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by Brynn Hooton, Phycology Lab

This year, Moss Landing Marine Labs will be hosting Edem Mahu, an exchange student from the University of Ghana.  I got a chance to sit down and talk with Edem, and learn a little bit about her background and her experiences at MLML so far.

Edem is a graduate student at the University of Ghana in the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries.  She told me that she has completed all of her coursework at the University of Ghana, and has come to Moss Landing Marine Labs to develop and complete her thesis.  Edem came to MLML through the International Student Exchange Program, better known as ISEP. I asked her how, out of all of the universities in the world, she ended up choosing Moss Landing Marine Labs for her year abroad.  She explained that you can apply to a list of schools that ISEP provides, and in her search for a marine science program, she came across San Jose State University.   San Jose State’s marine science program is housed here at Moss Landing Marine Labs, and after learning about the labs on our website, she decided that it was a good fit.

Edem will be working with MLML’s own director, Dr. Kenneth Coale. With Kenneth, Edem has developed a thesis working on the assessment of benthic assemblages and levels of chemical contaminants in marine sediments.  I asked how she became interested in studying this particular subject.  Edem answered that in the Gulf of Guinea, oil drilling is common.  However, baseline data on petroleum hydrocarbons and other contaminants in marine sediments is sparse.  In the event of an oil spill, such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico right now, baseline data would be invaluable to scientists trying to protect or restore the marine ecosystem.

So far, Edem said she is enjoying her experience at Moss Landing Marine Labs.  She said everyone has been very open, helpful and friendly.  I’ll look forward to hearing more about her adventures here in the future.  Check back often for more updates!

by Erin Loury

There’s no better classroom than out in the field.  This June, Mr. Lane’s 8th grade science class from the International School of Monterey got up close with oceanography, with the help of some MLML Physical Oceanography grad students and staff.  Having studied basic marine science and discussed human impacts on the ocean, including global warming and ocean acidification, the 8th graders had the chance to explore Moss Landing’s marine environment first hand.

The MLML crew steered the class on a boat tour of Elkhorn Slough that turned into a salty safari, with appearances by sea otters, jellies, rays, sea lions, and a variety of algae, invertebrates and birds.  The MLML team highlighted the potential impacts of agriculture on the local watershed.  They  also introduced the class to the LOBO network, which stands for Land Ocean Biogeochemical Observatory, and is designed to track chemical fluxes throughout the slough environment.

The class tipped over LOBO mooring L01 in the main channel of the slough to get a good look at the sensor array (which monitors many properties of the water, including temperature, salinity, nitrate, oxygen, pH, and current velocity), as well as a whole bunch of organisms that decided to make the mooring their home!

The MLML team talked to the class about the work it takes to maintain this observatory network, such as periodically removing these fouling organisms from the sensors, as well as managing the continuous flow of real-time data from sensors.  Tanya Novak, a graduate student in the Physical Oceanography Lab, summed up the experience this way: “They were a very enthusiastic and intelligent group of 8th graders, excited to learn and get their hands dirty.  We had a blast!”

Check out these photos of their adventure and findings!

More photos…

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by Colleen Young, Vertebrate Ecology Lab
Am I talking about toilet-training harbor seals in Alaska?  Although that would be fun and entertaining, I’m talking about flushing as a natural behavioral response.  In behavioral ecology, flushing is defined as an animal leaving its resting location on land or ice and entering the water.  The concept of flushing was the premise for the research I conducted for my Masters thesis.

My project was based on the general observation that wild animals tend to flee or flush in response to anthropogenic (human-caused) disturbances.  Vessels like boats and kayaks are one of the greatest sources of disturbance to Pacific harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii).

Previous research indicated that the magnitude (how big) and frequency (how often) of the flush response in harbor seals was variable among vessel types, with non-motorized vessels like kayaks and canoes causing greater disturbance than motorized vessels.  But most of those studies were based on harbor seals that haul out (come ashore) on land.  What about seals that haul out on ice?  Do they react in the same ways to different types of vessels?

To explore that question I recruited some volunteers and hopped on a plane to Glacier Bay National Park (GBNP), Alaska.  GBNP is home top Johns Hopkins Inlet, a deep glacial fjord.  Johns Hopkins glacier, at the head of the inlet, is one of the few glaciers that is actually advancing.  Glaciers advance during winter when snow falls on the ice field behind the glacier, pushing the glacier forward.  During summer, glaciers calve, or release large chunks of ice, which are called icebergs once they hit the water below.  Icebergs provide floating platforms, which are used by harbor seals for resting, giving birth to pups, and molting (shedding old fur).    Johns Hopkins Inlet was historically home to one of the greatest harbor seal aggregations in Alaska, and also is a popular destination for boaters and kayakers visiting GBNP, so it was a great place to study the impacts of vessels on ice-hauling seals.

After spending two summers camping in Johns Hopkins Inlet and conducting hours of observations on vessels and seals, I found that cruise ships caused the greatest magnitude of disturbance (i.e. flushed the most seals per encounter), but tour vessels caused disturbance more frequently.  Kayakers caused a lower magnitude and frequency of disturbance than any other vessel type.  This is different than previous research at terrestrial harbor seal haulout sites, which indicated non-motorized vessels caused greater magnitudes of disturbance than motorized vessels.  Why would there be a difference in harbor seal response to vessels at ice vs. terrestrial sites?  Why should we care? Stay tuned to find out!

By Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

This week I’ll be trading my MLML t-shirts for a business suit when I head off to Washington, D.C. for Capitol Hill Ocean Week.   Sponsored by the National Marine Sanctuaries Foundation, the week is held around World Ocean Day (coming up on June 8th!) and brings together legislators, agencies, academics and nonprofits to discuss ocean and coastal issues.  This year, the topic couldn’t be more timely:  “Clean Energy and a Healthy Ocean: Navigating the Future.”  I hope that the major topic of discussion will be the oil spill and environmental disaster currently unfolding in the Gulf Coast.

Thanks to a scholarship from the Center for Ocean Solution’s MARINE program, I will get to immerse myself in the mix of ocean science, policy, and science communication during a whirlwind few days.  I’ll be posting along with other staff from the Center for Ocean Solutions on their new Open Ocean blog.  In addition to attending some of the scheduled panels, I’ll be traveling around the city to meet with a variety of science communicators and conservation scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, the World Wildlife Fund, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to name a few.

Send me your thoughts and I’ll pack them along with me to DC!

by Erin Loury

Breathing is a pretty key function in life, and most living things need oxygen to survive.  This fact is just as true in the ocean as it is on land, meaning that areas of low oxygen water can severely stress marine organisms.  Scientists and managers are particularly interested in low oxygen, or hypoxic, zones in coastal areas because they can be human-created: agricultural runoff can dump an excess of nutrients into the water, triggering a huge phytoplankton bloom.  Not all of the phytoplankton get eaten, so these algae die and sink to the sea floor, where bacteria decompose them.  These bacteria working on overdrive use up the oxygen in the water, creating a hypoxic zone.

But some areas of the ocean are just naturally low in oxygen.  Much of this low oxygen water is very deep, but is occasionally carried to shallower, coastal areas through the process of upwelling (when surface water is blown offshore by wind and deep water rises up to the surface).  Physical Oceanography student Ashley Booth is studying oxygen data from monitoring stations in a kelp forest near the Monterey Bay Aquarium to determine how often  low-oxygen water from the Monterey Submarine Canyon flows into this important nearshore habitat.  The goal of Ashley’s work is to look for patterns and determine what “natural” low oxygen concentrations look like – using this baseline, managers can then determine the impact the agricultural runoff has in further depleting marine oxygen levels.

Ashley recently won the award for best student poster at the Sanctuary Currents Symposium.  You can also listen to Ashley discuss the importance of her research with a local radio station here (fast forward about halfway through to 2:10).  Congratulations, Ashley!