Pacific Sea Nettle

Did you see the huge smacks of jellyfish wash up last weekend? They were like nothing we usually see here. They had clear bells 6-10 inches across with DEEP RED tentacles around the margin and long frilly oral arms extending down from the center. These are called Pacific Sea Nettles, or Chrysaora fuscescens and they are usually found in the ocean waters. Their presence here indicates a large intrusion of surface sea water was carried in down the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Dr. Claudia Mills, the jellyfish guru in Friday Harbor did not see Chrysaora on the north side of the Strait this time, however she says she usually sees one or two float by a year.

Chrysaora fuscescens is a popular jelly to include in aquarium displays because it is so impressive. You can see them on display in the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Long Beach Aquarium (photo), and in traveling Jellies exhibits.

PS - a group of jellyfish is called a "smack" perhaps because that is the sound they make as you hit them with a boat.

Smith Island Sampling

Smith Island is the small island beyond Protection Island off Whidbey. Smith and Minor Island are connected by a beach at low tide. Like Protection, Smith now has a marine reserve status protecting the DNR owned sub-tidelands. On Friday a group of seaweed scientists all went out to Smith Island to make a permanent collection of who and what are living there.

This was our third attempt to go, and the weather was finally kind to us!

Dr. David Duggins took us out on the R/V Centennial from Friday Harbor Labs. Dr. Tom Mumford set up a video camera to record the seaweeds living on the

bottom. Next we towed a dredge

behind the boat while divers

carefully collected seaweeds that were more fragile.

This photo shows the basket full of seaweed being lifted into the sorting table.

Once the seaweeds are on the table, everyone gathers around, sorts the algae and calls off species names. Voucher specimens for pressing and microscope identification are collected into buckets and returned to the labs.

Dr. Bob Waaland is shown in this photo sorting through the many foliose reds like Cryptopleura.

One thing that is immediately notable from dredge samples is that the algae on the bottom is mainly red!

The way the light penetrates down to through the water and attenuates away red and yellow wavelengths favors pigments that can capture energy in the blue and green spectrum.

Fucus in the bathtub

This past week was an exciting one. The Phycology Society of America had it's annual conference in Seattle. Along with the excitement of giving a talk about genetic diversity of Heterosigma, learning from other talks about seaweed ecology, seeing old friends, and making new ones; we discussed changing the society's name. My favorite so far is 'Premier Studiers of Algae,' which my mother rejoices over. Apparently, I sometimes mis-pronounce 'phycology.' I accidentally become obscene when my 'fy' sounds like 'fu'...

One of the highlights was a meal where every dish was prepared with seaweeds. I sat across from seaweed herbalists, Christine Hopkins, and Amanda Swinimer from Sooke. They told of wonderful effects of bathing with seaweeds, so I felt compelled to give it a try. Of course, last week, the kids gave me a seaweed/lavender facial so I felt game to give this next level in 'science immersion' a go. I collected drift Fucus from high tide, washed it off in the bay, and then plunked it into my tub. 'Fucus' is another algae word that can easily be mis-pronounced...

It turned out, Fucus in the tub was amazingly delightful. As I rubbed it over my arm, it left a lovely coating all over my skin. I felt like I was turning into a slimy salmon. Christine says Fucus goo also works wonders on a sunburn; much the same relief you get from fresh aloe.

Fucus is the lovely brown alga we often call rockweed, bladder wrack, pop-its, and deer toes. It grows high in the inter-tidal and will often dominate where a fresh water seep meets the beach. (like just west of the north shore boat ramps) Next time you are out walking the beach, pick a little bit up and give it a try. Sure beats a bubble bath!

Baby Bull Kelp in the wrong spots...

Poor baby bull kelp! They keep trying to grow in places that are simply too high on the beach. One good low tide on a hot day, or one good wind storm at low tide, and WHAMMO. They're done for. Nereocystis (bull kelp) floats along with all sorts of other unfortunate algae are all washed up along our shore lines after last week's low tide cycles.

Washed up seaweed is good news for sand fleas! Previously the sand fleas were all hungrily wondering when the manna (washed up seaweeds) was going to come. The good news is that sand fleas are named for their prodigious jumping skill and are not fleas and don't bite. Beach hopper

is a better common name for this group of amphipod crustaceans. The one pictured at right with big long antenna is named Orchestoidea californiana. (photo at right by Peter J. Bryant)

Orchestoidea are excellent food for small birds, raccoons, moles, and beetles. Those beach hoppers that are unlucky to be caught by the incoming tide seem like they would make excellent fish food. Walking the beach as the tide rises is really amazing because of all the wild gymnastics occurring near your toes.

So the next time you see that pile of seaweed at the high tide line, flip it over and be amazed by the detritivores hopping everywhere. (PS - they are safe to handle and often seen are mama's carrying their eggs).

Pick up the small plastic trash embedded in the poor kelp while you are at it!

Beach Clean-Up Time

The Fourth of July was amazingly beautiful. We were blessed with warm weather and clear skies. Beach walkers now get the fun job of ensuring all the firework waste gets picked up, so take a garbage bag with you and enjoy the cross training workout of squatting down to pick up plastics!

As everyone is sad to know... clams etc. are toxic these days. You'll have to go to other parts of the sound for your clam fix. There is also a large phytoplankton bloom in Discovery Bay right now that is turning the water brown. This bloom is the stuff I am studying (Heterosigma) and it doesn't make the clams and oysters toxic, it just kills the larvae. And fish! So don't bother dropping your pole in that area - fish with any sense will have moved to clearer waters.

The beach club annual meeting will be held 9:30 May 21, 2011. This years meeting is going to be combined with a potluck celebration of good neighbors held down at our boat ramp. We'll have a bonfire, I'll bring some hot dogs and marshmallows. Bring your chair!

I'm planning on bringing my algae press, and I'll show anyone who wants to learn how to press seaweeds. The boat ramp has an amazing collection of seaweeds that don't grow well on the neighboring cobbles that get tumbled around.

Viewing Phytoplankton From Space

Viewing Phytoplankton From Space

What a difference a month makes! I've downloaded some wonderful MODIS satellite imagery (brought to you by NASA) that measures the amount of chlorophyll in the water. Chlorophyll is a green pigment that powers photosynthesis inside plants and algae. Remember that photosynthesis is the process where the sun powers the conversion of carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen. The hotter colors here in the April 17 image (bottom right) show that there is more phytoplankton in the water right now compared to the March 16 image (top left). You may be wondering how the camera is able to pick out the chlorophyll in all that blue water? The satellite is picking up on the red-light wavelengths emitted by the chlorophyll pigment at 680 and 720 nm.

Getting the satellite overhead on a cloudless day is a bit tricky, so if you notice a grey/black area, those are clouds. The people who do this remote sensing work have come up with very careful calibration methods for their image processing algorithms. Each region has undergone extensive testing to normalize for unique water quality properties like particulates in the water, depth, dissolved organic matter, and common algal pigments. As great as these satellite images are, there are limitations in how close a pixel can come to land. Dirt really interferes with a signal, particularly in Puget Sound which is why there is no color south of Tacoma. The more fine-scale the resolution of the camera on the satellite, the more useful future models will be to us.

These images came from the NANOOS website. Those folks at UW-APL (and a whole host of other partners) have been doing an amazing job creating this web tool to visualize the research on the Salish Sea. I visited it tonight because I wanted to download data from a PRISM research cruise I was on in the fall of 2009. I couldn't believe how much they had enhanced the site in the past few years. This image is of the chlorophyll at varying depths along the transect of Puget Sound main basin (red line) from North to South. The far left point is out beyond Dungeness Spit. It shows that there was a subsurface algae patch next to Port Townsend, and a denser algae patch down by Vashon Island.

Who is in the water?

There is a lot of phytoplankton in the water today. It is primarily composed of dinoflagellates. The dinoflagellates are little swimming beasts that can not only photosynthesize like grass, but also love to eat their competitors. Imagine a venus fly trap that runs around catching flys. Mostly, the species swimming round right now are 'gymnodiniod' in shape. (we used to classify all these into the Gymnodinium genus, but with DNA and scanning electron microscopy, it became clear that using only shape grouped many organisms together that were unrelated.)

Our water sample (a glass of water) also had three great big pink pigmented Calanus copepods swimming in it; see its facebook page! These large copepods are zooplankton that eat dinoflagellates. These copepods are beautiful animals, and my son enjoyed seeing the huge singular eyespot on the top of its head.

The fine green fuzz on the rocks has moved up a few feet in the last two weeks. It sure is slippery. When walking down to the boat ramp at low tide, we noticed a lot of small green Ulva, then some tufts of Ectocarpus (dark purple). As you continue towards the water some tiny Fucus starts appear mixed in with the fuzzy red Polysiphonia. Right where the tide is at its lowest point, the iridescent Mazaella shines up at you, mixed with some larger Fucus plants, several larger spiral roped Neorhodomella with many epiphytes. As we waded into the water we noticed a nice thick crop of young Alaria with its prominent single mid-rib.

Most notable of all was that the cobble rocks to our right and left were bare of all macroalgae save the green Ulva slime. The boatramp is several feet higher than the surrounding rocks, so it is exposed to air much longer than the neighboring cobble rocks are. This is the difference having a fixed surface makes. If those cobbles were magically cemented in place so the winter storms couldn't tumble them, they would look much more like the boat ramp. Seaweeds would be able to hang on through the winter, and get an early start on spring growth. The main disturbance on the boat ramp is the annual dose from the pressure washer! And it is a good thing that pressure washer works - or we'd never be able to walk on the slippery ramp.

Butter Clams Finally OK!

Good news - the butter clams at Diamond Point are finally safe to eat! The problem has been that the butter clam (Saxidomas) hangs on to the toxins from the algae, Alexandrium for over a year. Those tricky butter clams actually do this for a reason; by holding onto the toxin, they discourage predators from eating them. Their cousins, the Native Littlenecks, and Manillas (Steamer clams) clear out the toxins much sooner - about three months - depending on the toxin dosage they received from the algae.

The problem at Diamond Point has been that just about the time the butter clams were about to become safe, another algae bloom came along and re-dosed the clams. Alexandrium may bloom from June through September. You won't see these toxic 'red-tide' events by just looking at the water color. Toxicity is dependent upon the strain of the species of algae, and the conditions that strain is growing under. These confounding details have been frustrating to sort out by all of us in the Harmful Algal Bloom scientific community.

Many of you who live on the Discovery Bay side of the point should be thinking, "But I saw a Red Tide last summer!" Yes, you did. That red tide is tomato soup colored and is one of my favorite annual bloom events. It is caused by this HUGE dinoflagellate cell called Noctiluca. It is not toxic, and it is a major predator of just about all plankton. Noctiluca grows up at the end of an algal bloom (usually August) and eats up anything it can get to. Noctiluca blooms have been here a long time; Captain Vancouver noted a Noctiluca red tide event when he was anchored in Discovery Bay.

What is certain is that the toxin levels measured by the State Marine Biotoxin Lab are very reliable, and they do a great job testing the seafood for safety. If it says don't eat it - there is no reason to flirt with this toxin that will paralyze you and stop your breathing. If you do notice symptoms (tingling, numbness, and burning of the lips, ataxia, giddiness, drowsiness, fever, rash, and staggering) get to the hospital so they can give you respiratory support and you should recover.

If you look closely at the north shore line, you will notice it is orange, not green. In this case it means that the state lab did not do a test for bacterial contamination like they did in the other regions.

I recommend you look carefully at the state website before digging to look for updates. For instance, Sequim Bay's butter clams are still not safe to eat. The link is at right.

Happy Clam Digging! Oh, one more thing, the areas with no line are private tidelands and the state does not test. You may not dig on those beaches without the owner's permission. As the caretaker for the Thompson Spit land, please do not dig there. There are barely any clams to be had, and it is awful digging anyways. I am hoping that if we all don't harvest there, the population levels will increase to the decent levels I remember as a little girl.

Seaweed is a-coming!

The rocks at low tide are just beginning to show their green color. The seaweeds are just now starting their annual push for the sunshine. This winter had many strong wave action storms hit at low tide so there are not very many cobble rocks with last year's perennials attached. If you go down to the waters edge at low tide, be sure to keep your balance because these new algal starts are very slippery.

Last week I saw two adult bald eagles mating while on the north shore pilings. It was a precarious event - the male fluttered onto the female's back while she was eating a fish they had been flirting over. He kept his perch there for about ten seconds as he did his business, flapping all the while. The female looked like she was enjoying the fish more than the loving. Ah well, girlfriend. At least she had a good view.

This is the season for it. The Bald Eagles are gathering from all over the region to await the seagull hatch on Protection Island. Has anyone counted how many eagles there are in the area now? We are certainly getting an increased number of visits to the North Pilings.