitats. Her research is centered on fine-scale empirical studies using multi-sensor biologging tags.  Danuta is an oceanographer turned biologist. After an undergrad in oceanography at University of Gdansk in Poland, she completed an Arctic Biology program at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway. She then joined the Marine Bioacoustics Lab at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she worked on sensory ecology of echolocating toothed whales. After earning her PhD degree, she moved to the Section of Marine Mammal Research at Aarhus University, where she worked on the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Jeremy Goldbogen’s lab at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station.

The economies of scale – effects of body size on cetacean foraging

Size dependence of metabolic rate, where smaller animals generally exhibit higher mass-specific  metabolism, is a major factor influencing how animals interact with their environment. Whilst large body size necessitates high absolute energy intake, it also grants low relative rates of energy use per unit body mass and, therefore, many physiological and ecological advantages. Such size-related functional constraints ultimately shape animal behavior, performance and life history. In this talk, I will discuss how these body size trade-offs affect foraging performance of cetaceans, from harbor porpoises to sperm whales and blue whales. I will focus on how biologging technology has enabled us to address this.