There are days that change you. One minute you are chasing what you thought was your dream, and then something comes along that changes your trajectory. Those days are rare, and can come to define one’s entire purpose in life.
For me that day was my first day at sea, working to unravel it’s mysteries aboard the R/V Pt. Sur. I had fallen in love with the ocean before, and knew that I wanted to become a scientist, but that day would come to change just exactly what aspect of Marine Science would become my life’s pursuit.
Prior to this cruise, whales and dolphins had dominated my interest in the ocean. They are charismatic and graceful, and inspire wonder in anyone able to view them in their world. I had been involved in research projects with these wondrous animals armed with a camera lens and a fast boat. So it was strange that a day at sea lowering instruments into the water and pulling them back up could supplant the sense of adventure I had already experienced. This particular cruise, however, was for the Physical Oceanography class that I had enrolled in at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Physical oceanography is the study of the physical properties of the ocean, or more bluntly, it is the study of how energy is put into and distributed in the global ocean. I had never considered it as a field I was interested in, or that it could even be an option for my career, but by the end of that day at sea, I new that I was not the same person that had left the dock. It turned out the mysteries that I was most interested in, that appealed to me the most were not the creatures roaming the depths, but the awe-inspiring forces that shape our planet.
Last week I served as the Graduate Assistant for that same Physical Oceanography class and was able to observe the students in my class going through this same experience that had such a profound impact on me. The goal of this cruise was not simply to expose students to the joys of working at sea, but to hunt for elusive giants in oceanography: internal waves.
Internal waves are very similar to the surface waves you are most likely familiar with, with the exception that they oscillate within the ocean rather than at its surface, like the waves you may have surfed. The difficulty in studying these waves, however, is that they occur in parts of the ocean that are challenging to reach and require special instruments to be able to detect. One such suite of instruments is called a CTD (Conductivity Temperature Depth), which is lowered through the ocean via a winch and measures the key components of density in the ocean, namely temperature, salinity (extrapolated from conductivity) and pressure (depth). These properties are unique throughout the world ocean and determine how internal waves behave because just like at the surface, waves propagate along density boundaries. The second tool we use to detect internal waves is an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), which in simplest terms is an underwater speaker and microphone that makes a sound at a known frequency (pitch) and then listens for the return signal. The change in that pitch is related to the direction and speed that the current the sound wave passes through. You’ve undoubtedly experienced this if you’ve ever been standing still when a truck passed you blaring its horn. The sound at the truck is never changing, but since it is moving away from you, you perceive a pitch change. As internal waves pass the ADCP the velocity of the water at various depths tells us a lot about the characteristics of the internal waves.
As I watched my class donning life jackets and hard helmets, fighting the roll of the ship and the occasional wave spilling over the aft deck, straining to guide the heavy instrumentation on and off of the deck, wet and tired but undaunted, I couldn’t help but return their beaming smiles. Working aboard an oceanographic vessel is no simple feat, but for some reason nobody ever sees it as work. Not the first time, and not the 1,000th. It is an endless adventure that will continue to reward the persistent. I can certainly appreciate that not everyone gravitates to the field of oceanography as I have. But I can say with confidence, having seen it in the eyes of my students, that there is something universally magical about one’s first research cruise. I experienced it and it changed my life. The beauty of this field is that, there’s always something new to learn and experience.
2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the Western Society of Naturalists (WSN) meeting as well as the 50th for Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML). Fittingly, this year’s WSN conference saw MLML emeritus professor, Dr. Michael Foster, receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for crucial work studying the population and community ecology of marine macroalgae.
Six of MLML’s specified laboratories were represented by students, past and present, as well as one faculty member at this year’s WSN conference. A total of 21 presentations were given with 10 being oral presentations and 11 being posters; 11 MLML alumni presented, 12 current students and 1 faculty member. They Phycology and Invetebrate labs led the pack with the most presentations. Below is a list of highlights from those presentations.
Hello dear readers. We realize things have been a bit scant lately here at The Drop-In Blog, but summer = field season and so many of us at Moss Landing Marine Labs have been off to the far corners of the globe tracking down some serious science. We hope you can forgive us, because what it means for you is a ton of great new content on the horizon!
First off, we'd like to invite you over to our new website, Microcosms, designed as part of a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) class being offered this fall. Microcosms will use SEM technology to turn the lens on the tiny. If you've ever wondered about the texture of a shark's skin, or how sand from one beach might differ from another (and who hasn't?), it will be a great resource. Our professor, Ivano Aiello, recently wrote a post on our anniversary blog explaining the history of SEM usage here at Moss Landing. As he explains
Electron microscopes are scientific instruments that use a beam of energy electrons that allow us to ‘see’ objects on a very fine scale. The electrons are accelerated by a high voltage electron gun in a cathode ray tube (yes like the one used in the old school televisions) and condensed in a beam that scans and interacts with the specimen: the interactions produces new (secondary) electrons or backscattered (primary) electrons that are captured by a detector and turned into an electrical signal. A computer analyzes the signal and based on the location of the beam and intensity of the signal converts it into an image.
What it means for you is the chance to see such seemingly banal things with a new eye to detail. About 4000X the detail, on average. We're in week 3 of class and we've already "photographed" human hair, a fly's head, sharks' teeth, sponges, deep-sea sediments, a leaf, and sand from our local beachfront. Every week, we'll be posting new images to our Atlas, a photo-collection of big science on a micro scale. The Atlas represents a class-wide effort, but since there are only five of us in the class it really is a labor of love. Each student is responsible for a "chapter," and so far we expect to cover deep sea and coastal sediments, marine vertebrates, invertebrates, corals, and seaweeds. We'll be posting descriptions of each image, and may even invite you in with a "what am I looking at?" segment.
As an invertebrate person, I'm always grumbling under my breathe about how, come on, a worm could be just as cute as a dolphin if you could just see it. It's always been about the charismatic megafauna. But I say nay-nay to that. We hope to see you on the tiny side of the spectrum, where "huge" is measured in micrometers and the tools look like something out of a Mary Shelley novel. Oh, and we plate things in gold before we photograph them, so it's pretty fabulous.
The diversity of sharks, rays, skates and ghost sharks has increased exponentially with nearly 20% of all new species described over the past decade.
Unfortunately, the majority of these sharks and their relatives have largely been “lost” in a hyper-driven media age whereby a few large charismatic shark mega-stars overshadow the majority of shark species, especially during SharkWeek!
While these mega-star’s, such the Great White Shark, receive much media adulation and are the focus of numerous conservation and scientific efforts, the “Lost Sharks” remain largely unknown not only to the public, but also to the scientific and conservation communities.
Please help MLML’s Pacific Shark Research Center to discover and name these ‘Lost Shark’ species. Our Experiment.com campaign is raising funds to do just that.
Check out the video about our project to learn more. Thanks to the support of so many, we have almost met our goal of raising $2,800. Any donation helps!
As a bonus, anyone who donates $100 receives a limited edition print of a new species of ghost shark recently described by the PSRC by world-renowned artist Marc Dando.
Thank you for supporting shark science!
Andddd we're back!
Over our spring break and the week after, 20 Moss Landing-ers drove down to Baja California Sur to conduct fieldwork on the island of El Pardito, off of La Paz…for class! The drive down took three days and we were equipped with: two trucks, a van, two large trailers, two boats, two kayaks, a metric crap ton of dive dear, camping gear, personal gear and food. The first night we glamped, aka stayed in a hotel in San Diego after a day of driving which included going through “fun” Los Angeles traffic trying to get truck drivers to honk their horns. Apparently this is what entertains a car full of students in their mid to late 20s. The next morning, we crossed the border into Mexico, filled out the visa paperwork and trucked on.
We continued down highway 1 through Baja California on the Pacific side to our camping destination of the evening, Cataviña, where an adorable Labrador greeted us in the desert. The next day of driving landed us in Bahia Concepción, which just so happened to have a carnival on the beach! So after we swam, kayaked and explored the bay, we went to the carnival to indulge in a mechanical bull, bumper cars (it may have gotten personal), and a ride that hung us upside down for far too long for comfort. We continued the next day across the peninsula to hit the Gulf side where we were going to camp in Portugues, a small town where the family from the island has friends and our pick up location to get to the island, but that afternoon we ran into trouble. The dirt road we were supposed to take is usually completely dry, but when we got there it was a little wet and the tide was coming in. Therefore, one of the trucks complete with a trailer attached and the dive compressor inside got stuck at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Seeing this treachery, the other two vehicles were able to back out but we spent hours attempting to get the truck out, digging and placing rocks while also utilizing local help. We ended up unloading the truck and detaching the trailer before a SEMI truck was able to pull us out at around 11 that evening. The brothers that helped us were so kind and let us camp in what was essentially their backyard before getting to the rally point in the morning.
The next morning we loaded everything onto 5 pangas (boats) and traveled about 30 minutes to the island of El Pardito. This was our beautiful home for the following nine days of science. We would wake up around dawn (some of us went out with the fishermen to pull in nets they had set the night before), and then went about fieldwork for the day: diving, fishing, surveying, or spending time in the mangroves for respective projects. At night we would convene, (pretty late because some of us went hand-lining at night and then had to do some post fishing processing), to eat dinner (usually fish of sorts) and go around the circle saying what we did that day, what our plans were for the next day and if help was needed in the form of dive buddies or boat companions. As everyone took their turn speaking, I was very impressed with how on top of his or her research everyone was. They knew what they were doing, had protocols set and made the most of the limited time we had. After dinner, I would stay up pretty late each night processing fish stomachs from the fishermen for my project, a diet study, and now have 88 preserved samples to look through!
The families on the island were the sweetest people you'll ever meet. They were patient with our range of Spanish speaking abilities within the group, wanted to help us on our projects however they could, and were interested to learn about what we did. One woman on the island even let us come into her house and taught us how to make tortillas! Towards the end of the trip we had a bonfire and played music and chatted for quite some time, really bonding everyone on the island.
We decided as a group to stay a night in La Paz before driving back up which was amaaaaazing. Mostly because we finally got a chance to shower, but also because we went out to dinner as a group and hit the town after working so hard for those eight days straight! On our way back we had a flat tire one of the days, but we worked really well as a group and got it changed within the hour. After the rest of the journey continued without a hitch, we made it back to Moss Landing and have been playing sleep catch up and life catch up since then.
Overall, it was an amazing experience. I learned a great deal by choosing a project not in my area of expertise and expanded my worldview... all while getting a tan! Who’s up to take the trip again?
These are some exciting times in the Monterey Bay! Recently, five different species of whales have been spotted within our bay! We all have probably seen the humpbacks that have been hanging around since there is still available food for them. Normally, they are only here April to October and are otherwise migrating south to their calving grounds, but the last few years they’ve been staying put as the water has been warm and the food has been plentiful.
Additionally, as straggling gray whale moms with their calves head north to Alaska (usually they're here in January and February), orcas are chasing the moms in hopes of separating them from their calves. "When I find a dead gray whale the first thing I do is I go look at the tongue, and if it is missing, I know it was killed by a killer whale," our very own director Jim Harvey told the Monterey Herald.
These three species of cetaceans (science-y word for dolphins, whales, narwhals) have also been joined by blue whales and fin whales. It's not uncommon to see blue whales along our coast, but they are often seen further offshore. However, this week a blue whale was spotted only a mile or two offshore of the Monterey Bay Aquarium eating krill.
As for fin whales, not much is known about this elusive species. They are said to have a “cosmopolitan” distribution, meaning they can be found in most oceans around the world. As a result, their migration patterns aren’t well known. Scientists believe that the North Atlantic population may migrate south past Bermuda and into the West Indies. On our coast, fin whales are more often seen in the Gulf of California year round, with more appearing in the winter and spring.
Fun Facts About These Five Cetaceans:
Also, did you know that you can tell the difference between whales by their “whale spouts” or “whale blows”? Check out the photo below to see the different types, some of which are the whales you’ll see in the bay. Not in the diagram is the gray whale, which actually has a blow in the shape of a heart! Of course, on a really windy day, it would be harder to tell, but otherwise it is a great tool to use and, I can tell you from experience, it actually works!
If you’ve been following the blog more recently, you’re most likely aware that our Open House is coming up this weekend, April 30-May 1, 8AM-5PM. This event is a huge draw for the community every time we hold it, and this year promises to be one of the largest ever as we are also celebrating the 50th anniversary of Moss Landing Marine Labs! I greatly urge you to check out the official 50th Anniversary blog, found here, for a bunch of great reads about how this small “lab that could” came to be the vibrant center of marine research that it is today.
The importance of this event cannot be understated. Open House functions as an excellent source of funding and outreach. It provides the students with a chance to project their research to a wider audience, while also providing the public with an interactive and fun way to see just what it is we do here at Moss. Most importantly, the money we raise at this event feeds directly back to the students in the form of student body events and scholarships such as the MLML Scholarship Award and the WAVE Award. The recipients of this year’s awards (funded by last year’s Open House) were awarded just a few weeks ago, and many recipients will be giving talks about the work this money is funding (see our schedule of events here). I think this is an excellent way to donate to the community in a way that is both tangible and meaningful.
Open House is also run entirely by the students. From the puppet show to the bake sale to the lab activities to the sea lion show, everything you see has been planned over many months. Even the logo on our shirts is designed and voted on by the student body. I realize that for most people, all they see is the shiny, finished product. But there is so much heart and sweat and pizza-fueled meetings that go into this event, that I thought it would be a fun thing to show you readers a bit of what goes on “behind the scenes,” while also giving you a little sneak-peak on the events you can expect to see this weekend!
On December 21st, 2015, another ‘Lost Shark’ was officially found by the Pacific Shark Research Center (PSRC). PSRC is one of the world’s leading labs in chondrichthyan taxonomy research and I had the opportunity of being lead author on the paper for this discovery (how sweet is that?!). For this study, I described a new species of dark-sleek Lanternshark from the genus Etmopterus. And the coolest thing about describing a new species? Naming it!
Let’s begin with ‘Lost Sharks’. The term was created by my professor and co-author, Dr. David Ebert to identify lesser known species that attain little public or scientific attention. Examples of more charismatic species would be Great White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) and Whale Sharks (Rhincodon typus). The genus Etmopterus and its 38 species (current to the publishing of this post) are a perfect example of the ‘Lost Shark’ dilemma. That’s because despite being one of the most speciose genera of sharks in the world, it is also one of the least studied. Common names, though not official, are another reflection of the anonymity the Etmopterus genus faces. Names like Brown Lanternshark and Lined Lanternshark are certainly helpful in describing the shark’s appearance but they are not particularly memorable. But that’s not even the main issue! My gripe is with the fact that there are two Brown Lanternsharks (E. compagnoi and E. unicolor) and two Lined Lanternsharks (E. bullisi and E. dislineatus). To be fair, overlaps in common names happen a lot (just Google ‘Yellowtail’ and see how many different species you get). More so, they can even change overtime for a particular species. To avoid confusion, this is why many scientists are far more interested in the universal and permanent scientific name (assuming no changes occur to the status of the species). However, in the case of Lanternsharks, these are deep-sea species people rarely see and therefore rarely talk about. For just a moment, let that sink in- there are 38 relatively unknown species of shark that GLOW IN THE DARK. If that’s not cool enough, they even have spines on both their dorsal fins for protection. So why are spine-wielding Lanternsharks not getting any attention? The answer is certainly up for debate but overlapping common names are certainly not helping. To be fair, there is one more very good reason why common names get so little consideration in taxonomic papers.
Luckily, in the case of the Ninja Lanternshark, my other co-author, Dr. Douglas Long, has you covered with an easy and exciting read. Delving passed the Ninja Lanternshark, taxonomic research often involves the examination of a much larger picture. For instance, work conducted in the lab of Dr. Gavin Naylor aims to describe the entire chondrichthyan tree of life. Despite the small ripple I was making in the sea of chondrichthyan taxonomy, I still felt like I was a part of a huge moment. I was confirming the discovery of the very first Lanternshark ever found off the Pacific Ocean along Central America.
Of equal weight on my mind was therefore the concern that such an interesting discovery was doomed to the ‘Lost Shark’ fate. It was actually Dr. Long who gave me the idea to think innovatively. For a different taxonomy project, he chose the common name Jaguar Catshark, after the fictional shark in the movie, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The decision ended up getting Dr. Long a photo with his new buddy and Steve Zissou actor, Bill Murray, which he has also written about. This isn’t the first time a clever name has received public attention. There is actually a long history of biologists coming up with attention grabbing names, though again these tend to be scientific not common names.
Side note, too cool not to mention: One of my favorite examples is the arachnologist who named a species of trapdoor spider after his favorite singer, Neil Diamond. Stephen Colbert caught wind of this story and had the biologist along with some unnamed spiders as guests on the Colbert Report. By the end, one lucky spider was chosen and named Aptostichus stephencolberti.
As I realized all the potential circling the naming process, I was PUMPED-UP and ready to give this new species a clever name! I should mention that at this point in the story, I had been going to the California Academy of Sciences for months, examining and re-examining my new specimens. I wanted to ensure my specimens were nothing like the other 37 known etmopterids; and they weren’t. These specimens were jet-black with none of the classic body marking that other Lanternsharks possess. They were also much smaller and didn’t seem to glow as bright as most other species. Thinking about a name to reflect those features felt like proof I was almost done.
What if another researcher had stumbled upon some specimens too? At the same time I was sitting in a lab endlessly pouring hours of honed attention into every minute detail of every shark I had, somewhere… someone… could have been doing the exact same thing! It may sound farfetched but the threat was quite real. During background research for the introduction of my paper, I realized new species were being discovered all the time! In 2015, nine new elasmobranch species (included this one) were discovered, with most being deepwater species. When I thought about that, my work became a race against time and a shadow competitor. The first of us to publish would be the official discoverer.
Suddenly, a clever name seemed like a foolish concern. Worst, was the encroaching threat of losing the accolade entirely. My mind was flooded at the time with urgency but haste was its own kind of enemy. It’s not uncommon for taxonomists to write papers proving that what were previously believed as separate species are actually one in the same. One way an error like this occurs is when an established species is mistaken as new because it was found outside its known distribution range. Correcting or preventing such errors is often done through genetic analysis. Looking at the work I had done, I not only had something in a new region for any Lanternshark, I had no genetic analysis. Was I about to make this classic species mistake? Multiple reviews of my work was imperative to assuring my discovery would not be undone …and that takes time.
Of course, it should’ve dawned on me sooner, it wasn’t their first rodeo. And quite literally so. Dr. Ebert and Dr. Long recently published another elasmobranch discovery from the very same research expedition. Like many seasoned scientists, my co-authors juggle multiple projects in collaboration with many different colleagues. So needless to say, the time-crunch I was feeling was not mutual. In fact, before I was brought onto the Lanternshark project, the specimens had been sitting in a museum for five years; again a common occurrence when there’s many projects to conduct.
Regardless if my “race against time” was as dramatic as I thought, the ‘Lost Shark’ dilemma never changed nor my desire to address it. So how did I find time to come up with a clever name amidst the race to publish our findings?
Turns out, the answer was easier than I thought! I asked four very short people for help. Well… they’re short for now. Since my little cousins are between the ages of eight and fourteen years old, they are literally growing as I type!
I had no idea how successful this approach would be. By incorporating my co-authors suggestions and a little creativity, my cousins and I came up with both a common and scientific name that drew a media storm just in time for the winter holidays! I say this quite literally as my family delayed opening Christmas presents on the 25th so the local news station could finish my interview. Most recently, the Ninja Lanternshark was incorporated in a 10-strip series (beginning here) for the comic, Sherman’s Lagoon by Jim Toomey.
The innovation didn’t stop there. My cousins and I recorded our shark conversation and we created a short film about it. I would now like to introduce you to, “We Named a Shark!” the video of how the Ninja Lanternshark got its name.
Three weekends ago (3/18~3/20), the Pacific Shark Research Center (PSRC) had the opportunity to attend the 2nd Northeast Pacific Shark Symposium.This symposium was to gather elasmobranch biologists and aquarists from the west coast and share their research and potentially collaborate on future research. People from Canada and Mexico were able to join us for this bi-annual event. What better way to have this conference at the famous USC Wrigley Center in Catalina!
All of us board the ferry at 8 AM and then prepared to spend two days talking about elasmobranchs!
We had a couple hours to explore the island before the first set of presentations, I had the opportunity to hike around the island and look at the beautiful scenery.
After having lunch, had people present about their research and learned lots of really neat things about elasmobranch research; the talks ranged from the charismatic white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) to the less attentive batoids (flat sharks). We also became aware of the new opportunities to collaborate with other scientists.
After learning two long days of hearing interesting talks, we had a group photo of everyone in the conference and had some downtime before getting on the ferry to head back to the mainland.
We were greeted with a stubborn individual that refused to leave the dock when the ferry approached.
It had to take one of the brave deckhands to scare him off so we could disembark off the boat. But what a way to wrap up our successful conference at Catalina!