Corallines for Climate

Post by Scallop Research Intern, Bailey Moritz

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Branwen (left) and Cait (right) get ready to plunge into the cold Acadia waters in search of coralline algae.

Collaboration in science is really useful for carrying out successful research. Maybe you don’t live in the same place as what you are studying. This is the case for Dr. Branwen Williams, a researcher and professor for the Claremont Colleges in California, who is investigating coralline algae from its southern limit in Maine all the way up to the Arctic. Cait has collected samples for the past couple summers to send back to Branwen, but this year she made the cross-country trek to dive for the algae in Acadia National Park herself. The Schoodic Institute was generous enough to host us while we carried out a total of 5 dives to first find the algae, deploy a temperature probe at depth to monitor the algaes growing environment, and collect about 140 coralline samples to be shipped live back to the lab.

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Field work can require a lot of gear and talent to pack it all in.

A “modern paleo oceanographer using marine organisms as tools to look at environmental change,” Branwen is interested in the calcium carbonate skeleton of the domed, deep-pink algae that can be used as a proxy for reconstructing past climate. Tropical corals are commonly used to understand how climate has changed in equatorial regions, but less is known about paleo climate in the mid to north Atlantic region, an area particularly susceptible to modern climate change. Depending on the water temperature, the algae will substitute Mg for Ca when building its carbonate skeleton. The Mg/Ca ratio serves as a proxy for the temperature of the ocean when the algae were growing. Similarly, analyzing boron isotopes provide insight into past pH conditions. The coralline algae can be 100’s of years old and Branwen hopes to reconstruct a record of ocean conditions back to the 1700’s.

Coralline algae, which form a crust-like cover over anything from rocks to mussel shells, may be threatened by warming waters as they grow best in the colder climes. This could take an ecological toll, as they are substantial habitat builders in more northern latitudes. We’re excited to hear what Branwen and her colleagues discover from these little corallines! The more we understand about how climate change is impacting marine creatures, the better we can prepare ourselves and our local environment.

Learning from Shells

Post by Scallop Research Intern, Bailey Moritz

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Toni Chute and I start the task of aging the first scallop of several boxes of scallop shells

Bustling with research vessels and ocean scientists, Woods Hole, MA is a fitting location for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, located right on the water. Toni Chute, one of their scientists specializing in all things scallops, was generous enough to give Cait and I a run-down on how to determine the growth of individual scallops based on their shells. Cait will be using these data as part of the collaborative scallop research project she is coordinating. Scallop shells are formed from calcium carbonate that the shellfish precipitates over the course of its lifetime. Depending on what region of the ocean it grew in, pigments vary, from a rich pink to deeper purple to the rusty red color seen on most scallops here in Maine. The shell-building material is laid down during a period of the year when conditions, such as temperature and food availability, are favorable. Then growth stops for awhile. This pattern creates rings, or visible line markings on the shells surface, that indicate each year of growth the scallop has undergone. By measuring the change in height between rings, you can elucidate how much the scallop grew from year to year. But be careful! As we learned, false “rings” can form if the shell cracked, or was damaged slipping through the large rings of scallop dragging nets when they were still below legal harvest size.

     Measuring a shell with each of the  
      growth rings marked off in pencil.

Determining growth rings can be a tricky task. The surface of some shells have a heavy cover of barnacles and limpets that make it difficult to see the patterns. Often times you can turn to slight changes in color to pin-point the rings, and getting the shell wet and holding it up to the light helps to bring that trait out. We practiced on a number of our shells collected from Muscle Ridge and were still somewhat hesitant in distinguishing between growth rings and cracks. But Toni reassured us that familiarizing ourselves with the shells patterns makes finding rings easier. It’s also perfectly alright to eliminate a shell from your sample if you’re finding it’s just too difficult to tell where the annual growth rings are. So, next time you come across a scallop shell on the beach or at the market, try your hand at finding the growth rings and you’ll be told a story about the creatures path from small spat to adulthood. 

Scallop Nerds Unite!

From April 23rd through April 28th, 2015, I attended and presented at the 20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway, Ireland. Scientists from all over the world participated and session topics included ecology and general biology, aquaculture, fisheries, marine protected areas, biotoxins, resource management, and two sessions were dedicated to physiology, biochemistry, and genetics. A special session focused on Pectinids as witnesses of their environment in a changing ocean. This session featured work by French scientists to develop analysis tools which will use the shells of scallops to determine environmental characteristics at the time when the shell is formed. They have yet to determine the method for Placopecten magellanicus, the species found in Maine, but when they do, we hope to send them samples from the Muscle Ridge and Ocean Point closed areas.

Maine representatives L-R Skylar Bayer, Caitlin Cleaver, Trish Cheney, Carla Guenther, and Dana Morse

Maine was well represented at the conference, with four of us presenting our current research including Skylar Bayer, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, who presented on her dissertation work studying fertilization success in the Atlantic Sea Scallop (Placopecten magellanicus). Trisha Cheney, Resource coordinator for scallops, urchins, groundfish permit bank at Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) presented on state scallop management efforts, and Dr. Carla Guenther, Senior Scientist at Penobscot East Resource Center (PERC) and a member of the Scallop Advisory Council, followed up Trish's presentation by sharing the work that PERC and DMR have done to build trust within the scallop fishing community and to implement the rotational closed area management system currently in place in Zone 2. I provided preliminary results from quantifying the effect of the Muscle Ridge Closed Area on scallop populations. 

Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, Dr. Dave Bethoney, and Dr. Susan Inglis from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (You can find info about their work here) and Dr. Dvora Hart who works in the Population Dynamics Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, MA, presented on their work on the federal scallop fishery which ranged from a parasite in scallops that causes the white meat of the adductor to turn gray to larval dispersal.  

Conversations with workshop participants have inspired me to consider additional methods for the Collaborative Scallop Project that would improve the power of the study. In the near term, I am hoping to organize a visit to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to learn their shell aging and growth rate methods so we can apply it to the shells we've collected over the past two years. 

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A full group photo from the conference (I am hiding in the back row at the left edge of the blue background)

Maine Science Festival: Climate Change Panel

On Saturday, March 21st, 2015, I participated on a panel about climate change in Maine at the first Maine Science Festival, which was a fantastic event that drew 10,000 people of all ages to interact with science through presentations, workshops, and other events. The panel was moderated by Linda Silka, the former Director of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and a Professor in the School of Economics. Our panel group opened with an overview of climate change in Maine by Dr. Ivan Fernandez. He is a professor at the University of Maine in the forestry department and the Climate Change Institute and he played a significant role in writing the 2009 Maine's Climate Future report and the 2015 update, the culmination of a voluntary effort undertaken by a number of researchers in Maine at the request of Governor Baldacci. 

 Dr. Mathew Chatfield, an assistant professor of conservation biology at Unity College, followed Dr. Fernandez's talk. Dr. Chatfield studies amphibians and reptiles and he focused his presentation on talking about the challenges certain species with narrow ecological niches face as temperatures increase and precipitation patterns change; those species face real barriers to survival.  

One of my presentation slides

My presentation focused on evidence of warming water temperatures and ocean acidification, and the ecological and socioeconomic implications these changes have for important species in the Gulf of Maine. Scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute believe the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world's ocean. Others in the state have attributed the lack of the Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fishery, which is closed for the second season in a row, to warmer water temperatures altering the timing of the spring phytoplankton bloom and the release of shrimp eggs into the water column. The two events used to be synchronized so that larval shrimp could maximize feeding on the ready supply of phytoplankton; however, the timing of each event has shifted due to changes in water temperature. The result is that shrimp larvae are not getting the nutrition they need to survive. I also pointed to other examples of changes in the marine system, including the range expansion of black sea bass and the devastating effects green crabs have had on valuable nursery habitats and on our clam fishery, the third most valuable commercial fishery in the state. These examples are occurring partially because of warming waters and ocean acidification.

Finally, Dr. Caroline Noblet, a professor in the School of Economics at the University of Maine, concluded the discussion by speaking about the public perception of climate change and how to tailor messaging about evidence to initiate action. Once we wrapped up our presentations, the audience asked excellent questions about how to move policy and other initiatives forward to mitigate climate change effects and how communities can adapt to changing conditions. The discussion was engaging and I left the presentation feeling encouraged that people are paying attention and thinking about solutions to this critical issue. 

20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway, Ireland

Conducting drop camera surveys on Muscle Ridge in 2013.

I booked my flight to Shannon, Ireland on St. Patrick's Day! In early March 2015, I found out that two abstracts I submitted on behalf of the scallop project team were accepted to be presented at the 20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway, Ireland. The workshop has been organized around several themes including general scallop ecology and biology, aquaculture, fisheries management, and marine protected areas. The event will bring together scientists, managers, and others who work on scallop fisheries research. It provides an amazing opportunity to build my foundational knowledge on scallop biology, plus get some helpful hints on how to improve our project or other potential analyses to do to understand the effectiveness of small-scale closures in rebuilding the resident scallop population. I also have the opportunity to co-chair the plenary session - Marine Protected Areas with marine ecologist and fisheries biologist, Bryce Beukers-Stewart.

My oral presentation will be entitled, "The effect of small-scale closed areas on giant sea scallop populations in Maine" and the poster will focus on the collaborative project approach including lessons learned through working with a diverse group of fishermen, managers, and scientists. I am looking forward to writing additional blog posts to share what I learn while at the workshop.