Diario de laurenkay

Spent my first weekend off the island since September. Took a quick trip over to Anacortes to explore, and hike around. Went on a nice hike through the woods in a local park with some beautifully old trees, including Madronas. Some trees out on a bluff overlooking the water were warped and wind blown with bare and twisted trunks---very unique shapes. Also one of the outlooks was a bluff covered in this interesting red rock. It was scared and rutted like it had been scraped, I'm not sure much about the geology of the area but I'm guessing it was shaped by glacier movement.

Explored the view from Mt. Erie. The designated lookout platforms offer a poor view of the area, but if you hike back from the paved path, there is an incredible view of the islands, mountains and water. It was crazy windy, we thought we'd be blown off.

The ferry crossing back to the island was a little rough. Very strong winds, and white caps, but we made it back safe.

After what seems like weeks of solid rain, we finally had a clear day. It was cold, but the sun was shining and I couldn't help but spend the day outside. Spent a good hour sitting out on a little sunny knoll overlooking the bay and harbor. There were 3 or 4 deer grazing around me, so I tried to get in some sketches of them. It's amazing how much more you notice when you take the time to really study an animal and draw it, rather than just taking a picture. From an hour of just looking and attempting to draw these animals, I now know and will remember much more about their coloration, shape, the movement of their legs and ears. The same goes for the trees and plants...in the small landscape that I drew, there were so many different types of grasses. I had never really noticed it before.

Today is another beautiful day. Might head out and sketch some smaller creatures on the beach.

Spent the afternoon out on the R/V Centennial exploring the biology of the San Juan Islands! We did two otter trawls and pulled up a net full of amazing creatures...several different species of flatfishes (we have yet to identify which), Eumicrotremus orbis, lots of shrimp and decorator crabs. There were several Liparis species, one of which had a very unique pattern, almost camouflage like and another which had a marble patterned body. I will hit the labs with my field guide and report back on the species names. One of the most exciting catches of the day was a spotted ratfish, Hydrolagus colliei which is a cartilaginous fish with distinct green eyes and a venomous spine on its dorsal fin.

Another interesting find was a mermaid's purse, or the egg case of a Chondrichthyes. After learning about how the developing embryo uses its tail to pump water through the case, it was really exciting to see a real one.

Along the way we also saw several harbor seals and even a couple breaching porpoises and there was a steady trail of seagulls following us the whole time. Overall, it was a beautiful day out on the water. So much life in the Sound, both above and below the surface.

Apparently it's that time of the year when the male deer around here (blacktailed deer) get a little aggressive...it's rutting season. I was walking back from class the other day, when a male deer with fairly well developed antlers meandered across the path in front of me. I just kept walking, as my experience with deer so far has been that we both ignore each other and everything is fine. This deer, however, stared at me directly and slowed, stopped and began to walk towards me. I just kept walking, and tried to give it more space...it was about 10 feet away...and kept my eyes on those antlers.

Luckily nothing happened, but later that week someone sent out an email warning us all to be aware of the aggressive males. I have noticed that they have been much more active--running around and chasing and cornering females, poor things.

Hopefully the season passes without incident....

This week in lab we had the opportunity to help one of the resident researchers with his project. He is trying to learn more about Rockfish by drawing their blood and measuring heat shock proteins to see how warmer water temperatures will affect these fish.

We got to be a part of every step of the process from collecting the fish and anesthetizing them (a very interesting process to watch! They started out flopping wildly in the bucket but once the MS222 kicked in, they were floating belly up) then measuring and weighing them. We watched as he drew the blood from a vessel behind the anal fin, and it looked a lot more difficult then it would seem. After drawing the blood, we monitored the fish until it recovered (i.e., was not swimming upside down or running into the tank wall)

This was one of my favorite labs because it was so different. I had never really though that you could anesthetize and draw blood from fish. And it's amazing how much you can learn about these Rockfish just from this kind of data collection.

Hope to someday have the chance to draw blood from a fish myself.

Wednesday night, our Ichthyology class bundled up and headed out at 10:30 pm to Deadman's Cove for a night tide-pooling excursion. We set quadrates made of pvc and turned over every rock within that area to ID and count all the fish we uncovered. The two most abundant fish we found were Xiphester atropurpureus and Xiphester mucosus. We also found a number of clingfish and in order to better understand these unique fish, we took the rock on which we found them back to the lab. We will be making a cast of the rock to see the curvature of the rocks to which these fish suction themselves. I also loved looking at all the little crabs we came across as now I'm able to make at least a general guess at the species. The night was so clear and nice even if it was freezing that it looks like we're headed back out sometime this week for another tide-pooling adventure.

Went on an early morning run through the woods the other day, but found it difficult to keep a steady pace because I kept pausing to take pictures or listen to birdcalls. It was around 7 am, still dark outside but the birds were chirping like wild…I would like to be able to recognize which birds make what calls. Heard a very unique sounding owl, I thought it was a howl at first as it kind of resembled a coyote call. After 10 minutes or so of running through numerous spider webs, I stopped (to spit out the spider webs) and also to take a picture of some of these incredibly crazy perfect webs. It’s hard to capture the detail of the complexity of the whole web with a phone camera, so I may have to return with my digital camera. Although spiders are hardly my favorite creature, I can appreciate their skill.

A short detour off the main trail led to a bluff overlooking the water, where there’s an amazing view of the sunrise. Even if you’re not a morning person, try going out for a run or walk as the sun is coming up…it’s worth it.

Last Friday night, I experienced my first night rowing outing. It was about 7 pm when we headed out on the rowboat towards town. As we pulled into the harbor, we spotted a fox slinking along the shoreline under the pilings. Its pelt was black and its tail was tipped with white. I had heard that there were red foxes on the island, so seeing a black one was a surprise. It turns out that the black foxes are the same species Vulpes vulpes, but they are called “Silver Foxes” because they are a melanistic form of the red fox. Melanistic is the opposite of albinism, that is, it is the undue development of dark pigmentation in the animal’s skin. In Greek, melanism means “black pigment.” The row back from town was equally exciting: I saw bioluminescence for the first time “live”. At first, it’s hard to tell whether you are seeing the moon reflecting off the ripples created by the boat but then you begin to see the distinct blue sparkling of the dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans appropriately nicknamed the Sea Sparkle. It is the most impressive, beautiful phenomenon and I will definitely be back out on the water at night to see more of these little Sea Sparkles.

After baiting our crab pots, we deployed them in the subtidal region around Brown Island and crossed our fingers hoping crabs like chicken. Turns out they do! The next morning we pulled the pots and collected a total of 24 specimens, all Metacarcinus magister or Dungeness crab. We learned how to identify gender: look at the thoracic sternum on the underside of the crab. If it has a wider, triangular shape it is female, while if it has a thinner “lighthouse” shape, it is a male. Also, you can tell whether the crab has recently molted: if the exoskeleton surface is a lighter coloring, not covered in barnacles and is softer/elastic to the touch then it has just shed its exoskeleton. We brought our samples back to the lab and set them up in a tank, but soon discovered that they are tricky little creatures, and strong too! They managed to push over the standpipe that allows water to reach a certain height in the tank. So we built a fortifying tower of bricks around the pipe and so far, it has held. As our first catch was only one species, we decided to reset our pots around the docks in hopes of catching some Pacific Rock Crab, Romaleon antennarium.

Today my research partner and I had our first day of field work for our project, and like many research projects, nothing went as planned. We headed out on the motorboat at slack tide this morning and whizzed across to Shaw Island. After a crash course in basic fishing technique (both of us have zero fishing experience) we settled down for what we thought would be a successful morning of catching, tagging, and performing gastric lavage on Quillback and Copper Rockfish. We had several moments of excitement when we thought there was a bite…it turned out that both of us were just really talented at hooking rocks on the channel floor. Rocks, but no Rockfish. We did spot several seals, which for me was really exciting as the only one I’ve seen so far was mutilated and half decomposed on the beach. So, we headed back disappointed and after a talk with our mentor, decided that as he has had bad luck for the past couple weeks with hooking any fish, it would be safest if we switched to a new project.

That’s where the Deadliest Catch part comes in. Our project is to catch and identify crabs of the rocky intertidal and subtidal areas and make measurements of the dentition on their claws. Specifically the aspect ratio, radius of curvature and wear patterns. First step: buy chicken legs for the crab pot bait. Second step: head back out on the water!