Boy Bands and Neoprene

With thanks to N'Sync.

Produced by Monika LaPlante.

GIS mapping

The second week of our conservation biology course focused on the use of GIS (geographic information system) software for making maps of a nearby island. We went over to Shaw Island, WA to conduct tree surveys in a forest on Cedar Rock Preserve. A hundred years ago the preserve was managed by allowing controlled fires to clear the undergrowth. The management method has changed since then, due to the inhabitants on the island not wanted to risk fires destroying their homes, and mowing is now used to control the undergrowth.

Our class gathering to start the transect in Cedar Rock Preserve.

Our plan was to lay out 200 meter transect parallel to each other to form four bands that were 30 meters in width and record the trees inside of the bands. We were especially interested in marking the oldest trees with GPS and took measurements of circumference and counted the neighboring trees in a five meter radius around the tree. The smaller trees were divided into classes based on circumference size, class one trees were <0.5 m, class two trees were 0.5 - 1.0 m, class three trees were 1.0- 1.5 m, and class four trees were >1.5 m. We went into the field on two separate days to conduct the surveys, and were able to cover quite a large area. On the second day we were lucky enough to see the bald eagles flying around their nest at the edge of the forest.

The rest of the week was spent learning how to input the data into the GIS program and generate maps. This is not as simple as it sounds, and I have a greater respect for all map makers. Our project for the week was to create two different maps, one looking at the date collected from the tree surveys, and another map looking at the data for the polygon areas that the entire survey area was divided into. This morning we presented to the class all of our maps, and every map helped to explain the patterns we observed in the field.

Below are the two maps that Monika and I made.

This graduated symbol dot density map was created to distinguish the differences between the four different size classes of trees and their relative abundances in each polygon. The size of each dot corresponds to the size of tree. This map also contains a visual of terrain differences (forest or meadow) of each polygon. This map is easily interpreted by any audience. They could conclude that meadows polygons are less dense than forest polygons, and that specific forest areas such as the northeastern corner are more tree dense than others.

The forest of Cedar Rock Preserve on Shaw Island, Washington was surveyed using three different class sizes of nearest growing neighbors of old growth trees. This map shows the numbers of nearest neighbors with circumferences between 0.0 and 0.5 meters (class one) in a 5 meter radius of the old growth trees, where sizes of circles correspond to number of trees; a larger circle means more trees. Purple circles represent burned trees, and green circles represent non-burned trees. This map displays the effectiveness of the two different management types, moving and burning.

Diving at FHL

The beauty under the water is just as amazing as above the water here in Washington. There is a herd of deer that wander around the campus eating the grass and eyeing you as you walk past. They are not that skittish, and you are actually able to get quite close and look at their big eyes. Although you probably wouldn’t want to touch them because they look pretty dirty.

Photo credit Stina McKenna

The world under the water is teaming with many different organisms from fish to nudibranchs, and many varieties of algae. There are even Pisaster ochraceus the purple seastar! You may remember that I did my invert presentation on this species in the fall and I am quite excited to finally make their acquaintance. Seeing all the different species of invertebrates is really quite amazing!

Dirona albolineata Photo credit Chris Marks

Pycnopodia helianthoides Photo credit Chris Marks

Henricia leviuscula Photo credit Chris Marks

Triopha catalinae Photo credit Robert Murphy

On one of my dives I dove along a wall a little offshore from the lab 6 beach, and there is so much to see all the way down past my 60 ft certification. There are huge sea urchins, though not as big as the Diadema from Panama, different types of rock crabs, many varieties of rock fish, lots of sea cucumbers and all of that is surrounded by beds of kelp! The kelp grows so much larger here than on the East coast, and it is really amazing to dive among it!

Cancer productus Photo credit Chris Marks

Cribrinopsis farnaldi Photo credit Chris Marks

Parastichopus californicus Photo credit Robert Murphy

We have also been diving in the Zostera marina seagrass beds collecting data for a baseline survey. Diving in the beds is fun but takes skill to be sure not to kick up too much sediment from the bottom, because soft bottom substrates are where Zostera grows.

Epiactis prolifera on Zostera marina Photo credit Chris Marks

The diving here has been amazing, and being able to see what is living under the water is definitely worth suiting up to go into the cold water!

The Final Sea

We have now settled into our final destination with the Three Seas Program: Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island, Washington. On Monday the 28 of March a group of us were met by Sal and Chris at the ferry dock and driven to the lab just in time for dinner. The first few days were spent moving into our dorms and dive lockers, and getting checked out for diving by University of Washington. Unfortunately the 44 degree water is quite a bit colder than what we grew accustomed to in Panama, and even colder than the low 50s we experienced the last few days of Nahant. But it is worth suffering through the chill to be able to dive in this new location among the kelp, fish, and inverts. Yesterday we started Conservation Biology, our first class of the semester, and like all Three Seas courses we jumped right in. We have the opportunity to work in groups and present the lecture topics including climate change, ocean acidification, invasive species, fishing, pollution, and species range shifts to the class, and discuss papers of our choosing. Our class will also conduct a subtidal mapping and natural history survey of a location in the water next to the lab to form a baseline focusing on the Zostera beds.

The monitoring program we start this year will be continued by future Three Seas classes, allowing long term data to be collected to note any changes to the baseline. We are learning how to use the knowledge gained in previous courses to protect and preserve our oceans and planet.

Goodbye, Panama

Well, our time in Panama is over. As hard as we all worked and as tired as we all were, we were still sad to leave. Who wouldn't be, as it was in the 80's and 90's there whereas back up north we are just getting into the 70's if we are lucky. We picked the perfect year to go to Panama; it was a terrible winter in New England.

As for being the first Three Seas group to go to Panama, we didn't do too bad, if i do say so myself. We all learned so much and made some good connections while we were down there. I can't wait to see how next year's class does and what the professors all learned from our guinea pig class.

Now, we are all back home and on a break from studying for two weeks. Some of us are traveling through South America and others are headed out to the west coast early. On March 28th we will all be back together again in Washington! I am looking forward to Friday Harbor Labs and the classes we will be taking there, especially the marine birds and mammals course, guaranteed to be my personal favorite. I am sure I will have much more to talk about then. But for now, I will be relaxing and looking forward to getting back in the (much colder) water!

Back from Coiba

We’re back! Sorry for the lack of communication, but we were all away on the island of Coiba for a while. Now we have lots of fun stories for you. We left early last week to go hiking as part of our Tropical Terrestrial Ecology (TTE) class up Vulcan Baru, the tallest mountain, and - as you can guess - volcano, in Panama. We left for the hike around 11pm so that we could make it to the top of the mountain by sunrise. After 6.5 hours, we made it to the top, sore, tired and hungry. Well, most of us made it; a couple people had to turn back because of altitude sickness. We were able to see the sunrise over both the Caribbean and the Pacific! Then we started back down the mountain. After another 6 hours, this time with some daylight, we made it back and went to sleep for the rest of the day.

We stayed at a hostel for another night and we were able to go into Boquete, the town there, for lunch and some shopping. When we finally made it to Coiba, it was amazing! I have never been to the Pacific so that alone was cool. On top of that, on our first day there I saw three white tip reef sharks and a hawksbill sea turtle. I was finally able to confront, if not partially overcome my extreme fear of sharks. The white tips didn’t move much and would only swim away if you came near them. This definitely helped me to become a little more comfortable with the idea of swimming in the same waters as them. It was also made worthwhile since the sea turtles were in the same areas!

I was instantly amazed at the sharp contrast between the Caribbean and the Pacific. There were definitely more apex predators around Coiba; there was even a saltwater crocodile named Tito at our dorms. There was much less coral diversity, but substantially more and bigger fish! The water was so warm that most of us didn’t wear our wetsuits unless there were jellies in the water. Even when we were on the boats (missing Eric and Sebastian, our Bocas boat drivers) going from site to site, we were able to dolphins and sea turtles. One day, we even stopped the boats and jumped in with a pod of dolphins as they swam around the boat. Overall, it was a breathtaking experience. I won’t give away all the stories since I know many more people will want to share, but those were definitely some of my highlights.

R&R Trip

Here is a video of our R&R day trip to the banana plantation and Bird Island. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!