Hi everyone! Welcome back, to week four! This Saturday we took off on our long awaited boat trip! I’d been looking forward to it since May when I received my acceptance letter. Last September I went out into the ocean on a boat in Alaska, and never felt happier! I’ve missed the sea since then. I decided to take a dose of Dramamine - to make sure sea sickness didn’t get in the way of my fun. Unfortunately, I did not react very well to the Dramamine, and was pretty much unconscious the whole trip… I spent the rest of the day in my dorm alternating between sleeping and throwing up… definitely a lesson in taking the listed side effects seriously! I’m glad I have taken a few other boat trips previously, so I didn’t miss out too much on the experience. Thankfully the other REU’s collected many sea creatures along the trip, and brought them back to our aquarium! I’ve enjoyed visiting the creatures each morning. They are our little sea pets. We collected a baby squid during our voyage, but it wouldn’t have been able to survive, so Richard froze it to look at. We’ve had a few REU visitors throughout the week in the lab, asking to “see the frozen squid”. On Wednesday I made adult barnacle extract - to encourage settlement. The cyprids still had not settled onto the plates, and I needed them to in order begin to collecting data. Painting adult extract onto the plates has encouraged barnacle settlement in previous studies I have been reading. There is little data as to why this works, but it is believed to be caused by proteins present in the solution. I collected adult barnacles off of the marina, brought them back to the lab…. and ground them up into a yellow powdery-goo. Sorry barnacles, rest in pieces!! I ground this substance further with added sea water, until it became “barnacle juice”. I centrifuged the solution to separate the liquids from solids. I separated the liquids from solids, and fed the solid ground up barnacle remains to our sea creatures. I boiled the liquid barnacle extract for ten minutes to keep the enzymes from digesting the proteins. I painted two layers of the solution onto air-dried biofilm covered plates. I air dried the plates 30 minutes in between each of the two layers. My barnacle extract was a success! The very next morning I found a crenatus settler - the most challenging cyprid species to settle! For fun, I painted my sea plates with the Crenatus extract, to see if and what would choose to settle. Low and behold, apparently Balanus glandula are attracted to Crenatus extract! The plate is crawling with B. Glandula cyprids who have not metamorphosed yet, as well as settled juveniles! I made a batch of B. Glandula extract and C. Dali extract, and I will test how they compare in success! I’m glad I finally have some settlers to work with, and data to collect. I will continue monitoring my current settlers and documenting their development. I am collecting more cyprid species and trying to settle them, as well as testing out my barnacle extracts. I have plates out in the sea, and plates in a sea table at the lab. I'll see how settled cyprids compare with wild settled cyprids. On Wednesday I attended a seminar with Dr. James Carlton, from the Williams College-Mystic Seaport, the world’s expert on marine bioinvasions. He discussed the link between marine bioinvasions, plastic, tsunamis, storms, and coastal development. The Great Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 gave him an opportunity to study the transoceanic rafting of marine organisms, as the event carried hundreds of Japanese marine species into North America, some of these species continue to arrive in 2021-2022! On Friday morning we took a trip to Qochyax Island - the tide was low enough! We climbed down a sea cliff, trecked across tidepools, and ventured into a sea cave! It was a LOT of fun!! Thanks for reading, see you next week! Annika
4 Comments
Cliff Reynolds
7/18/2022 09:11:35 pm
Hook me up with some seafood & i'll slip you some fast food..."squid-pro-quo"
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Annika
7/20/2022 08:54:36 pm
🦀 🦑
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Felicia
7/21/2022 08:15:08 pm
This is so interesting to read. You make it all sound so exciting! Loving your pictures of the week and critters!
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Annika
7/22/2022 10:46:41 am
Thank you :)
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Hi! I'm Annika, a biology student attending Lane Community College. I will be researching cyprid larvae in the Emlet lab this summer. I look forward to sharing my findings on Cyprids. I love roller skating, my eleven penpals across the globe, my two cats, two guinea pigs, and the enchanting PNW woods - my forever home.
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