A marine bio student by the water--imagine!
- Brittany R. Jones
- Jun 4, 2017
- 2 min read
Imagine being in a Marine Biology program and actually being on the water! It's sometimes hard to imagine being based in Fairbanks, but I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to spend 11 days in May at the Kasitsna Bay Laboratory near Homer. I cannot begin to write enough praise for the Kasitsna Bay Lab. It's in a beautiful location, the facilities and labs are great, and the people are wonderful - so supportive and helpful!
I visited the lab to test out my respiration experiments before the cruise in June on the R/V Sikuliaq (you can follow the R/V Sikuliaq on Twitter or Facebook). Respiration rates can be used to estimate how much food a benthic (seafloor) critter is eating. It is important to know how much different critters are eating to better understand who are the main benthic contributors to the global carbon cycle.
For the trial experiments, I collected clams (Macoma sp.) from Jakolof Bay near Kasitsna Bay Lab with the help of a crew doing clam surveys at the site. We were surrounded by beautiful mountains and the sun shone down on us!
Back in the lab, I rinsed the clams with fresh, filtered seawater; gently scrubbed the shells with a toothbrush; and measured maximum length of each individual. I will also be measuring dry mass and ash-free dry mass back at the home laboratory in Fairbanks.
I am using innovative technology to measure oxygen concentration in closed jars using non-invasive sensor spots. The small sensor spots are glued to the inside of glass jars and the oxygen concentration is read using a fiber optic cable and recorded with the Fibox 4 meter.
Each clam I collected was placed in a glass jar containing a sensor. The jars were placed in a water bath in a temperature-controlled room set to 0°C (32°F) to acclimate overnight. In the morning, I closed the jars and measured the oxygen concentration read by each sensor spot. The incubations lasted until the oxygen concentration had dropped by 20%, which took anywhere from 3 to 12 hours! And, some of them didn't even make it to a 20% decrease - I ended those early so I could go to bed! Then, I had to repeat this 2 more days to get a total of 3 replicates per individual. Believe me, it was a cold 3 days!
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