Successful second sampling!

Second sample season successfully completed - all 48 colonies resampled for our second reproductive season. Stay tuned for the third cruise which myself and technician Christian Clark will be participating in!

Second Sampling!

Good luck to Bob and Jennifer, out right now on the Alaskan Legend doing the second sampling effort of this project. They have a lot of tasks, so hopefully it'll all get done!

Aloha
Dr. W.

Update

Things are certainly moving right along with the Primnoa pacifica samples from Septembers cruise. In total we tagged 40 colonies, collected water samples for carbonate chemistry and set out environmental sensors to collect temperature and salinity data year around - quite the feat for just 4 days on site! Though most of the samples will be sent to Maine to await my arrival there, I did bring some back here to Hawaii to analyze and get a sense of what is going on in the fjords!

These corals are proving to be pretty interesting! The primary goal of this first set of samples is to find out which ones are males and females for sure, to make sure we samples the right ones when Bob and Jennifer go back in December. So far they've proved to be tricky - some of the ones we thought were males are actually females and vice versa! Luckily there is nothing like a good scientific puzzle! 

Image above - Top left - SEM image of the tip of a branch - those are three polyps all facing us, much more heavily armored than I was expecting, see all those plates! Top right - a large and small polyp (a) and an area on the outside of the coral where they seem to keep their larvae (bottom left picture). And bottom right - lots and lots of eggs in a female coral! 

Aloha Dr. W. 

Video Log

More Pictures

Sawyer Glacier at the end of Tracy Arm. 

See all the little black dots on the ice floes in front of the glacier.....

Well, they're all harbor seals! 

Jen and Bob ready to dive. They did 3 dives a day for 4 straight days, pretty amazing as the conditions were very challenging! 

The drop off site at low tide. The tides here are crazy - 14 feet was an average for our stay! 

Wade and I tender for the divers. While the divers are in the water we would sit in the zodiac and watch the bubbles making sure they didn't get into trouble. When the water is this cold, as soon as the divers come up you want to get them out of the water, so it's important to stay close and pay attention to what might be happening underwater. 

We also did a CTD cast at the site and out in the outer fjord to look at the environmental conditions of the water - salinity, temperature and dissolved oxygen. 

The lab, looking much more "used" after 4 days of non stop processing! 

Cataloguing is an important part of any science project. Here Bob takes video of all the colonies that were collected to look at for damage effects. I'll put up a good summary of the work and products in the next few days. 

We were never the only ones in the fjords either - here a large cruise ship overtakes us in the morning, taking tourists to look at the spectacular glacier. 

Heading out at the end of day 5. 

Spectacular sunset on our last night. We anchored just outside Tracy Arm for our final night, a little closer to Juneau so we could get going early in the morning, as this boat can't run at night. 

A treat on the way home - dozens of humpbacks feeding and playing! 

Four of the humpbacks. 

In the fjords

We just got back from the fjords and i'm already heading on my way back to Hawaii. The cruise was a roaring success, lots of corals, lots of good weather and all the major goals accomplished, pretty impressive for four days. I'll fill you in on the particulars of the work when i'm back at my desk, but until then, today and tomorrow i'll post some photos from the trip.

Leaving Juneau early on tuesday morning, Wade (left) and Richard (right) set us loose.

Cruising out of the Gastineau Channel, beautiful day! 

Sealion checks us out as we near the turn for Tracy Arm.

The water is definitely cold! 

Turning into Tracy Arm fjord, spectacular scenery of a glacial cut fjord. 

Our sample site, a sheet wall with lots of current and nutrients, just right for cold-water corals to grow. 

Captain Dennis sets us off as we head out for a quick dive tuesday evening to check out the sample site and locate the corals. Jennifer (left) and Bob (right) suit up! 

Both Jennifer and Bob have dove here before and seen these corals, but never at this time of year. This was a really challenging dive location, the current was much faster than in other times they've dived here and the visibility was very poor. This dive team really pulled it out and got an amazing amount done. I was sad not to be diving, but am hoping to come back on another trip next year. 

My zone for this cruise - the "lab". 

And the outcome.....corals! Lots of them! This is part of a colony we've simulated fishing damage to, so we can see what happens internally when these corals get snagged in fishing gear. 

Off to Tracy Arm Tomorrow

Heading out to Tracy Arm tomorrow to start work. The transit is around 5 hours, so we're leaving at 7am in the hopes of getting at least one dive in tomorrow so we can get a start on things. There is so much to do underwater on this trip - measure corals, tag corals, take samples, take water measurements, take photos, take video, put out instruments - quite ambitious for just 5 days!

We will have no email while out there, and i'm doubting i'll be able to post this time while we're out, so there may not be any updates until we get back on Saturday. I haven't pre-posted anything either this time, so you'll just have to wait in suspense to see how we're doing!

Our home for the next five days, the quite luxurious Alaskan Legend. Not a traditional research vessel, the people who run this boat have worked with Bob before, and since there is no specialized equipment, just SCUBA, we have this charter to work off. This morning we loaded all the gear, and I stowed all my chemicals and set up my microscope for the trip, so we're ready to go bright and early tomorrow!

That meant some sightseeing this afternoon! This is the view down the Gastineau Channel, where we'll be headed tomorrow to get to Tracy Arm.

Looking into Juneau with Auke Bay in the distance, and even further you can make out the snowcapped mountains which are in the Glacier Bay area.

The Mendenhall Glacier.

Bob and Michelle took me on a hike to the Glacier on Saturday, here are Bob and I with the glacier in the background.

Red Tree Coral

Photo by Bob Stone

Primnoa pacifica, the Red Tree Coral is a coral usually found at depths of over a few hundred meters in the North Pacific, however in the Alaskan fjords often grows much shallower, within a few tens of meters. How does it do this? We're not entirely sure, and call animals that do this, often in high and low latitude fjord systems, deep-water emergent species. It could be because fjords in high and low latitudes are cold like the deep-sea, the fjords often have a freshwater layer on top creating darkness below and often these systems are high in nutrients and have the fast currents that cold-water corals like.

The exact reasons are unknown, but it does present a unique opportunity to study these corals in a much more accessible place. Usually to work on deep-sea corals we have to get expensive equipment - submersibles or ROVs, which typically run at over $30,000 per day, so when you are lucky enough to get one, you don't get it for very many days! Cold-water corals that grow shallow can be sampled by SCUBA diving, and they can be sampled year around, just like you can with shallow water corals. To get a good idea of how corals reproduce you need samples from more than just one time of year - think of animals like birds, who lay their eggs in the spring. Well some corals can be the same, just reproducing once a year. If you took just one sample in the fall though, you would miss that entirely, so you need to have more than one "season", and preferably all seasons, to be able to really know what is going on.

In the deep-sea I am used to puzzles, we get samples here and there, from populations separated by many miles, yet because of the scarcity of samples I have to lump them all together to get a picture of what is going on. That works to a degree, but you're always missing something and there are always caveats with your data.

The Tracy Arm Primnoa pacifica represents my nirvana as a cold-water coral reproductive biologist - an area I can get samples, 5 times in a year, from 30 colonies, all in the same place, all at the same depth - that NEVER happens with deep-sea samples. So this is an exciting project for me - what will we find? Tune in to find out, though i'll only be joining the diving crew on this first expedition (to make sure we tag enough females and males), there will be 5 expeditions I'll be getting samples from over this next year. This first cruise leaves on Tuesday, after the long weekend.

Juneau

Flying into Juneau. I got to sit in the front seat....yeah!

Flew into Juneau today from Gustavus, i've gone from a "city" of 300 to the state capital, a city of over 40,000. The change is somewhat dramatic! The flight was delayed this morning because of weather, so I didn't get in until nearly midday, so just time to grab lunch with Bob and get to work! I met Jennifer for the first time today, one of the other collaborators on this project, and we all sat down and discussed a plan of action. I prepared chemicals and got all my jars ready to go. We are not quite ready yet (the boat leaves Tuesday morning) so we have a few more things to do this weekend too, but i'm also hoping to see a little of Juneau too!

I just found out today too that the boat we'll use is larger than I thought, an 84ft diving boat, which sounds like it could be positively luxurious! It will certainly make it easier with all the work we have to do, our meeting today really brought home just how much we have to accomplish in a 5 day cruise! So wish us luck!

Aloha!
Dr W.

One month to go!

One month until the off for this project, but don't forget i'm actually leaving in ten days, because before this project begins, i'll be checking out corals in Glacier Bay National Park, be sure to check out the updates on that one!

So with just ten days to go what is going on? Well, boxes are starting to be packed, chemicals weighed out, protocols downloaded, new bottles and jars purchased, my ever expanding list of things "not to forget" is getting longer. Once I leave Hawaii, it'll be very difficult to be able to get anything i've forgotten, so it's really important to make a good list now.

It'll be an adventure, be sure to tune in!

Aloha

Dr. W.

Getting going

I'm not an experienced SCUBA diver by any means, but when this project came up, and then got funded, the excitement began to build. As i've discovered though, not everyone is as excited as me at the chance to jump into 5C water in Alaska. Up until a few months ago too i'd racked up the grand total of 6 dives in my entire life, all in the warm waters of Hawaii, so getting prepared to even be allowed to get into the frigid Alaskan water has been a time consuming process.

1. Get dry suit certification
2. Get more practice with dry suit
3. Get advanced open water certification
4. Get more dives in

The first two are done, and to a degree so is #4 too. I'm now up to 15 dives total, four of those in a dry suit, so i'm feeling more prepared. I'll talk more about the differences between wet suits and dry suits later, but be assured, it's a whole different ball game. Number 3 i'm dealing with this weekend, so thats good too!

So what is next on the list?

1. Organize logistics (flights, hotels)
2. Send chemicals to Alaska
3. Make sure all the equipment will be available on the ship
4. Get to Alaska

This project is going to be tagged onto my travel to Glacier Bay National Park for a project up there in a few weeks, so it means being extra organized up front and early. By stay in touch, exciting things happening in the next few weeks!

Dr W.