One of the best parts about Open House is learning about what each lab does. The Phycology (Seaweed) lab will have products with algae in them (like ice cream!), the Vertebrate Ecology lab will have a giant whale mouth to walk through…Each lab is doing something fun to invite you, the public, to learn about the science we do!
MLML Open House 2011 is Saturday, April 30 & Sunday, May 1.
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No joking – the annual Open House is the biggest event of the year at Moss Landing Marine Labs. It’s such a big deal that this month the Drop-In will be devoting our photo-a-day feature to giving you a sneak peak at all the incredible aspects of the Open House experience. Mark your calendars: Open House is Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1 from 9 am to 5 pm.
To pump yourself up for the big day, check out the amazing video put together by Wavelength Films! We also have a whole website just for Open House information: http://openhouse.mlml.calstate.edu/. Stay tuned to learn more about Open House, your best opportunity to “Drop-In” to MLML in person!
by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab
It’s a pretty cool day to when your advisor says off-handedly, “There’s a salmon shark in the ich lab sink if you want to take a look.” Um, no “if”s there! This juvenile salmon shark carcass washed ashore on a beach near Monterey and spent some time in the MLML freezer before being handed over to researchers at Hopkins Marine Station for genetic analysis.
Far from being cold-blooded killers, salmon sharks can keep their body temperatures well above the temperature of the surrounding water. Their blood can be as warm as 61 degrees F in water that is only 32 degrees! There are also no reported attacks of salmon sharks on humans, and they tend to feast mostly on (appropriately) salmon. (I also think those cartoon-style big black eyes make them look awfully cute!) Salmon sharks make some impressive migrations from Mexico all the way to Alaska – follow the paths of tagged salmon sharks and learn more at the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) website.
Although this photo was taken two years ago, the word on the street is we just might have a salmon shark on display at our upcoming MLML Open House. What is Open House, you ask? Stay tuned to learn all about it!
by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab
This baby red rock crab (Cancer productus), only about an inch wide, still shows some of its bright patterning even after being digested in a gopher rockfish stomach. Spending more hours than I’d care to admit sifting through fish guts may give one a slightly skewed perspective on the definition of “pretty,” but after identifying so many drab brownish crabs of other species, I found this little guy downright bedazzling. The color variation in this species is captivating: check out its shocking-white color morph.
How charitable of nature to lend its best colors to both baby crabs and the evening sky. After hours of staring through the microscope, nothing is more rewarding than stepping out on the back deck of the lab to soak up the amazing view.
The little whippersnapper was too tiny to tag, but definitely deserves some points for biting a big hook! This young lingcod was caught during a marine protected area survey at Año Nuevo as part of the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program. Lingcod do have a reputation on our surveys for biting off more than they can chew (or swallow).
by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab
Field surveys are often a collection blitz for scientists – we spend a brief, intense period of time out in nature gathering up samples to analyze back at the lab during the rest of the year (or for many years to come…). My 10 days on a trawl survey with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) were a flurry of activity – each time the net came up, we recorded all kinds of information about our catch (what species we caught, how many of each kind, etc.), then bagged up requested specimens for researchers at MLML and NMFS to study.
We collected small pieces of deepsea corals (such as the sea whip I posted about earlier) for NMFS scientists to use for genetic analysis. We stored the samples in vials of ethanol to preserve them. Labeling and inventorying each vial was good practice in learning to stay organized on a messy, chaotic fishing boat!
This octopus out of water is a strange sight, but it sheds a little light on the common name of the Flapjack Octopus, also known as the Flapjack Devilfish. These squishy deep-dwelling creatures are the flattest species of octopuses. You might not recognize her, but a related species of Flapjack Octopus was famously portrayed by the character Pearl in Finding Nemo. One of her tentacles might look a little shorter, but you can’t really tell if she twirls ’em…
What kind of fish can you net in Elkhorn Slough just down the road from MLML? After the Ichthyology class set our nets on a field trip, we pulled in all kinds of sandy bottom fishes, like this Starry Flounder. A flat shape and a mottled pattern are perfect adaptations for blending in to the sandy floor.
This Three Spined Stickleback came from deeper in the channel of the slough. The males build nests out of vegetation and guard them once the females lay their eggs. Spiny defenses can come in handy when the next generation is at stake!
When it comes to doing ichthyology field work, loading up on nets is only the first step – then you have to actually use them to catch fish! To study the sandy-bottom fishes in Elkhorn Slough, the MLML ichthyology class conducted a survey with a seine net. This net has a weighted bottom, so casting it wide then pulling the ends together like a drawstring corrals all the fish into a small area to collect and study them. What kind of fish did we catch? Stay tuned to find out!
These little goobers are called peanut worms, or sipunculids. Sipunculids are in their own phylum Sipuncula (that’s a pretty high level of taxonomic classification), so while their unsegmented bodies make them look like other marine worms (phylum Annelida), they are not directly related.
Sipunculids are pretty fascinating to watch because they can invert their long proboscis to bunch up (like the little peanut-look-alike on the far left), or extend it by essentially turning inside out. These specimens were just some of the great diversity of critters I found poking around in a kelp holdfast. Now the question remains: would you like those salted or unsalted?