I started my long week with an absolutely amazing day. I was invited (kind of invited myself) on a boat trip with the deep-sea biology class to deploy a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The ROV is pretty much a remote-controlled submarine with cameras and lights on it and is used to get video footage of deep-sea ecosystems. The weather was beautiful and the deployment of the ROV went smoothly. Although I wish it was much longer, I did get to drive it around for a few minutes and maneuver around the reef 200 feet below the boat. We got to see deep-sea corals, giant anemones, creepy looking fish, and much more. I was able to help out and learn a lot about the deployment and logistics of using the ROV. The rest of the week turned out to be a little more hectic. On Tuesday, we spent our day fixing a third pressure vessel so that we could simulate four different depths (0m, 500m, 1000m, & 2000m) during our pressure tolerance experiments. We were preparing to set up temperature and pressure tolerance experiments on Wednesday with newly fertilized eggs. When Wednesday arrived, Dr. Young wanted his deep-sea biology class to be involved in the pressure experiment so that they can see how high pressures can affect deep-sea animals and larvae. The students in the class helped us spawn the shallow water purple urchins (S. purpuratus) and the deep-sea urchins (S. fragilis). We didn’t get many of the urchins to spawn, and those that did were not generous with their gametes, so we didn’t get as much as we wanted. We got enough to run the experiment though. After fertilizing the eggs, we immediately placed some in the different pressure vessels and the rest were used in the temperature experiment. Also, I polished my methods for my detrital feeding experiment with my mentor. It took us quite a while to figure out exactly how I could know how much detritus I was actually feeding each larva. I decided that I needed some practice with my methods before I started the experiment, so I stayed in the lab late into the night to make sure I was ready.
On Thursday, I was expecting to collect the data for the pressure experiment pretty quickly and I would be able to start the detritus experiment, but it took much longer than expected. Even with the help of Dr. Young, we did not finish until 9:30 p.m. that night. After we recorded each vial of larvae we would place the larvae back in and repressurize so that we could see them after 48 hours. We would also be finishing the temperature experiment on Friday as well as starting the detritus experiment, so we had to phone a few friends. We asked everyone we knew that was free that afternoon and offered them pizza for their help. Kaylee even sent out a S.O.S. (Save Our Study) email to get as many hands as possible. Our cry for help did not go unanswered and we had so many generous volunteers to help us with everything when they could have been enjoying their Friday night. All of the data collection did still take quite a while, but we took pizza breaks and tried to hold on to our sanity after spending many hours looking through a microscope for tiny eggs. After several long nights, I am ready for the weekend.
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AuthorMy name is Matthew Mullins and I am from Birmingham, AL. I am currently a rising junior studying marine biology at the University of the Virgin Islands. I am working in Dr. Young’s lab and I’m looking forward to exploring the Oregon coast and getting some interesting research experience! Archives
August 2019
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