huangt3's Journal

Ichthyology lab last week, we went on the Centennial and otter trawled. We went north and south of the San Juan Channel. The trawl was dragged in the water for about 10 minutes, but I'm not too sure how far it was dragged.

We caught a spotted ratfish, lots and lots of spot prawns, flatfishes, snailfish, walleye pollock, pacific tomcod, a nudibranch, a squid (but we couldn't keep it), seastars, kelp/algae, and poachers.

During the trip on the Centennial, we saw a stellar sea lion, dalls porpoises, and harbor seals!

I've gone bottom trawling before for my FISH 312 class, we caught a bunch of spotted ratfish, flatfishes, saw stellar sea lions, dalls porpoises and harbor seals in the Puget Sound near Ballard Locks. With bottom trawling we dragged up everything and was more destructive, but we got to see a lot of cool things that lived at the bottom.

Yesterday we went apple picking on Shaw Island. We left for the ferry at 11 am and got on the ferry at 11:35 am. It took us about 30 minutes to get there. We arrived around 12:20 pm. I learned that the apple orchard is owned by the University of Washington. It took us (20 students) about an hour and a half to pick most of the apples off the trees there. Many of us climbed trees to shake the apples off. We filled the back of the pick up truck to the rim. We had to wait until 4:10 to take the ferry back to Friday Harbor. While we were waiting we played apple baseball. We were pitched apples that were left on the ground and we would hit it as if we were playing baseball. It was so much fun! I'm glad it didn't rain that much.

Today, we will be making cider with the apples that we picked. I hope it's delicious! I originally thought we were just going to juice it, but Michelle told me cider making is a whole different process. It's basically gritty apple juice!

On November 6th, 2012, the ocean circulation class went with the marine biology class on a plankton towing field trip. Our goals were to collect zooplankton, phytoplankton, and data using the ctc. We observed the pelagic ecosystem.

The ctc data showed us the temperature, salinity, and phosphorescence (chlorophyll). The collect data using the ctc, the ctc was deployed down to 150m in two different locations (North and South of San Juan Channel).

We collected the zooplankton and phytoplankton at three different depths in two different sites. We used plankton net with a bigger mesh size at the deep and medium depth. That mainly collected the zooplankton and phytoplankton. We then used the small mesh sized net and dragged it around the bow of the boat and collected only phytoplankton.

At the surface of the water contained mostly phytoplankton due to the net size and the speed at which the towing was at.

It was a great experience and field trip.

I woke up at 6:15 AM to go Jackson Beach seining this morning. The reason why we went seining was to hopefully catch some sand lance for Charlie and Nick's research project.

Once we arrived to the beach, we quickly unloaded all the material we needed and carried it to the beach. We uncoiled the net and rope and placed it into the row boat. Nick and Jessica rowed out into the water and started dropping the rope and net. Once the net deployment was completed, we started to pull the ropes in from each side. There were about 10 of us this morning so 5 on each side worked out perfectly. My hands were rubbed raw from tugging the rope in. The mixture of the cold air, cold water, and sand exfoliated my skin.

We seined twice, hoping to catch sand lance, but we didn't get any. We caught 3 sculpins, 2 tubesnouts, 4 spiny lumpsuckers, 2 helmet crabs, 3 northern kelp crabs, 2 pygmy rock crabs, and a nudibranch.

This was the last time the PEF kids were going out to seine for their project. Once we got everything cleaned off, recoiled, and back in the buckets, we carried them back to the car and loaded everything. We made it back to the labs before 9 AM. Just in time for breakfast! Today was was great, although we didn't catch anything, I was still happy to see all the different species of organisms at that time of day!

Night lighting was a fun experience. We basically took the extended light out of the shed on the docks and placed it in the water. There wasn't a lot of visibility, but we could still see pretty far down.

It took about 5 minutes for the sand lance to start appearing. They were adorable! They swam together, getting closer to the light then getting further away. I tried to catch the sand lance with a net, but they were a little tough to get. They're super fast! Some of them weren't as smart and swam right into my net. There were also a lot of shrimp! They were up on the pilings, some green ones, some translucent ones, and the normal striped ones.

After about 10 minutes of that we went to flip the tires. There were so many tiny decorator crabs on there and barnacles. I think during the night is the best time to go out and see what's lurking around in the water. During the day, there isn't as much variability in the organisms.

I wish we could have seen dog sharks or other cooler fish. It was still fun and I'd probably do it again. The luminescence in the water was pretty cool as well!

One of our ichthyology assignments was to clear and stain a fish. I chose the sculpin that I drew from our first lab assignment.

I started to clear the fish about 6 weeks ago, it wasn't until last week when I could see the bones in the fish. I started off by soaking the fish in water for about an hour. I then stuck the fish in a solution of hydrogen oxide, tripsin and sodium bromide. I changed the solution every day but the fish still wasn't turning clear enough to the point where I was able to see the bones. After about 4 weeks of trying to clear the fish, I decided to poke some holes into the skin of the sculpin to try to make the process faster. At the end of week 5, I was able to see the bones inside the fish!

After that I placed the fish in some red dye with KOH. Every 5 hours I would change the solution for that until the sculpin itself (the bone part) was dyed. The fins turned out very well, however the rest of the body is still a little purple so I'm hoping the dye will come off! But so far so good!