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Birds of the Bering Sea – Seabird Surveys begin!

October 3, 2008mlmlblog

Nate Jones

by Nate Jones, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

June 5, 2008: I am finally out counting seabirds! Fulmars flap, storm petrels flit, and murres paddle along the still ocean waters. Perhaps the Bering Sea is finally settling down for some summer sleep. At times the surface is so smooth I can see the silhouette of my own shape, dancing in reflection on its silky surface. The days are long, though the light is dimmed by the heavy, intermittent fog and constant overcast. It is difficult to judge distances in this lighting. Our world spans a continuum between black and white, but we see little color. Everything is some shade of gray; the sky, the horizon, the water. From our perch, 40 feet high up on the bridge of the boat, the whole experience is quite surreal. Sometimes the view seems unchanging, and it is difficult to tell if we’re even moving at all!

Forked-taiil Storm Petrel (photo: B. Parkinson)

Luckily, there are birds to punctuate this monotonous tranquility! So far we’ve seen fulmars, kittiwakes, puffins, murres, storm petrels, and shearwaters. Fulmars and shearwaters are closely related, considered to be in the same taxonomic family. These birds travel great distances at sea – thousands of miles – to follow the seasons and stay near productive ocean hotspots. They race past me on strong steady wings, arcing and diving if it’s windy, brushing within inches of the wavelets and then climbing abruptly above the ship. When it’s calm they speed along with stiff, powerful wingbeats.

We see tremendous color variation in fulmars. Some are almost white, others a near uniform dark brown, and many more are some mix in between, splotched and peppered with contrasting feathers. Read more →

Who’s at Home in a Holdfast?

September 29, 2008mlmlblog

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

I got to play evil landlord the other day and evicted a bunch of little critters from their home (proving that even marine invertebrates are not immune to housing woes…). I was on the hunt for some specimens that might be prey items for the gopher rockfish, which I’m studying for my thesis. Someone suggested I seek out the creepy crawly snacks where they live – holed up in a kelp holdfast.

A whole mess of tenants was living inside!

A holdfast keeps a towering kelp plant anchored firmly to the sea floor. It may look like a giant root ball, but its many fingers don’t suck up nutrients and water like true roots do in land plants. They do, apparently, make a great high-density high rise for little crabs, brittle stars, and more.

While hacking open the basketball-sized mass of slippery tubes, I expected to find maybe a dozen animals or so – but I tallied up some 85 residents! Crabs, brittle stars, polychaetes (worms), urchins, shrimp, you name it. I was so jazzed to dig up a handful of these little peanut worms (also called sipunculids). They have a long proboscis that they can actually turn inside out and tuck up inside themselves! And aren’t they just so fat and cute?

Peanut worms turning themselves inside out — Peanut worms in a jam

What do you think makes a holdfast such a great home? Post a comment and let us know what you think!

Let Endless Summer Reign

September 27, 2008mlmlblog

That fall equinox may have passed, but here at Moss Landing, we’re getting ready to party like summer never ends! Mark your calendars for MLML’s 10th Endless Summer Celebration, the major fundraiser for the Friends of MLML, and the labs as a whole.

Join us for a night at the Acropolis - beachside!

Saturday, October 4th @ 5:30 PM

the Hilllside of MLML

This year we will even be celebrating Athens style because let’s face it, the – Greeks knew how to throw a party. So don your finery and join us for delicious food, live music, and live and silent auctions. The wine will flow, and yes, there may even be grad students in togas to wait on you hand and foot. Let the revelry begin!

Call (831) 771-4100 to RSVP. Tickets $60 for Friends Members, $70 for non-members

Mobilizing Beach Heroes for Coastal Cleanup Day

September 18, 2008mlmlblog

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

I recently witnessed some true beachside heroism while running (ok, ok, jogging) on my local sandy stretch. An older couple was out for their morning walk along the beach – and between them they were steadily filling two big bags, one for trash, the other for recycling. Had my heart not already been pounding from long-overdue exertion, the sight surely would have warmed it to the core.

Give your local beach some love on Sept. 20th, Coastal Cleanup Day!

You too can be a beach hero this Saturday, September 20th. It’s International Coastal Cleanup Day! Check out the Ocean Conservancy to find out more and also register for a cleanup near you. For those of us that study the ocean (or just love it), it’s a great way to say thank you to our coastlines and waterways, to keep them healthy and beautiful. Trash is an unbelievably big problem in the ocean (think the size of Texas big) and its critters (like the Laysan albatross). But you can help – check out this video about what the Coastal Cleanup Day is all about!

Obviously, you don’t need to wait for a special day to clean up your beach. I find it hard to jog pass by an empty Doritos bag or beer can on the sand without picking it up (yeah, I’m one of “those” people, but gosh darn it, I’m proud too!). While stooping for trash does turn a leisurely run into “red light green light,” it’s amazing how good it feels, in that Captain Planet sort of way.

Deep sea trash from near San Diego. Just part of the bigger mess.

When I saw that tidy couple, I made my way over with a discarded plastic bottle in hand, and thanked them for their efforts. They bagged my bottle and said they were just tired of seeing others trash their favorite spot – so they decided to do something about it. Simple. I guess I could have asked for their names, but perhaps like all superheros they prefer to walk among us, unknown…. Read more →

Keep On Rockin’ in the Sea World

September 16, 2008mlmlblog

by Kyle Reynolds, Benthic Ecology Lab

You may not believe me when I say this, but not all marine science takes place underwater. That’s right… you don’t even have to get wet to study the seafloor! No, I haven’t been sucking the helium from my SpongeBob balloon, and I’m not off my rocker – I just got back from my first Geological Oceanography field trip.

Keep in mind that as an invertebrate biologist I’m hardly qualified to discuss geology on an intellectual level, but that’s never stopped me before! Please keep your arms and legs inside the blog at all times, because this could get rocky…

As sea levels have risen and subsided over the past 4.5 billion years of our planet’s existence, beachfront properties have changed their locations and altitudes dramatically. The earth’s crust has actually been swallowed up and spit back out through the mechanisms of plate tectonics and volcanic activity. So it just stands to reason that what was once found at the bottom of the ocean can now be found on the tops of mountains and vice versa. Oceanic sediments and fossils of ancient marine life even appear on top of the Alps!

Dr. Ivano Aiello surrounded by his adoring Geological Oceanography students in a cave at Pinnacles National Monument

Fast forward to current geologic times (namely, last Friday), when the Geological Oceanography class here at MLML took a fun day-trip out to Pinnacles National Monument. We learned from our esteemed professor, Dr. Ivano Aiello of the Geological Oceanography department, that the rock pinnacles jutting out of the ground were once the sides of an ancient volcano. Most of the rock outcroppings we walked over and under that day had once been subducted along with seawater into the mantle of the earth before being spewed out by an explosive volcanic eruption.

Remnants of an ancient volcano at Pinnacles National Monument (Photo by Iryna Novosyolova; NPS)

In fact, right where we were standing marked the birthplace of modern plate tectonic theory (where scientists realized the plates of the earth must be shifting and moving). It turns out that some brilliant geologist noticed that the pinnacles at this location exactly matched an outcropping near Los Angeles. Part of the same volcano in two different places! Did these rocks hitch a ride to vacation in the Monterey Bay area? No, it appears that the volcano was sitting right on top of a transform fault, and part of it has been slowly migrating north for the past 23 million years until it wound up here. And it won’t be sticking around, it seems. According to the USGS, the west side of the fault zone creeps north at a rate of several centimeters per year!

Don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned for more geology field trip ramblings as the class camps out in beautiful Point Reyes and takes a cruise to collect sediment cores in the Monterey Canyon…

Animal, celebrity, or cake?

September 14, 2008mlmlblog

by Amanda Kahn, Invertebrate Zoology and Molecular Ecology Lab

I’d like to introduce you to my favorite organism! I’m studying these critters for my thesis project, and I think they are one of the weirdest critters in the ocean. Let me explain why they’re so cool, first of all:

This organism lives in all places where there is water: bays, harbors, freshwater lakes, coastal environments, and the deep ocean. It eats microscopic particles out of the water, yet can grow so large, a person could fit inside of it! To find its microscopic food, it sifts through microscopic particles one by one, to find the edible bits with up to 95% efficiency! As if that’s not cool enough, this organism is the star of a popular cartoon, is present in many people’s homes, and has a delicious dessert named after it. Wow! Can you figure out what I’m talking about?
Read more →

Science Cafe: Laser-bots on the Beach

September 3, 2008mlmlblog

Infrared laser-scanning robots may sound like something straight out of Star Wars, but lucky top-notch scientists get to play with them too. Come hear Professor Ivano Aiello of the Geological Oceanography Lab talk about how these cool tools can continuously monitor our shifting coastline of beaches and sea cliffs, capturing the effects of both pounding storms and sneaky erosion. It’s free!

Friends of Moss Landing Marine Labs presents:

High Resolution Coastal Monitoring with Terrestrial Laser Scanning Robotics

by Ivano Aiello

Wednesday, September 10th, 7:00 p.m.

MLML Seminar Room

8272 Moss Landing Road, Moss Landing CA

Come enjoy free refreshments and join the dialogue about some piping-hot science! To download the event flier, click here. Did we mention it’s free?

The Friends of Moss Landing Marine Labs sponsor Science Cafes at MLML to engage the local community with science happening in their backyard. Past Science Cafes at MLML have featured Dr. Lara Ferry-Graham, research faculty of Ichthyology at MLML, Dr. Tierney Thys of Sea Studios Foundation, and David Maguire of Sea Stewards.

Birds of the Bering Sea: Shipping out of Dutch Harbor

September 1, 2008mlmlblog

Nathan Jones

by Nathan Jones, Vertebrate Ecology Lab

June 2, 2008. Dutch Harbor, Alaska and the R/V Oscar Dyson – We arrived in Dutch Harbor very late, indeed. I think it was after 1 am when I finally unlocked the door to my room. Outside, the dusky, midsummer light of an Aleutian evening was still slowly fading in the fog. I closed the curtains and sank happily into bed.

Boats on the bay in Dutch Harbor, Alaska (photo by NMJ) — Boats amid mountains in Dutch Harbor, Alaska (photo by NMJ)

In the morning, I had just a couple hours free to take a stroll around Dutch Harbor, but I’ll be back again more than once this season; like many of the commercial fishing vessels, most all the research ships doing work in the Bering Sea must stop to exchange supplies or crew members in Dutch. This is a working town, in the truest sense. And, although it’s surrounded by beautiful wilderness, Dutch Harbor itself doesn’t see too many tourists!

Nonetheless I am fascinated and engaged by the sort of raw beauty that can be found in the industry of humankind. Although Dutch Harbor has gained an outsized, ribald reputation, I find it is also earnest, industrious, and indomitable. There is a certain honesty in the worn deck lines, rusty rails, towers of shipping containers, and acres of crab pots: This is how fish is brought to your dinner plate.

Orca Sighting!

August 27, 2008mlmlblog

by Erin Loury, Ichthyology Lab

Regular 4 a.m. wakeup calls are brutal even for the coolest fishing survey. Once the boat is steaming towards our destination, very few things can come between me and my precious snooze time. But this morning I heard words that had me on my feet in a hurry: “Killer whales!”

Science crew and volunteer fishermen alike clamored onto the deck and pressed ourselves against the boat railings, scanning the early morning horizon as our captain maneuvered us in for a closer look. Suddenly we saw them – two black jackknives of dorsal fins appeared over the rolling swells. We spotted two small orcas (another term for killer whale), their heads surging forward through the waves. Their characteristic white eye spots stood out like warpaint in fearsome contrast against their sleek black bodies. I watched in disbelief and euphoria as their heads broke the water’s surface once, twice, and again before they disappeared from sight.

Since I wasn’t able to snap a decent photo of my own, this one is courtesy of SIMoN and the Monterey Bay Sanctuary, who generously host a marine photo library for public use.

Though orcas are found in all the world’s oceans and are not unheard of in Monterey Bay, to actually see them here is rare and really quite special. Orcas are voracious hunters – as far as their prey are concerned, they earn their nickname, “wolves of the sea,” and probably the Latin meaning of their scientific name, Orcinus orca: “from hell!” Orcas near Monterey, like the ones I saw, sometimes hunt gray whales passing through on their migration from Mexico to Alaska with their new calves (ie, easy targets).

But even their ruthless reputation just added to my enthusiasm, which somehow always gets the best of me around whales and charismatic wildlife. Cheering and clapping at the sight of my first orcas, I threw my fist in the air and shouted “Jump!,” – you know, like in Free Willy? Apparently these orcas had never seen the movie, since they missed their cue.

Still, it was a good miniflashback for me, remembering how I used to dream of being like the kid in that movie, who lived by the ocean and got to spend time with awesome marine life, lucky duck. And now I am that kid, getting to see the real deal on days like this, roaming free. Such sweet job perks even make the 4 a.m. wake-up call worth it – at least until tomorrow morning.

A Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean

August 12, 2008mlmlblog

Editor’s Note: Graduate student Kyle Reynolds describes her experience in the South Pacific, where she participated in a 2006 research cruise to study organisms living on the hydrothermal vent system of the Lau Basin.

by Kyle Reynolds, Benthic Ecology Lab

Looking out of the airplane as it began its descent toward Fiji, I remember feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience. We had crossed the equator and the International Date Line during this flight – two firsts for me! Once the plane touched down and we made our way to Suva, the capital, I would be embarking on a multidisciplinary research expedition with several teams of scientists from around the world to study the biology, chemistry, and geology of hydrothermal vents in the Lau Basin. My heart was in my throat as I elatedly took in the sights and sounds of my last moments on dry land for the next 30 days.

Once onboard the R/V Melville (the Scripps Institute of Oceanography ship we’d be using), the scientists quickly went about the task of securing their own cargo in their lab spaces to keep anything from spilling or breaking in transit. Our research would involve multiple deployments of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) named the Jason II, or “Jason” for short. Jason would be working almost non-stop over the next month to take videos as well as animal, geological, and chemical samples for the various researchers’ projects. I was there to obtain snail samples for my thesis research, and would be using them to study their reproductive adaptations. Being the newbie, I was given the midnight to 4:00 a.m. shift to stand my watch in the Jason control van each night. The control van is a large metal container from which the crew can pilot Jason, while scientists record the data, log notes, and direct the collection efforts.

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