Author: Allison J. Gong

Bogus terminology

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

BEWARE: This is a mini-rant. Continue at your own risk.

Several times over the past year or so I’ve heard the term “king tide” being tossed about in the general media. I remember looking up the term when I first heard it, back in December 2014, and came across the following definition, which I cribbed from the EPA’s website: The king tide is the highest predicted high tide of the year at a coastal location. Okay, I thought then, every year there is going to be one highest high tide and why not call it a “king tide”? A king, after all, is the biggest of the cheeses, the headiest of the honchos, the top of the heap. I could live with that, although I generally steer clear of hokey terms and wouldn’t dream of using “king tide” in my classroom.

In 2015, however, it seemed that we heard about “king tides” about half a dozen times. WTF is up with that? Obviously, the highest tide of the year can’t occur more than once in a year, right? So why did I read reports of “king tides” in January, around Thanksgiving, and at Christmas last year? Part of the problem is that the meaning of the term itself has morphed into something else. Instead of reserving “king tide” for only the highest tide of the year, writers are now using it to refer to any old spring tide. I detest this trend the same way I detest grade inflation—it gives an ordinary natural occurrence more importance than it deserves and doesn’t make it clear what’s going on.

Okay then, let’s clarify.

First of all, what are spring tides, anyway?

Well, spring tides are the extreme low and high tides that we get every two weeks or so. Spring tides and the intervening neap tides, during which both low and high tides are of intermediate height, are due to the gravitational pull of the sun and moon on Earth’s water. Obviously the sun, being orders of magnitude more massive than the moon, has much more gravitational pull than the moon; however, the moon is much closer to the earth and has a much stronger effect on our tidal cycles.

Tides

The top of the figure above depicts what is going on during spring tides. During a new or full moon the gravitational pulls of the sun and moon are aligned, causing higher-than-average high tides (and correspondingly lower-than-average low tides). When the moon and sun are forming a right angle with respect to the earth their respective gravitational pulls cancel each other out a bit and result in intermediate high and low tides. These neap tides occur during the first- and third-quarter moon phases. Even people who don’t live near the ocean have experienced the different phases of the moon, and have some understanding that the lunar cycle is about 28 days long. Thus every month we can expect two cycles of alternating spring and neap tides.

Oh, and spring tides get their name from the fact that the tide level bounces up and down like, well, a spring. And the amplitude of the tides increases and decreases throughout the month, as does a spring when you pull it, let it settle, and then give it another pull.

The take-home message is that EVERY MONTH we have extreme high and low tides. You could even say (though I certainly wouldn’t) that we have a “king tide” every month, since one of the high tides is going to be the highest of the month. Kinda takes the oomph out of the phrase, doesn’t it? What’s the fun of being a king if there are 11 other kings? Nobody gets to be THE king, which is kind of the whole point of being a king in the first place, isn’t it?

So what are the reporters trying to convey?

Digging a little deeper into pages from NOAA and other reputable sites, I think the intended message is that the effects of ordinary spring tides will be augmented by El Niño and climate change. Such effects include increased coastal erosion and flooding. When a spring high tide coincides with a big storm surge, which has happened here in Santa Cruz the past couple of days, the threat of flooding becomes quite real. The National Weather Service issued a high surf advisory for yesterday and today. The surf was indeed big when I went out to check things at the marine lab this morning.

In the context of a spring high tide combined with a big storm-driven surge, I can live with the term “king tide,” although I still don’t like it and won’t use it myself. A tide is a tide and has specific direct causes; same with a storm surge. Mixing them together and slapping the label “king tide” on the conflation gives people the wrong impression of what’s going on and implies that somehow the tide and the surge are the same thing. They are not; they are two independent phenomena that occasionally happen at the same time, that’s all. I am an educator and it’s my job to impart scientific information in both academic and informal settings. But I feel that my job is made more difficult when the media get all hyped up about an impending king tide and either state or imply that it will be the highest high tide of the year, and then we read about it again a few months later, and yet again during the following spring tide series. It’s both bogus and lazy.

Don’t worry, bee happy

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

On a dreary day in mid-winter I stopped by the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, which is operated by my alma mater, UC Davis. I first visited the garden shortly after it opened to the public in 2009, when all the plants were babies. Even then it supported an astonishing array of honey bees and native pollinators, and now that the plants have grown up and the gardeners continue to make improvements, it will be indeed be what its name says, a haven for insects, wildlife, and people.

I love the sign that greets people as they enter the garden. It is hexagonal, of course, and has information or art on all six sides. It’s a bench and an art piece, and an educational exhibit, all rolled into one.

Entrance to the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis. 16 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Entrance to the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis.
16 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Given that it is the dead of winter and raining a bit, there was zero insect activity. But I do kind of like gardens in the winter, especially after the solstice when the days are getting longer and plants start working on their spring buds. There’s a feeling of spring around the corner even if it’s drizzly and gloomy today. Plus, mid-winter is when honey bee colonies begin growing again. The bees will be out foraging any time it’s not raining or too windy, and the queen will resume her egg-laying duties. This also the time of year when managed colonies are most likely to starve–if a beekeeper has taken too much honey, or hasn’t right-sized the hives so that honey stores are near the clusters of overwintering bees, they may run out of food just at the time that there are more mouths to feed.

The spring nectar flow is when honey bee colonies grow, and thus are likely to throw swarms. Just as egg-laying is the way that new bees are produced, swarming is the way that new colonies are produced. A responsible beekeeper takes measures to reduce the number of swarms thrown by her managed colonies, for a couple of good reasons:  (1) bees lost when a swarm is thrown are bees that could have been used to start another managed hive; and (2) swarms often end up in undesirable locations, such as a neighbor’s tree or house. A large part of being a good backyard beekeeper is keeping the neighbors happy. Gifts of honey are helpful, of course, but proper care to reduce swarms is just as essential.

Even with the most diligent care, some swarms are going to happen. While it’s fun to go catch a swarm, there’s also something satisfying about catching a swarm from one’s own hive. The Honey Bee Haven beekeepers have put up a bait hive in a tree outside the garden proper:

Bait hive at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis. 16 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Bait hive at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis.
16 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

The idea behind a bait hive is exactly what it sounds like. If a colony swarms, the beekeeper hopes that the bees will be attracted to the bait hive and decide to move in. A bait hive is usually a miniature hive box containing a few frames of drawn-out wax and maybe some honey. Hopefully the scout bees in the swarm will like the familiar scents of wax and honey, and convince their sisters that the bait hive will be the ideal home. It’s a nice strategy, but doesn’t always work.

I hadn’t been to the Honey Bee Haven for a couple of years, and was happy to see that they now have established a bee hive right in the garden. And it’s a pretty hive, too.

Bee hive in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven garden at UC Davis. 16 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Bee hive in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven garden at UC Davis.
16 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Judging from the condition of the paint this hive is a relatively recent addition to the garden. I watched the entrance for a while, but given the weather conditions the bees were all sensibly tucked up inside the hive.

Of course, you can’t just put a bee hive in a garden visited by the public, even if the garden’s raison d’être is to be a haven for bees, without proper signage to inform said public. Besides, maybe the visitors don’t know what a bee hive looks like, and are wondering what those boxes are all about.

Beehive

I really like that people can come to the garden and observe the activities of an actual bee hive. And I imagine that the beekeepers have populated this hive with what I call sweet bees; that is, a queen whose genetics produce mellow bees that aren’t likely to take offense at visitors who are watching from a safe distance (in this case, about 2.5 meters). The door to this hive faces to the left in the photo above, so the bees’ flight path will take them safely away from visitors.

The last time I visited the Haven it was summer, in the midst of a prolonged drought. One of very cool things I saw was a watering platform for bees. Bees do drink water, and they also take water back to the hive to dilute honey, reliquify honey that has crystallized in the comb, and for evaporative cooling when it’s hot. The Haven provides water for bees, without threat of drowning, on these nifty slabs:

Water source for bees and other small creatures. 16 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Water source for bees and other small creatures.
16 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

The slab slopes a bit so that water drains off the end and doesn’t pool. Right now the taps are closed, and given all the recent rain it’s easy for bees to find water, but in the summer one of taps will be opened enough so that the tiniest trickle of water drips onto the stone and accumulates in the little troughs. Bees can land on the stone and drink.

The Haven was designed and built to accommodate not just honey bees, but all sorts of animal pollinators. The planners included these “bee condos” to provide nesting areas for carpenter bees:

Condo for carpenter and other excavating bees at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, UC Davis. 16 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Condo for carpenter and other excavating bees at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven at UC Davis.
16 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Carpenter bees don’t eat wood, but they chew into it to make burrows for their larvae. They can be a nuisance, as to them the rafters or eaves of a human’s house often make prime real estate for bee burrows. Providing them an attractive site to deposit their eggs might draw them away from human structures. Carpenter bees are large, shiny, black bees, easily distinguished from the fuzzy bumble bees, and as California native pollinators should not be regarded as pests. Watching them buzz through the garden like heavy air-borne tanks is one of the joys of spring. I think this year I’ll put up a carpenter bee condo of my own and see if I can get them to nest in it. Fortunately, the Haven provides instructions for a DIY bee condo! If you’ve ever wondered how you can protect native pollinators, this is something that’s easy to do.

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A tale of sand, a shell, and a seal

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

The new moon is tonight, which of course means that we are in spring tides. Yesterday afternoon my friend and colleague Scott joined me for my first visit to the intertidal in 2016. And where to go for this inaugural field excursion of the new year, but to Franklin Point? Low tide was at 15:53 yesterday, so we met up at 14:00, stopped to fill up the gas tank, and headed up the coast. Expecting it to be crazy windy as afternoons tend to be on the coast, I had dressed in extra layers. Scott and I were surprised to emerge from the car and find it wasn’t windy at all, so even though the air temperature was cool at least we didn’t have to deal with any significant amount of windchill factor.

Hiking over the dunes we saw Unusual Thing #1–a bridal photo shoot. A couple of stretches of the trail are covered by a boardwalk, and on the first of these we encountered a bride decked out in full regalia–wedding dress, flowers, hair, make-up–and two photographers. They were very nice and let us pass through in our decidedly inelegant boots and field gear. I didn’t think it would be very nice to take their picture. However, I did think that they’d lucked out and gotten a great day for photography: the aforementioned lack of wind meant that the bride wasn’t freezing in her slip of a wedding dress, and the afternoon light was flat so there were no shadows or harsh glare.

Descending onto the beach we came across Unusual Thing #2–an elephant seal.

Male elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) hauled out on the beach at Franklin Point. 8 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Male northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) hauled out on the beach at Franklin Point.
8 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

It is e-seal haul-out time at Año Nuevo State Park a few miles down the road from Franklin Point, and I’ve seen them on the beach a few times before. This was the first time I’d seen an adult male, though, and he was HUGE! Without being stupid and going over to stand next to this animal it’s hard to depict how large he is, and unfortunately there wasn’t anything in the vicinity to give a sense of scale. So trust me, or look it up for yourself, male elephant seals are ginormous. This big guy was taking a siesta, and we could hear him snoring. He did wake up and lift his head to look at us, but we gave him plenty of room as we walked past and he returned to his nap.

One of the reasons I wanted to see Franklin Point after the El Niño storms of the past week was to see how much sand had been washed away from the beach. Sand typically accumulates on California coastal beaches during the dry storm-less months of summer and autumn, only to be flushed away by storms the following winter. After a particularly violent storm or a series of storms occurring in a short time, very large amounts of sand can be removed from a beach. For the past four years we haven’t had much of a winter storm season (hence the awful drought) and the beach at Franklin Point has been tall and gently sloped. I’d grown accustomed to this state of affairs, which makes what we saw yesterday qualify as Unusual Thing #3–rocks that had been covered with sand for years and are now exposed.

To set the stage, here’s a picture that I took on an afternoon low tide last year on 17 March 2015:

Franklin Point beach on 17 March 2015. © Allison J. Gong
Franklin Point beach on 17 March 2015.
© Allison J. Gong

And here’s yesterday’s photo from the same general area:

Franklin Point beach on 8 January 2016. © Allison J. Gong
Franklin Point beach on 8 January 2016.
© Allison J. Gong

Can you see how much steeper the beach is in yesterday’s photo? And those rocks on the left side? They are not visible in the photo from last spring because they were under sand!

Here’s a closer look at the newly exposed rocks:

Newly exposed rocks at Franklin Point. 9 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Bare rocks at Franklin Point.
9 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

You can see exactly how high the sand was last summer. What’s really exciting is that these rocks represent pristine habitat that has yet to be exploited. I can look at primary ecological succession this spring! Well, at least until the sand returns and buries the rocks again.

As we meandered among the rocks in the intertidal, Scott and I both noticed an abundance of abalone shells. Fairly early on we spotted this black ab shell lying emersed above the water line:

Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point. 8 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point.
8 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Turning the shell over we saw Unusual Thing #4–an abalone showing signs of withering syndrome:

Ventral view of a black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point. 8 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Ventral view of a black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) at Franklin Point.
8 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

We were actually surprised to see that the animal was alive. Healthy living abalone are firmly attached to rocks, tucked into crevices. This one wasn’t attached to anything, just lying on the sand. We picked it up, turned it over, and found the body of the animal shriveled up and filling up only about half of the space it should have occupied. It didn’t respond to gentle pokes but wasn’t dead yet, or at least not dead enough to pass the stink test for deadness.

Withering syndrome is a bacterial disease that inhibits digestive function in abalone. To stave off starvation the infected animal begins to digest its own body tissues. As a result the entire body shrinks and eventually the foot can no longer stick to rocks. In California it affects black abs and red abs (H. rufescens). Until the recent years of warmer-than-usual water black abs (H. cracherodii) had been most common in southern California, but I’ve been seeing more of them in the past few years. Now it looks like the disease that plagues them has accompanied them up the coast. It’s not surprising, given the current El Niño conditions.

This gives me another thing to keep an eye out for in my intertidal excursions. I’ll start keeping track of abalone and see if withering syndrome becomes more prevalent. Might as well start with this afternoon’s low tide!

Seek and ye shall find

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

Before Christmas I was invited to speak at one of the monthly public talks hosted by the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. I’m always happy to be asked to speak to students or the public, so my default answer to these requests is “Yes!” Usually for this kind of presentation I get to choose the topic, but this time my name came up because one of the Seymour Center staffers came up with “bees, banana slugs, and bat stars” so that’s what I was given to work with. When my brain took hold of this topic and these very disparate animals, the common theme that came to mind was . . . wait for it . . . reproduction. So yes, this is going to be another sex talk.

What this means is that I need to provide some information on the talk and photos so that the Seymour Center can start publicizing the event, which is in March. Banana slugs are still in the mix, and I don’t have any pictures of them, so this afternoon I took advantage of a break between storms to go hiking in the forest and look for slugs. I’d been feeling a little cabin fever for the past few days because of the rain and my own recovery from bronchitis which sapped all of my energy, so I was grateful for an excuse to leave my desk and get outside for a bit.

I headed out to the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, knowing that where there are redwood trees there should also be banana slugs, especially after all the rain we’ve had recently. You know how when you’re looking for something you can’t find it, and when you’re not looking for it you see them all over the place? That’s how this hike began. It turns out that looking for banana slugs under a deadline makes them very hard to find. And I did have a deadline, as I’d promised to have the blurb and photos for my talk ready today.

After about half an hour of slowly meandering along the trails and getting distracted by all the fungi that popped up after the rains, I did see a banana slug:

Banana slug (Ariolimax sp.) at The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. 7 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Banana slug (Ariolimax sp.) at The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park.
7 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

That is such a gastropod face! Banana slugs are really cool (and ectothermic, too) animals. One of my buddies in grad school kept one for a pet in our office bullpen; we called it Terry, because slugs are hermaphrodites and deserve androgynous names. Terry really liked eating mushrooms and lettuce.

Banana slugs, and all of the terrestrial snails and slugs, are pulmonate (“lung”) gastropods. Most of their marine relatives, with whom I spend so much quality time in the lab and in the field, are prosobranch (“gill in front”) gastropods. The nudibranchs and sea hares, which are so photogenic and conspicuous, are opisthobranch (“gill on back”) gastropods. As these names imply, the prosobranchs and opisthobranchs possess gills (although they are very different kinds of gills) and thus live in water. The pulmonates don’t have gills; they live on land and breathe air. [There are aquatic pulmonates, too. Only a few are marine, and most live in fresh water. They have to come to the surface to breathe.]

So, what is the lung of a banana slug? It’s actually the mantle cavity, that oh-so-molluscan feature, that in prosobranchs contains the gill(s). In the pulmonates, the mantle cavity is highly vascularized, as you’d expect from any gas-exchange surface, and opens to the outside by a hole called a pneumostome.

Here’s the pneumostome of my first banana slug of the afternoon:

Anterior region of a banana slug (Ariolimax sp.), showing the pneumostome on the right side of the mantle. 7 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Anterior region of a banana slug (Ariolimax sp.), showing the pneumostome on the right side of the mantle.
7 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

The pneumostome is always on the right side of the animal’s mantle. You can actually watch it open and close as the slug breathes.

I found a second slug about an hour into the hike.

Banana slug (Ariolimax sp.) at The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. 7 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Banana slug (Ariolimax sp.) at The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park.
7 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

See? No pneumostome on the left side.

If I’d had the time, I would have put the slugs together to see if they’d mate. It is a sex talk I’m prepping for, after all. Heck, what would be even better would be to find two slugs already in copulo. No such luck today, though. What’s good about not finding everything that I was looking for today is that it gives me incentive to keep going out to search for it. And in the meantime, I’ve got to start studying up on local fungi. I saw so many different kinds of mushrooms today that now I’m motivated to fill in this particular gap in my knowledge. Might as well take advantage of the El Niño rains, right?

Busting through

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

At 07:40 on Tuesday 5 January 2016, the sandbar at the mouth of Younger Lagoon broke open for the first time this rainy season. The Younger Lagoon Reserve (YLR) is located directly west (or “up the coast,” as we say; the terminology gets a little weird because the coastline runs east-west in Santa Cruz) of the Marine Science campus of UC Santa Cruz. The actual lagoon is Y-shaped, and while it receives run-off from land, including from the adjacent agricultural fields, for most of the year it is cut off from the Pacific Ocean by a thick sand bar.

Map of UC Santa Cruz's Marine Science campus and adjacent Younger Lagoon Reserve.
Map of UC Santa Cruz’s Marine Science campus and adjacent Younger Lagoon Reserve.

This week California has been glorying in the might of El Niño, which has been bringing heavy rain to most of the state and lots of snow in the Sierra Nevada. As the first new moon of the year tomorrow creates the usual extreme high and low tides, we’ve been treated to some spectacualr waves on the coast. However, it’s not the incoming tidal surge that causes the lagoon to break through; if that were the case, then the sand bar would be broken open, or at least seriously eroded, more often than it is. Rather, it’s the surge of fresh water, the accumulation of heavy rain and run-off, coming from the top of the lagoon that breaches the sand bar from the upstream side.

This photo was taken on Tuesday by staff of the Younger Lagoon Reserve:

Temporary channel through the sand bar at the mouth of Younger Lagoon. 5 January 2016 © Younger Lagoon Reserve
Temporary channel through the sand bar at the mouth of Younger Lagoon.
5 January 2016
© Younger Lagoon Reserve

You can see that the ocean is rushing through the channel and mixing with the brown stagnant water from the lagoon. Those two tiny white dots on the far side of the channel are snowy egrets. The same egrets also appear in this video that I shot from the overlook which is the closest I can get to the lagoon itself without trespassing on the Reserve:

The break through the sand bar is a temporary thing. This photo and my video were taken around mid-day on Tuesday. Later in the afternoon I looked down on the lagoon from a more distant vantage point and already the sand had begun to accumulate again. Today the lagoon broke through again, and the YLR staff took another great photo from down in the reserve:

Channel through the sand bar at the mouth of Younger Lagoon. 7 January 2016 © Younger Lagoon Reserve
Channel through the sand bar at the mouth of Younger Lagoon.
7 January 2016
© Younger Lagoon Reserve

This being the first break-through of the sand bar this season, the water running out was pretty stagnant and nasty. In fact, as I drove in Tuesday morning I noticed a strong smell of H2S permeating the entire lab complex, and wondered if the construction workers had hit a sewer line. Obviously, the first breach of the sand bar releases all of that gunky, H2S-laden water into the ocean, where it flows right past our seawater intake.

I’ve long wondered what nutrient levels are in the lagoon at different times of the year, and whether or not conditions in the lagoon affect our seawater quality at the marine lab. I used to think that there might be a correlation between nutrient input from the lagoon and the occasional gunky algal bloom that clouds our seawater and makes life difficult for animals and aquarists alike. However, seeing for myself how little actual water exchange there is between the lagoon and the ocean when the sand bar breaks open, I’m pretty certain now that any nutrients from the lagoon would be quickly diluted to the point of having no effect on productivity in the ocean. Besides, those pesky algal blooms are a regional phenomenon, occurring over large swaths of coastline. Still, it would be interesting to study how nutrient levels within the lagoon fluctuate throughout the year. Maybe I can get a student to take this on as a senior thesis project.

The short drive home

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

Among some members of my family we have a not-quite-regular New Year’s tradition of meeting up for dim sum in one of the Bay Area restaurants. I’d say we can usually pull this event together 3-4 of every five years. It’s a totally casual affair: anybody who can, shows up at the designated time, friends are allowed, and we all eat monstrous amounts of food. After lunch we hang out, go hiking, visit other friends in San Francisco, or whatever. Today we decided to cross the new Bay Bridge into the City and drive down the coast on Highway 1.

The atmosphere was spectacularly clear. We could see the Farallon Islands, some 30 miles outside the Golden Gate, clear as day out on the horizon. I think I’ve seen them a total of about five times in my life as a native Californian, and never as distinct as they were today. As we drove south the clouds began to gather, first as wispy mares’ tails and then as more substantial masses, although looking nothing like rain clouds. Just south of Pigeon Point I took this photo, where we stopped to watched a dozen or so dolphins leisurely swimming southward:

Highway 1 along the San Mateo County coast south of Pigeon Point. 1 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Highway 1 along the San Mateo County coast south of Pigeon Point.
1 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

I have been grateful to see some green along the roads in our area. After four years of drought the recent rains have been most welcome. Keep it coming, El Niño!

From the exact same spot but facing the other direction (north) and letting my phone adjust the exposure to showcase the clouds and the afternoon sun, I got this shot of the Pigeon Point lighthouse in silhouette:

Pigeon Point lighthouse, viewed from the south. 1 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Pigeon Point lighthouse, viewed from the south.
1 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

South of Pigeon Point we spotted a few whale spouts and pulled off the road at Franklin Point to take a look through the binoculars. We saw mostly spouts and a few backs, not enough to be able to identify them. While the binoculars were in other hands I took another picture of the lighthouse.

Pigeon Point lighthouse, viewed from the south. 1 January 2016 © Allison J. Gong
Pigeon Point lighthouse, viewed from the south.
1 January 2016
© Allison J. Gong

Yes, there’s a lighthouse in this photo. See it at the end of the point, way off in the background? I took this photo from atop the highest dune on the trail going out to my favorite intertidal site at Franklin Point.

And again, because I have become infatuated with clouds, I let my phone work its magic and snapped this shot:

Afternoon sky over Franklin Point, taken from Highway 1. 1 January 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Afternoon sky over Franklin Point, taken from Highway 1.
1 January 2015
© Allison J. Gong

It’s rather amazing the pictures a non-photographer can take with an iPhone, isn’t it?

In the car we talked about how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place, to encounter such natural splendor on an ordinary drive from Point A to Point B. And I still can’t believe that it’s part of my job to go to the ocean and simply marvel at what I see. How did I ever luck into that?

I’m not the sort of person who makes new year’s resolutions, but my hope for myself in 2016, and beyond, is that I never take for granted this paradise where I live. My hope for you is that you find and appreciate beauty in the natural world wherever you are. And please, share it with me and with others.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Gotta getta gecko

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

This past weekend I was in the San Joaquin Valley to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. On a cold and rainy Saturday morning we gathered at my parents’ house to take care of some last-minute things before the big party later that evening. We were in the backyard when I noticed a tiny lizard on the patio under a table. It was so still even as I approached that at first I thought it was dead, but when I touched it it turned its head away from my finger and twitched a leg. Amidst suggestions of “Pick it up” and “Don’t squish it!” I coaxed the little guy onto my hand and held it out for pictures, hoping I’d have time to ID it after all the birthday festivities.

Small lizard found in my parents' backyard in Fresno, California. 19 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Small lizard found in my parents’ backyard in Fresno, California.
19 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Cute little thing, isn’t it? The entire body is only about 5 cm long. It didn’t look like any of the native lizards or salamanders that I’ve seen, and a little research on the excellent website California Herps confirmed that it is indeed an alien species.

Hemidactylus turcicus, the Mediterranean house gecko, has been living in California since at least as early as 2007. It is a nocturnal gecko that is usually associated with human dwellings, as artificial lights attract the moths and other insects that the gecko preys upon. The predatory habits of this H. turcicus make it a welcome, if informal, house pet in its native range. I was unable to find how H. turcicus made it into California from the Mediterranean, but I bet the original “colonists” were escaped pets. Since they are small (no longer than 15 cm) and nocturnal, they are not considered to be a threat to native California lizards, although their distribution in California seems to expanding northward.

Like most other geckos, H. turcicus has vertical pupils and doesn’t have eyelids. In this picture you can see the pupil. We watched our little guy lick its eyeballs several times, which is what geckos do to keep their eyes clean and moistened.

Head detail of H. turcicus, showing the vertical pupil. 19 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Head detail of H. turcicus, showing the vertical pupil.
19 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

There’s no way of knowing how long this little gecko has lived in my parents’ backyard, or now long it will live after I let it go. Now that I know about them, I’m going to keep an eye out for them around here where I live. According to the California Herps species map for H. turcicus, there has been at least one verified sighting in Santa Cruz County. They don’t seem to be particularly shy, but their nocturnal behavior and small size may make them difficult to see even if they are fairly abundant. If one makes it into my house, I’ll welcome it and hope my cats don’t catch it. I wouldn’t mind another mouth in the house, if it’s one that I don’t have to feed.

Wave watching

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

Last night the moon was new, meaning that we are now in spring tides. The spring tides occur during the new and full phases of the moon and result in the largest swings between high and low tides; in the weeks between the full and new moons we have neap tides, during which the height difference between high and low tide is smaller. As an intertidal biologist I look forward to and make use of the spring low tides, and after a year of pretty intensive field work I can feel in my body when they should be coming around. I love being that tuned in to the rhythm of the tides.

Yesterday a very large northwest swell came through the region, combining with the late morning high tide to generate some awesome (in the literal sense of the word) waves. For example, huge waves broke over the pier in Ventura, causing officials to close the pier until further notice. Alas, I was in class all morning and didn’t get out to the marine lab until early afternoon, at which time the tide had receded (yesterday’s low was at 16:48) so I didn’t get to catch any of the action.

Made up for it today, though. Knowing that high tide would be at about 10:00 I made sure to be out at the lab for my daily chores after breakfast. Patience was rewarded!

Here’s the view from the cliff at Terrace Point:

Big wave at Terrace Point, Santa Cruz, California. 12 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Big wave at Long Marine Lab, Santa Cruz, California.
12 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The waves were at least twice as tall as I am. I could feel them crash into the cliff beneath my feet. There’s nothing quite like being reminded that Mother Nature has home field advantage. Here’s the action looking east towards Natural Bridges and Santa Cruz. Hard to believe that I spend hours crawling around on those benches, isn’t it?

Out at Terrace Point there’s a non-public-accessible platform that lab staff have access to for water sampling. Every day, conditions permitting, a technician goes down the steps and throws a bucket off the cliff to grab a water sample and take the temperature; it’s a fun task that I’ve done a bunch of times. I don’t think the outside water temperature is going to be taken today. Take a look at this sequence of photos, taken in a 5-second time span, and imagine yourself standing on that platform. Yeah, you don’t want to be there.

Before:

The wave approaches 12 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
12 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

During:

12 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
12 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

And after:

12 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
12 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The biggest splashes occur when a wave is reflected off the cliff and crashes back into a second oncoming wave. To see this I walked over to a different area of the lab and looked down onto Younger Lagoon. There’s a rock island in the mouth of the lagoon that almost always has birds perched on it. Sometimes the birds are pelicans or pigeons. Today they were cormorants and gulls.

Pelicans and gulls at the mouth of Younger Lagoon. 12 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Cormorants and gulls at the mouth of Younger Lagoon.
12 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The west-facing cliff of Younger Lagoon is perfectly situated to reflect back these northwest swells. Watch for yourself:

Watching this reminded me of a passage from Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, in which he describes the waves that ultimately sank the fishing boat Andrea Gail in the North Atlantic. It’s a visceral demonstration of the ocean’s power. All of a sudden the adage “Never turn your back to the ocean” seems rather trite, doesn’t it?

Progress report

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

My most recent batch of sea urchin larvae continues to do well, having gotten through the dreaded Day 24. I haven’t written about them lately because they’re not doing very differently from the group that I followed last winter/spring. However, I’ve been taking photos of the larvae twice a week and it seems a shame to let them go to waste, so I’ve put together a progression of larval development. As a reminder, the last time I wrote about these larvae they were six days old.

Age 9 days: The larvae had four arms and were growing their skeletal arm rods. Their stomachs, which we keep an eye on because their size can tell us whether or not we’re feeding them enough, were a bit small but not so much so that I worried.

9-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 13 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
9-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
13 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Age 12 days: The larvae were growing their third pair of arms. Some had just begun growing the fourth pair of arms. Red pigment spots also start appearing all over the body. Some larvae develop lots of red spots, others have very few. Notice that the stomach is slightly pear-shaped; this is normal.

12-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 16 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Ventral view of a 12-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
16 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Age 17 days:  This larva doesn’t look appreciably different from the previous one. This photograph, though, is a bit clearer. The stomach has taken on a pink tinge, due to the red color of the food the animal is eating, and the mouth is the large rounded triangular in the in-focus plane. The pair of skeletal arm rods that are in focus are protruding from the ends of the arms, which raises is something to be concerned about. Sometimes the first sign of imminent doom is the shriveling of the arms, so seeing the rods sticking out makes me think “Uh-oh. . .”

Dorsal view of a pluteus larvae of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 21 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Dorsal view of a pluteus larvae of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
21 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Age 24 days: This is about the time in larval development when things often start to go wonky. I’ve looked back at my notes from previous spawnings of S. purpuratus, and seven of the 20 cultures that crashed did so in the week between days 20-28 of development. Some of these cultures were doing well right up to the point that they all died. They were literally there one day and gone the next.

Nonetheless, the current batch of larvae continued to do well. The fourth pair of arms were slow to grow but otherwise the larvae look fine. The top larva in the picture below is lying on its back, so you are looking onto the ventral surface. On the left side of the stomach there’s a little upward-facing invagination; this is part of the initial water vascular system forming. Note also that the overall shape of the larvae is changing a bit. They are becoming less pointy and a bit rounder.

Pair of 24-day-old pluteus larvae of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 28 November 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Pair of 24-day-old pluteus larvae of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
28 November 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Age 30 days:  At this stage the juvenile rudiment is clearly visible. You can see it as a rather nondescript blob of stuff to the left of the gut. The fourth pair of arms have also grown quite a bit but are still considerably shorter than the others. This individual has two bands of cilia, called epaulettes, that encircle the body. These epaulettes will become more conspicuous as the larva approaches competency.

Ventral view of a 30-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 4 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Ventral view of a 30-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
4 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Age 33 days: Today I got lucky! The larvae looked good when I changed their water this morning <knock on wood> and although I’m keeping my fingers crossed I have high hopes for these guys. They’re about as big as they’re going to get, measuring 760-800 µm in length. They will get heavier and more opaque as the juvenile rudiment continues to develop.

33-day-old pluteus larvae of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 7 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
33-day-old pluteus larvae of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
7 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

The really cool thing is that one of the larvae landed on the slide exactly as I wanted it to. It happened to fall onto its left side and stayed there, so I was able to focus up and down through the body to get the rudiment into focus.

Left-side view of a 33-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 7 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Right-side view of a 33-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
7 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Do you see five small roundish blobs that are evenly spaced around the larger golden circular blob? The large blob is the stomach, seen in side view. Those smaller blobs are tube feet! Don’t believe me? Then take a look at this close-up:

Juvenile rudiment of 33-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. 7 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Juvenile rudiment of 33-day-old pluteus larva of the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
7 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Now if those don’t look like tube feet, then I’ll eat my hat. What’s also noteworthy about this larva is that its epaulette bands are both visible, especially the posterior-most one.

So far, so good. I won’t know how successful larval development is for these guys until they either make it through metamorphosis, or not. In a very real sense, I won’t be able to draw any conclusions about the success of larval development until they either become established as juvenile urchins, or not. One of my graduate advisors inherited a couple of sayings that he passed on to me, as well as to a whole generation of aspiring invertebrate zoologists:

The animal is always right.

and

The life cycle is the organism.

The first is a given, right? The animal knows what it is and what it’s doing, even if we humans have no clue about what’s going on and can’t decide what its name should be.

The second saying might be a little less intuitive. What it means is that, for organisms with a multi-stage life cycle, you have to consider all of the stages if you want to understand them. This is a much more holistic view of biology, and it’s the one that appeals most strongly to me. When I’m thinking as a naturalist, I find my thought process constantly switching between “forest” and “trees” as I seek to understand even a teensy bit of the world around me. While it’s easy to get distracted by all the cool details of organisms, it’s important to step back and ask myself, “What does it all mean? What is the big picture here?” So yeah. Perhaps when (if!) these larvae turn into urchins and I’ve got them feeding on macroalgae in a few months, I’ll be able to say whether or not larval development was successful. If all goes well this larval phase, as all-consuming and fascinating as it is to me, will be only a small part of these animals’ lives.

A phobia that I don’t have, and a tiny phurry phriend

Posted on by Allison J. Gong

This morning I was teaching lab when three of my students in the back corner called me over to where they were working. “We have a problem,” one of them declared.

Since they were making posters I assumed that the problem had to do with format or content or something related to the scientific papers they were analyzing. When I got back to them and asked what the problem was, they just pointed at the corner of one of the counters. “You’ve almost put your hand on it,” one of them said.

I looked under my hand . . . nothing. “No,” the student continued, “it’s under the edge.”

I looked under the lip of the counter and there was a tiny spider just starting to lower itself on an invisible strand of silk. And I do mean tiny: the entire body would have fit onto my thumbnail, with room to spare. Seeing that it was a jumping spider and nothing to be afraid of, I captured it in my hands and released it outdoors. Meanwhile, the students cowered and kept their distance.

Here’s the only picture I was able to take before returning to the classroom. I was supposed to be teaching, after all.

Red-backed jumping spider (Phidippus johnsoni). 4 December 2015 © Allison J. Gong
Red-backed jumping spider (Phidippus johnsoni).
4 December 2015
© Allison J. Gong

Intrigued as I usually am by something I don’t know much about, I looked up California jumping spiders after class. I knew it was a jumping spider because I’ve seen many of them before, and they really can jump. This little one, measuring maybe 1 cm in total length, jumped about 10 cm when I put it on the railing outside. Then it scurried to the edge of the railing and went overboard. Jumping spiders are super cute. If you don’t believe me, ask the almighty Google to show you some mating dances of male jumping spiders. I dare you not to be impressed.

Jumping spiders belong to the appropriately named family Salticidae. They are little spiders, rather hairy, with shiny black eyes. Because of their small size they often don’t provoke the knee-jerk “KILL IT!” response except from true arachnophobes. The one my students found today is, I think, a female red-backed jumping spider (Phidippus johnsoni). Both sexes in this species have a red abdomen; in males it is solid, while the females have a black stripe running down the center.

All spiders are hunters, capturing prey by various means and killing it with a venomous bite before slurping up the juicy insides. A little jumping spider could bite a human, but I’ve handled many of them and have never been bitten. The trick, I think, is not to make the animal feel threatened. If it perceives your hand as just another surface to crawl on, it won’t waste its venom on you. Not that I would try this with a spider known to have a bite that is dangerous to humans, mind you. Jumping spiders often end up inside houses, though, and it’s good to know that you can gently pick them up and put them outdoors where they will be happier. You might also be happier, knowing that the spider isn’t inside with you!