Censusing the history of ecology

We had a unique opportunity this past week to revisit a chapter in the history of both marine ecology and the Marine Science Center by surveying an experiment set up 35 years ago. In 1974, Professor Bruce Menge, then a faculty member at UMass Boston, cleared the dominant seaweed species, knotted wrackweed (Ascophyllum nodosum) from two 2-meter wide vertical swaths of the intertidal zone in Canoe Beach Cove. He also removed all barnacles (Semibalanus) from one of the vertical swaths. A third, adjacent uncleared area was marked as a control.

When Bruce visited the MSC this past spring to present the annual Riser Lecture, he and I revisited some of his field sites in the area. We were amazed to not only find some of the old bolts marking his experiment, but also to find that the cleared swaths were still visibly different from the surrounding fucoid zone.

After some head scratching and bolt-hole hunting, we relocated all three transects on last Wednesday's afternoon tide. We censused the swaths and found that there are large and persistent differences between cleared and uncleared areas, even 35 years after clearing. This is a system that takes a long time to recover from major disturbances!

35-year-old bolt

Censusing transects