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Open House Count Down: 10 days!

When’s the last time you looked a Steller sea lion in the eye?  Or used your armspan to measure a robust clubhook squid?  When you come to Open House at MLML on April 25 and 26, you’ll be amazed by the sheer size of the specimens we have on display.  Come get a good look at a whale skull or a sea turtle shell.  Did you know that we get sea turtle visitors in Monterey Bay? Stop by the vertebrate ecology lab to learn which species!

Can you find this whale jaw at the labs?  Can you guess which species it is? (Hint: it only has teeth on its lower jaw, which is pictured.  Click to read Mariah’s post and solve the mystery!)

Open House countdown: 11 days!

Did you know that seaweed is not only in your sushi, but in your ice cream too?  The phycology lab will be dishing up this sweet treat for free at Open House to show off the wonderful thickening properties of an algae-derived carbohydrate (What is it called? You’ll just have to stop by to find out!).

They will also have fun activities like seaweed printing and pressing, and a grab bag to let you try your hand at algae identification!  Come and learn all about the amazing adaptations plants have to survive in their marine environment that is so different from land!

Open House countdown: 16 days!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftNqCN_ht4c]

One of the most popular events at open house is fish printing! You won’t want to miss a chance to make a piece of this beautiful artwork (called gyotaku in Japanese).  And those slippery fish can be full of surprises – watch the video and read Ben’s account below of the unexpected “special delivery” at last year’s fish printing!

by Ben Perlman, Ichthyology Lab

Most species of fishes lay eggs – but did you know that some species actually give birth to live young?  That’s right!  Some fishes, like the surfperches, give birth to little babies that look just like their parents.  Of course, they are a lot smaller!  Fishes that give birth in this form are called “viviparous.”  That fancy word means “live bearer.”

Surfperches live all along the coast of California in just about every marine habitat, including one species that lives in freshwater rivers and streams.  I’m studying how surfperches swim for my thesis at MLML.  You can find these guys swimming around the kelp forest, hiding next to a pier piling or in the slough, hovering over rocky reefs, and especially in the surf zone.  So I guess naming this family of fishes the “surf” perches was a pretty good idea.  Cowabunga, dudes and dudettes!

Here at the Moss Landing Marine Labs Open House, coming up on April 25th and 26th, you never know what amazing scientific discoveries you’ll stumble upon.  Last year at our popular fish printing activity, two young ladies were painting the top of a barred surfperch and were ready to put a piece of paper on top of it to press down and make their very own masterpiece.  As the girls were pressing down on the fish, to their incredible surprise and everyone around them, little babies popped out of the fish!  Lots of ooohs and aaahs echoed around the lab!  A couple of other kids said “How cool” or Wow, I never knew that little fishies came out like that!”

I was able to take that opportunity to help explain this unique characteristic about how surfperches give birth.  So who knows what will happen this year at our Open House?  Come on down and make some new discoveries!  See ya there!

by Mariah Boyle, Ichthyology Lab

December 2008: Our boatload of kai vulagi (visitors) are heading towards Survivor Island (the one they used in Survivor: Fiji) for some exploring. All of a sudden, a whale spouts only about 50 yards away from our tiny boat. The whale is small, a juvenile. We follow it for a while – it is breathing often and doesn’t dive even when we are close. I know it is stressed. I can’t get a great look at it but notice its blowhole is offset to the side a bit.

I snap a bunch of photos to send back home to my marine science friends. I’m an ichthyologist, after all – I study fish, and I was out of my element trying to identify this whale in Fiji!

After returning home from the trip I looked up pictures of whales that live in the waters around Fiji and tried to identify it. Before finding a definitive answer, I got an email from Fiji: the whale had died and washed up on shore. A friend emailed me a Fiji Times article on the whale, which reported that upper teeth were not found in the whale, while the bottom 40 were removed using a ladder because the whale was so big! A lot of villagers thought that the whale’s top teeth had been stolen very early in the morning, as the teeth are used for tabua in Fiji, a sacred singular whale tooth on a string used for all sorts of formal ceremonies. I’d seen one right before I left Fiji presented to the island’s chief, Tui Mali, asking him to bless the engagement of a couple working on the island.

After reading that article it all clicked: no teeth in the upper jaw meant it must have been a sperm whale, which only have teeth in their bottom jaw!   I looked up sperm whales online and sure enough they also have an offset blowhole. I showed the pictures to a friend and she agreed on the identification. I had been getting lots of messages asking me to try to identify the whale, and now I knew what it was!  I researched a bit about sperm whales and wrote a blog for our group’s website to tell everyone about the whale. I felt good about identifying the whale and putting to rest the mystery – little did I know how it would be connected to my next visit to the same island… Read more →

This week’s student spotlight is on Mariah Boyle, a graduate student in the Ichthyology Lab.   Mariah is currently studying the feeding habits of the roughtail skate for her thesis.  Check out her student profile to discover how she got her start in marine science – with a father who manages a dive shop and a mom who teaches swim lessons, it’s a logical step!   “Since they are both part fish, I was close to developing gills for a while as a kid,” Mariah writes of her parents.  Some advice she has for people interesetd in marine science: “While marine science may be a tough field, if it is what you truly love to do, stick with it. Too many people out there are not doing what they love for work.”  Read more!

Speaking of jobs you love, Mariah has used her flexible grad-school schedule to  take advantage of the kind of opprtunity most people only dream about:  becoming part of Tribewanted, a unique, environmentally aware, cross-cultural community tourism project on Vorovoro Island, Fiji.

By joining  Tribewanted, she was given  access to the online side of the project (voting rights and message forums on www.tribewanted.com) and then could schedule a visit to the  island for however many weeks she chose. The land is being leased by a British company, and in turn the Fijians get to share their culture and earn a good wage. The project has a low impact on the island – the drinking water is captured rainwater, the shower is a natural waterfall, the fish is speared right off the beach.

Members of Tribewanted can be elected as chief for a month by posting a manifesto and being voted in by the other members online.  As chief this summer, Mariah was in charge of the on-island operation for a month -making sure there is enough water, managing the budget, organizing trips to villages, and making sure everyone is having an amazing time.  Mariah wrote a series of blog posts while serving as chief, including topics such as marine safety, sharks and sustainable seafood.   Check back soon and we’ll post even more stories about her tropical adventures!