Monthly Archives: July 2012

Crabs, clams, and shrimp (Oh my!)

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The title pretty much explains the theme of the past week.

Most of my time was spent collecting, measuring, weighing, and tagging Dungeness and Red Rock crabs for an abundance/life history study. I worked with my mentor, Scott, and Sylvia, a researcher from OSU. We started Monday afternoon by deploying about a dozen crab traps throughout Charleston marina. Tuesday morning, the survey began. Aside from an occasional kelp crab, the traps contained only Dungeness and Red Rock crabs. We started by measuring and weighing the Dungeness crabs. We measured carapice width and then took their weight in grams. This information was later uploaded to a database so Scott could make continuing estimates of the size distribution and biomass of the crabs in the Charleston area. The Red Rock crabs were measured and weighed in the same manner as the Dungeness crabs but were then tagged as part of a mark-recapture study being conducted by Sylvia. As I recall, the tags were called “flow tags” and were attached to the crabs using a plastic “gun,” which had a needle that was inserted into the crab’s carapice at the molting seam. When the trigger was pulled, the tag was attached and hung off the crabs by a small plastic thread. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a photo, because the work was fairly wet, and we wanted to keep the pace up. I’ll try to upload a photo of the tagging this week. The tagging is believed to have no effect on the crabs’ mortality, because the needle is inserted into a hollow area of the carapice, but I think it would make for a cool study to confirm this. The tagging procedure was performed every day of the week, and we’ll be doing it again this Monday and Tuesday. We tagged over 200 rock crabs and measured/weighed over 500 crabs total. And to think I only got pinched once! This procedure provided an introduction to crab sampling and also got me started on my first in-depth work with databases.

At various times over the week I also measured and weighed pink shrimp as part of an abundance/size study. This work was conducted in the lab. Shrimp boat captains graciously provide us samples of their catch, which we measure and weigh to determine the most common size present. Measurements were taken using electronic calipers that were plugged into a laptop so the data were injected directly into a spreadsheet for later analysis.

Finally, this past Saturday was the Clamboree festival in nearby Empire, OR. Clamboree is a culinary festival celebrating……clams (and other shellfish as well). I helped staff the ODFW booth with Stacey and Cami from ODFW, Newport. We had much literature to pass out regarding shellfish identification and good crabbing/clamming locations around Coos Bay. We also had live specimens of gaper, butter, littleneck, cockle, and softshell clams, as well as a live Dungeness crab. These proved popular with everybody; especially the kids. I learned how to properly clean clams and some popular ways of preparing them for the table–chowders, fritters, steamers. Visitors to the booth readily shared tips and tricks for cooking clams. The only downer of the day was the weather: it was cool and rainy, and it definitely had a negative effect on festival attendance. We kept busy at our booth, though, and had a steady flow of visitors throughout the day.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Backtrack to Monday. The week actually started off with a staff meeting, via conference call, between various ODFW biologists and managers. I sat in on the meeting with Scott and Steve Rumrill, leader of the ODFW Shellfish Program. At one point during the meeting people took turns discussing what they had done/accomplished the previous week and what their plans were for the upcoming week. It was at this point that Scott had to excuse himself to take a call in his office. No big deal right? Well, turns out the Charleston office (where I’m interning) was first up. Steve talked some about what he was doing and then says something like “And now Eric will discuss what he and Scott have been working on.” Yikes! You mean I actually have to speak? Despite being caught off-guard, I think I did pretty well. I reported on our exploratory cockle study, beach seining, and GIS work and then spoke about the upcoming crab sampling. Steve was very reassuring and gave me the thumbs up when I finished. A bit nerve-wracking at first, but I actually felt pretty good when it was over.

I’ll leave you with some photos of crabs and clams and will try to upload some detailed photos of the tagging this week. I bid you peace.

 

 

At the ODFW booth. Clamboree! Empire, OR.

Our live specimens at Clamboree 2012.

Measuring a Dungeness crab.

 

 

to dredge or not to dredge?

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… that was the question of the week. And I learned that it is a difficult question to answer.

Dredging is serious business… we had professional divers and everything. Basically there is a pump on a boat, a water intake tube, the dredge head (it sucks up the mud and clams and whatever), and a water discharge head that has the sample bag attached to it. It’s really hard to explain how it works and I don’t have a picture, but all you need to know is that the sediment gets sucked up and thrown out the back, into the mesh sample bag. The bag is later sorted to find the good stuff.

Here’s a picture of some of what we got out of our dredge samples. We found gaper clams, cockles, macoma clams, brittle stars, baby dungeness crabs, and olive snails.

We did subtidal dredging in Yaquina on both Wednesday and Thursday this week, but we only got to 30 of the 40 spots we wanted to sample. The weather and tides were not  cooperative, and the divers had to stop early both days (but we still worked over 8 hours each day!). The whole process really showed me how much the combination of tides and wind and weather can effect the boats and divers. The wind was strong enough to counteract the effect of the tides on the boat; but the outgoing tide was so strong that the divers couldn’t hold the dredge system in place. All of this totally threw off our plan to have a separate boat place anchors before we got to a site, because by the time the dredge boat got to the point, the winds and tide had changed enough to require the anchor to be reset.

So basically all day I was dropping and hauling in anchors and the dredge system. Even with gloves my hands were pretty sore from all that rope!

A little background on why we were dredging for clams in the first place:
Back in 2010 (… I think), the NOAA Pacific Fleet moved from WA to Newport. In order to keep all their giant research vessels here they had to build a huge dock, which disturbed a large area of subtidal clam habitat. My team is studying the long term effect of this disturbance and the recolonization rate of the Gaper clam in the area. This is the 3rd post-construction sampling of the area around the NOAA dock. We also are taking some samples in a subtidal area in Sally’s Bend, an area in Yaquina Bay unaffected by the NOAA dock that can be used as a comparison. This creates a BACI study: Before-After-Control-Impact.

Now we just have to determine when we’ll get our last 10 samples. But until then, I’ll just have to be content digging for more clams in the mud and beach flats this coming week.

~Maryna

 

Interacting with the Public

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This week has been very interesting in the least. On Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend an ODF&W office meeting with all the department heads. For this meeting, my mentor, Melissa was trying to give people in her office more information on the community fishing profiles that the Marine Reserves department released. Melissa explained to a mostly biologist-filled audience how qualitative social science methods work and that they should be respected as a form of science. It was interesting, because you could tell that the biologists had a really hard time wrapping their heads around the idea of a report that included only text and quotes, and they kept asking for more numbers. For me this didn’t seem like an issue of right or wrong, but more of an issue of being right or left-brained and it was really rich to watch them try to compromise so that both groups could comprehend the information.

I also started doing pressure counts this week, through which I have learned a lot as well. Pressure counts involve a ton of driving, and take up most of the day, because I drive the width of the marine reserve/MPA at Cape Perpetua and make 10 stops, then repeat this three times per day. When I count people I also have to include their age, sex, and what kind of activity they are doing. In a trial run I quickly figured out that this can be very difficult when you have tour groups of 30 people coming through and I had to refine my methods a bit. So far the counts have gone smoothly and I am definitely enjoying the scenery, but not so much the driving time.

The biggest amusement so far for me has been the people that come up and interact with me. Although I dress in normal clothes, I don’t look very inconspicuous with a pair of binoculars and a clipboard. By the end of the day I end up feeling like a huge creeper. This is part of the reason why I don’t like to tell people what I am doing (Melissa also told me to keep it very vague, because this is such a controversial issue). I started trying to explain it at first, but by the end I gave up and just nodded whenever people asked me if I was doing a specific job. I mean what I am I supposed to say when someone comes up and asks me if I am counting seals…..No… I am counting you? Creeper status. So as of right now people think I am counting fish, seals, cleaning up the beach, and watching for Tsunami debris. Speaking of which, I found a float from the tsunami covered in invasive mussels and they were some of the strangest organisms I have ever seen. I also had a conversation with an elderly man, who told me that he was on the lookout for a boat coming in from the tsunami. I told him about the float and the invasive mussels, and he responded with, “I always knew Japan would invade us eventually.” Oh dear! Then he started launching into some World War II stories. I think this helped prepare me a little better for some of the things I might hear when I conduct interviews with people visiting the marine reserve next week. Melissa trained/prepared me really well to give straight and unbiased interviews, but you never know what someone is going to say to through you off…Nevertheless I am sure I will have some good stories for next week.