By Naomi, Ashley, and Jesse
We all know about the current pandemic facing the human race today. But what we don’t know about are the pandemics that are evolving below the surface.
Morgan Eisenlord from the Friday Harbor Labs enlightened us on one of the many major diseases facing our marine creatures today. The eelgrass wasting disease, not dissimilar to the sunflower sea star wasting disease, eats away at eelgrass plants throughout the Salish Seas.
Morgan discussed the labs she conducted to determine if increased water temperature is an eelgrass wasting disease trigger. She showed us pictures of infected and healthy eelgrass and demonstrated how, using Image J, we could find the area of a disease lesion.
This is unaffected seagrass that is happily thriving. 🙂
Earlier that morning, we, the Bottlenose Dolphins, introduced Dr. Dobkowski, a phycologist and visiting assistant professor at Bates College. The seaweed expert described the various research systems that she uses in order to conduct different macroalgal labs. One of these techniques involved using a combination of transects and quadrats in order to measure kelp abundance in different intertidal terrains. Her research demonstrated that there is less kelp diversity in the wave-exposed cobble zone due to environmental pressures such as solar and tidal.
Before she said goodbye, she discussed her lab feeding research on kelp crabs. Her main goal was to determine the crabs’ feeding preferences. Dr. Dobkowski conducted an experiment measuring the amount of three types of kelp eaten by the crabs in the lab. From this experiment and many others, she was able to deduce that a kelp crab diet consists of bull kelp, sea snails, and sargassum.
This is a kelp bed like the one from Dr. Dobkowski’s studies.
After listening to Dr. Dobkowski’s presentation, we moved on to finishing Kay’s presentation from yesterday. Kay finally showed us the results of her butterflyfish research! She explained how she used linear regression, T-tests, and ANOVA to demonstrate butterflyfish behavior. By comparing the two reef sites where she conducted her research she found that aggression was less common in the degraded reef compared to the healthy reef.
After a long day of lectures and lesions, we received a quick blogging lesson from Caroline to wrap up the day. She showed us ways that we could liven our future blogs. Let’s see if you can notice any of the changes!