With only a few hours left in 2009, it’s time for a whirlwind year in review! Click through to take in some of the great Moss Landing Marine Lab adventures we posted this year at the Drop-In:
Great big ships are the Antarctic ticket home (photo: K. Green)
by Kristen Green, Ichthyology Lab
March 2009: Yesterday’s dawn revealed the greasy, orange Russian research vessel looming on the horizon. A few short hours later, the small green field station with white shutters where I’ve lived in for the past 5 months grew smaller as we sped across the bay in zodiacs towards our floating ride home.
The events of the past three weeks are a blur of inventorying, packing, and cleaning. Everything was counted down to the last pencil, and then placed in bags to inhibit moisture and mold over the winter. The satellite antennas, wind generators, everything that connected us to the outside world and generated our power supply was disassembled.
I felt ready to go, but wanted to climb to the top of Jardine, the 700 ft peak above Escurra Inlet. The weather had been unimpressive all week, but the morning of the extra day was miraculously clear and sunlit. We made the three hour trip from Copacabana, exploring some new routes over the glacier. Jardine is an eroding basalt monument, the remnants of a 25 million year old volcanic plug. From the top, all of Admiralty Bay was visible in stunning panorama. The scenery was crystalline, the light was just right. From this perspective, I could see a good portion of the area we worked in over the past 5 months. I tried hard to imprint this last, perfect view of the island.
photo (K. Green)
Now, sitting on the Russian ship, I feel drained. I just took the first consistently hot shower I’ve had in 5 months. Watching the rust-tinged water drain away, I felt like I was being wasteful. I’m too clean, the ship is too hot. I’ve spent months of my life on boats, but now I feel claustrophobic. The dull roar of the engine never ceases, the fluorescent lights flicker in tunnels of blue hallways.
Already I miss my life on King George Island. I wish I could sum up my experiences in the last five months with the perfect conclusion, like that last day on Jardine. Maybe the filter of time and distance will provide the necessary perspective, but for now, nothing I could write would be eloquent enough.
Kristen and her fellow team members signing off from Antarctica
Happy Holidays from The Drop-In! Our gift to you is a Creature Feature of one our most popular celebrities. “Firefly squid” and “bioluminescent squid” are some of the most frequent search terms that lead people to drop in on us. And seeing how these decorated dazzlers are the winners of our “Vote for Your Favorite Holiday Marine Creature” poll, we figured their victory justifies some more attention.
Known to the science world as Watasenia scintillans and to the Japanese as “hotaru-ika,” these sparkling cephalopods grow to a mere three inches long. Their tiny bodies are packed with photophores, which they can flash in a variety of alternating patterns. These squid are believed to be the only cephalopods that have color vision, possessing three visual pigments instead of one like other squid.
Toursits and fishermen alike soak up some squid light in Toyama Bay, Japan (photo: pinktentacle.com)
Firefly squid live throughout the Western Pacific Ocean at depths from 600 to 1,200 feet. They gather to spawn from March to May, and can be found by the millions (or even billions!) in Toyama Bay, Japan. The adults die soon after releasing their eggs and sperm, completing a brief, one-year life cycle. That is, if they are not first scooped up by fishermen to be served as a Japanese delicacy.
We have past copies of Science looking for an educational home
Are you an educator that could benefit from copies of Science magazine in your classroom? Many MLML graduate students currently receive free subscriptions of Science as part of the AAAS/Science Program for Excellence in Science. It’s a great way for us to keep tabs on the latest developments, but the volume of weekly installments can become unwieldy after a few months. We would love to pay the knowledge forward in support of education! Please leave us a comment below if you are interested, and we will contact you to pass on copies of this esteemed publication.
Hi, this is Mariah, an ichythyology student here at MLML. I want to let you know that a local non-governmental organization (NGO) I work for, FishWise, is hosting a screening of The End of the Line, an amazing documentary about the global overfishing of our oceans.
This documentary is excellent, as it is based in science – you will hear from leading scientists such as Daniel Pauly and Ray Hilborn in the film. This film also reminds us of the global nature of overfishing the oceans, as what we do here in California affects the rest of the world, and vice versa.
Kristen goes for the catch to get a satellite tag from a Gentoo penguin in a successful roundup (photo by P. Angiel)Kristen Green
by Kristen Green, Ichthyology Lab
Before leaving my Antarctic camp last spring, we still had biological work to do which was a welcome break from the monotony of packing. The first was a last ditch effort to retrieve the last missing transmitter on a Chinstrap penguin. The satellite data indicated the bird was still coming to shore; sometime between 10 pm and 1 am, and somewhere in a three mile stretch of coastline between Demay and Patelnia. Dave planned to search at Patelnia and then walk back to Demay at midnight. My job was to search the colonies at Demay.
By 11 pm, I was starting to feel my headlamp wasn’t quite sufficient in illuminating the distance I would have liked from fur seals. Surrounded by low guttural warning growls as I picked my way to the penguin colonies, I hailed Dave on the radio and was relieved to hear that he was on his way back. He too, was tired of waiting in the cold, navigating through minefields of territorial fur seals. We returned empty handed, morale sinking further as we tried to decipher Polish cooking instructions on the food stored at the tiny, unheated Polish refugio where we planned to stay the night. Later in the week the next satellite download revealed the transmitter had stopped transmitting signals all together, but at least we tried.
Had Kristen and Dave caught their rogue penguin, they would have proceeded to do something like this... (photo by P. Angiel)
Our final biological task was to count and band giant petrel chicks. Of the birds we work with, giant petrels are the most sensitive to disturbance. The chicks need to be old enough to fend for themselves since the parents will fly off immediately when we approach the colony. These are the largest birds we handle; the adults are about 25 lbs; the chicks are like big fuzzy 15 lb dough balls.
Despite their size, the giant petrels are primarily scavengers, and their defense mechanism is to project an oily vomit onto potential attackers. The best way to avoid this is to approach within 10 ft of a nest, and then sprint the last few feet to the nest, grabbing the chick quickly and holding the beak so it can breathe, but not regurgitate on the lucky person doing the banding. Giant petrels are known for their strong site fidelity, often returning to the same colony and the same nest each year. The bands help us to estimate this site fidelity, as well as measure over winter survival. This year’s chicks will fledge in about a month, and then live on the open ocean for the next 5 years before returning to the island to breed.
A giant (non-vomitting) petrel looks on (photo: P. Angiel)
The bird work was done, but the chaos of packing continued. Sitting in the hut the night before we were scheduled to leave, surrounded by plastic bags with a laundry list of things to still accomplish, we found out via radio call that the ship was going to be delayed a full day. They needed better weather to offload researchers at another island field camp about 12 hours away. The gift of this extra day was a blessing, not only in needed time to finish closing camp, but also for me in being able to say goodbye to the island.
A tagged Gentoo penguin shows off its fashionable new satellite backpack (photo: K. Green)
Come hear them describe the historical ecology of the the Central Coast, the State Wetland Monitoring Project, wetland restoration and planning, and the California Rapid Assessment Method for Wetlands (affectionately known as CRAM). Rather appropriate, with finals just around the corner…
Advancing the coordination of wetland science and management on the Central Coast
(photo by L. Whitman, submitted by and B. Hoover and N. Jones)
Counting birds is harder than its sounds when your place of observation is the ocean, not a bird feeder. This week’s photo features Brian Hoover of the Vertebrate Ecology Lab up in Alaska looking for a clue – to what drives seabird distribution, that is. Brian and Nate Jones, a Drop-In regular, spent several weeks on the Bering Sea this summer recording where and when they spotted seabirds, as well as gathering data on bird prey and oceanography patterns.
If you have a good caption for this illustrious researcher hard at work, submit it as a comment. We’ll post our favorite!
(still in the Bering Sea) … Of course the bad weather I’ve been writing about was nothing compared to what happens on the Bering during the months of February or March, and the Gold Rush fishes regularly during that time of year, so I had complete faith in the seaworthiness of the ship and the judgment and skill of the crew. I took comfort in that thought, and stumbled down to my bunk for what became a grueling 72 hours of bumps, rolls, and queasy stomachs. During this stormy time the crew exchanged watches at the helm, keeping the ship pointed into the fury.
Bumpy Bering Sea
We all hoped for the best, but by the time the seas had calmed to (a more manageable?) 8-10’, the hungry ocean had damaged and ripped off much of our scientific equipment, snapping several ¼” steel bolts and ripping welds clean apart!
The Gold Rush itself weathered this storm in fine shape (wish we could say the same of our scientific equipment!), and there were no major injuries to anyone on board. It really was quite a minor event in the context of the Bering Sea; just another blowy, bumpy day or two out on the water.
Another day at "the office" for a marine scientist
But, it impressed me and I couldn’t help contemplating darker scenarios – what happens when there is a true emergency? What if someone had been swept overboard, or, worse yet, what if the ship itself had been damaged or taken on water and started to go down? Such things do happen, although not as frequently now as they have in the past (coast guard regulations and improvements in technology and crew training have contributed to much increased safety).
In my next post I’ll put up some images from training exercises that are routinely undertaken to help prepare crew and passengers (scientists) for emergencies at sea…
Do you remember that big storm that soaked the central coast in mid October? What I remember most is not how scary the driving was in that first big rain of the season, or the sound of the downpour on my roof – what stands out for me is the pile of shovels the storm left in its wake.
Yes, shovels. When the weather cleared, I paid a visit to my local beach to observe the fall-out. The sand was strewn with kelp, and fair amount of trash. But what floored me were the nine, count’em nine plastic shovels pictured above that I picked up in a half-mile stretch of beach. Not to mention passing a few other beach walkers with colorful shovels in their hands too!
So you’re thinking, what’s the big deal? A bunch of kids left their shovels on the beach. Consider this: even if those shovels were buried in the deepest of sand moats, a good storm can unearth them and sweep them out to sea. Add a few spin-and-tumble cycles in the surf zone, and suddenly a happy, harmless shovel is reduced to a plastic pile of marine debris.
And marine debris is a Big Deal, especially of the plastic variety:
You can be a beach hero by conducting your own Coastal Cleanup Day at your local beach after a storm. And remember to pack out those toys you pack in when visiting the beach with kids in tow. Just think of all the lonely pails out there.
