10 January

Due to the late night writing of research proposals the night before, I missed the 7:30am breakfast that everyone enjoyed. Today was pretty exciting though, my research partner, Cassie, and I, were able to get started on our research project. We’ve decided to study the nitrogen enriched sea grass in Discovery Bay caused by seeping groundwater and the effect it has on the grazing herbivores that feed on it. It’s a behavioral study that is going to require much work in the lab but many snorkels will still need to be had to collect our primary producer, Thalassia testudinum, and its grazers, the West Indian sea egg urchin Tripneustes ventricosus, the Variegated Urchin, Lytechinus variegates, and Bucktooth Parrotfish, Sparisoma radians. [Ed: The picture above is none of these but just a charismatic fish.]

Just the day before, Cassie and I had set out to find Anthony, the dive officer here at the marine lab and go-to guy for just about everything else, to make a trap for the parrotfish we will be needing for our experiments. Parrotfish rely on seagrass for nutrients and it is their main food source. We took an old z-trap that was in the back of the wet lab, patched up the holes and set out in the boat to drop it. We tied empty plastic bottles to a rope attached to the trap as our marker and used delicious bananas and wheat bread as bait. We were not the only ones excited about this trap, as any bycatch has been promised to a number of other people for their projects.

The day was filled with snorkeling, chaos and some excited and disappointed faces in the wet labs. It was day two of our projects and any problems with experiments that were set up the day before were now being realized. Anna and Alina, the urchin catching machines, had some problems with their urchins, who turned out to be more persistent in surpassing any barriers they had made than they had originally thought. Amy and Josh were also running into some unforeseen problems with their goby fish. They had a few mortalities within their well-planned and constructed tank (see below) that allows different levels of light into each section. The goby were also more complicated to catch then they had originally thought, every hour coming up with a new tool to use for the task. Each time they seemed to have come out with larger sticks/poles attached to larger and larger nets but still was unsuccessful. They will be switching to brittle stars and any other fish they are able to get their hands on to use in their project.

After a lunch of french fries and chicken nuggets, a rare and delicious treat for us American visitors, Cassie, Alina, Anna and I decided to go snorkeling for some more urchins, seagrass and food for our specimens. Cassie and I collected enough seagrass for a months worth of research (we wanted to be able to choose the best specimens for our needs) but had little luck at catching any urchins.  While swimming back to the dock area, we both assumed Anna and Alina had much of the same luck due to the turbulent waves caused by the strong winds that afternoon. However, we were surprised to find them with not one, not two but three bags full of urchins and other goodies (algae and seagrass) and a deal was soon made for the urchins they may not need. This was, however, not the first disappointment Cassie and I encountered for the day. We had thought our trap could be hauled out of the water by midday for some fish but it couldn’t be done. The weather seemed to halt everyone’s plans though, not being able to take a boat out to our trap and others not being able to have comfortable dives. Cassie and I did, however, set up our tanks and prepared our ropes for the seagrass specimens but were unable to do much else until we could obtain the un-enriched seagrass from outside the discovery bay area that we needed for comparison.

The day was filled mostly with preparations for our research presentations that each group needed to give that night to the professors and class for feedback and suggestions. Every group seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do and was very articulate in their plans for the next few days’ experiments, surveys and observations. There was a kind of excitement in the air for the days to follow. We were finally free to get started with our projects, and even though many of us had run into some minor setbacks, I think our research projects will turn out better for them in the end.

-- Cat

Comments

[Diane Schubach]

Sounds like you're doing some hard work in addition to enjoying the great weather. We miss you, and Mickey misses you!