By Victoria, Zack, Maya, and Rachel

An epidemic sweeping the globe. Thousands, even millions, of individuals infected with the unforgiving pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae. Scientists desperately searching to find the source and cure of this crippling affliction, to save victims whose bodies are literally being eaten alive by this virulent parasite.

If this terrifying description made you shake in your boots, have no fear. Labyrinthula zosterae has no effect on humans- in fact, it is the pathogen responsible for eelgrass wasting disease, a plague affecting the leaves of Z. marina that spreads rapidly through contact with ocean water. Labyrinthula, or Labi, as it is called by some of the experts who study it, made its first major mark on the world in the 1930’s and has been spreading throughout the US ever since. Eelgrass on North American and European coasts even suffered from population decimations as high as 90%.

Afflicted Eelgrass (Zostera marina)

Today our program had a chance to interact with the disease at Fourth of July Beach, a research site and local eelgrass bed in Morgan Eisenlord’s current study. Morgan, along with several other scientists and interns, is currently conducting research on factors that affect Labi’s virulence, or it’s capability of causing disease, as well as how the pathogen is influencing eelgrass populations in the Salish Sea.

We helped contribute to her research by collecting around 200 samples of eelgrass leaves for later study that day, also measuring eelgrass population density with the help of our two most beloved field tools: quadrats and transect tapes. Post-collection, we took the aforementioned samples and scanned them, before running the photos through a program which we intend on using tomorrow to measure and log both the size of the eelgrass blades and their disease-induced lesions.

Zoe and Gabrielle sampling infected grass

Today was a beautiful, sunny day. Hopefully we continue to get lucky with such nice weather for the rest of our 5 days together!

Maya, Rachel, Victoria, Zack

*This blog post was late because we woke early to survey slugs with Professor Erika Iyengar Tuesday

Early in the morning, we woke up to a nourishing breakfast before hiking Mount Young with Sharon Massey, a teacher at Spring Street and a scientific illustrator on the side. She was there to foster our observations of the local ecosystem; we practiced some scientific illustration of our own on the summit, from drawing extensive landscapes to penciling in the smallest details of flowers and insects.

Learning from Sharon Massey

The hike up Mount Young

After a lunch of heated debates about James Bond and Marvel movies, we headed back to Deadman’s Bay, our location from last Tuesday, to conduct a field study with PhD student Will King. Will discussed with us the differing environments in the intertidal, as well as ways that the various creatures living there grapple with both biotic and abiotic factors. During our field study, we used transects and calipers (precision measurement devices) to locate and measure one sampling of the local barnacle population.

Clarissa hard at work measuring barnacles

Data analysis was next on the agenda as we returned to the Spring Street lab and recorded our findings from the intertidal as well as information from Beatrice’s rabbit field study on Sunday.

For dinner tonight, Professors Erika and Vik Iyengar were our guests. They both live in Pennsylvania and work at the Friday Harbor Labs in the summer, studying marine ecology and behavioral ecology respectively. Aside from our engaging dinner conversations filled with stories of snail mating and the scientific inconsistencies of Finding Nemo, professors Vik and Erika both presented slideshows on their studies of rattlebox moths, maritime earwigs, and local slugs.

Lights out was at 9 PM tonight in preparation for a ridiculously early 4:15 AM wakeup tomorrow morning.