mknowlen's Journal

After a long day filled with research presentations and talks, I went on an evening walk in the woods to get the blood flow moving again and wake up my legs. The light was fading quickly and by the time I was deep within the forest, it had reached the "black and white" phase, as I like to call it, in which your eyes can no longer distinguish between colors. I didn't have a flashlight, so I walked by the dim light in the sky as well as the moon (which, in the deep shadows of the trees, was not a lot).

I had hoped to come across a large animal of some sort (a deer or fox, perhaps?) but no such luck. Which is actually for the best because I'm sure it would have scared the daylights out of me had something jumped out of the bushes at that moment. Coming to the end of the trail, I watched an inter-island ferry boat slowly chug past the shoreline. Its motor a quiet and calming hum, and its lights a warm and inviting glow in the darkness.

At that moment I became contemplative about my months here at Friday Harbor Labs and sad that in just a couple of days I'll be leaving to head home again. I'll miss the ferry fog horns at 5am, the constant smell of sea water and fire smoke in my clothes and hair, the deer that quietly eat and sleep just feet from my room, the raven calls, the fierce night wind storms, late night tea in front of a fire, the clear starry night skies, and the peaceful bliss that is soaked into every molecule of this place.

The only joy I get in leaving is that I hope I'll get to return again soon.

Took an hour in the morning to slowly walk along the Shore Trail at Friday Harbor Labs in the woods and see what critters I could find. Other than chickadees and a jouvenile garter snake, not too many animals crossed my path. But that's okay because I was too absorbed in looking at the different, and abundant, fungi species popping up on the forest floor.

Taking pictures of them is almost like entering another microscopic world. A lot like Alice in Wonderland. There's large mushrooms that tower above the moss they seem to grow from, white mushrooms the size of a fingernail, slimy brown species, bright yellow-orange witch's hat mushrooms, yellow snotty drips of fungi growing on tree branches... They grow out of pinecones, moss, soil, and downed tree trunks.

And then there's the lichen. My favorite, the British soldier lichen (Cladonia cristatella) grows in red-tipped green spires out of logs and stumps, often with other lichen species nearby. They don't even look real!

All-in-all, an excellent way to start a day.

Took the light out again to see what we could lure out from beneath and below the FHL docks. Despite the cold, strong winds (nothing a warm cup of tea couldn't fix) we suspended the light in the water and laid out on the docks to wait. But not for long--within seconds we had lured in many shrimps (as always) and copepods as well as a handful of Gasterosteus aculeatus (sticklebacks), one of which was missing a tail (presumably from an unfortunate encounter with a predator). And then, a school of long silvery fish (smelt? sand lance? They never came up close enough so it was difficult to say).

We also saw a few Psychrolutes paradoxus (tadpole sculpin), which slowly waddled up to the surface and then sank down to the light. A 2" bright red Nereid worm of some sort undulated by, and then, the highlight, one large Pholis ornata (saddleback gunnel) wiggled up out of nowhere from the depths to check everything out. He then promptly sank down again, obviously dissapointed in what he saw. Overall, we spent about 40-mins nightlighting before our fingers had had enough and needed heat. So fun!

Lauren and I filmed our small Rhamphocottus richardsonii (grunt sculpin) specimen with a high-speed video camera to try and capture in slow-motion how it moves short distances using primarily its pectoral fins. On the video you can clearly see how it thrusts up and forward off the seafloor with its pectorals in a "hopping" motion. Using a ruler, we were able to determine that 5 "hops" equate to about a 0.6 inch distance for our specimen (which we dubbed "Little Richard"). Not very far!

We had originally hoped to film the dorsal fin movement of R. richardsonii, as it appears to constantly undulate even while the fish is at rest...but the small spines and rays of the dorsal just didn't show up on the high-speed camera. Though, perhaps with a macro lens we would have been able to.

Still, this was a neat project and really gives you an up-close look at fish locomotion.

11.26.12

Went nightlighting tonight and didn't see much (likely because the tide was so low--the light was only in about 4 feet of water). But for the little amount of time we were there for we did see a lot of shrimp (as usual), a couple small silver fish (tubesnouts? Maybe?), and a harbor seal (who buzzed the area twice). The seal made standing in the freezing cold completely worth it. He came to the surface twice when the light was off and seeing the moonlight reflect off his whiskers was pretty neat. We'll try again later this week and hopefully see some larger fish. It'd be great if some dogfish came in...

There's also a small group of quail (around 7 or so) I keep running into on the Lab grounds and every time I see them I can't help but laugh. They huddle so close together and run around in a little quail pack. It's cute. And then last week I saw a fox for the second time while living here. He was actually in the ditch near the University Road and Roche Harbor Road intersection (around 6pm) and waited for two cars to pass before slinking across the street...just before another car came. Timed the crossing just right.

11.1.12

Went trawling on the Centennial off the north eastern edge of San Juan Island for the first time. We ran two trawls and caught a wide-range of marine organisms: snailfish, sea stars, flatfish, crabs, shrimp (lots and lots of shrimp). The highlight was catching a spotted ratfish in the trawl net. I've caught many with a fishing pole, but never with a trawl. Since it did not have a head clasper, it was determined to be a female ratfish. In addition to this, we also caught a few spearnose poachers (Agnopsis vulsa), which was an entirely new species to me. They have a very primitive alligater-like appearance.

Also saw a few porpoises and a steller sea lion on the way to/from the trawl site.

10.26.12

I spent all day Friday, Oct. 26th with Dr. Emily Carrington and my mussel research mentor as we drove from FHL down to the Hood Canal to visit both a shellfish hatchery and mussel farm (both owned by Taylor Shellfish). It was an incredible opportunity to learn about shellfish aquaculture from those who work in the field and to actually experience the science of it first-hand. The mussels grown at the hatchery and the farm are Mytilus galloprovincialis (Meditteranean mussels), which have been genetically altered as triploid chromosome organisms so that they are unable to reproduce--incredibly important to limit hybridization with local Mytilus trossulus mussels.

The amount of science and fine-tuning involved is amazing. Everything is monitored--pH, temperature, DO, amount of food each young mussel/oyster/clam eats and doesn't eat, etc. The hatchery even goes to great pains to grow their own algae (of different species and in different densities) to feed the shellfish. And apparently, they are the largest producer of manilla clams in the entire country (80%). I was not aware of this!

While touring the mussel farm (which consists of simple floats/rafts about 50ft from the shoreline near Shelton, WA) I also got to see how important byssal threads are to the industry, as they depend on the mussels attaching strongly to their nylon ropes. Definitely lots to digest and think about while looking at trends in my research data.

Went out to Deadman's on 10/17 at 10:30pm with the Ichthyology class for some night tidepooling. What fun! We stayed out until 2am, armed with flashlights and buckets, looking under rocks for clingfish and various other critters. This was the first time I had ever gone night tidepooling and can't wait to go again. Every rock I flipped had gunnels and/or pricklebacks and many different crab species. Also saw a sunflower star, some very large keyhole limpets, nudibranchs, chitons, and clingfish.

Earlier in the week on the 15th I saw a Northern River Otter while walking next to the shoreline at FHL early in the morning. He was busy swimming and diving near the rocks to (I assume) get food. It was quite a treat to be so close.

Also, after reading various articles on Mytilus edulis mussels, I found out that the mussels I am using for my experiment and collected near Jackson Beach are technically Mytilus trossulus (a west coast hybrid of Mytilus edulis). The two species are so closely related that the only way to determine which is which is through genetic sequencing. Their distribution, however, is different: trossulus is found along the west coast while edulis is east coast.

Woke up bright and early to go out to Jackson Beach near Friday Harbor, WA to collect Mytilus edulis mussels for my marine research project (temperature effects on byssal thread production in Mytilus edulis). Got there before dawn and collected 80 of them during the low tide. My project grad student mentor informed me that it's actually quite difficult to come by mussels around Friday Harbor (perhaps due to predation?), but at Jackson Beach there's a little channel owned by the UW where they grow abundantly, along with chitons, snails, and urchins. I think they are numerous there because most of the day they're protected underwater from predators (the low tide is still under about 1-2" of water there). I also did not see any seastars in the channel...

After collecting, the mussels were stored in dock boxes under the FHL docks so that they would be protected from predators and have a steady supply of food. On Friday, 10.12.12, my research partner and I took 12 of them and began our first temperature trial with the mussels in the flume. It started out well enough--the mussels were active and sticking their feet out to start producing byssal threads--but after a few hours it became obvious that something wasn't right and the mussels weren't happy. They weren't producing threads and remained closed. It turned out that the water flow was just too stagnant for them. After raising the flow and changing out the water, they all produced some threads. Time to repeat the temperature trial again!

9.28.12

Spent a good hour or two lifting up tires off the Friday Harbor Laboratories dock to look for critters and was not dissapointed! I was hoping to find nudibranchs, but no such luck this particular day. Instead I saw a good number of isopods and teeny tiny decorator crabs, along with the usual giant acorn barnacles (which, when opening and closing are quite a sight to behold) and a nice little hairy chiton.

Earlier in the morning at 7am, while walking about the FHL grounds, I stumbled upon a black fox while he was pouncing on and playing with some sort of small rodent. He continued for a minute or so before he looked over and saw me, and then bolted in the opposite direction. Hopefully we'll meet again soon (preferably when I have a camera at the ready).

Also...the deer. The deer are everywhere! I stumble across them in the morning, at night, during the day. They seem considerably smaller than those we have back at home in Kitsap County--can't tell if it's due to age or just that their diet is limited here with lots of competition (with other deer).