Still Cruisin!

Hi everyone! Where are all your comments??? Sorry it has taken me a day or so to post again. The internet connection has been slow because the ship has been carving back and forth across the ocean using sonar to map the bathymetry around the NOAA undersea habitat called aquarius - very cool!

Here is what has been going on over the last few days....and a little more about my research. Sorry if it's a little long, skip around and pick out the good stuff! :)

We are still cruisin the western Florida Keys and outer bank reefs. Wednesday afternoon we dove ‘The Pulaski’ – a reef located adjacent to a tower equipped with oceanographic and atmospheric equipment that can monitor the weather as it passes through the western keys into the Gulf of Mexico. The current was ripping, but I got some great photos of moon jellies in the water column with their commensal fish hitchhikers. We spent the evening touring Fort Jefferson until the rain forced us back to the ship. There are some idyllic views that span 360o from the upper battlements.

Today (Thursday) we descended about 75 feet onto deeper reefs in the Tortugas Banks. There was an ominous darkness that enveloped us as we sunk deeper through the water column – this is because red and yellow (warm colored) wavelengths can not travel as deep as the blue and green spectrum. As we settled down to the bottom we could immediately recognize a difference in benthic diversity compared with the shallow reefs we surveyed over the past few days. Here there were far fewer gorgonians (e.g. sea fans) and soft corals. There were also several coral species that were more common at this deeper depth (e.g. Montastrea franksi, Mycetophyllia sp. and Dendrogyra).

Though I was most intrigued by the macroalgal differences – at depth there were very few Halimeda, a calcareous green alga. Halimeda are generally a primary component of shallow reef communities and contribute a significant portion of calcium carbonate which is then incorporated back into the system. These deeper reefs were dominated by several species of Dictyota, which are brown algae (also prevalently found on shallow reefs), but thrown into the mix were short bushy clumps of Hypnea and encrusting Lobophora.

As a Ph.D student at Auburn University my research interests generally include how these foliose macroalgae associate with one another and with corals through competitive and facilitative interactions. Many algae are strongly chemically defended, producing secondary metabolites known to deter herbivory. Secondary metabolites (which means, not used for primary metabolic processes) also can be active antimicrobials and may influence the natural microbial flora on and within adjacent organisms. Organisms, such as humans, have natural microbial assemblages that serve to protect us from disease and assist in boosting our immune system. Because corals do not have complex immune systems, microbes are proving to be a critical protective mechanism against disease. When these bacteria are disrupted the overall physiology of the coral may be compromised leading to increased disease susceptibility. Tomorrow I will collect samples of coral mucus and associated macroalgae during our dives off Summerland Key at Looe Reef. Hopefully these data will help me determine whether macroalgae play a role in the prevalence of coral disease along the Florida Keys reef tract.

Ship Tracker

Goodmorning!

I haven't had a chance to get online much in the last couple days, but I'm writing a post on another computer that I will blog this afternoon... until then I thought you might be interested in checking out our progress! You can track our ship, the Nancy Foster, on our voyage at this link: Ship Tracker

Have a great day and I hope to write more later!! :) Check back soon.

knots to miles per hour

Follow-up to Day 2 Question: 12 knots = approximately 15 mph (haha, we're crawling out here!)

Fort Jefferson - Day 3

Hello from the the Dry Tortugas

This morning, after a night of rocking and rolling from Key West, we anchored off of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park.

The Dry Tortugas are a small group of islands, located at the end of the Florida Keys, USA, about 70 miles west of Key West. Still further west is the Tortugas Bank, which is completely submerged. The islands were discovered in 1513 by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León.

The islands get their name from their distinctive characteristics: Dry because none of the islands have fresh water and Tortugas because seafarers stopped at the islands to take sea turtles, which they kept on their backs in the holds of sailing ships and butchered when they wanted fresh meat. Thus, there are very few sea turtles left in the Caribbean.

The islands, or keys, that encompass the Dry Tortugas are contstantly changing over time as wind and waves reshape them. There are seven islets, which are from West to East:

1. Loggerhead Key
2. Garden Key with Fort Jefferson and the inactive Garden Key lighthouse
3. Bush Key - formerly named Hog Island because of the hogs that were raised there to provide fresh meat for the prisoners at Fort Jefferson. Bush Key also is the site of a large tern rookery.
4. Long Key
5. Hospital Key - so called because a hospital for the inmates of Fort Jefferson had been built there in the 1870s.
6. Middle Key - it is not always above sea level, disappearing for weeks or months only to reappear again. And finally,
7. East Key

Today we did 3 dives throughout the Tortugas - we saw Nassau Grouper (Epinephelus striatus), more huge Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita), and many other beautiful fish, corals and invertebrates. The weather changes and quickly and dramatically - and this evening after a long rainstorm a beautiful double rainbow arced across the sky over Fort Jefferson. What a great day at sea! Now it's time for me to try to sleep, hopefully I'll be used to the rolling of the boat tonight....

Goodnight

Sunday Day 2

Ahoy, Happy Monday!

My first day on the ship was quite exciting! I rolled out of my bunk bright and early Sunday morning and grabbed some breakfast before our dive de-briefing and safety run down. Then we got all our dive gear together and put it into one of three smaller boats set in locks on the back of the larger vessel. After all our SCUBA gear was loaded, a huge crane on the back of the ship hoists each small boat into the air and deposits it into the water. After the small boats are in the water, we can board and take off for the reef where we will dive.

For each dive we swim a 6 ft metal pole down to the reef bottom and place it into a holder that was previously cemented on the reef floor. From the metal pole a 10 meter string is unraveled and held taught. One diver holds the line taught and swims around the pole and two other divers record: 1) all coral species and 2) coral disease and what species it appears on. These observations are taken between the 8 and 10 meter marks on the line. I was the line swimmer today, pretty exciting, haha. But, it’s a lot tougher to hold a line straight underwater than it is on land (why do you think this is??). This same scenario will be repeated each day at 3 or 4 different reefs all through the Florida Keys.

Today when I rolled backward into the water I saw 5 or 6 huge moon jellyfish (just like the ones in my photo album posted previously). They were beautiful as they were buoyed along by the currents, capturing microscopic algae and food particles to eat. Our dive today was just off Key West and right now we’re cruising out to the Dry Tortugas, one of the only coral reef protected areas in the U.S. I’ve been told we will be cruising all night while we’re sleeping in order to be there by morning.

It’s so strange to walk around on a moving ship (we can go about 12 knots in smooth seas – how fast is that??). The inside of the boat is quite spacious, you would never even know you were on a boat accept for the strange dizzy feeling you get now and then – plus it seems very hard to walk in a straight line – I hear you walk wobbly for a while once you get off the ship too. It’s hard to imagine I’ll be experiencing this rolling sensation for the next 8 days! Weird!

Well it’s off to a final dive de-briefing for the day where we will discuss what worked and what didn’t worked and how we can improve our sampling tomorrow. Maybe I’ll walk out to the bridge and see what the ocean looks like as the sun sets off the bow tonight.

Cheers!

P.S. We have a satellite connection to the internet – so it’s slow going uploading anything larger than 1 MB – I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to get many pictures uploaded while I’m here but I’ll try!

Day 1 - Saturday

Hi all -

I'm flying to Miami International Airport today and then heading down to Key West, FL where we will board the NOAA ship Nancy Foster. I'm excited but a little nervous! We will be sleeping on board tonight and beginning the day on Sunday at 7am with scientific planning meetings. The 'shake-down' dive will be Sunday afternoon - when we test all our equipment and get used to how each of us dives. Wish me luck!

Tropical Reef Pictures

Welcome to the Smith Station Biology Blogger

Hi everyone! Greeting from the deep and welcome to the new Smith Station High School Biology Blogger. This is a casual platform for students and teachers to ask questions about science. I will do my best to answer your questions or direct you to the correct resource that will help answer your questions. Hopefully we will all learn some fun new facts about this beautiful planet we live on.

Now a little about me, I'm a Ph.D. student in biology at Auburn University. Previously, I completed a bachelors of science in marine biology and chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I went on from there to complete a masters of science at California State University, Northridge in Los Angeles where I studied kelp forest ecology and anemone physiology off the coast of Santa Catalina Island (more info to come later). Check my "Fave Biology Links" for links to the universities I attended.

My present research at Auburn involves the study of how coral-algal competition on tropical reefs alters the natural bacterial assemblage on the surface of hard corals. Bacteria on corals, just like in people, help maintain a healthy immune system, preventing corals (and us) from getting sick. When the bacteria are altered by abiotic stress (such as temperature and light changes, sedimentation, and pollution) or biotic stress (such as competition and predation) the corals natural defense may be weakened and the coral may get sick and die. My studies take me to the Florida Keys and the U.S. Virgin Islands where I collect samples and bring them back to the laboratory at Auburn University. In the lab, I can identify what kinds of bacteria are present and how they change when introduced to different stresses.

That's all for now, but ask questions and find out more!

Let me know if there are any specific areas of biology you would like me to post about.