Having read multiple news accounts of domoic acid (DA) events up and down the Pacific coast of the U.S., I decided to do my own informal survey of the culprit that makes DA. Domoic acid is a naturally occurring toxin that is produced by some (but not all) species of the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia during a plankton bloom….
Fair is foul, and foul(ing) is fair
Next week classes for the Fall semester begin, and this will be my fourth term teaching a marine invertebrate zoology class at this particular institution. I have built this class on a foundation of comparative anatomy and functional morphology; lab activities include dissections (to observe how bodies are put together) and diversity labs (to examine the morphological…
Falling in love
Today Scott and I gathered all of our tiny Pisaster stars and assigned them to food treatments. We’re not doing a feeding experiment per se but have the goal of getting these juveniles to grow, and to do that we need to figure out what they eat when they’re this small. Nobody knows, or at least…
The Enemy of the State
I came of age, in an academic sense, working as a technician in a lab where the research focused on colonial hydroids. The other tech in the lab, Brenda, and I would get sent out to collect hydroids, then spend another day or so picking the predatory nudibranchs off the colonies. The PI of the…
A marine biologist goes to the mountains
This past weekend I attended a family reunion at South Lake Tahoe. It had been several years since the previous reunion for this side of the family, and it was wonderful seeing almost all of my cousins and their various offspring, plus aunts and uncles, in a glorious setting. All good things must come to…
You are what you eat, part the second
Two months ago now I gave my juvenile sea urchins a job. It’s the kind of job they’re perfectly suited for: eating algae. I measured them all and randomly divvied them up into three food treatments. One group remains on the pink coralline alga they’d all been eating once they graduated from a diet of scum,…
Pop quiz!
Okay, what are these? Extra-credit: Who made them? If you’ve been reading my blog posts for the past few months, you’ve seen everything you need to answer both questions. Respond in the Comments section, please!
More unusual sightings, and some underwater experiments
In defiance of post-nasal drip and an ominous tickle at the back of my throat, I got up early again this morning and went out on the low tide. I skipped yesterday’s low tide in favor of getting a little more sleep, thinking that it would help me fight off this incipient summer cold, but…
Farewell, Franklin Point!
Today I made what is likely my last trip to Franklin Point for several months. Tonight’s blue moon brings us the last of the good low tide series until the end of October. For me, a “good” tide series is one in which the low lows occur during daylight hours and are below the zero mean…
Nature’s air conditioning
While much of California’s interior swelters under abominable heat this week, here on the coast we are blessed by the presence of the marine layer, which often brings cooling fog. It was drizzling when I got up this morning, and although the sun did make brief appearances the air remained refreshingly cool. And right now, on…