A Mess of Macroalgae

I've made it back to Corvallis and am ready to crash. I had a productive past tide series though! I collected a ton of biomass samples, both eelgrass and macroalgae. I'll continue to take these samples monthly throughout the year as part of the monitoring part of my study. I'm comparing sites of varying marine influence, and think that the huge quantities of macroalgae (mainly green ulvoids) that I find in the marine sites may have an affect on the eelgrass growing at these sites. The monitoring is necessary to establish the seasonal patterns and site differences before I start doing experiments and other analyses.

So anyways, I spend a lot of time picking away at the macroalgae in the eelgrass beds, collecting samples from 5 quadrats at each site. It gets a bit tedious when the macroalgae crumbles or is composed of tiny little pieces or is embedded in the mud. But, I had fancy new blue industrial glooves to work with (to keep my hands warm and protected from unknown gunk in the mud) and the weather was great so I didn't mind the self-inflicted task. Processing the samples was another deal..... Luckily Dafne showed up to do recon for her project and helped me sort the stuff for an entire day! This consisted of emtying my samples into buckets, scooping out handfuls, getting rid of all the sediment, worm casings, dead and dying inverts (poor baby Dungeness crabs!) and pieces of eelgrass. Then we'd squeeze as much water as possible from the samples, categorize the macroalgae into different types (ulvoid species vs. drift red red and browns), fold them up into nice little aluminum foil packages, and take a picture and wet weight before freezing them for later determination of dry weight (biomass). Some samples took almost an hour to sort through, which made for some incredibly long days.

Thank god for long summer evenings and help! Dafne was a good trooper and sacreficed her afterrnoon for the cause. And I somehow convinced John and Jeremy (Hacker lab techs extraordinaire) to stop off en route North to help me count eelgrass this morning (that's another story, which already has a dedicated poem... to be posted later). If they hadn't showed up I'd probably still be in Coos Bay covered in eelgrass-diatom juice. Time fore bed, this is going to be a good one, ciao, Margs

The Meandering Moon Snail

One of my field sites, Fossil Point, is outside the main channel of focus for my study. Its in the main channel of Coos Bay, not South Slough. I'm keeping this site because its really close to the mouth of the estuary and also has very high marine influence (somewhat of a replicate for my marine site). I'm not sure if I really need this site in terms of data collection, but its a cool spot so I'm keeping it for the time being. Once you get beyond the smell of the Dairy Queen (just down the street) and way out on the mudflat, there's always an unexpected find. If you recall from a past post, last time I was out here some clammers asked me about the i.d. of a moon snail. Well, it was still here this time round, making its way, slow as a snail, to deeper water. Ok, so there's a chance that it wasn't the exact same snail, but I think it was, guarding my transect line. Its large foot was extended like a sail, reaching into the strong shoreward breeze. It was making no effort to concel itself underneath the plentiful eelgrass beds, and it wonder if its brazeness was do to its gigantic proportions. Its so incredibly huge that I wonder what birds or other predators would be able to eat it. After photographing this beast of a snail from every possible angle I helped it down to the channel edge where I presume it was headed. Here's a chunk of a short storythat my mom wrote which features the moon snail:


"It’s all about survival”, says Bill, as he slowly stretches back to a standing position. “Competition. Reproduction. Predation. Moon snails are a good example.”
He peers into the muck of the nearly drained lagoon. “Moon snails are in the same phylum as most of these bivalves, mollusca, but they’re in the gastropoda class. That means ‘stomach foot’”. He looks around, and then squishes further into the disappearing lagoon, boots sucking against the suction of the mud. He walks back towards us carrying a rubbery band that looks like a small inner tube, and holds it up for everyone to see. His voice slows: "This is the egg collar of a moonsnail."
The sunlight sparkles the life ring like diatoms glimmering in a honeycomb incubator. Bill’s voice softens and slows, "At high tide in mid-summer, these egg cases will crumble, releasing thousands of eggs." The class straggles to the edge of the stream following Bill.
Nobody speaks.
He lays down the collar, and begins to prod gently around a round protuberance in the sand, then more quickly digs into the gravel around it. The snail moves like a softball in a very slow pitch, trying to dig itself down, but Bill is too quick. He holds it aloft on his trowel, cupping it with his other hand. The foot of the snail jelly-rolls underneath, slimy and translucent and enormous, extending beyond the circumference of the shell. Bill’s voice is solemn as he points to the gelatinous mass: “The foot motors the snail along, and it digs to avoid predators and unwelcome events such as this.”
The class is in a trance.
Bill holds up the shell. “Moon snails are carnivores. This thing,” he slowly turns so everyone can get a good look, “will hunt down molluscs, like clams, snails and mussels, and surround them with their foot, this gooey underneath part.” He’s talking faster now. “Then it drills a beveled hole through the shell of its prey with its radula, inserts its proboscis, and yum, yum, yum…”
Sophie winces, holding up a clamshell with a hole in it. “Is that what happened to this poor clam?”
Bill walks peers at the clamshell. “Yup, you can always tell whodunit by that beveled hole. That’s the moonsnail’s signature. The drilling can take hours. So if the prey escapes, and is recaptured, the moon snail will drill in a new place. If you see shells with several holes, that’s probably what happened.”
The night of the living dead. This round, benign shell, with no visible teeth or horns or poisonous antennae, is a predator. It consumes almost everything we've observed.
Sophie asks the question I’ve been thinking, “But why isn’t the moon snail a bivalve? Why is it round instead of flat? What makes the shell go around like that?”

“It’s because of something called ‘torsion’, says Bill. “When it’s growing, one side of the larvae grows more quickly than the other, and twists around 180 degrees from the rest of the body. And look at the shell – it’s much smoother than those oysters, you see, so it can burrow down into the mud.”

But Bill’s snail has other business. Thousands of tiny eggs are pressed together with particles of sand, wrapping its shell in a rubbery collar. Bill gently strokes off the sandy outer layer, and the egg casing is exposed in a thin, moist wrapping.

It is like seeing the Holy Grail.
Without a word, Bill turns away from the class, digs back down into the streambed, tucks the shell back in place, and covers its sides. The moonsnail oozes down into the mud and out of sight. cc Melody Hessing

p.s. I saw an egg casing as I was walking back to shore, perhaps this guy had chosen my site as a good spot for disposal of its progeny.

Siuslaw Transplant

En route back down to Coos Bay, I stopped off for a morning to help the South Slough gang on an eelgrass transplant on the North Fork of the Siuslaw River. Oregon Department of Transportation will be replacing the existing bridge structure over this river as it joins the main fork of the Siuslaw. In so doing, they will also quash a portion of a healthy and expanding eelgrass bed. Steve, being the local eelgrass expert is in charge of a mitigation effort to see if they can save some of the bed by transplanting it. It was fun to help out (and not worry about logistics) and to see another approach to eelgrass transplanting - different from the single plant method that I'm familiar with. The crew had already been at it all week, so they had their protocol down pat by the time I arrived...... This consisted of digging up large plugs of eelgrass + rhizome + sediment (with a handheld snow shovel!), dumping it into a brightly coloured buckets in a canoe along with a chunk of rebar to hold it in place. These mounds were transported just downstream to the transplant site, which adjoined another, intact bed of eelgrass. At this site we dug holes in the sediment and then plopped the plug into place, using bamboo "chopsticks" to try and hold things in place against the river current. Some of the donor site shoots were also washed of sediment, then attached to small pieces of rebar with twist ties. We planted these in between the larger eelgrass mounds to fill in the gaps. The transplanted eelgrass was arranged in a checkerboard pattern. The plan is that overtime, they will expand and fill in the gaps. Steve will be monitoring and tending to this bed for the next 9 years (that's quite a commitment!). I've posted an underwater video of the transplant site taken by Ben in full wetsuit attire (plus samurai ponytail):http://picasaweb.google.com/margothl/07_06_15_SiuslawTransplant
It was great to work with this crew as they are really gung-ho - wetsuits, canoes and all! This morning I went out to two of my sites to collect eelgrass and algae biomass samples. The tide was incredibly low (-0.6m), which is always cool as all these new features of your site are revealed. The low tide was actually at a reasonable time this morning (a gentleman's tide said someone yesterday), so there were a ton ofclamdiggers out on the flats. I listened as one guy working close by tried to coak out a clam he was hunting, "come on honey, squirt for me!". Gentlemen's lingo indeed. On my way out to my first site a guy passed me and asked if I had caught my limit yet, I responded, "yes, in eelgrass". He didn't get it, and followed my tracks to my transect line, where I assume he thought I was filling up on clams. Then he proceeded to dig a huge hole right in the middle of the eelgrass bed. Arghhh!!!!! I went back and explained to him that it would be nice if he could avoid this section, and that the clamming was much better up higher anyways. He said, as expected, that he had never been out here before but thought he'd try this spot as he saw others out here - I think I need better camo for the next tide series! It doesn't matter though, you can't keep people away I guess, at my next site, there were also some huge pits near the monitoring site. Some guys asked me to come over - they were curious about the i.d. of a huge moonsnail (Euspira lewisii) they had found and I asked them about the pits. They said, yeah, people out for the first time and they have no idea where the best clams are. I met one more notable character on the mudflat today. He was a heavyset man scuffing along on two pontoon shoes. I asked him about them, and he said, "first time I came out I almost had a cardiac arrest, these things are the only way my big belly doesn't sink into the mud". His friend had custom-made these mud walkers for him: inflatable wheelbarrow tires, a wood plank and bindings - I might have to try this one day!

I''m glad that the past couple of days have been the lowest tides of the year, and that mostly my sites are protected by super early mornings and quick exposure. However, the super low lows are great for fieldwork. It seems like you have the whole day to work, an endless time as the tide recedes. Then the water hovers for awhile at the channel edge before the flood, rushing back in much faster to send you scurrying quickly back to shore.

Duck Tape

This is the amount of duck tape and athletic tape needed to keep my socks upright beneath waders. Slouching socks and skin exposed skin to chaffing are to the detriment of every intrepid mud explorer.

Roger's Zoo

John and I are finishing up with data entry at Roger's Zooemporium (or something Zoo ish) and are patiently waiting for an incredible pizza - out first meal since breakfast! John just devoured the best tortilla chips ever, and we are soaking in the live Townes Van Zandt and Lightfoot cover artist amist smalltown drunken bar chattter. John is leaving me 3 chips to be polite, but I'm giving him the a ok to go ahead with the chips before he passes out. We entered the data, and I might be a little light-headed from my pint of beer, but we're relishing in the glow of a great inaugural kayak day. For some reason, this local bar hang-out has wireless - weird since the atmosphere is dark - no light - and we are definitely outcasts with the laptop running. There is also a baby shower going on behind us, and a group of lesbians showing off their tatoos, as well as the usual men at the bar shooting the shit.

Apparently yesterday's hike was the second longest slog in white man's history of slogging in the Slough. Only to be outdone by the master, Steve, who one day walked almost the entire slough - all the way back to Charleston - he claims this was on purpose, to get acquainted with the estuary, but we've heard he was on a vision quest!

Pizza is here!!!!! Yeah!!!!!! This pizza looks rediculously good - its overflowing and the crust is rippled and infused with the toppings itself - but this ain't no commercial stuff crust!!!!!

Bears and Wolves; Destination Danger!

I'm back in Coos Bay, this time with John Schaefers, our lab tech, handyman, truck mechanic, cameraman, storyteller, and accomplished mud walker. We went out on the South Slough NERR (National Estuarine Research Reserve) boat to do some recon for an eelgrass monitoring site up-estuary. Steve Rumrill, the science director for the reserve showed us where we could find a potential site where they've worked before bearing the name of Danger Point. He assured me that it wasn't really dangerous, just that some field work mishaps had previously occured at the site, but I still can't help but wonder just how cursed this spot will be.... I already have one marine site, and one site halfway down the estuary, but need another site with more riverine influence to compare with the others. If you zoom into this map, maybe you can get a sense of where I was headed:

We couldn't make it to the desination in boat becuase the tide was still too low, so John and I decided to hop ship and head to Danger Point by foot. Unfortunately, the going was rough... I mean soft... super soft mud that was impossible to get through. John, having just gotten off a mudshrimp experiment with Sally was well accustomed, but this was my first real slog of the summer, and the stuff was deep - I kept sinking up to the top of my hip waders (mistake - chest waders for tomorrow!). I eventually had to give up and crawl.... We eventually made it out of the mud and into the fringe marsh, where the going was much easier. En route we found some bear tracks, which John swears are huge, but being only the size of my hand, I think are quite small or average for a black bear. We mentioned this to Steve who said, oh yeah, that must have been a Black Bear Crossing - their favorite spot for getting across the slough.

Checking out Danger Pt.
(looks like working here is going to be fun!)


Eelgrass Boa
(already so dirty I couldnt' resist)

We made it to the site, and it looks like it has potential, so we marked it out and will return tomorrow to set things up. Then we phoned for a rescue from the other side - it had taken us almost 2 hours to walk from the boat, so its a good thing reception held and we could coordinate a pick-up from the other side - a quick 30 minute walk through as amazing marsh that they've been restoring for almost 20 years now.

While we were waiting for our ride, we made friends with an Arctic Wolf! Yes, that's right, this lady was hanging out with her "dog", and although it first growled as John approached it slowly befriended us. It was huge - 175 pds, with the most gorgeous fur. Beautiful, just like its name Beau (although I think to be fair to the dog it should be spelt Bo), but also pretty scarry, especially as its owner, this petite older lady kept telling us about how crazy it has been of late at home - that's why she was hanging out at the slough!. She adopted the wolf after a shifty up-bringing and it still has some eccentricities, but seems ok for an animal that never needed to be domesticated. She said that there's a wolf rescue group that have made shawls out its fur - we were left with our own personal fur (and smell) covering after our visit.

Action Shot; Thumbs Up!

Back to the lab we made a stop to pick up some kayaks at the reserve. I was pretty excited to find out about the boats..... much easier that walking in the muck, and a good excuse to go for a paddle. So a great day, with plenty of adventures and exotic animal sightings amidst the rural clearcut lands of Oregon.

"Ciao", from Margot, seen here posing with a native rhodo.
All headshots coutesy of John and his pursuit of a good field pic of me. This one ain't bad.

Willapa Bay; A Retrospective

Two weeks ago I went to Willapa Bay on a recon mission. Katie Naphtali came along as my companion and field assistant. We walked out to two oyster aquaculture areas that we will be sampling later on in June. I was checking to see how these sites were faring since last year, getting spatially oriented with respect to the different oyster bed types and grabbing the sensors that have been logging temperature and light intensity since last summer. Some of these sensors were fouled – covered in barnacles and algae – but surprisingly, many of them looked fine and were still blinking away, thus indicating that they were still logging.
Quintessential KT pose above.

Pendant Loggers (the sensors)

KT did an admirable job slogging it out in the mud with a nasty cold, but I think I might have given her a false impression of fieldwork – we didn’t have to get down on our knees once and there was no grit to be had under the fingernails. And that was just fine, as we were en route home to Vancouver for a friend’s wedding. Despite some major Burden problems (that’s my vehicle as usual!) we made it back to BC for Genny and Chris’ fabulous wedding. Unfortunately, worked called me back to the States, and I headed back early the next week – the first of many summer road trips to come.

OIMB

Wow, that was fast…. Not sure if I can keep up this rate of postings! OIMB stands for Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. It’s located in Charleston, which is near the mouth of Coos Bay. I’ve been here doing some eelgrass monitoring for the past 3 days. I’m here by myself to get things organized for the rest of the summer. It’s a little hard to motivate yourself to get up at 4:30 and hit the foggy mud flats solo, and so I’m looking forward to a field assistant next week, as I don’t think its healthy when you genuinely think the seagulls are talking to you.

Its been foggy and a bit blustery for the past two days. My first day out was much more pleasant, one of those days when you feel ridiculously spoiled to be at this type of work. This was probably related to the lifting of the fog and my various visits from passing critters. The osprey didn’t seem to mind that I was standing right next to his prey. I only heard the splash as it bombed into the Bay, flying away quickly with a little fish in its talons. The seal and otter passed consecutively, checking me out as I counted swirling blades in standing water.

The tide wasn’t that low so unfortunately I had to make do with touch as opposed to sight as I quantified the percent cover of eelgrass and macroalgae in my quadrats. I’m trying to get a handle on the amount of macroalgae associated with eelgrass in these habitats – and this site has a ridiculous amount: thin sheets of ulvoids and many open-coast species that drift into the estuaries. I also count the density of eelgrass shoots in the quadrats – I’ll do this monthly this year to determine seasonal cycles of eelgrass in the Bay.

As the tide began to rise, and passing boats and animals left their wake I started to feel seasick with the rippling incoming wavelets – a perfect curl for fairy surfers! Luckily I finished my measurements along the transect line just in time for the flooding tide to hide the bottom from my view.

I’m tired (most likely attributed to a splendid day of climbing at Smith Rock prior to this trip) and am heading home for the weekend tomorrow morning to recuperate for next week and fetch my field help.

To Blog.....

Perhaps because its my first solo field mission and I’m feeling the need to communicate with others beyond myself, my cottage and my car, perhaps because I’ve already caved with Facebook and my whole world has gone public, perhaps because I’ve been scanning other blogs daily with the pathetic eagerness of new posts. Whatever the reason, I’ve decided to try it at blogging. So here goes…. a place to check in with updates on my summer of fieldworking on the Oregon coast. I’ll use this as a venue to let you know what the heck I’m doing out there in the mud, counting blades of grass, as well as a means for me to try to figure it all out, and document the process of doing so. I promise a good dose of reading about my eelgrass encounters in Pacific Northwest estuaries, as well as some other fun fluff. So stay tuned, and feel free to correct my spelling and punctuation and to tell me how to change the colors – I do like green, and it is appropriate, but this may be a little too much.