Golden fall morning at Mumford Cove. Picture-book conditions for beach seining with graduate and undergraduate students. Have a look for yourself (Picture credit: Sean Flynn, 9 Oct 2015)
Liz being happy to go beach seining
On 14 October 2015, Hannes and Chris stretch out the 100 ft of beach seine on the Mumford Cove beach
Sustainable Ocean Development Symposium: A Perspective from Former, Current and Future Kiel Marine Scientists | September 28-30, 2015, New York City
H. Baumann gives invited lecture “Combined effects of ocean acidification and its co- stressors on marine organisms” at Columbia University
“I had no idea that ‘Graphical recording’ was a thing.
But Tracey Berglund, an artist currently living in NYC achieved with a whiteboard an a bunch of colored markers, what I wouldn’t have thought possible: a visually entertaining and remarkably accurate depiction of the main points of my talk, which highlighted the multistressor reality of climate change and the need for according experimental approaches.”
Head bowed, Tracey.”
See for yourself.
Graphical recording of H. Baumann’s keynote lecture “Combined effects of ocean acidification and its co- stressors on marine organisms” (Artist: Tracey Berglund, tra4art.com)Hannes Baumann delivers remarks about effects of ocean acidification and it’s co-stressors on marine organismsFuture Oceans Symposium at the Theological Seminary of Columbia University, NYC
On this golden-crisp early fall Friday morning (9-25-15), we went to our favorite spot again – Mumford Cove – to go beach seining. Thanks to the many helping hands – Chris, Jake, Elizabeth, Wes, Megan, and Hannes – we hand a ton of fun, while seeing a very diverse catch, among of course our target species – Atlantic silverside juveniles. These were measured on the beach and then preserved, and will ultimately become part of a larger study of the seasonal characteristics of survivors.
However, have you ever wondered what it must be like for fish to get caught in a beach seine. Well, thanks to Jake’s new GoPro and his ingenuity tethering it to the bag of the seine, here’s a glimpse (in HD). Enjoy!
Measuring and weighing the beach seine catch (f.l.t.r: Wes, Elizabeth, Megan, Jake, Chris)
A juvenile Northern Kingfish, Menticirrhus saxatilis
Hermit crab needs new apartment
Juvenile Winterflounder Pseudopleuronectes americanus
Elizabeth and Chris seining the Mumford Cove beach
Sampling day! On September 15th 2015, our lab concluded a long-term growth experiment on four large laboratory populations (500+ fish per tank) of Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia), which were reared at ambient and high CO2 levels and low temperature (17C) and feeding conditions. Given all the hard work rearing these fish from eggs to 4 month old juveniles, sacrificing them is always a bittersweet moment. To avoid the word ‘killing’, we therefore coined the euphemism “becoming famous”.
Thanks to Jake’s new GoPro, here’s a time lapse of all of us working for hours to sample, measure and preserve various parts of the populations for later analyses of weight, sex, as well as genetic and transcriptomic approaches.
Chris Murray measuring juvenile Atlantic silversides that were reared in our lab for the past four months
Some fish were measured immediately, others were preserved in formaldehyde/seawater solution, frozen at -20C or -80C
Hannes measuring some the many fish that were sampled on 15 Sep 2015.
Molly HughesMolly & Chris sampling fish larvaeChris & Molly are measuring silverside adults used to fertilize the first experiment …
By Molly Hughes
This summer, I was lucky enough to work in the Rankin Lab at Avery Point. I’d been looking for an opportunity to gain lab and field experience in marine biology, particularly in fish ecology and hypoxia research. I could not have had a better experience than volunteering with Hannes Baumann and Chris Murray this summer. Their research combines issues of hypoxia, ocean acidification and fish ecology to give meaningful insight into the range of effects possible under a changing climate.
Volunteering in the lab, I was able to develop practical skills in fish biology that are already coming in handy in my upper level Ichthyology course. In the field, I learned how to use a seining net to catch specimens and identify target species. In the lab I participated in spawning fish, fertilizing eggs and day to day maintenance of larval fish and their environment.
However, just as valuable as practical skills is the perspective I gained from this experience. Before volunteering at the Rankin lab, I’d never considered the importance of creative thinking in research. When Hannes and Chris set out to study the combined effects of pH and oxygen levels on larval fish development, there was no starter kit available for them to do so. They had to create an entirely novel system, and only through resourcefulness and a lot of trial and error were they able to make their idea a reality. For me this meant days of drilling holes in five gallon buckets and hot gluing mesh over them. This was a creative solution to the problem of continuous water flow between the buckets within a tank. Its a comfort to know that my arts and crafts skills have relevance to my aspirations in marine biology.
I also walked away from this summer with an appreciation of the interconnectivity of the sciences and the importance of collaboration. When a fungal pathogen wiped out most of the larvae in the first trial of the Hypoxia/Acidification experiment, we were not equipped to identify it. Neither Hannes nor Chris specialize in mycology, but they were able to reach out to colleagues at Avery Point and Stony Brook who do. This is just one example of the many times I saw Chris and Hannes collaborate with scientists and engineers of different specialties this summer.
This being my first experience in a research environment, I was very fortunate to volunteer in a lab where I was able to gain such a wide range of skills and knowledge. I’m grateful to Hannes and Chris for introducing me to the research world and giving me the confidence to keep pursuing a career in marine biology.
This study by Yencho et al. examined growth, mortality, and settlement distributions of juvenile Winter Flounder Pseudopleuronectes americanus in two bays of Long Island, New York, to better understand localized population dynamics of a species experiencing a protracted population decline. They found that settlement distributions had multiple peaks (cohorts) occurring between March and late July in 2007 and between February and May in 2008. Otolith-based growth rate was significantly higher for Port Jefferson Harbor during 2007 than for all other year × location combinations. Together with previous research the finding of multiple spawning cohorts in Long Island Winter Flounder suggests a degree of isolation, and local management will be needed to support healthy populations.
39th Annual Larval Fish Conference, Vienna (Austria) 16 July 2015; American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting, Portland (OR), 19 August 2015
H. Baumann presented the Master thesis work of Elizabeth Depasquale about individual and concurrent effects of low pH and low oxygen conditions on larval forage fish species at two international conferences. The talk highlighted the novel findings of the study, i.e.: (1) that sensitivities to combined stressors are species- and trait-specific, (2), that larval fish overall seem to be less tolerant of low oxygen than low pH condition, but that (3) the combined effects can be additive and even synergistic; hence suggesting that focussing only on hypoxia in urbanized, eutrophied coastal waters may considerably underestimate the negative effects on larval fish. Even though hypoxia and acidification are almost always coupled conditions in marine environments, the empirical database on such multistressor experiments is still very small and thus precludes robust conclusions and generalizations across taxa or ecosystems.
Reliable estimates of short- and longer-term in situ growth and condition of organisms are critical if one hopes to understand how the environment regulates survival. This laboratory study reports the first comparison of somatic- (K), biochemical- (RNA–DNA ratio, RD) and otolith- (increment widths, OIW) based indices of condition of a young juvenile fish. It found that RNA:DNA ratios react 2x faster to growth changes due to changes in feeding level than otolith increment widths, while condition factor was the most variable proxy.
“Plastic and evolutionary responses to ocean acidification: navigating the difficult terrain between unfounded pessimism, optimism, and impossible tasks”
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 11 June 2015
Experiments on contemporary marine organisms have demonstrated many negative responses to elevated CO2 levels, i.e., conditions that could occur in the average open ocean within the next 300 years. This has led to the recognition of ocean acidification (OA) as a key anthropogenic stressor and to concerns about detrimental changes to marine ecosystems on which humans depend. While assessing species sensitivities to OA has been the necessary first step, the gradual nature of these shifts further demands that we assess how transgenerational plasticity and evolutionary adaptation to OA will likely affect the overall vulnerability of species and ecosystems. Our predictive ability of these adaptive processes is still in its infancy.
The overview talk first looked at currently employed approaches to study adaptation, from relatively well-documented in vitro evolution to OA in single cell organisms to necessarily more inferential techniques (e.g., evolutionary potential, standing genetic variation, molecular techniques) in longer-lived metazoans where multi-generational experiments are largely unfeasible. Secondly, the talk touched on the likely role of transgenerational plasticity in mitigating adverse OA effects over shorter time-scales in some species and whether this could perhaps compromise their ability to genetically adapt. The final objective was to pose a number of largely unresolved questions (e.g., selection differentials? Evolutionary trade-offs?) and highlight a few, perhaps underutilized approaches (e.g., studying spatial gradients as analogies to temporal change) that might improve understanding of evolution and plasticity to OA.
