Routine Snail Tests, Fish Surveys, and Halloween

Hello guys! These past weeks have been extremely busy for Team Valkayeri. Here is a quick rundown (and photos!) for the week of 10/29 through 11/4. 

Cool kids in the lab, of course

     This week we have refined our routine and efficiency well. In the morning, we do what we fondly refer to as "Snail Science", which involves preparing Egregia in the manner mentioned in the previous blog post: cutting, spinning, weighing, measuring, and making visual observations of the algae. We remove the snails and algae used in the trials from the first day, and spin, weigh, measure, and note the "used" algae. Its not the most exciting work ever, but we hope that our methods will beget statistically significant results regarding Lithopoma preference of Egregia morphs.

     In the next few days, we are going to need to run trials with crushed algae to test for any differences in consumption when thallus morphology is not a factor. Today, we tried making an agar gel for the snails to eat. The first step was to use a mortar and pestle to crush the algae. We used just the bladed morph for this preliminary test. Crushing the algae with a mortar and pestle takes a few minutes and some effort, but when a few drops of seawater are added and the algae is finely chopped with scissors, it can be crushed into a paste. We made a gel of just agar and no Egregia using 1.44 g of agar powder and 40 mL of water (equivalent to two standard batches of agar gel. We microwaved the mixture for 40 seconds and then poured it into a coffee filter. Then, we made another one of these mixtures and added some crushed algae mixed with 32 mL of water. We trimmed the excess paper from the coffee filters and placed the agar into the tank containing snails not yet used in experiments. The agar was somewhat buoyant and had to be weighed down with rocks. We put two snails on each agar gel to encourage them to eat, and then closed the tanks and left them overnight. If this is successful, we will start running trials with squares of the gelatinous agar. Can't wait to see how it goes!

     In the afternoons, we conduct fish surveys of our algae plots. We watch each plot for 2 minutes for fish rooting around in the Dictyota. The fish surveys are really just supplementary data to couple with our future invert assemblage data. We hope that the two factors, "inside-reserve" vs. "outside-reserve", and "close to the kelp" vs "far from the kelp" will have interesting results on both fish and small mobile invertebrate affinities.

     We are really lucky to get to see the great diversity of Southern California kelp forest fish in these surveys and the rest of our time in the water. The most common species we see on our plots are kelp bass, señorita, sheephead, and rock wrasse, although we also see garibaldi, kelpfish, blacksmith, kelp surfperch, halfmoon, and ocean whitefish, opaleye, black eyed gobies, and more. It is always exciting to see an elasmobranch (sharks, rays, and skates), such as leopard sharks, horn sharks, swell sharks, bat rays, and stingrays. We even have gone on a couple of night-snorkels, and although we see less fish typically (they hide in the cracks at night to rest), we see plenty of healthy protected lobster and large kelp crabs! The difference between day and night assemblages are really striking.

     Despite being so busy, we have some time for fun too! We dressed up for Halloween and visited a Haunted House in Two Harbors that the local town set up. It was lots of fun, and I doubt I'll ever take a boat to a haunted house and hike back.

Korra, The Catalina Wine Mixer, and face painted science!