This week has been hectic and busy! It is the second to last week and everyone has been working on their posters. Last Friday we celebrated Nick’s birthday at 7 Devils brewery. We had a great time, but I found it bitter-sweet since we’re all leaving next week. The invertebrate ball was last Saturday and everyone dressed up as their favorite integrate. There is a catwalk and judges on the most biologically accurate and non-accurate costumes. I chose to be an urchin and rocked some urchins buns on the runway. Last weekend my boyfriend Evan visited and we went out and explored Bandon and the local coastal trails. One thing I have really appreciated about coming here is all the amazing coastal nature that is everywhere. The small coastal bays and rock formations are very beautiful. Last Wednesday Aaron and I went diving in Port Orford. On our first dive, we had to replace the whale camera and while Aaron was replacing the camera I found a small Pycnopodia/sunflower sea star! It is the first one that’s been found in Port Orford since the wasting disease. Aaron has dubbed me the “Pycnopodia whisperer” since I’ve found 2 out of the 4 seen here this summer! On our last dive. Aaron and I went on a spearfishing dive and caught some rockfish. The tacos were fantastic! Next week is the final week and I’ll be finishing and presenting my poster! Stay tuned!
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Hello! The weeks here have been going by so fast. This week I have been focused on urchin gonads, presentations, and video data entry. Last Monday Annika and I volunteered at the CLMC as we always do. When we went to feed flash he was very active so we had a mini photoshoot. We feed him half a crab in a jar with a lid. This is a form of enrichment because he must open the jar to get the crab out, but as you can see he is very good at this and quickly takes the lid off and takes the crab. As I’ve been dissecting urchins I’ve noticed that the gonads come in a range of colors from bright orange, pale yellow, to brown. I’m wondering if it’s an indicator of health, reproductive readiness, or environmental factors? Last Wednesday Aaron and I went to Port Orford to replace whale cameras and gather urchins. It was a calm day in the bay and the visibility was much better! We placed a camera at 2 sites and went to a new spot to collect urchins. While we were doing our transect we came across a giant pacific octopus laying flat against a rock. It was pretty big and had textured camouflage. It was the first time I had seen one in the wild and the highlight of my week. The giant pacific octopus was my favorite animal at the Seattle aquarium as a kid so I was ecstatic to see it. We did a total of 5 dives that day! Afterward, we celebrated by having some fancy coffee in Bandon at a chocolate shop. This Saturday the REU students and I will be presenting our research to high schoolers via zoom. Also, Saturday evening is the OIMB invertebrate ball! Everyone dresses up as their favorite invertebrate and there is a costume contest. Next week I’ll be creating my first draft of my poster and working on more video data analysis, stay tuned!
Hello! It has been an eventful week! Last weekend some REU students and I went to Portland for the weekend. We ate some great food and explored the city. We also went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Technology and got to see some cool fossils and dinosaur replicates. The weather was really nice and we did a lot of thrift shopping. On Wednesday, Aaron and I went to Port Orford to set up a whale camera and to collect urchins. We were accompanied by Kevin the OIMB and OSU DSO and Lisa who is part of the whale research for the Kelp2Whales project. The first dive site was near these cool rock formations in the bay. As soon as we were there, a grey whale came and checked us out! Aaron and Kevin went down to attach a camera for whale footage. The camera Aaron and Kevin went to set up was placed in a specific spot in order to capture whale feeding behavior. Apparently the visibility was so bad that neither could see their gages, so they decided to put it in another location. The second location was much better and Aaron and Kevin were able to set up the camera. During this another gray whale came to the boat to check us out, it was a very magical experience. Aaron and I went to dive and collected 12 urchins. Since Port Orford isn't protected, they have their boats on dryland and then lowered into the water, so on our way back we got to ride the boat up to dry land! On Friday Aaron, Svetlana, and I went diving near lighthouse beach in Charleston. It was a beautiful day and the rock formations at the Lighthouse were amazing. There was a lush bull kelp forest where we did two dives. Svetlana was collecting bull kelp holdfasts for her research while Aaron and I did our benthic transects and urchin collections. I collected 24 urchins! The dives sites we dove haven't been surveyed in many years so it was special to be diving there. Next week Aaron and I will be diving at Port Orford again, stay tuned!
Hello! This week has been focused on urchin dissection, a project presentation, and creating still photos from previous dive videos. Last weekend, some fellow REU students and I went to Eugene Oregon for the weekend. We went to a watering hole with a natural rock slide and explored the downtown area. It was nice to enjoy some hot summer weather! Last Monday Annika and I went to CMLC to volunteer. During the feeding of the wolf eels, all the fish in their tank stole their food, so we had to remove some of them. Catching large fish in a tank is a lot harder than I thought. We caught the rockfish and kelp greenlings and put them in the other large tank with flash (the giant pacific octopus). Once the fish were removed, we cleaned the tank and removed the old mussel shells left at the bottom. Hopefully, the wolf eels will have less competition from now on. Throughout the week I have been dissecting my dive urchins and looking through benthic transect videos. With each video I process, I create 4 still photographs to quantify the percent cover of the purple urchins and kelp if it’s visible. I also have been helping other REU students with their research. This Friday Annika and I helped Jordan collect crabs for his research. We went out to three spots in the estuary and emptied the crab traps. Jordan is collecting invasive green crabs for his project. We found green crabs, shore crabs, Dungeness crab, and small sculpin fish in the traps. We had to wear long waders, special mud shoes, and gloves. After that, we got to measure and weigh them. Next week Aaron and I will be diving in Port Orford to do some benthic videos and to replace an underwater camera for the Kelp2Whales project, stay tuned!
Hello! We are now halfway through the REU program and it is flying by! This week I’ve been working on my research proposal, data entry, and dissection. Last weekend was the 4th of July and we watched fireworks and had a bonfire. On Wednesday I dissected my first urchin. It was a test run for when I dissected my collected urchins. To start I had to sedate the urchin, and we try to be as humane as possible. When the urchin was sedated, I had to weigh it, find its volume, and measure its height and diameter. To measure the height and diameter I had to cut the spines of the urchin off. It looked very strange without its spines, like a hairless urchin. Once the physical measurements were done, I had to begin the process of opening the urchin. To do this I had to cut its mouth and Aristotle lantern out. The Aristotle lamp is its teeth and jaw apparatus (I saved it for keeping). I then had to cut the urchin open, to do this I used scissors and cut along the equatorial line in order to not mess up the gonads. Once opened, I had to remove the digestive system. Afterwards, I scooped the gonads out and weighed them. This is the process I will do with all the urchins that I collect from dives. It was a fun learning experience that I’m excited to do more of! This Thursday Annika, Rhoda, Jordan, Nick, and I went to the boat marina docks to test out the CTEL lab’s ROV (Remotely operated vehicle). It comes with a controller similar to an Xbox controller but with a screen in the middle to see what the ROV is displaying. It was really cool but hard to control for footage. Next week I will hopefully be doing some more diving, urchin dissection, and video analysis. Stay tuned!
Hello! This week I’ve done a lot of literature review for my project and some fun activities! I have mostly been focusing on solidifying my project, gaining background information, and figuring out my urchin gonad protocol. In my previous post, I said I would go into more detail about my project so here it is! My project at OIMB is based on Aaron’s #Kelp2Whales project. Over the past 5 years, kelp forests have been declining due to an increase in purple urchin populations and climate change. In 2013-2014, the main predator of purple urchins, sunflower sea stars, experienced a large die-off event due to sea star wasting disease. With the loss of a main predator, the purple urchin population has been increasing, resulting in the overgrazing of kelp forests, turning them into urchin barrens. These urchin barrens are desolate areas where urchins have eaten all the kelp, resulting in a barren with little to no life. Kelp forests shift from forest to urchin barrens naturally, but due to climate change, the bounce back of the kelp will be delayed longer than usual. This has become a huge issue in Northern/Central California and is spreading to Oregon. The way this connects to whales is because grey whales have been observed hanging out and feeding in the kelp forests along the Oregon coast. This behavior is relatively new and shows that there is a stronger connection between whale ecology and kelp forests than previously thought. Since the urchin barren problem is slowly shifting to Oregon, there needs to be a better understanding of Oregon’s coastal benthic community. I will be collecting video and photographic data of the benthic community of Oregon’s southern kelp forests. Using an underwater camera via SCUBA, we will be filming transects of the benthic community along the coast. Using this video data, I will quantify the percent coverage of kelp to urchins. I also will be collecting urchins to sample their gonads in the lab to calculate their gonad index. The gonad index is a measurement of the urchin's gonads compared to their actual size. It is a measurement of their overall health, reproductive readiness, and food intake. I will then compare the gonad indexes between different habitats to see if they differ from one another. By comparing the gonad index to each habitat we can see which places urchins are more developed and healthy. This will hopefully provide more insight into the kelp forest ecology of Oregon and the ecology of purple urchins. Last Friday Annika and I went in for our training day at the Charleston Marine Life Center. We got a tour of the marine life center and got to prepare the meals for all the animals living there. They have all sorts of local fish, invertebrates, and bigger animals such as skates, a giant pacific octopus, and wolf eels! Flash, the giant pacific octopus was very sleepy that day. Last weekend we had our REU cohort camping trip and an epic morning of tide pooling! We camped at Sunset Bay campground Friday night and enjoyed fried chicken and smores by the fire. The next morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and headed to Sunset Bay beach for an extremely low tide. Richard led us through a dense forest trail that led us to an area where we could access the “island” to do tide pooling, where most people can’t. It was honestly the best tide pooling I’ve ever done! So many urchins, anemones, small fish, and sea stars! The island has a tunnel that leads to more tide pooling areas. It was cool to roam around in what would normally be underwater. This Tuesday we went out for another dive to do some transects and collect some urchins for sampling. We dove at the jetty and the OIMB kelp forest. The visibility at the jetty was pretty bad and very dark. As we descended into the depths, most of the sunlight was gone within 10 ft down. Our lights were the only thing allowing us to see down there! It was spooky but also thrilling! I collected a total of 9 urchins. In preparation for this dive, I decided to wear more layers to stay warm, but I forgot that it would make me more buoyant. Since the kelp forest was 5-15ft and couldn’t stay down, so I watched Aaron from the top of the water and did some very fancy snorkeling. The kelp forest was very pretty but surprisingly there were no urchins! It got me wondering why weren't there any urchins in this kelp forest, but plenty at the jetty? Might be something to consider for my project. Along our dive, Aaron picked up some crabs for us to eat for dinner. That night we bought groceries for a crab pasta dinner. Figuring out how to cook the crabs was eventful, thrilling, sad, but successful! The crab was delicious and definitely will happen again on our next dive Next week I plan to be working on my research proposal, dissecting urchins, and analyzing video data. Stay tuned!
Hello! My name is Maite Gato-Fuentes. I am from Seattle Washington, but I am a senior Marine Science major at California State University, Monterey Bay. I am an AAUS certified scientific diver and an aspiring kelp forest ecologist. My research interests are kelp forest and coral reef ecology, marine mammal biology, and oceanic conservation. Specifically, I am interested in how benthic organisms affect kelp forest ecosystems and what can be done to reduce the spread of urchin barrens. Outside of research, I do lots of recreational scuba diving, surfing, hiking, and drawing/painting. In Monterey, my favorite pastimes are camping/surfing in Big Sur and hiking with my cat Chaka! Here at OIMB, I am working in the Coastal Trophic Ecology Lab with Dr. Aaron Galloway. I will be surveying the benthic community composition of the seafloor using an underwater camera via SCUBA. I will also quantify the abundance of kelp to purple urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, and gather purple urchins from each video survey to sample their gonads. I will go into more detail about my project next week! Getting to OIMB was an adventure! I drove 12 hours from Monterey Bay, CA to Charleston, Oregon. The first night, my roommate Alondra and I walked to Lighthouse beach during sunset and witnessed a beautiful pink sunset with a full rainbow! Throughout the first week, we have been exploring the OIMB campus and the beautiful coastal parks and scenic lookouts. Last Tuesday Annika, Makenzie, and I watched the sunset and saw a pod of orca whales! It was my first time seeing wild orcas so I was very excited. Last Wednesday morning, Aaron and I went out on our first dive! We did two dives within the bay of Charleston to do two check-in dives. These dives are required to make sure that I’m proficient in all my diving skills and that all my dive gear works correctly. Our first dive was in the sandy shallows and our second dive was along a jetty. We saw tons of invertebrates, crabs, rockfish, kelp greenlings, and lingcod on our jetty dive! The star of the dive was seeing an orange ~20 cm sunflower sea star, Pycnopodia helianthoides! These sea stars used to be the main predator to purple urchins but they had a major die-off event in 2014 due to sea star wasting disease. They are considered locally extinct in most places on the outer coast from Washington, Oregon, and California, and are still quite rare throughout their range. It was amazing to see one in the wild and a glimmer of hope for their future. Last Saturday we went out on Pluteus, the OIMB research boat! We were able to trawl the seafloor and got to see some cool critters and lots of crabs! This second week Aaron and I went on another dive to collect some bat starfish and purple urchins for lab use. On our dive, we saw another sunflower sea star! This one was a little smaller than the last one we saw, but it was bright orange and looked very healthy. It’s really uplifting to see that these sunflower stars are slowly coming back. On the left you can see Aaron and I holding up a bat star and purple urchin in our drysuits! On the right is the sunflower sea star we found! I’m really looking forward to next week! I will be solidifying my project, learning more about gonad indexes, and might start collecting data so stay tuned!
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AuthorMy name is Maite Gato-Fuentes. I am a senior marine science major at California State University, Monterey Bay from Seattle Washington. I'm working in Dr. Aaron Galloway's Coastal Trophic Ecology Lab. Archives
August 2021
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