currenttidings2022-2
Current Tidings
Shannon Point Marine Center
Volume 2022, Issue 2
Shannon Point is a hive of research activity this summer. Just as the Arellano lab returned from a 50-day trip studying hydrothermal vent communities in the waters off the Kingdom of Tonga, the Strom lab departed on another of their frequent research cruises to the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) site in the Gulf of Alaska. Resident and visiting researchers are busy in the SPMC laboratories, on our vessels, and in the field. A group of outstanding graduate students can be seen busily pursuing thesis research around the facility, and we are hosting our 31st cohort of undergraduate student researchers funded by the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. The REU students, who spend nine summer weeks in-residence at SPMC, bring an energy and enthusiasm that contributes a great deal to the SPMC environment. The projects this year, completed with the support of dedicated advisors (shown below), span an array of topics. We appreciate the high-quality work going on and look forward to seeing the outcomes of these varied research activities.
2022 SPMC REU program participants
Left to right: John Blaha, Brandilyn Castro, Riley Heath, Frankie Lopez, Isabel Yueh, Maia Dykstra, Alexis Jordan, Kyle Bryant, Kalena DeLong
- John Blaha, George Washington University. Methodological comparison for counting bacteria (Dr. Tanika Ladd, advisor)
- Kyle Bryant, University of Maryland, College Park. The phenotypic and potential genetic differences between Dungeness crab cohorts in the Salish Sea (Dr. Jay Dimond, advisor)
- Brandilyn Castro, Estrella Mountain Community College (Avondale, AZ). Indirect transmission modes of seagrass wasting disease (Dr. Morgan Eisenlord, advisor)
- Kalena DeLong, Scripps College (Claremont, CA). Measuring the rate of denitrification in Hood Canal (Dr. David Shull, advisor)
- Maia Dykstra, Trinity University (San Antonio, TX). Metal contamination in Salish Sea sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) (Dr. Kathy Van Alstyne, advisor)
- Frankie Lopez, University of California Los Angeles. Photoinhibition and recovery effects on photosynthetic efficiency for phytoplankton in the Northern Gulf of Alaska (Dr. Suzanne Strom, advisor)
- Riley Heath, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (Socorro, NM). Modeling nitrogen transport in Hood Canal (Dr. Sam Kastner, advisor)
- Alexis Jordan, Western Washington University. Water quality at the Joe Leary Slough Tide Gate and eelgrass health metrics in Padilla Bay (Dr. Sylvia Yang, advisor)
- Isabel Yueh, Western Washington University. The impacts of volcanic ash on Ifremeria and Bathymodiolus in the Lau Basin (Dr. Shawn Arellano, advisor)
Dr. Shawn Arellano: Rocking the world of deep-sea larval ecology
Dr. Shawn Arellano, associate professor in Biology/Marine and Coastal Sciences and energetic presence at the Shannon Point Marine Center, is overseeing one of the most active and interesting research programs in SPMC history. Shawn’s recent 50-day cruise to the southwest Pacific represented an exciting mix of larval and microbial ecology wedded to vent geochemistry. The National Science Foundation-funded project is a collaboration between Arellano, Dr. Roxanne Beinart (URI), and Dr. Craig Young (UOregon). The centerpiece of the project is the Lau Basin vent field just west of the Kingdom of Tonga, which hosts a gradient of geological (and hence chemistry) conditions. The researchers hope to determine how this gradient in vent geochemistry influences the types of chemosynthetic bacteria in residence, and how this in turn relates to the distribution of snail species that host symbiotic chemosynthesizers.
Shawn’s component of the project focuses on the snails’ planktonic larval stages (see other articles in this issue for details). A major challenge is capturing these sparse larvae from huge volumes of deep seawater. Tools brought to bear on this challenge include the SyPRID plankton sampler (like a large plankton net with an impeller to move water through) on the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry, a large-volume pump that can be placed next to individual vents, and larval tube traps on the sea floor for localized capture. A ‘microscope team’ on board the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson picked through the captured larvae, sorting them for later genetic sequencing, morphology, and other analyses. A significant cruise moment was the first-ever equator crossing for the Arellano Larval Lab – they participated in the traditional sailor ceremony initiating them into the Ancient Order of Shellbacks.
The Arellano lab after their first equator crossing and working hard on the 'microscope team'.
A completely unexpected expedition finding was vent burial by ash from the record-breaking January 2022 eruption of volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. The first three vents visited by the science team were blanketed by as much as a meter of ash, with few living vent creatures in sight. The team quickly consulted with a geologist on shore who provided suggestions as to how to diagnose the ash source and collect samples. Larval settlement plates were placed in the area and the group is hoping for a return visit to assess colonization in the wake of this spectacular natural disturbance.
This ambitious research effort is not Shawn’s only undertaking. With vent biologist Lauren Mullineaux (WHOI) and vent microbiologist Costa Vetriani (Rutgers), she’s using deep submersible Alvin to study how biofilms influence larval settlement on the East Pacific Rise. A cruise this coming winter will recover experiments deployed earlier. Even sooner will be a fall expedition to cold seeps along the south Atlantic coast of the U.S. and into the Gulf of Mexico. The final in a series of four cruises in collaboration with Craig Young, this project is looking at how larval dispersal influences cold seep connectivity and community composition. The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc with these complex cruise schedules, resulting in seemingly endless postponements and the current super-busy field season.
Sunset at sea on the Lau Basin cruise
Shawn shares her life with husband Kevin, who works as an Environmental Specialist with the Port of Anacortes, and 6-year-old son Owen, who works at being an active and growing child. As you might imagine, her family life along with research and faculty duties leave Shawn little time for recreational activities. When pressed, she admits she’s always wanted to learn to play piano. We hope Shawn finds a few moments for some music-filled rest and relaxation this summer, and we can’t wait to hear more fascinating deep-sea findings from her vigorous research team!
Vanessa Jiminez: Enraptured by invertebrates
First-year Biology graduate student Vanessa Jimenez got the opportunity of a lifetime when she accompanied the Arellano lab group to the southwest Pacific this spring. After quarantining for 5 days in Hawai’i, the group boarded R.V. Thomas G. Thompson for a 50-day cruise that included an equator crossing (the team are now all official Shellbacks!) and extensive sampling of the hydrothermal vents that populate the Lau Basin near Tonga.
Vanessa’s M.S. research on the vent snail genus Alviniconcha combines larval ecology, biogeography, and symbiosis. Working with Ahna Van Gaest, a technician in the Arellano lab, Vanessa will be prepping samples for DNA barcoding. She hopes to relate water column distributions of the larvae to adult distributions at the vents, asking, Are the larvae everywhere? At what point do the populations experience bottlenecks, yielding the discontinuous adult distributions seen across the vent field? Sequencing of 16S rRNA will show whether the planktonic larvae already contain their chemosynthetic bacterial partners and, if so, which specific types. As if that weren’t enough, she also has collections of small juvenile Alviniconcha for comparison of species and symbiont identity with snail size distribution.
(Left) Vanessa holds an Alviniconcha snail while at sea. (Right) Vanessa pilots the Remotely Operated Vehicle JASON while aboard the Thomas G. Thompson in the Lau Basin.
Vanessa described the cruise as a “great collaborative experience”. Being surrounded by experts in the field, and working side-by-side as colleagues, was a real thrill and a tremendous learning opportunity. Vanessa was on the ‘dissection team’ that attempted to identify the adult snails morphologically (very tough with these cryptic species) and parse them into a variety of subsamples to be sent out to a bevy of researchers. On top of working long hours while remembering which snail bit goes into which fixative, ROV Jason could have a scheduled dive or recovery at any hour of the day or night, requiring deployment or retrieval of the larval traps (one of several tools used to winnow rare snail larvae from vast volumes of seawater).
Inspiration to dive into graduate research was provided by Vanessa’s recent stint as an AmeriCorps research assistant at the Padilla Bay Research Reserve, working with Dr. Sylvia Yang on plankton monitoring. Vanessa previously conducted surveys of a variety of marine species in northern Puget Sound for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. She’s just started as a mentor for the Dare to Dream program, which works with high school students from migrant families in a 3-week program to immerse and engage them in science. This program is particularly satisfying for Vanessa, a first-generation Columbian-American who has clearly found her own passion for marine research.
For fun and relaxation Vanessa enjoys hiking, hanging out with her shepherd mix Juniper, and going tide-pooling with friends. A recent low-tide trip led to a once-in-a-lifetime sighting of a giant Pacific octopus gliding about in a particularly large pool. How exciting for Vanessa, and for the future of science, that she’s been introduced to the ‘large pool’ of deep-sea larval ecology with all of its beauty and mystery.
Maia Heffernan: Inspired - and inspiring!
Maia’s research on the cruise and beyond is focused on the hydrothermal vent snail Ifremaria nautilei. This species has an unusual reproductive strategy wherein larvae develop through multiple stages in a ‘brood pouch’ found in the snail’s foot. Young snails are ultimately released as free-swimming, ciliated forms known as Warén’s larvae, a novel gastropod larval type first described in detail in 20101 . Maia’s research into I. nautilei was serendipitous; the team hadn’t proposed to focus on this type of snail, but their high abundance at some of the Lau Basin vents along with their mysterious reproductive strategy made them a tempting target. With other members of the research team, Maia worked on culturing the snails at different temperatures to investigate their poorly understood life cycle, and on making respiration measurements. Back home at WWU, she’s using scanning electron microscopy to look at morphology of the larvae at different life stages and shell morphology.
Top: A multitude of Ifremaria nautelei on a hydrothermal vent in the Lau Basin. Middle/Left: Warén's larva. Bottom/Right: Adult I. nautelei.
Maia reports that the hardest aspect of the cruise was the amount of work and the very long days (Editor’s note: I can relate. . .). The schedule made it hard to find time to process the experience, and to let things sink in. Most unexpected, and highly enjoyable, was the community at sea on the R.V. Thomas G. Thompson. Maia relished the opportunity to talk about life paths with the crew, the engineers responsible for the submersibles used to explore the vents, and of course the other scientists on board.
Maia’s enthusiasm for science doesn’t begin and end with larval ecology. She’s worked for three years at WWU’s Sustainability Engagement Institute as a faculty-staff ambassador. In this role she assists with running events that promote sustainability and collecting data to assess the university’s progress in this realm. Last summer she worked with the WWU Sustainability Program as a youth advocate in the Methow Valley2 . When asked for thoughts about her future path, Maia envisions working at the nexus of marine science, sustainability in the face of climate change, and social justice.
(Left) Maia working at sea holding one of her study subjects. (Right) Maia enjoying one of her hobbies outside the lab.
In her free time Maia enjoys rock climbing, watercoloring, and hanging out with her friends in the beautiful Bellingham area. Her gratitude to WWU and Shannon Point for providing this opportunity epitomizes the power of research experiences in education: “It’s really rare that undergraduates get to participate in something this cool.” Being involved in the larger project at sea has captured her imagination and inspired her – and we can’t wait to see where that imagination and inspiration take her next!
1Reynolds, KC, Watanabe, H, Strong, EE, Sasaki, T, Uematsu, K, Miyake, H, Kojima, S, Suzuki, Y, Fujikura, K, Kim, S, Young, CM. 2010. New molluscan larval form: Brooding and development in a hydrothermal vent gastropod, Ifremaria nautilei (Provannidae). Biol Bull219: 7-11.
2https://methowvalleynews.com/2021/05/05/wwu-sustainability-projects-back-in-the-valley/
Larval Lab Website
Derek Smith: New Lab Manager with deep experience
Shannon Point is thrilled to welcome Derek Smith to the Laboratory Manager position recently vacated by long-timer Gene McKeen. Derek comes to SPMC with an abundance of energy and a wealth of experience. He’s already been sighted around the lab constructing new platforms for storage units, meeting the Shannon Point denizens (both with and without backbones), organizing equipment for summer research, and grappling with on-going issues of SPMC campus access and security.
Derek and his family are relocating from San Juan Island where his wife Brook has been a long-time high school Spanish teacher. They just closed on a house not far from the lab in Anacortes, a town that they love. Most recently Derek has been a stay-at-home dad for children Livia (3) and Lucy (1), which in itself should give him many of the skills needed to manage day-to-day operations at a busy marine lab. Not surprisingly, Derek reports that one of the most attractive aspects of this new job is “regular adult talk”. Come on, Shannon Point folks! I know you can do it!
Derek has extensive experience SCUBA diving around the world, from Diving Santa to president of American Academy of Underwater Sciences.
Before the arrival of children, Derek was simultaneously juggling completion of his PhD on the ecology of rocky reefs1, and work as a marine tech (and ultimately marine safety officer) at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. These positions required skills that sound like a perfect fit for SPMC, including driving FHL’s vessel Centennial, supporting research diving, and generally being an organizational ‘gofer’. As if that weren’t enough, he was also heavily involved with the new STEM education facility and programs at Friday Harbor High School. Derek’s contributions included pairing National Science Foundation GK-12 fellows at Friday Harbor Labs with the high school programs and offering classes himself in practical STEM subjects such as coding and 3-D printing. Dig deeper into Derek’s past and you discover further fascinating strata. He’s worked as project biologist on Mediterranean shipwreck investigations, recognizing that 2300-year-old ceramics on the seabed constitute some of the world’s oldest ‘settlement tiles’. He also served as diving safety officer at the former NOAA National Undersea Research Program facility on Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas.
While working in the Bahamas, Derek visits feral pigs at Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park.
A self-described facilitator, Derek is excited about the opportunity to support marine science at SPMC. His enthusiasm is contagious as he describes how he “likes to help make good stuff happen”. Good stuff has certainly happened to SPMC with the arrival of Derek – welcome aboard!
1Smith, Derek. 2018. A community approach to understanding patterns and processes on rocky subtidal reefs in the Salish Sea. PhD thesis, University of Washington.
Sophie Boyd, Marine and Estuarine Science Program
Sophie is studying the transfer of metals from kelp to shellfish under the advisement of Dr. Ruth Sofield and Dr. Kathy Van Alstyne. She works at an aquaculture farm to sample algae, oysters, and mussels to determine concentrations of metals that may be transferring from algae to cultured shellfish. This summer she will set up an experiment at Shannon Point to learn more about the relationship between metal-contaminated algae and oysters. Her research has implications for management, aquaculture, and human health.
Jeremy Johnson, Biology and Chemistry
Co-advised by Dr. Brady Olson and Dr. Karin Lemkau, Jeremy studies the production of polyunsaturated aldehydes (PUAs) in intertidal, mudflat diatoms. This summer, he will use Shannon Point's Ocean Acidification laboratory to test whether these diatoms produce more PUAs with increased carbon dioxide from climate change. PUAs are compounds that have already been shown to negatively impact reproductive potential in predators of pelagic diatoms, such as copepods. The mudflat diatoms that Jeremy studies are associated with forage fish and marine invertebrates.
Megan O'Hara,
Marine and Estuarine Science Program
Traveling with Dr. Suzanne Strom's lab to the Northern Gulf of Alaska, Megan collected cryptophytes, a type of phytoplankton that play a vital role in the ocean food web. Back at Shannon Point, Megan uses specialized equipment to process samples and conducts laboratory experiments to determine how cultured phytoplankton respond to environmental variables. As marine environments experience changes, changes to plankton communities can represent overall ecosystem health and resilience.
Tessa Beaver, who received her Biology M.S. degree in May 2022, is the recipient of two awards: the Biology Outstanding Graduate Research Award and the Biology/Marine and Estuarine Science Program Outstanding Graduate Student award. Tessa’s thesis research, in the Arellano lab, was on microbial community dynamics during early life history of a cold seep mussel. Congratulations, Tessa!
Mitch Hebner, a graduate student in the Arellano lab, is a finalist (Washington State’s nominee) for the Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship in DC.
Dr. Suzanne Strom is a collaborator on a newly funded education and outreach grant from the North Pacific Research Board: PhytoCLAS: Learning about phytoplankton in the Gulf of Alaska through culture, language, art, and science. The grant will be led by Katie Gavenus, an environmental educator with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies in Homer, AK.
Dr. Jay Dimond is excited to report that a $298k research proposal to the NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Program, in collaboration with researchers from the Pacific Northwest Crab Research Group, was recommended for funding. The 2-year project, titled “Sustaining long-term yield of the Puget Sound Dungeness crab fishery by accounting for complex mixed-stock population structure “, will assess population genetics and connectivity of Dungeness crab as part of a larger effort to inform fishery management in our region. A gorgeous photo essay by Gemina Garland-Lewis features Jay’s pinto abalone eDNA work in support of restoration of this endangered species.
Dr. Jay Dimond aboard an SPMC research vessel. Photo credit: Gemina Garland-Lewis
Newsletter content prepared by Suzanne L. Strom (stroms@wwu.edu) unless otherwise specified.