MLML's fall AAUS Science Diving course is coming to an end, and what better way finish than with a pair of boat dives from our own R/V John Martin.
The R/V John H. Martin from a diver's view (Photo: Scott Gabara)
As part of the course, students get certified in Nitrox diving, a gas mix with a higher percentage of oxygen than normal air. This mix allows for longer bottom times and decreased surface intervals, which is a huge advantage for conducting research underwater.
Last week we were lucky enough to have our last dives of the semester in Carmel Bay, at Pescadero Wash Rock and outer Copper Roof House.
Kathryn along the Wash Rock wall (Photo: Diana Steller)Marissa and Lindsay examine turf algae and benthic invertebrates (Photo: Scott Gabara)Thanks to all who made it an amazing semester!
Recently the marine science diving class here at Moss Landing Marine Labs went down to Monterey's Breakwater to conduct a sunset and night dive. The first dive was to a rocky outcrop called the Metridium field. The Metridium are white plumose anemones that look like fluffy cauliflowers and filter particulates out of the water. It is a stunning sight with so many anemones.
Martin and Metridium
The second dive was conducted by nightfall. Every diver had a glow-stick to better locate their buddy and stay in visual contact in the dark. Each diver has a waterproof light, it takes practice to communicate underwater let alone now using a flashlight. We saw different species like red octopus which were out foraging and rockfish that seemed to hover almost half asleep in the water column. It is interesting to see these changes that happen as the rocky reef changes from day to night.
Sunset Diving with Martin Guo, Paul Clerkin and Scott Miller (left to right)
Nautical charts and tools to plan a route. We'll be navigating the high seas in no time!
One of the perks of being an MLML student is that we get to utilize the lab's fantastic diving and boating resources - provided we get proper training first. While "training" sounds like a drag, it can actually be quite a lot of fun! For example, the lab recently offered a course to get checked out on the small boats. Getting checked out on the small boats allows us to take the boats out for thesis-related work and other lab-approved reasons, so a number of students met up at the harbor to get certified. After confirming that we had previously taken our online boating safety course, we began learning about nautical navigation and the basics of an outboard motor.
After learning all about the boats and procedures in the morning, after lunch it was time to take to the sea. We separated into two smaller groups and went out on our Boston whalers. The helpful staff at Marine Ops guided us as we practiced maneuvering in the bay. Although I have boating experience on lakes, driving in-and-out of ocean swells was quite different and I had a blast learning the techniques. After braving the ocean, we headed back into the harbor to practice docking. While there wasn't too much boat traffic inside the harbor, we still had to drive carefully to avoid the otters and seals that are abundant in the area. We each took turns docking into different spots and under different conditions, then we took the boats back to the dock and cleaned everything up. Spending a beautiful afternoon on the water got at least one student excited about having the opportunity to use the boats more frequently to help with his future research!
Heading home to the Moss Landing harbor. While we technically could have asked for better weather, it really just would have been greedy.
This time of year offers the chance to provide a romanticized explanation of autumn on the central coast. I could explain how here at Moss Landing the weather is turning colder, the leaves are changing color, and the storm clouds bring a scented promise of the rains to come. However, we have more important things to discuss: Halloween!
This past weekend was Moss Landing Marine Labs’ annual Halloween Party. Everyone came in costumes and as part of the tradition, each lab or group brought their pumpkin to be judged by the student body in the pumpkin carving contest. Though officially there was only one winner, I think everyone did a great job. What do you think?
Front Desk, Biological Oceanography lab, Shop, and PSRC pumpkinsScuba Pumpkin
Plankton is finally bigger than SpongebobVoting for best pumpkin! Photo Credits: Catherine Drake
Halloween, however isn’t just about carving pumpkins, it also calls for sweet treats and telling tales of the unusual and scary! Ghosts, ghouls, and goblins may be the usual topic of conversation when talking about things that go bump in the night, but my favorite scary creatures to discuss are those truly unusual, and of course, found in the ocean!
One of my favorite “scary” species is the Goblin Shark. Though it is no threat to humans, as it lives very deep, those jaws are a bit spooky!
Goblin Shark Photo Credit: George Burgess
Another favorite spooky creature of mine is a Bone Worm. These worms feed on skeletons of dead whales! How’s that for an evolutionary adaption?
Bone worm Photo Credit: National Geographic
And last, but certainly not least is the Blobfish. While in water the blobfish has a fairly normal appearance, but out of water – due to low tissue density – its appearance is a bit unusual!
Earlier this week I volunteered to dive on the MLML seawater intakes, located about 200 m due west of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and 17 m below the surface. The intakes supply seawater to multiple sites around Moss Landing, including the aquarium room at MLML, the Test Tank at MBARI, and the live tanks at Phil’s Fish Market.
Location of the intake pipes offshore. Image: MLML/Google Earth (2013)
The purpose of the dive was to attach a surface float to a subsurface float located at a depth of about 15 feet. A secondary objective was to visually inspect the intakes, which can be viewed in the video below.
The view of Moss Landing from approximately above the intakes. Photo: Diane Wyse (2013)
So how do you find an intake system 50 ft below the water?
To execute the operation, Assistant Dive Safety Officer Scott Gabara and I took a whaler from the MLML Small Boats with the assistance of boat driver Catherine Drake. We used the best GPS coordinates previously called upon to locate the intakes, then threw a spotter surface float attached to a line and weight that unraveled to the seafloor. We followed that line to the bottom and practiced our circle search skills until we found the first of the two intakes. While anchoring the search line I saw a pipefish, a couple flatfish, and not much else. During our descent and ascent we spotted half a dozen sea nettles, but on the sandy bottom it appeared pretty desolate. The intakes, on the other hand, provide a hard substrate for sessile invertebrates and their predators to form a lively little oasis in the sand. The first thing you notice when you come upon the intakes are the large white Metridium anemones. If you take a closer look at the video, around 15 seconds in, you can spot a little octopus scurrying for cover. After inspecting the first intake we moved to the second, that’s right, completely submerged by sand, with the line extending up to the subsurface float. Though the video is short you can see some of the organisms residing on the line include seastars, Metridium, caprellids or “skeleton shrimp”, and my favorite marine invertebrate: nudibranchs. Hermissenda (opalescent) nudibranchs, to be exact. I wish I had a chance to take still photos while I was out there, but we had a job to do. We successfully tied the surface float to the line and removed old line, thus making it much easier for future divers to study sediment movement and perform maintenance on the intake pipes.
I'll admit had another motivation for volunteering for the dive. Beyond helping out and increasing my scientific diving experience, I was curious about the system. In 2011 and 2012 I worked as a research assistant for CeNCOOS, and helped maintain the oceanographic instruments at the MLML shore lab and ensure that the public data portal was operational. That system is dependent upon water flowing in from the intakes. I learned even more about the seawater system in my chemical oceanography class, so it was really cool to see the pipes from under the sea. The visibility for most of the dive was much better than it seems in this video, as we spent most of the time working further up in the water column away from the fluffy layer composed of detritus and fine-grain sand.
When my dive buddy and I returned to the surface we met back up with our boat, reeled in the line for the first float, and cruised back to the harbor. Another day, another successful dive!
Divers Diane Wyse and Scott Gabara with the new surface float for the seawater system. Photo: Catherine Drake (2013)
We want to go with the flow when it comes to supplying seawater to Moss Landing Marine Labs. The incoming water is used for research and husbandry so we keep a close eye on and maintain our seawater intake system. In efforts to better understand why sand has been building up around our intakes over the years our diving safety officer, Diana Steller, and a new student, Angela Zepp, have started to take cores of the sediment in that area. We hope to learn more about the sand movement and/or retention from cores by continually taking them and comparing the sediment size over time. Sand seasonally moves onshore and offshore during the summer and winter seasons, respectively. We hope to learn why this buildup is occurring over time.
Earlier this week, three graduate student volunteers and I ventured to Bay View Academy in Monterey to talk with the fourth grade class about trophic levels and intertidal zonation. I had the unique opportunity to lead the trip again this year, you can learn about the first iteration of this trip in one of my very first posts for the Drop-In.
Sara Worden, Heather Kramp, Dorota Szuta, and Diane Wyse lead a classroom safety briefing and intertidal lesson. Photo: Erika McPhee-Shaw (2013)
I volunteered for the trip again this year because it is the sort of educational outreach experience that to me really embodies the spirit of MLML; sharing resources and experiences from multiple labs and teaching in our beautiful marine backyard. The student volunteers represented the Physical Oceanography Lab, the Phycology Lab (Sara Worden), the Benthic Ecology Lab (Dorota Szuta), and the Ichthyology Lab (Heather Kramp). Another reason I volunteered again? Try passing up an opportunity to geek out science on one of the prettiest beaches in the world. Yeah, it’s tough to do.
Benthic Ecology Lab student Dorota Szuta teaches a group of fourth grade girls about intertidal invertebrates. Photo: Diane Wyse (2013)
Working off an intertidal food web lesson plan developed by the Teaching Enhancement Program at MLML, the grad student volunteers introduced the fourth grade class to the organisms in tidepools at Asilomar State Beach. We were impressed by the knowledge the students shared with us that their teacher Alicia Doolittle had introduced in previous lessons. At the beach it was hard to tell who was more excited to explore the intertidal – the elementary students, grad students, or even the parent chaperones!
Ichthyology Lab student Heather Kramp shows some intertidal organisms to an interested chaperone and the youngest field trip participant. Photo: Diane Wyse (2013)
This year’s trip was especially cool for me as my graduate advisor, Dr Erika McPhee-Shaw, who serves as a board member for Bay View Academy, was along for the trip and helped to photo-document the field lessons. I’ll admit it was a bit intimidating to be on the other side of things – here’s a highly-regarded physical oceanographer who has taught me equations of motion, coastal dynamics, and guided me through the steps of a Master’s research thesis, and here I am fielding questions about the inner workings of the ocean to a class of fourth graders while she listens in the audience. It reinforced something I’ve learned time and again through graduate school, that the more simply and elegantly you can describe a complicated process, the more completely you understand it. With the students’ healthy appetite for knowledge our conversation ventured from why ocean water is blue to a comparison of ecological zonation on a beach versus a mountain.
Recognize those t-shirts? The 2013 Open House t-shirts were designed by our very own Dorota Szuta! Photo: Alicia Doolittle (2013)
From the closing discussion it was clear that invertebrates were the crowd favorite: the hermit crabs, the purple pisaster (ochre) seastar, even the tunicates were getting some love thanks to the students’ curiosity about the round little chordates. Will student leaders from MLML lead the trip again? You better believe it!
A research team at MLML has been conducting research in the Antarctic for many years, but this year their plans may be shutdown. View of the Antarctic, photo by Clint Collins.
To be honest, I was sure this would have been over by now. When the government shutdown first started, I didn’t think it could reasonably last more than a couple of days. Even now in the second week, many people are still not seeing serious ramifications of the shutdown in their own lives. I, however, am feeling its effects greatly.
I started the Moss Landing Marine Lab graduate program last year after working as a research assistant in the Benthic Ecology Lab for a couple of years. My thesis work focuses on changes in Antarctic bottom-dwelling communities along a depth gradient, under the guidance of Dr. Stacy Kim. I've taken this current semester off from coursework in order to go to Antarctica to do field work for three months. Despite not being in any classes, I’ve been surprisingly busy getting ready for the trip. In order to physically qualify to work in Antartica, there are a series of medical tests everyone must pass involving EKG’s, full dental x-rays, blood work, and vaccinations. The diving we were planning on doing in Antarctica is deep, in sub-zero temperatures, and under a thick sheet of ice—considerably different than diving here in the Monterey Bay, so I had a lot of dive training to complete. Our team (you can read more about our work here: http://scini-penguin.mlml.calstate.edu/) was scheduled to live in a field camp where we would be collecting data through a hole in the ice with our remotely operated vehicle (ROV) called SCINI, so since the summer we’ve been testing its functioning and practicing driving it. Needless to say, our engineers have been busy.
View from under the ice to a hole where divers can enter and exit to perform underwater research. Photo by Clint Collins
If you’ve been following the news at all, you know what happens next in the story. The government shutdown means the National Science Foundation (NSF) is not operating, which means that the US Antarctic Program switches to "caretaker mode" and all science is suspended (you can read the announcement here: http://www.usap.gov/). Plane flights are canceled, ships en route are turning around, cargo is stopped, and almost everyone who is already down there has to be flown home. The waste of resources and funds this cancellation represents is monumental, but the additional cost in ruined research and scuttled projects makes it an irreparable loss.
Missing out on the research trip of a lifetime is frustrating and heartbreaking for me. However, my independent research won’t take too hard of a hit; while I was planning on collecting samples for my thesis work this season, I will be able to complete my thesis with data collected in previous years. What is much worse is the implication for the hundreds of larger projects that were to be conducted this season, such as our team's work on Antarctic food webs, numerous climate change studies, or research on life in subglacial lakes. Many studies conducted in Antarctica measure change over time, so one season of missing data can disproportionately compromise the scientific integrity of a sustained project.
View of penguins in the Antarctic, subject of a lot of research that is suspended until further notice. Photo by Clint Collins.
But what if the government shutdown ends soon? Can’t we still go? Well, as we’re settling into fall here in the northern hemisphere, spring is in full bloom in the southern hemisphere. In Antarctica, the research season is a narrow window in the summer, roughly October through February. And the window for diving is even narrower since an annual plankton bloom towards the start of summer means bad visibility by December. Sure, it’s possible that the government shutdown will end tomorrow and the US Antarctic Program will be back up and running. (But take that with a grain of salt— the shutdown itself has really changed my view on what is possible). There is a chance that we will still have part of a field season, although it may look pretty different from what was originally planned. The logistics of conducting research in Antarctica are complicated (think airplanes and helicopters, icebreaker ships, and international cooperation) and are planned out months and even years in advance. To suddenly stop everything and attempt to restart it weeks (or months?) later will be even more complicated. Whether any scientific research is going to happen this season, or whether it will be moved to next year, or whether it will be cancelled completely, is unknown.
So things are up in the air and we wait. After a year of planning, everything was halted just three weeks before our departure date. Our bags are packed and sitting on a pallet just waiting for theoretical shipment. So for now, I’ll be at the lab doing research for my thesis. But only the kind you can do with books and scientific papers.
The Golden Bear Facility at the Cal Maritime Academy is the site of all our ballast treatment testing. Photo: CMA
Although I’m only a first-year graduate student here at Moss Landing, I’ve had the pleasure of working on the ballast water testing team with the Biological Oceanography lab for over a year now. Aquatic invasive species have become an increasingly large problem across the globe and one of the ways organisms make their way to non-native waters is through the ballast tanks of ships. The IMO (International Maritime Organization) is now requiring all ships to reduce the number of live zooplankters in their ballast tanks to only 10 in every 1000 liters. Since most zooplankton are microscopic, you can imagine that this is an incredibly challenging thing to accomplish!
Samples are carefully collected so we can compare the treated water with the control. Photo: GBF Staff
But another huge challenge that our team directly faces is determining whether certain treatment methods have worked. How do we do this? With some good old fashioned counting! First, samples are filtered through a net that catches only organisms that are greater than 50 um in size (which is the size class we count by eye). Then, 5 mL of that sample are pipetted into a serpentine tray, which allows us to count what is in the sample row by row. We can then look under a microscope and manually count every single living zooplankton found in that 5 mL sample. This is sometimes known as the "poke and prod" method, since we may not even be sure if a zooplankter is alive or dead until after we've poked them with a small poker stick. Afterwards, we can use our 5 mL sample counts to extrapolate how many total organisms were found in 1000 liters of the treated water and determine whether the treatment method passed.
Counters use microscopes and serpentine trays to count every zooplankter in a 5mL sample. Photo: Kevin Reynolds
In order to make sure our zooplankton counts are as reliable as possible, we have to count samples multiple times. Although the work is time consuming and sometimes back-straining, it’s fun and fascinating to discover all of the tiny, microscopic organisms found in just a few drops of water. Everytime I count a new sample, I wonder what kind of alien-like creatures I’ll find swimming around!
Like many of you readers out there, I seem to overlook the small things in life. One of those is what direction the water in my toilet rotates in when it flushes. Why does this matter? Well, if you are like me, you have likely grown up hearing that toilet water in the Northern Hemisphere flushes in a different direction than toilet water in the Southern Hemisphere. That is to say that when Australians use the toilet in America, they will aptly notice that the water is flowing in the opposite direction.
Well I learned this past Thursday in Physical Oceanography, that is not the case!
As it turns out, toilet water flushes down in the same direction in both the Northern and Southern hemisphere. Why is that? Well, like almost everything else in the world, it is due to physics. Why though, did this rumor about flushing in different directions start? As it turns out, it too is based in physics, but it is just inaccurate.
The Coriolis force is a deflection of moving objects when they are viewed on a rotating reference frame. Well, the Earth is a rotating surface, therefore objects that move in the Northern Hemisphere are deflected towards the right and objects that move in the Southern Hemisphere are deflected to the left. It is this force that the rumor is based on. However, whoever started this wives tale didn't take their Physical Oceanography class very seriously because this only applies to objects that move for a time period of over a day (since that is how long it takes for the Earth to rotate completely) and for a distance to the order of kilometers.
Since toilets do not take over a day to flush and the water in a toilet is moving in a space that is less than even a meter across, it is safe to say that the Coriolis force does not affect what direction the water flushes down a toilet. Next time you flush, just know that the water moves down that toilet in the same direction as it does when a kangaroo uses a toilet in Australia as well.
