{"id":7086,"date":"2021-07-24T23:35:24","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T23:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/?p=7086"},"modified":"2021-07-27T06:16:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T06:16:09","slug":"searching-for-sea-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/searching-for-sea-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 4: Searching for Sea Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today’s blog by Joey and Maddy \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s search for Sea stars at Lonesome Cove was a huge and exciting success! Today tide times were much more agreeable with our sleep schedules, and we were able to start the day a bit later than usual. Some of us used the extra time to go get breakfast and coffee in town at the Bean, a local coffee shop. Those that went agreed that the poppyseed muffin was average, but said that the ham and cheese breakfast sandwich was very good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once everyone had eaten and packed lunch, we headed straight to Lonesome Cove. In the intertidal zone, we were greeted with the salty smell of the sea and many seaweed covered rocks. After quickly changing into our water shoes, Miranda, who studies Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD) as a science co-instructor at SSS, showed us how to conduct a sea star survey. For the next two hours, we scoured the rocks for hidden creatures, carefully traversing the slippery seaweed patches and trying to avoid cutting ourselves on the sharp barnacles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Everybody working together to spot stars on the beach! (Photo: Derek Smith)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We were amazed by the many bright red sea cucumbers and slimy anemones, but the most stunning animals were the bright purple Ochre sea stars. Unfortunately, due to SSWD, the population of sea stars of all species are greatly reduced; according to Miranda there used to be hundreds of orange and purple stars lining the rocks. But even despite the large declines, we were able to find 56 total stars, 22 of which were Ochre stars! Hopefully this data will help scientists around the world further understand SSWD and save the sea stars!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kika and a sea star that she found! (Photo: Derek Smith)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When we were done, we had lunch on the beach; all of us enjoyed the perfect view of the ocean, with Canada in the distance. After a little down time at the dorms, (during which Joey beat Gray in a game of Xiangqi) Morgan gave a presentation about eelgrass wasting disease (EGWD) and explained how it related to our survey excursion. In her presentation, she honed in on different experiments that people have conducted to understand how EGWD spreads. Specifically, she told us about an experiment she ran to test whether EGWD transfers through the water column. Her team placed healthy eelgrass samples around different distances from a natural bed of eelgrass. Two weeks later they retrieved the eelgrass and tested it for EGWD. Her results showed that EGWD can spread through the water column, and that a concentration of only 6 cells\/mL of the pathogen is needed to infect eelgrass. This presentation was extremely interesting and helped us gain an insight into how a real scientific experiment is run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, Derek gave us an excellent and engaging presentation, full of colorful photos of various marine organisms. For his Ph.D, Derek studied marine ecology in various parts of the world, and the goal of his presentation was to help us understand what it’s like to work in his field. After pulling us in with beautiful data displays and interesting facts, he gave us an activity that would allow us to truly understand what it feels like to be a marine biologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For dinner we had vegan patties or chicken with delicious turmeric rice with a side of Israeli salad, prepared by Tom (Caroline\u2019s Husband and excellent chef), Jacob, and Madelyn. We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner as we joked and conversed about the events of the day, happy with our sea star searching success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We challenge you<\/em> to figure out how to solve his puzzle – it\u2019s not that hard and we put the puzzle and the answer below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Derek\u2019s Puzzle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Derek has analyzed tens of thousands of photos of different parts of the Salish Sea seafloor. With his accumulated wisdom, he has come up with three simple rules to determine the characteristics of where a certain photo was taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Pink is shallow<\/li>
  2. Orange is deep.<\/li>
  3. Horizontal areas have less organisms than vertical areas. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Using the rules, determine which characteristics each of the following 6 photos have. One has each combination (i.e. only one photo is deep and vertical). (Making a table is a useful thought organizer). Good luck! The answers are below the photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Image 1:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Image 2:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Image 3:Image 4:Image 5:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Image 6:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (Photos by Dr. Derek Smith)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    ANSWER BELOW. SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Answer: Soooo\u2026. We don\u2019t know the answers either. Now you know what it feels like to be a marine ecologist!! (This is what Derek did to us, unfortunately)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Today’s blog by Joey and Maddy \ud83d\ude42 Today\u2019s search for Sea stars at Lonesome Cove was a huge and exciting success! Today tide times were much more agreeable with our sleep schedules, and we were able to start the day a bit later than usual. Some of us used the extra time to go get breakfast and coffee in town at the Bean, a local coffee shop. Those that went agreed that the poppyseed muffin was average, but said that the ham and cheese breakfast sandwich was very good.  Once everyone had eaten and packed lunch, we headed straight to Lonesome Cove. In the intertidal zone, we were greeted with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7086"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7110,"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7086\/revisions\/7110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salishseasciences.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}