Eclectic Essays on Eelgrass and Estuaries

Algae Addition Protocol

2009-07-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

One might think that it would be difficult to get algae to stay in place once quantified, but we have developed a protocol that seems to do the job.... well, at least for a couple of low tides when we can still see what's going on. The key is to get rid of the air bubbles lodged in the algae. After these are gone, it becomes negatively buoyant, and hopefully a significant amount is retained within the corral by the structure itself, and the eelgrass shoots. There are a couple of key moves to employ, and best be on top of these as soon as the tide starts to flood!

The initial Poke-Down (using bamboo spears) gets out most of the air bubbles, and we trap some of the algae by pinning it down in the sediment with the spears. This move is followed by the...

Shimy Shake. See Wyatt's manual force-down using his bare hands. See also Sea-oh's poke-down/half twist manoeuver. Seda (back right), is using the individual poke for find-tuning.

The Final Fling occurs when the tide is over the top of the corral structure. At this point its important to keep proding the algae, while at the same time flinging escaped algae back into the corral. Don't get me wrong, we can't get to every little fragment of ulvoid, but we can keep most of it at bay. It especially likes to accumulate in the back corners of the corral where it is pushed by the incoming tide. It tries to escape here, but using the Final Fling, you can make sure it stays where its meant to be. Usually, at this time, I am still final flinging while the rest of the crew has given up and has headed for high ground. I call it quits once I feel like I can do no more to help out the macroalgae addition treatment, or the allure of the coffee shop wins me over.

Nutrient Diffusers

2009-07-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

During the last tide series we spent a good deal of time fabricating nutrient diffusers out of 2 ft sections of PVC. I bribed the nice young men at Home Depot with cookies and juice to cut up the PVC, which they did by hand, only to find that I could operate the power saw at the OIMB shop with ease. We then drilled big holes into the side of these (Wyatt was the master of this), then suspended 500g of slow release fertilizer within them using women's panty hose. I had a hard time figuring out how other experiments had added the little fertilizer pellets without them spilling out all over the eelgrass bed. I had to e-mail a researcher to find the solution... apparently you aren't aloud to mention nylons in a scientific publication!

This is what the "nut diffs" look like once installed in the field. We also installed "blanks" in the non-nutrient corral plots. The goal is to see if the algae and eelgrass respond to a heavy additional dose of nutrients. This is already a nutrient rich locale, and there is a lot of mixing, so it may be hard to detect a response, but will be very cool if get one! We're going to replace the osmocote fertilizer in August and perhaps September so that there is a constant influx of nutrients available to the corrals.

The Finished Product

2009-07-14T17:31:00.001-07:00

After fabricating all that algae I realized we needed even more! Luckily, as I was purchasing another round of expensive silicon impregnated algae at the Rain Shed the lady there suggested that I use zap straps (aka zip ties in american lingo). Why hadn't I thought of that!!!!!! So we assembled the remaining algae during the last tide series in about a quarter of the time. There are now over 200 fake algae hanging out the estuary in the corral experiment - this probably amounts of over a grand in material costs!!!! They are doing what all good algae with fake holdfasts do - accumulate sediment, make habitat for polychaetes, and will hopefully do something to change the light environment of their co-habitants, the eelgrass (the goal of this crazy fake algae production).

Fake Plastic Algae Instruction Manual

2009-06-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

In case you've ever wanted to make fake ulvoid algae here's how:

1. Cut out one yard (wide) pieces of green silicon impregnated nylon, cut these in half, then in half again.

2. Add rocks as anchors

3. Sew rocks into nylon

Voila, the finished product!

new in Coos Bay....

2008-07-12T18:39:00.001-07:00

10 New Things during the last field trip to Coos Bay:

1. New sampling methodology: floats to catch drift algae

2. New excuse to wear wetsuits for servicing new methodology

3. New lab safety equipment (for deliriously long days!)

4. New Friends: Bonnie and Clyde of the Spruce Ranch

5. New Experiment at Fossil Point

6. New Explorations

7. New Art: algae wrack mobiles

8. New lovely underwater shots of Z. japonica (J. Hende pic)

9. New Skillz for Hollis

10. New All-American experiences: Charleston 4th of July Pancake Feed

Sally's Bend

2008-06-12T15:23:00.001-07:00

For those of you who aren't aware, my supervisor, Sally Hacker, has a very intimate connection with a nook of Yaquina Bay baring her name. The name of the spot, Sally's Bend pre-existed her, but I think she can now rightfully claim the namesake based on the number of hours she has spent emerged in in its muddy depths. You see, Sally has been conducting an experiment on the two species of mud shrimp that co-occur here for the past 2+ years. Granted, she has had some help in the mud, but its only through her perseverance, fortitude and gumption that the experiment has persisted. Most sane people would have given up after day 1, but not Sally or her students - they are a bit nuts and very hard core. Here are some reasons why:

1) you can't walk in mud: no you have to do a special strut with lots of forward momentum to go anywhere. some people have it, some people learn it, others wallow. alternatively, and especially near the end of the day, you can crawl or try the back-crawl. it takes awhile to perfect these techniques and some people lose it trying to take a step.

2) early mornings and long days: its not so bad waking up really early for fieldwork, there's always a lot of coffee to get you going, but the early hour tends to catch up with you once you've been out on the mud flat for 6 hours digging, strutting and hauling things around. I joined Sally and Jer on day 7 or 8 of the experiment take-down. At 5-6 hours a pop that makes for a lot of hours in the mud! Given the coffee consumption at dawn one undoubtfully has to take a break at some point. The guys are lucky, the girls have to head for shore.....

3) mud is yucky: which brings me to the next point. you get used to being covered in dirt and grime while in the mud. waders keep you nice and protected and you begin to sport mud flecs on your face as war wounds. However, some bodily places are just not made for mud, and it is really disgusting to get it in your ears, nostrils and other places that get exposed when you have to make that bathroom break - yuck!

4) mud sucks you in: for this experiment we use a giant metal core as a sampling unit (it can fit a child inside it). we dig out all the mud within the enclosed core area. one person is in charge of digging out the core, while the others go through the pallards of mud and collect all the shrimp and clams for later analysis. as you sit there digging or picking you gradually sink into the mud. this doesn't seem like a problem until its time to move or your foot goes numb. at this point you have to dig yourself out. you're on your own for this one - doesn't working well digging others out. so you have to do a dance, a wiggle back and forth motion with all sorts of twists and turns thrown in to extricate yourself. being limber might actually be the best attibute of a mud worker!

5) gross creatures lurk in the mud: you never know what you're going to unearth in the mud... for the most part we get harmless shrimp who are pathetic once you get over the size of their claws. but occasionally you find ginormous (apparently now an official dictionary word) worms. if you see or touch one of these beasts, most likely a Nereis spp. you can't help but squeal. even the most macho of guys can't help themselves. their undulating parapodia give anyone the heebee geebees.

I hope I've convinced you that this work isn't for everyone, but haven't deterred anyone too much. You're curious right? Everyone should try it at least once, its fun stuff, but a warning that it can be addictive for some unknown reason (perhaps the sulfur fumes?). All in the name of science you could say..... Do the two morphologically different species, Upogebia pugettensis and Neotrypea californianus compete? Do they bioturmate and change the sediment in difference ways as they burrow about? What structures their marked zonation in the mudflat? But there's got to be more ....... Its an excellent work out with market potential as the next exercise/diet craze - both quads, upper body and abs all at once, coupled with a menu of giant pizza slices, cupcakes and cinnamon roll bread pudding (with vanilla sauce) afterwards. Most of all though, its the feeling you have when its all over, re-hashing the morning's events in the coffee shop with your mud-mates, still speckled in salty earth, but relishing the fact that very few people could ever fully comprehend what you've already experienced that day.

June Monitoring trip

2008-06-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Corvallis right now, getting things together for our next big trip down to Coos Bay and doing some office work. But in the interim, here's a recap of the last trip. Val and John came with me again. We did the usual monitoring routine at four sites and marked some shoots that will be collected next time to measure eelgrass growth. Tides were pretty darn early..... in fact the latest sleep-in was 4 am! I think I'm still recuperating from lack of sleep. Weather here has been downright nasty of late, although we lucked out on 2 of the 3 mornings. Rumor has it that NOAA is on the verge of declaring La Nina!

Here's a glimpse of the state of our awakeness on Day 3. Note: vocalization at this hour is sometimes difficult...

We did have time to show Valerie some of the local sites on the first afternoon (before we attacked the mega algae sites the next two days, which take all afternoon to process). We explored a new down-home breaky joint (Joe & Jeannie's) where we were encouraged to dance, play guitar and chose some tunes on the juke box (at 8am we weren't really in the mood). I tried to get Val to come to Wall-Mart with us to get a true sense of local culture, but she declined. And then we went to the Cape to have a gander at the sea lions (Val couldn't understand why the other tourists were some entranced with their laziness and annoyingly repetitive barks - arf arf arfffff!). At South Cove a pair of Harlequins with their namesake plumage put on quite the show for us, and Pelagic Cormorants whizzed by. We were en route back to the lab when the sun made a sudden appearance, so we followed it out to the bluffs and rejoiced for a bit:

My signature move

My field assistants were, as always, marvelous! Valerie, visiting from Quebec was especially remarkable in her ability to laugh it off with too-big waders in too-deep mud. John kept us all going with his yarns and humour once again. Here are some pics of Val to show to friends at home.

Valerie post-mud at Danger Point (she didn't get sucked in!)

Val with her new friend the Roughskin Newt (Taricha granulosa)
(little does she know that they can be toxic!).

We stopped for a picnic leftover lunch at Honeyman State park en route back to Corvallis. The sky was going crazy with colliding weather systems manifesting in a bizarre array of clouds. I think someone was trying to tell us something, but we couldn't quite figure it out. Stormy? Sneezy? Super? Whatever the sign may have been it passed directly overhead and then snaked off to the South.

Quick return to Willapa

2008-05-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

On return from a conference in Vancouver, I picked up my new crew (John and Valerie) and headed back to Willapa for 2 more days of fieldwork in order to finish this round of data collection. We'll return later in the summer to see how things have changed at all 3 of the sites. Last time, Kate and I didn't make it out to one of the sites - Nemah. This site requires boat transportation, which we coordinated with Brett and Lee for this trip. Taking the boat is alway fun and never for lack of adventure....

We made it out to Nemah way too early the first day. This is always a bit annoying because it means that you could have slept in for another 3o+ minutes. We anchored in the channel and waited for the eelgrass to emerge. With the tide still high you have no idea that an intricate maze of oyster cultivation, rotation and ownership exists beneath you - only an inkling as indicated by the weird tree boughs popping up from the water haphazardly around you. These aren't as random as one would guess, but mark the channels and the different oyster beds.

With two extra hands we finished the work just before the tide flooded the sites. I was very gracious for the extra set of hands as the tides were much worse this week, and we had to hurry to get things done in time. Things weren't too stressful out there though as John and Brett are old hacks at this line of work, and Valerie is an experienced fieldworker, on loan from Universite de Rimouski. She's currently visiting the Lubmenge lab, and was really good natured about yucky fieldwork, most likely because her work involves scraping mussels off of frozen St. Laurence River buoys in the dead of winter!

When the tide starts to bite at our heels we can be assured that Brett's phone will ring. This is always Lee, wondering where the heck we are, as we're suppose to pick him up further up the estuary. Answering a cell phone is very difficult when you are wearing layers of clothing and also trying to drive a boat, not to mention the occasional passing downpour! The winds picked up daily just as it was time to power up-estuary. This slowed us down some, but we managed to cut through the rough chop at high speeds. The knees are a little worse for wear despite my best efforts to absorb the boat bounce with my snowboarder stance.

I'm glad the cell coverage is good out here though, or we may just have missed Lee and Steve before their little oyster hummock went under! (Note: this is not as dangerous as it seems, the water is still quite low and they could have walked home if we didn't show up in time.... I hope!)

Back in town, we stopped for a quick coffee (of course) at Adelaide's before getting ready for the afternoon's eelgrass and algae sorting and packaging extrazaganza. More to come re Adelaide's later this summer when we do our official rating of the Coffee Houses of the Pacific Northwest, but here's a picture of the bookstore adjoining the shop to shop you just how upscale quaint little Ocean Park can be!I have some more good videos, but until I figure out how to upload them faster or cut them down to size I'll wait with those. Until the next trip to Coos....

Kate's Day 7: Newport to Corvallis

2008-05-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

We had a quick coffee with Dafne this morning before heading back in the truck and driving inland from Newport to Corvallis. Margot drove me by Hatfield Marine Sciences Centre, where she and Dafne do a bunch of experiments. It is definitely a little bit less remote than BMSC, however, it doesn't have the proximity to rocky intertidal or quite the character of Bamfield!

We viewed one final lighthouse, Yaquinna Bay Historic Lighthouse, which overlooks the entrance to Yaquinna Bay and the bridge over to where Hatfield is located.

Finally, we arrived in Corvallis, dumped our stuff at Margot's really neat house, and came up to Oregon State University to finish weighing samples and so that I could write the blog up while Margs sorted out stuff!

Kate's Day 7: Fieldwork day ?: Netarts Bay to Newport

2008-05-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Fieldwork in the morning was pretty smooth... we were going to rent a boat to access what sounded like a really cool site, but... we were tired so we chose a walk-in site *right* next to the road. After a coffee in the sweet town of Oceanside, which has thsi fantastic view of sea arches, we waited for the tide to go out, and watched the sand beach in the middle of the channel of Netarts Bay fill with clam diggers.

We were just doing random quadrats for counting eelgrass shoots and macroalgae. It was a VERY high density of eelgrass - in one quadrat I counted something like 321 shoots!!

I also found this really cool oyster shell full of the boring sponge, covered in some ophlitaspongia (the red sponge), as well as a couple of tiny opalescent nudibranchs and some brittle stars!! If you really want to see them close, you can click on the picture to zoom in :)

We returned to the campsite to pack up and move out of the yurt, then sat down at a picnic table in the sunshine to measure eelgrass and count macroalgae from the previous day as well as today. It took a long time and I went a little bit crazy part way through and started speaking in a french accent and interjecting french words into everything.

We finally finished, packed everything back into the truck and drove down to Newport where we pulled up in front of Dafne's lovely housesitting abode. I am ready to shirk my duties with my summer job, uproot myself, and move into her bungalow with Darla the dog, to spend the summer in Newport. She is about a block from a huge sandy beach that is perfect for running on, she has the cutest dog to sit for the summer, the house is the ideal lovely beach house, and the part of Newport that she lives in, Nye Beach, is really cute and full of cool people. We took Darla for a walk after making another huge gourmet meal, and stopped into the Cafe Mundo which was hosting an open mic night - looks like a super awesome place to hang out in the evenings.

Unfortunately Dafne and her boyfriend Toshi were out for most of the night at a sailing lesson, and Margot andI were pretty exhausted and not really too sociable, so we had a quick visit and a really good night's sleep.

Kate's Day 6: Stony Point, Washington to Netarts Bay, Oregon

2008-05-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

Fieldwork in the morning was at the same site, an hour away from where we were staying. We had decided to pack up all of our things (another reason why that final night in Ocean Park was SO crazy! and probably while I am SO tired right now!) and get the heck out of Dodge right after our fieldwork, so we jammed everything in the truck at 5:30am and drove up to the site, did the work, and hopped back in the truck for a sweet drive down the coast.

On the North side of the Columbia is an oddly named (again, by Lewis and Clark) site called Dismal Nitch.

On the South side of the Columbia is the lovely town Astoria, which I fancied as likely having cheap cute tall wooden houses with a view of the Columbia.

We found another AWESOME cafe!!

and I considered finding work here:

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I forgot to put this in the post from the other day but we watched Michelle Obama speaking on CNN one night and were totally captivated. She's an amazing speaker (makes sense, since she is a successful lawyer). After being down here in the States for a while I feel like I should be walking around with a VOTE OBAMA pin).

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We also stopped in Cannon Beach as we meandered down the Oregon Coast. Known for the giant sea stack called Haystack rock, Cannon Beach is a giant sandy beach with a few awesome bird colonies full of seagulls and Common Murres.

Phalaropes? Haven't had time to ID these with the bird book yet!
I could feel the ocean calling me, so I walked as far as I could (until I realized that it was a pretty scary tide, and giant waves... oh yeah and that there was a hole in my Xtra Toughs - gumboots).
Lots of Guano on that one!

We hopped back in the car and continued down the coast. The road signs down here are kind of funny. Not only are there the crazy Tsunami warning sign, but also crazy ones that just say "DIP".

We next stopped at Cape Meares, which houses a beautiful historic lighthouse, overlooking an awesome Common Murre colony.

This outhouse had the thinnest toilet paper I have ever seen.

We ended up in Netarts Bay at the Cape Lookout State Park. In a YURT!

Kate's Day 5: :Fieldwork Day 3: Stony Point

2008-05-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

We had a bit of a drive around Willapa Bay and up towards South Bend, Washington to get to the next site. And an even further stretch of sloggging. It's really quite funny in hindsight, that we get all geared up in long johns, really tall socks, layers of fleece and toques, with chest waders and rain jackets on top. After about 5 minutes of walking through the mud (that reaches up somewhere around the calves) it gets pretty hot, especially in the areas covered by neoprene. Each site was at least 20 minutes if not more like 35 minutes of slogging. I guess the best part was that it was nice to feel warm. Also, I am pretty sure that my legs are well toned from all of the resistance training.
In between grids, the best and fastest way of making sure that the rope grid doesn't get tangled up is to wrap it around one of us!! In the above picture, Margot is walking around with the GPS trying to locate the four corners of the grid. Not so easy, as the GPS isn't accurate enough!
Short Billed Dowitchers!! They were all over the place.

It was REALLY muddy.

We turned up the coast and checked out South Bend, Washington for our coffee stop. Another great wee shop with THE BEST cinnamon buns I have ever had. Sadly that was to be our only break that day as it was approximately an hour to and from the field site and we had a tonnne of samples to process that night.

Kate's Day 4: Fieldwork Day 2: Willapa Bay

2008-05-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

After being a little bit too late for the tide the day before, we woke up at 4:30am and arrived at the site as it was still partially flooded. Not entirely knowing how deep some of the channels on the way to the site were, we hung out and watched shore birds and Brants for a while, and enjoyed the sights in the estuary.

We managed to just barely get 3 reference quadrats done before the tide crept up on us. I was madly collecting eelgrass and doing a random quadrat to survey for macroalgae (at each site we tried to get 20 of these done - measuring percent cover and number of eelgrass shoots and then stuffing a ziploc bag full of whatever kinds of drift/attached seaweed was also present in the quadrat).
It was another long day. We grabbed some more coffee, this time at the new coffeeshop in Ocean Park, and returned to the resort whereupon we threw our fieldwork stuff everywhere we possibly could to try to dry it out (after rinsing off as much estuarine mud as possible) , and proceeded to process the samples. More measuring of eelgrass, and then sorting the macroalgae and determining the wet weight of each sample from each quadrat.

Finally it was dinner time and we could put together another gourmet meal; this time was to celebrate cinco de Mayo!! We did our best with some Dos Equis, guacamole and salsa, and burritos!

Kate's Day 3: Fieldwork Day 1: Willapa Bay

2008-05-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

Oh 5:am sure felt early! The road was really busy with clam diggers, the parking lot at the edge of the mud flat was packed with oyster farm workers, and we were a bit late for our first tide of the trip. It was a beautiful morning.

Margot's field work involves spreading out a rope grid on a predetermined spot (located partly through awesome memory and partly through the use of a GPS and partly through the location of PVC posts previously pushed into the ground but not always still remaining). At each cross point of the grid, a quadrat is placed, and percentage cover of eelgrass, macroalgae, and animals/debris is counted. The number of eelgrass shoots are counted, and a measurement of the redox potential is then taken before moving onto the next quadrat. Margot did all of the initial measurements this first day, and I sat on my butt and froze while recording all of the numbers she was shouting out.

The first site we were doing was right on an area recently dredged and in the process of being worked as an oyster farm. All morning we had background noise of birds and Spanish-speaking oyster workers.

We barely managed to get three grids done when the tide breached the nearest channel and began to creep towards us. We slogged out of there (fording a channel and making me VERY glad to be wearing such sweet sweet neoprene chestwaders).

It was a beautiful day and only 10am ish when we finished (the benefit to getting up so early!). After a stop to pick up some clams in Ilwaco, we had coffee at Bailey's (and an amazing scone) and headed to the south end of the peninsula to check out Cape Disappointment.

I have no idea why Lewis and Clark named it Cape Disappointment - it's a gorgeous spot with specacular beaches on either side of the Cape (one is actually named Waikiki Beach). We wandered around the park a bit, and did a short hike up to the lighthouse.

It's a bit hot hiking in long johns and rain gear. We had to modify our apparel on the way down, which lead for some interesting looks from people driving by us as we walked down the road. I think that the two German businessmen whom we accosted to take our pictures at the lighthouse were a bit amused by our outfits, but they LOVED it when we decided that we were going to act out Lewis and Clark's famous Discovery Pose.

Lewis and Clark kept interesting journals and as part of a larger art project along the Columbia, an artist has created a walking path incorporating some of their observations during their travels, such as "bought a dog" and "do" "do" "do".
On our way back to Ocean Park, we ran into a roadblock which forced us to park the truck and watch the Loyalty Day Parade in Long Beach. At first we couldn't figure out why Loyalists would be celebrating in the USA, but upon closer inspection (and an article in the Oregonian), we deciphered that it is Loyalty to the USA day.

We also did the best we could in the spirit of the USA and pigged out on soup and donuts. Uggghhhhhhhhhh.

Lastly, before we could go to bed, we had to process some eelgrass in the kitchen of the studio suite at the Resort. Each day we collected 50 random shoots and measured their overall length, the length of the sheath, and width. Margot will dry these and record their dry weight to determine biomass.

That night we were still incredibly stuffed from our gorge fest for Loyalty Day . We decided on a small meal of wine and rosemary steamed clams with salad and baguette. LUXURY!

Kate's Day 2: Portland to Ocean Park

2008-05-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

As the week passed, a few themes emerged. Most days were long, and we found definite benefits in the consumption of coffee. What I hadn't realized about Margot's PhD research is that it has evolved to encompass a survey of coffee shops in southern Washington and western Oregon!

We started Day 2 in Portland with a cup of coffee... said goodbye to Elise and Mark and headed into to downtown Portland so that I could check out a few shops that I had heard about but never been to. First up: Trader Joe's! We stocked up on various foodstuffs and yummy treats for the long car rides and essential meals. We also stopped in at REI to see if there was anything on sale, and to purchase a few water bottles (non PBA). Mine is really pretty with a tree and a bird on it!

On our way out of Portland we took a few exits until finally finding Fisher's World for a pair of wader boots for Margot's chest waders, and then finally were on the road. We decided to take the highway through northern Oregon, along the Columbia, instead of heading through Vancouver Washington and following the north side of the Columbia.

Our target location: Sunset View Resort in Ocean Park, on the Long Beach Peninsula of southern Washington. Margot is very lucky to get a massively cheap discount, for this place has waterfront, a hot tub, tennis and volleyball courts, and more (sadly we didn't ever have the energy or the time to utilize the hot tub!!).

We made dinner (alphabet pasta - look what I ended up with!!)
And then we wandered out to the beach in front of the resort. Apparently Long Beach Washington is the site of the longest beach road in the world, so we had to worry about running into cars. We found a bunch of shorebirds enjoying the tire tracks!

Ocean Park is a tiny little community at the northern end of the peninsula. It has a nice, new coffeeshop/bookstore, a couple of grocery/general stores, a few gas stations, and a few vacation rentals. I really started to fall in love with the bungalows of the Coast... it's also spring-time, so the flowers in town were really starting to look pretty.

After doing a few hard calculations to figure out the optimal time to arrive at the beach, we set the clock for 5am, Margot pulled out the hide a bed, and we fell asleep to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.
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PS: this is a warning!! Be careful of tsunamis!!!

Kate's Day 1: Vancouver to Portland

2008-05-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

I suppose that it's quite busy here at OSU, and Margot has an extremely busy field season ahead of her, and she knew that not only is my schedule flexible but I was also looking for something to do this spring that would use my field skills. All in all, it didn't take too much convincing for me to decide to hop on a plane and come down to Oregon and Washington for a week to help Margot do her PhD. I had kind of been wondering what she's working on, and also wanted to check out her life down here, as well as see a bit more of the world. It is my first time in Oregon, and I have never made it out to the coast of Washington.

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I should explain that I am writing these posts on my last day, from Corvallis. My brain is pretty much a pile of mush, I feel like I might have the edge of a cold, and I am pretty tired from a week of early mornings! If I ever have time, it would probably be a good idea for me to come back and edit these posts. OR not.
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I need to thank Mel, Margot's Mom, for her help getting me to the airport. The day that I left Vancouver, I was called in to work Kindergarten in the morning, and then I switched schools halfway through the day and taught Science 10 in the afternoon until 3pm. My flight was from Vancouver to Portland, leaving at 6:15 and I was a bit nervous about the horrid rush hour traffic, especially since I was driving from North Van. Fortunately our worries were unfounded, I made it over to the Hessing-Lewis abode with plenty of time, and Mel dropped me off at the airport at around 4:30.

Margot and I nearly didn't find each other once I reached Portland (confusing airport!) but we managed to hook up and get me out of there and into Portland. We stayed that night at Margot's former labmate's lovely 1900s home in the Hawthorne District of Portland.

I wish that we had taken pictures that first night (ha, really made up for that later on!) because when we went out for a walk to check out Hawthorne St, we happened upon a bunch of people wearing bathrobes. As we continued down the street we noticed that there were actually hundreds of people in bathrobes, and they were lined up in front of a cinema. It turns out that there is a cinema that shows The Big Lebowski annually! The bar attached to the cinema was providing white russians for everyone... if we had only had a wristband, we could have enjoyed the fun!

Field Season 2008: Guest Posting

2008-05-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

Margot's field season 2008 has already begun - she has been far too busy thus far with trips to Willapa, Coos Bay, and Newport, that she has asked a few people to act as guest posters (and volunteer Field Assistants). Melody Hessing was the first Field Assistant of the year, and Kate Henderson, another FA transplanted from Vancouver participated on the early May trip to Willapa and Netarts.

Next set of posts will be by Kate..............

And now for something completely different

2007-08-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

We took a break from protected waters of South Slough to help Dafne with her larval barnacle and mussel collection at Cape Arago. The pump wouldn't work properly at the second site. We spent a very long time trying to make it run though. I wasn't being much help so I picked up the camera to record the unfolding events. We did get out ye 'ol plankton net and did a couple of tows back and forth along the surge channel, which seemed to work just fine, and is much much easier than dealing with the loud, stinky, heavy pump!

Guest story by Jer Hendersen

2007-08-19T21:18:00.000-07:00

In between early mornings and afternoon prep activities, Hacker lab field assistant extraordinaire, Jer, likes to crank up his laptop and plug away on his novella. I hadn't read any of this work until this trip - its good stuff, including many gripping stories about fishing and getting into trouble with stupid evil park rangers. And so I commissioned a short story about our adventures with macroalgae during the last field excursion. I did wonder what he was up to, typing away in the corner for much longer than I expected for a short story. What emerged, and what is posted here, is only the beginning of said story. He didn't even get to the real macroalgae caper! But instead, he sets the scene, with what I hope is a sarcastic and amusing tale of my use (and abuse) of his field prowess.

There are few things worse than getting up at four in the morning to go muck about in the estuary, unless it’s getting up at three in the morning to go muck about in the estuary, which is exactly how the week started.

“You ready to go, Jer?” Margot asked as we sat at the table gnawing on dry toast, wishing we had peanut butter.

“Mmmpphh?” I replied, rubbing my puffy eyes.

“Good. Here, drink this coffee.”

I reached for one of the two mugs she had just filled with scalding hot brew, but before I could grab it she pushed the other mug out for me.

“No, no. This one’s yours.”

“…Uh, why is this one mine?”

“Because this one’s mine.”

“Huh...”

We finished up and got in the car. On the ride out to the site I began to perk up and notice things; mainly that three-thirty is still too early for the sun, though not too early to do fieldwork.

“So what are we doing today?”

“Macro-algae additions.”

“What’s that involve?”

“Oh, clearing plots, counting shoots, collecting algae, taking redox, you know, all the fun stuff.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“No, you should go fast.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”
“Um, are you going to help?”

“Yeah, yeah. But you’ll go fast at your part.”

We pulled into the dirt parking lot behind the local bar, geared up, and trudged through the mud out to the site. At the first plot Margot gave me a brief run-down of the procedures, demonstrating how to do everything under the glow of our headlamps.

“So you put your quadrat down, stake out the corners with the PVC…” She began as we kneeled there in the cold mud. “…And then you count your shoots, trim around the edge, and sort the macroalgae out and put it all in these bags. Once you got that done, you just have to go collect two-thousand milliliters of algae, tuck it into the plots, stake it down, and then do the next one. Got it?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so.”
“Alright, well go ahead and get started.”

“Um, what are you going to do?”

“Redox.”

“Um, it seems like this might take me a while.”

“No, no. Once you do a few you’ll get faster.”

“Uh, okay…”

I plunged my hands into the icy water that was left sitting in puddles atop the mudflat from the receding tide.

“This sure is cold…”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll warm up in a minute.”

“Uh, maybe we could wear gloves or something next time.”

“Gloves aren’t in the budget.”

“Oh…”

As I was counting the shoots I noticed my hands starting to shake. Things didn’t seem quite right. I was beginning to feel a little funny.

“Margot, I think your coffee’s a little strong or something.”

“Yeah? You waking up?”

“Um, yeah, but my hands are beginning to shake.”

“Huh. Maybe we need to drop down your dosage.”

“Dosage?”

“Oh, I mean amount. Amount. Well give you less coffee tomorrow.”

“…Uh, okay.”

I finished up the shoot counting and moved onto gathering two-thousand milliliters of macroalgae. The algae stunk, and I had to stumble all around in the soft mud to find enough, but after a few hundred stinky handfuls I figured I was finally done.

“Do you think this will be enough, Margot?” I asked, showing her the pile lumped in the bottom of a dirty plastic bucket. She shone the beam from her headlamp on the mass and pondered it over for a second.

“…Hmmm… Doesn’t look like quite enough. Maybe we’ll have to do four-thousand.”

“Four-thousand milliliters?”

“Yeah.”

“Won’t that take a while?”

“Hmm. Yeah. Maybe you could run. And try not to take so much time rubbing your hands together. You’ve got a lot of sites to do.”

“Um, okay, but they’re kind of cold.”

“Yeah, yeah. They’ll be alright. Just work faster and they’ll warm up.”

I went back out into the darkness and tried to stumble around a little faster as I collected another two-thousand milliliters of macroalgae, but the mud was so soft I kept getting stuck. I thought I was doing pretty good, but then Margot hollered across the mud at me.

“Jer, you’re not running.”

“…Oh. Sorry Margot.”

“Don’t be sorry, just run.”

“Uh, okay…”

I finally finished the plot and moved on to the next one. I kept tripping while on my macroalgae sprints and getting all covered in mud. I tried to wipe the mud out of my eyes, but my hands were so dirty it just made it worse. On my forth plot, I noticed things starting to get light as the sun came peeking up over trees, kissing the beds of eelgrass and making them glitter. I looked over at Margot to see how she was doing with the Redox meter. It looked like things were going well for her as she stood there, daintily poking the probe into a plot a few thousand milliliters of macro-algae down the line. She scribbled down something on her data-sheet and then pulled the probe out, rinsing it down with a squirt bottle before giving her hand a quick douse where a spot of mud had splattered on it. I noticed she looked really clean.

“Jer, you doing all right over there?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Hmm, because you’re not working.”

“Oh, sorry.”

The next plot went faster, and the next one faster than that. Soon the sun was above the tree line, and everything was going fast. Things were spinning. I felt real anxious. I could count really quickly. It began to seem like I was counting, collecting, and consolidating all at the same time. Every time I finished a plot I was really sad I had to leave it, but every time I started a new one I was really excited about the possibilities and new horizons. I had a good conversation with a dead clam. He was really long winded though, and I had to carry him around to six different plots while he finished his story. Before I knew it, the tide had flooded us out and we were back at the truck peeling off our waders. I told Margot all about the plots and how much fun it had been. I really wanted to keep at it.

“Yeah, I could go back out there with my wetsuit and finish up if you want. I really like working. Working’s fun. The macro-algae stinks but when you squish it in your fingers and the water comes out you really feel like you’re doing something good for the world. People don’t do enough good for the world. The world’s really big. Have you ever been to Idaho. There’s not many people in the world who’ve been to Idaho, but I’ve been to Idaho. One time-”

“-Here Jer, drink some water and take this vitamin.”

“Vitamin? I used to take Flintstone’s vitamins when I was little. They tasted kind of like chalk, but it was a good kind of chalk, not like writing chalk. We should get some chalk and draw on the sidewalk later. Maybe we could make a-”

“-Yeah, yeah. Take the vitamin.”

I took the vitamin and started drinking the water. It tasted really good.

“Are you going to take a vitamin.”

“No I already took one.”

“Oh. Maybe you should take two. You can never be too safe, though sometimes too many vitamins can be bad. Maybe two is too many. There’s too many two’s. There’s too, and to, and two, and nobody can ever-”

“-Yeah, yeah. You ready for a treat?”

“A treat? I like treats. My dog likes treats. Have you met my dog? She’s-”

“-Alright, let’s go out for a treat. How about coffee and doughnuts.”

“Yeah, I like coffee and doughnuts. You know what else is cool, space shuttles. It’s crazy. I mean they go, like, way-way up there and float around. Space is really big. I think it’d be sweet to be an astronaut. I bet there’s one floating up there right now.” I said, finally stopping to take a breath as I pointed at the sky. I looked over to see if Margot could see where I was pointing, but she had rudely left in the middle of our chat and was already buckled in and firing up the truck. I ran around to my side and hopped in. I thought about how great seat belts were as I buckled in and told Margot all about how great seat belts were, along with all sorts of other things. By the time we pulled up to the little quaint deli that sat next to the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen I had told Margot just about everything I knew, and was starting to get exhausted.

“Man,” I said as we got out of the car. “I’m getting kind of beat.”

“Yeah, you feeling a little sleepy?”

“Kind of. More just exhausted.”

“Oh good. It’s working.”

“What’s working?” I asked as I reached for the door to the coffee shop.

“Hmm? Oh. Nothing. No, no. Not in there.”

“What? I thought you said we were going for doughnuts and coffee.”

“Yeah, but paying for food’s not in the budget. Besides, you can’t beat the conversation at the Salvation Army, can you?”

To be continued......

Jeremy Hendersen is a senior undergrad at Oregon State University. He likes to tie flies, catch fish, release fish, drink beer, write, grow miniature vegetables and is fascinated by the introduced Zostera japonica's potential ability to compete with the native Zostera marina. Below is an example of his fieldwork, after one tide. This macroalgae addition plot appears to be doing very well with 4000 milliliters of macroalgae stapled to the sediment, and nestled between the eelgrass shoots.

Trip Highlights

2007-08-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

We were back in Coos Bay last week, doing some eelgrass monitoring, and setting up for a macroalgae addition/exclusion experiment. Here are some photo highlights amidst many early morning tides and boat excursions to snorkel the sites. The Gatehouse: this is the cute little cabin I have rented for August in Charleston. Our lab truck (Big Red) looks like it dwarfs the cabin in this picture, but it really is quite roomey, and with a loft to boot. Sunset from the Gatehouse: offering spectacular views of Coos Bay proper, and refreshing sounds of lapping waves (and the fish processing plant around the corner and U of Oregon students heading to the beach fire).
Danger Point "poking": A fun activity, "poking" in the eelgrass sense of the word involves jabbing a hyperdermic needles (or alternatives: pencil #2, crab arm) into the sheath of the eelgrass in order to set a mark for use in future growth measurements. Unfortunately "poking" may be quite hazardous, especially at Danger Point, where unconsolidated sediment makes for tricky movement and slippery shoots that are easy to pull out of the sediment, not to mention the chance of infection after the occasional self-poke. Macroalgae Treatments: The Gatehouse also offers Turkish Towel (aka Chondracanthus exasperatus) spa treatments after hard days in the field. This drift algae likes to float into the marine eelgrass sites that I'm monitoring, but can be caught fresh while snorkelling the local kelp bed. Producing a nice lather, the Towel was used by Jer (shown here) as an alternative to the more commonly used cleanser, soap.
Until next week's report from experiment week in Coos Bay, bon soir!

P.S. we also managed to grab some eelgrass and mud from Yaquina Bay for the tank experiment at Hatfield, and catch an amazing Rufus Wainwright concert in Portland. I've been sleeping since then in an effort to release my mind from an eternal dazed state.

Coastal Transect

2007-07-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

I completed a personal coastal transect last week, from Vancouver (typical Jericho Beach shot above), to southern Oregon (cloud-shrowded Cape Blanco below)/northern California, and back to Coos Bay.
The drive south was necessary to pick up help for an estuarine excursion that same day. John and I made it back to Coos around 5 and headed straight for the skiff. We were able to measure water column light, temperature and salinity profiles at three sites in the estuary, as well as collect water samples for nutrient and chlorophyll analyses at each site.
We sampled the estuary on the same day as PISCO's coastwide Coastal Transect sampling. PISCO's large coordinated effort collects water samples from open coast sites from Oregon to Northern California monthly throughout the summer. Hopefully my estuarine sampling can be used to show some evidence of marine connection into estuaries, as well as to show the water column conditions above my eelgrass monitoring sites, and differences between sites in Coos Bay. The sampling that I did, with a YSI probe and a Licor meter, is in addition to permanent sampling conducted in the estuary that measures similar parameters. The permanent monitoring , however, does not measure light (PAR - photosynthetically active radiation), which is a key variable controlling eelgrass dynamics. Next time around, I will be able to get out on the water before dusk for some better PAR measurements!
John and I finished up around 9:00 and then processed the water samples in the lab. Ravenous, we tried to get food at the local pub, but were quickly left as the bartender wouldn't even offer us a hello, let alone fried food. We settled for granola, and then quickly crashed, after a long day on the road and boat.

Dr. SEED recap

2007-07-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

No time for blog posting during the 7-day field excursion to Willapa Bay, WA (with a quick side trip to Netarts Bay, OR on the way home). Too many early mornings (5:30 am), afternoons spent biomass processing and entering data, and trying to stay awake via massive cappucino intake and walks on the beach. John, Jeremy and I made it back last Thursday, and Sally was with us for the first 3 days of the trip. We had a great time, and data collection was fruitful. We are very grateful to Sally, who is in full support of our coffee needs and camping gear requirements - after a stop at REI we now have the most deluxe car camping kitchen ever assembled!

from the top: 1) pre-coffee, 2)post-coffee, 3)even Jackson is addicted,5) in case one method should fail

Beach walks

The Willapa project is a bit of a side project for me - looking at the effect of dredge oyster aquaculture on eelgrass. For the time being I refer to this projects as Dr. SEED (Dredging, Seeds and Eelgrass Demography). Funding for this work comes from WRAC (Western Regional Aquaculture Center), who has been funding this project for the past five years. The general foci of this research, spearheaded by Sally, Jen Ruesink (UW) and Brett Dumbauld (OSU/USDA) has been to understand how different types of oyster aquaculture affect various aspects of eelgrass demography and ecology. Lori, my former labmate, looked at early life stages of eelgrass (i.e., seeds and seedlings), and their success in different aquaculture types (i.e., hand-picking oysters from the sediment, attaching oysters above the sediment along lines, and harvesting oysters with a dredge). My current project is to look in greater detail at dredge aquaculture, and how it affects the various life stages of eelgrass (adult densities, flowering shoots, seedling and seeds). To do this we are going to follow these life history stages through time at three sites in Willapa Bay which are subject to a range of physical conditions: Stackpole, Stony Point and Nemah. Unfurling/untangling the GRID over a dredged bed

Sampling along the DRID on an eelgrass reference bed

Each of these sites has an oyster bed that was dredged this past winter as well as an adjacent contiguous eelgrass bed that we will use as a reference bed. We want to know how fast eelgrass can re-colonize these beds post-dredging, how the demography of eelgrass in dredge beds compares to that of the reference bed and how other physical and biological characteristics of the dredge beds may affect their recolonization potential. This research is important as it will provide greater information to oyster aquaculture management about the effects of dredging; specific to the eelgrass populations of Willapa Bay.

Fieldwork consists of unfurling and positioning da GRID (masterfully constructed at CRS in a hot-tub) on the ground. This is repeated three times in each dredge bed and adjacent reference bed. We sample sediment and eelgrass at all the cross-hatches of the GRID. All the GRIDS are aligned in the same orientation so that in the future we may be able to extend the sampling unit to other areas of the dredged beds. These beds are permantently marked and will be re-sampled throughout the next couple of years, during different seasons, to catch all the primary life history stages of eelgrass.

Ok, enough with the explanations, I've also posted a bunch more pictures with captions here: http://picasaweb.google.com/margothl/07_07_01_WillapaDrSEED
Most photos curtesy of John and his fancy new camera.

Canadians take Long Beach, WA

2007-07-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

July 1st, 2007
1 Canadian and 2 in training scout the beach situation for their Canada Day takeover.They conquer enemy soil (sand).The participate in traditional July 1st Canadian activities.They make friends with their nemeses.

A Mess of Macroalgae

2007-06-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-09T21:51:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

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.....

2007-06-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

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.