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by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

In July 2009, I went to see the leatherback turtles in Papua. After a five-hour flight from Jakarta to Sorong, West Papua, and a six-hour boat ride east, I finally arrived at Jamursba Medi beach. It is the home of leatherback turtles and Birds of Paradise. Jamursba Medi consists of three beaches, and together they span approximately 18 km. The Tamrauw Mountains covered in pristine lowland rainforest give the beaches a lush emerald backdrop.

I patrolled one of Jamursba Medi beaches for three nights, and not a single leatherback appeared. On the fourth day, I went to Wermon, another nesting beach about 30 km from Jamursba Medi, with a small crew of people. That night around 10 pm, my walking partner’s keen eyes spotted the dark silhouette on the sand yards away and we rushed to it. I didn’t make out the silhouette right away, but I heard her front flippers hitting the sand as she pulled her heavy body forward and her laborious breathing. She was breathtaking! A leatherback’s carapace can get up to two meters long and their weight up to 900 kg. But the enormity of this giant was beyond my expectations. Such girth around the body! How strong must her front flippers be to pull such a heavy body! Her carapace was 167 cm long and 118 cm wide, and she could easily weigh more than 800 kg. She had smooth skin, and her muscular flippers reminded me of muscles of an elephant.

Once she located a good place, she started excavating. She dug with her hind flippers, which are surprisingly flexible and maneuverable. She scooped a handful of sand with the tip of her flippers and tossed it to the side. As she scooped, the flipper grazed the side of the nest, effectively smoothing and compacting the nest wall, which prevented it from collapsing. Once an appropriate depth was reached, she started to lay her eggs. While she laid her eggs, one flipper covered the nest opening to prevent sand from coming into the nest. Female turtles are in a trance-like state when they lay eggs, which allows researchers to mark individuals, measure carapace length and width, and attach transmitters. When she was done laying her eggs, she covered the nest with sand using her hind flippers. Then with the weight of her whole body, she packed the sand above the nest. But it was not over yet. With her powerful front flippers, she moved the sand towards the back of her body. Sand was flying everywhere! Then she started to circle, dramatically tossing the sand back. She was camouflaging her nest. Once she was done, she headed back to sea. It was definitely a meeting to remember.

Mark your calendars, marine science fans!  The MLML 2010 Open House is fast approaching!!  Come join us on Saturday and Sunday, April 17 & 18th from 9 am – 5 pm as we throw the doors of our lab open wide for a weekend of fun hands-on exploration and discovery.   Get a behind-the-scenes look at how we study the ocean! We will have live animal touch tanks, native dune tours, fish printing, an adventure puppet show, a science scavenger hunt, educational seminars, and much, much more!

This is a free event that is great for families and marine enthusiasts of all ages.  Delicious food will be available for purchase.  You will also be able to purchase opportunity drawing tickets to enter to win a variety of wonderful prizes, while supporting the MLML student body at the same time.  Join us for:

The annual MLML OPEN HOUSE!
Saturday & Sunday
April 17th and 18th
9:00am-5:00pm

8272 Moss Landing Road, Moss Landing CA 95039
For more information, call (831) 771-4400

See you there!

by Jeremiah Brower, Geological Oceanography Lab

Well it’s been a while since my last post, but things have been busy! With my last sample season far behind me, my thesis writing is well underway.  Many students at Moss Landing try to travel to conferences across the world to present the results of their research BEFORE they have to make a final defense, and I am no exception. As our decade came to a close, I tried to open as many future doors as possible by making a poster and attending the international Ocean Sciences (OS) Meeting in Portland.

The annual OS meeting brings together some of the top minds in oceanography to present the latest advances in all aspects of Marine Science and I felt privileged to be able to join them. I spent the January preparing and going through many many different drafts of my poster. Initially I’m always happy to work on a poster, it gives my poorly neglected artistic side a chance to mingle with the rest of my brain to create something both visually appealing and scientifically accurate. After a month of working on the thing my feelings changed and I began to hate spending hours on simple formating while my aging computer struggled under the weight of the behemoth Keynote file. In the end, the poster was printed, I got time off of work and everything was ready for the week-long conference.

Unfortunately I developed a nasty flu just as I was leaving Moss Landing so I spent most of the conference groggy and drugged-up, but despite my poor health the event was a resounding success. I presented my poster and received some great feed-back from some of the key scientists whose past research served as inspiration for my thesis. There were some phenomenal presentations that represented a good variety of both field research and statistical modeling. Personally, I thought that results of field research are more compelling then ocean modeling, but there is value in both approaches.

I had to leave the conference early because my flu was becoming worse, but after I returned to the Monterey Bay I was able to recover and begin work on finishing my thesis! I used the feedback I received from Portland to re-structure some sections of my presentation and start thinking about what my data actually meant! As much of a pain as the poster ended up being, it forced me to start thinking about the conclusions of my thesis. The poster, while general in its representation of my research, provided the platform I needed to dive into writing my thesis draft. I was able to use the conference to organize my thoughts and present them to my peers both in and outside of the lab environment. Finally, the conference allowed me to assess how far I still had to go and plan the rest of the year.

A few weeks after Portland, I  presented my conclusions at a lab meeting and with the help of my advisor and the blessings of my committee, I was able to set a date for my thesis defense in late May!  There is a lot of work that still needs to be done, but I should have no trouble getting ready to present my final conclusions at the end of the Spring semester. I’m taking the last stage very slow: spending my weekends reviewing data and writing up my final conclusions, making sure everything fits into a nice little story. My advisor has stressed the “story” structure of my presentation because there are not many physical science defenses at Moss Landing,  so my audience will be largely uninformed about the background to my research. My thesis has nothing to do with gut-content analysis of Harbor Seals or age and growth modeling of Skates (two of the more common Moss Landing thesis topics), so the challenge for me will lie in explaining to a room full of biologists why they should be interested in sand!

To wrap things up, I can’t recommend scientific conferences enough! They force you to make some sort of order out of the chaos of your data and it exposes your research to the larger scientific community across the world. The rest of the year after my defense is a unknown factor. I don’t have any guaranteed jobs, nor am I moving directly into a Ph.D program (maybe in the future, but not now), but I can take a little comfort in the fact that I’m doing all that I can to expose my research and make those vital connections that will lead to future employment. For now, I just cross my fingers that my life retains some sort of stability that will let me finish my thesis.  After that….I suppose the sky’s the limit.

Rock on!

by Deasy Lontoh, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

It usually takes me 17 to 20 hours to fly from San Francisco to Jakarta, Indonesia, which covers about 9,000 miles of distance. Most of my family members live in Indonesia and I come to visit them every few years. Long hours in a plane seat and missing a day because of a 15-hour time difference are not my favorite things. But my journey is comparatively fast and plush. In 2007, I learned that a leatherback completed a similar trans-Pacific journey in 647 days covering 12,477 miles! On flippers! Scientists put on a satellite transmitter to track this turtle when it was nesting in Papua, Indonesia, which is about 2000 miles northeast of Jakarta.  It traveled all the way from Indonesia to Oregon to feed on abundant jellies.

We know now that the leatherback turtles that feed all along the west coast of North America, including Monterey bay, CA in late summer and early fall, come all the way from the nesting population in Papua. Their satellite tracks show that these leatherbacks spend one season to forage on our west coast, spend the winter in Hawaii (probably because the water here is too cold), then come back to our west coast and eat more jellies. The body of a jelly consists of mostly water, although their gonads are a richer source of nutrients.  Can you imagine how many jellies they need to eat?  They have to eat enough jellies to fuel their return migration to the nesting beach in Indonesia and to produce eggs.   Scientists predict they can their weight in jellies per day to get that much energy – about 800 pounds!

To learn more about the leatherback visitors to Monterey Bay, check out Scott Benson’s great blog through the TOPP project.

If all of Mariah’s posts about diving in Fiji has you itching to visit a tropical coral reef, now is your chance!  Join us for a science cafe on Wednesday, March 31st to learn about the need to restore coral reefs in Fiji, and what actions are currently underway.

Our speakers include Dan Presser, the owner of FourWinds Travel, who has explored jungles from Borneo to Argentina to Africa. Recently, Dan began working on coral reef restoration in Fiji with Victor Bonito. Victor Bonito is a coral reef ecologist (M.S. Biology from the United States who has studied and explored reefs worldwide. Victor’s company, Reef Explorer Fiji Ltd., is based in the Fiji Islands with the mission to conserve Fiji’s natural and cultural resources through research and education.

Join us for:

Sasalu Tawamudu – an Integrated Community-Based Approach for Fijian Coral Reef Conservation

Wednesday, March 31st at 7 PM

8272 Moss Landing Road

Click here to download our Science Cafe flier.

by Mariah Boyle, Ichthyology Lab

I’m sitting on the dive boat bouncing around as we speed off to our dive site.   Normally I wouldn’t be this nervous, I’ve logged plenty of dives – honestly I’m surprised I don’t have gills after my childhood spent in the ocean. But today is different. Today we are in Fiji (during my trip as part of Tribewanted), heading towards Beqa (pronounced benga) Passage and the Shark Reef Preserve.

This reef is owned by two villages who allow for operators to bring divers in, while charging $10 FJD per person for all that participate with the money going back to the villages. The outfitter I’m with, Beqa Adventure Divers, has trained 12 Reef Wardens from the local community to patrol the reef and keep an eye out for illegal fishing, the biggest threat to this protected area.

The boats motor cuts out and we start our dive briefing.

“Safety is our number one concern” the Divemaster says. He reminds us to watch our air and the sharks. “No one has ever been hurt here in five years, since we started.” We are given black neoprene gloves to wear as our white hands and palms can be mistaken for fish.

What did I get myself into? I keep thinking at how strange this feels, how in California white sharks have been known to nibble on things looking like seals, which is exactly how the crew was telling us to dress. When in Fiji…

After more prep we finally descend as a group, with divemasters all around us in a circle. They drop down a huge garbage can of fish.

This could get ugly, I think.

I squeeze myself behind the coral wall and between some other dives, sitting on the floor.

I contemplate peeing in my wetsuit, for warmth of course, though I have a feeling that is a convenient excuse.

This is a deep dive, we have to be careful about watching our computers so we don’t run out of air or stay at depth too long. Then the show begins. The garbage can is opened and fish swarm the feeder. All of a sudden circling us in the blue haze are big shadows, big beefy shadows. The sharks come closer, bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas), one of the sharks on the list not to mess with. They are all just under 3m long and stocky sharks, thick like a white shark. The sharks start to move in, swooping in effortlessly and gracefully for a piece of fish.

This is awesome.

I’m smiling so much I get seawater in my mouth. Then I feel it.

Ouch, something bit me…

Not of a bull shark, but a tiny damselfish in the rocks. I’m sitting next to his territory and he is letting me know. Luckily the gloves don’t let him break the skin but it hurts, and he won’t stop attacking my knuckles. I cross my arms to bury my knuckles, and then he goes for the knees. I laugh, I’m here watching bull sharks be fed and am getting pecked by a tiny damselfish. We can’t stay at this depth long, and leave as a group to the shallow reef top where we watch all types of reef sharks feed, and feed up close. Then get so excited and in such a frenzy that they brush against you and even bump into you, close encounters all around.

“Woohoooo, that was awesome” a fellow diver yells when we surface. High fives are exchanged, because we saw such awesome sharks, and because we all still have all of our hands. I’m stoked. All of us have the biggest smiles on our faces. The smile you get when you know you’ve cheated something and witnessed an unprecedented event.