Imagery

[Lab news] Whole life cycle CO2 fish are getting sampled

Posted on April 24, 2019April 24, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

18 April 2019. This Thursday was a long day in the Baumann lab, because we sampled and processed over 200 adult silversides from a unique experiment. These fish were fertilized in the lab and reared from eggs to adulthood under different temperatures and contrasting CO2 conditions. We are interested to see, if future ocean conditions have measurable effects on this species fecundity, growth, and oocyte characteristics. We also took tissue and genetic samples, with an effective line-up of hands, i.e., Hannes, Emma, Chris, Callie and Lucas.
Good teamwork all!

[Publication] Brachiopods thicken shells to compensate for shell dissolution under future OA conditions

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

15 April 2019. Today, Emma is happy to report that Environmental Science & Technology have just published the latest paper from her PhD about brachiopod resilience to future ocean acidification. This project involved long-term culturing of a polar and a temperate brachiopod under future ocean acidification and warming conditions. Substantial shell dissolution posed a threat to both species under ocean acidification, with more extensive dissolution occurring in the polar species.

Unexpectedly, we discovered that brachiopods thicken their shell from the inner shell surface when extensive dissolution occurs at the outer shell surface under ocean acidification. This is an important finding to further our understanding of how predicted vulnerable marine calcifiers might cope under future environmental change.

Cross, E. L., Harper, E. M. and Peck, L. S. 2019. Thicker shells compensate extensive dissolution in brachiopods under future ocean acidification. Environmental Science & Technology (published online March 29, 2019).

[Publication] The Project Oceanology time-series has been published!

Posted on March 28, 2019November 5, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

21 March 2019. We are happy to announce that Marine Environmental Research just published our most recent paper about long-term ecological change in eastern Long Island Sound based on data collected by Project Oceanology!For his Master’s thesis, Jacob Snyder painstakingly retrieved and digitized more than 40 years of environmental observations from Project Oceanology. This non-profit ocean literacy organization has educated middle and high school students on boat trips to nearby estuarine sites for decades. For the first time, his work allowed a quantitative evaluation of these data and glimpses into the abiotic and biotic changes in nearshore waters of Eastern Long Island Sound.

Highlights

Citizen-science observations revealed rapid warming, acidification, and dissolved oxygen loss over the past 40 years in eastern Long Island Sound
Otter trawl catches showed significant decreases in overall species diversity and richness
Cold-water adapted species (American lobster, winter flounder) decreased, but warm-water adapted species (spider crabs) increased since 1997

Citation

Snyder, J.T., Whitney, M.M., Dam, H.G., Jacobs, M.W., and Baumann, H. (2019). Citizen science observations reveal rapid, multi-decadal ecosystem changes in eastern Long Island Sound. Marine Environmental Research 146: 80-88

Public outreach

The publication of this work is also featured in an article for the online magazine TheConversation.com titled
“Citizen science shows that climate change is rapidly reshaping Long Island Sound“

News coverage: UConn Today | New Haven Register | The Hour | NonProfit Quarterly | WSHU Public Radio

Fig_2-abiotic-conditions_new — Long-term changes in temperature, pH, and oxygen in the Thames River Mouth (eastern Long Island Sound)

Fig_6-CPUEs_4-species — Catch indices of four major species in Project Oceanology trawls over the past two decades

[Publication] Meta-analysis of silverside CO2 experiments published!

Posted on November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

28 November 2018. Hannes, Emma, and Chris are happy to announce that Biology Letters just published our latest study, a meta-analysis of 20 standard CO₂ exposure experiments conducted on Atlantic silverside offspring between 2012-2017. All these years of sustained experimental work resulted in the most robustly constrained estimates of overall CO₂ effect sizes for a marine organism to date.
The study demonstrated:

A general tolerance of Atlantic silverside early life stages to pCO₂ levels of ~2,000 µatm
A significant overall CO₂ induced reduction of embryo and overall survival by -9% and -13%, respectively
The seasonal change in early life CO₂ sensitivity in this species
The value of serial experimentation to detect and robustly estimate CO₂ effects in marine organisms

Baumann, H., Cross, E.L., and Murray, C.S. Robust quantification of fish early life CO₂ sensitivities via serial experimentation. Biology Letters 14:20180408

Baumann-etal-BiolLett2018---Fig01 — This figure shows the summary of early life responses to high CO₂ conditions in Atlantic silversides across all experiments conducted between 2012-2017. Effect size was estimated using the log-transformed response ratio (A-D). Error bars are 95% confidence intervals. The responses are considered significant if the confidence interval does not include zero. Panels E-F: seasonal decomposition of response ratios, showing that silverside early life stages are most sensitive to high CO₂ at the beginning and end of their spawning season.

[Research news] Sandlance are spawning on Stellwagen Bank again!

Posted on November 19, 2018November 19, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

15 November 2018. After a stretch of foul weather kept us from going out to Stellwagen Bank last week, this time all the stars aligned for Emma and Mackenzie. Due to their success in catching spawning ripe Northern sandlance, we are now embarking on our third year of CO₂ x temperature experiments on this species!

Here is how Mackenzie Blanusa experienced her first trip to these enigmatic waters:

“This particular sandlance cruise was a day filled with firsts and is definitely a trip to remember. I accompanied Emma, Hannes’ postdoc, up to Scituate the night before the cruise and was given a rundown of what needed to be accomplished. I was a bit overwhelmed at first, because I’ve never dealt with sandlances before and did not know a lot about these fish. Nevertheless, I was eager to learn something new and was ready to help out wherever needed.

The goal of the sandlance cruise was to collect running ripe males and females to do a fertilization via strip spawning. Emma and I were a bit doubtful at first because we got less than 10 sandlance on the first two trolls. However, things got much better by the afternoon, and our most successful trawl caught 147 sand lance. I helped out with the fertilization and deploying the trawl, two things I have never done before. The most exciting part of the day was getting to see humpback whales. Usually they are in the distance but today they were right next to the boat. Everyone on board said that this never happens and it was very unusual so I felt very lucky to have seen whales at such a close proximity.”

Overall, the trip was a huge success and it was very refreshing to see everything go as planned. The only downside to the day was driving back home through a snowstorm. I later found out that there was a 73% fertilization success and we got 27,000 embryos for Emma’s experiment. I am very grateful to have gotten the opportunity to help out on this sampling cruise and am looking forward to doing this again in the future!

Sandlance-Nov2018-03 — Emma on the makeshift spawning station for sand lance on board the RV Auk

Sandlance-Nov2018-02 — Mackenzie strip-spawning sand lance on the ship

Stellwagen whales — Added perks of doing research on Stellwagen Bank …

Sandlance-Nov2018-04 — Exactly 0.5ml of sand lance eggs (~ 600) were distributed into each replicate per treatment

Sandlance-Nov2018-01 — Emma and Julie pipetting sand lance eggs

[Lab news] Baumann & Therkildsen lab on a silverside road trip

Posted on October 29, 2018April 5, 2025 by Hannes Baumann

28 October 2018. Members of the Therkildsen (Nina Therkildsen, Maria Akopyan) and Baumann labs (Hannes Baumann, Callie Concannon) went on a joint road trip together to sample juvenile Atlantic silversides for our NSF project about the genomic underpinnings of local adaptation in the ocean. We targeted again three sites, Morehead City NC, Oregon Inlet NC, and Chincoteague Island VA, sampling silversides via beach seine. The weather was lousy and the work strenuous, but the mood elated, because we got all the fish we needed for subsequent genomic and otolith analyses.
What a great collaboration. Check out some of the pictures from the trip below.

[Lab news] Baumann lab participates in first DMS sea course

Posted on October 15, 2018October 17, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

12 October 2018. This year, the Department of Marine Sciences at UConn Avery Point has conducted his first graduate course on physical and biological oceanographic methods, which culminated in a two day research cruise aboard the newly stretched R/V Connecticut. The cruise sampled stations from Eastern Long Island Sound all the way out the continental shelf, deploying CTD’s, sediment corers and grabs, as well as zooplankton and nekton nets. Callie and Hannes from the Baumann lab were part of the fun!

Check out some of the action in the youtube clip below.

Seacourse02 — f.l.t.r.: Alec Shub, Michael Mathuri, Hannes Baumann, Samantha Siedlecki, James O’Donnell, James DeMayo, Amin Ilia, Callie Concannon, Molly James

[Lab news] Baumann lab goes sailing!

Posted on September 22, 2018September 22, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

Stonington, 21 September 2018: On this windy Friday afternoon, Lucas invited the Baumann lab on a little sailing tour on board of his boat, which he also calls home. Thanks to the professional skipper qualities of Lucas and Julie, the rest of us had to just lean back and enjoy the sea and the wind and the company. Thanks to all!

Baumann-lab-sailing_01 — From left to right: Chris Murray, Hannes Baumann, Emma Cross, Callie Concannon, Julie Pringle, Lucas Jones

[Research news] Live staining of silverside neuromasts at URI

Posted on July 27, 2018July 27, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

By Emma Cross.

23 Juli 2018. Yesterday Hannes and Emma took a short road trip to the University of Rhode Island to visit Professor Jacqueline Webb’s lab to learn about in vivo fluorescent imaging.

This technique involves placing live fish in a fluorescent mitrochondrial stain for 5 minutes before imaging different areas of the fish under a dissecting microscope equipped with an epiflourescence light source. This allowed us to visualize small sense organs called neuromasts located in tubular canals in the head, trunk and tail, which form the fish sensory lateral line system used to detect water flows.

We are interested to see if high CO₂ conditions affect these neuromasts in the Atlantic silverside, which could impact their critical schooling behaviors.

Take a look at some of the stunning images below! Thank you to Jackie and all the lab for a fun-filled day!

[Lab news] Baumann lab attends the Larval Fish Conference in Victoria

Posted on July 2, 2018July 2, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

Holding the fort at the Rankin lab were Emma and Sydney, who did an excellent job. Thank you guys!

Victoria08 — The Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe Resort was the conference venue

Victoria10 — Before the conference, we all attended a workshop on larval fish identification

https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products/fisherbrand-class-a-clear-glass-threaded-vials-attached-caps-pe-poly-seal-cone-liner-8/14955326 — Whale-watching with Corinne, Julie & Chris

Here is how Julie experienced her first LFC:

Ever since attending the American Fisheries Society conference in 2014, I’ve wanted to go to another fish-focused conference. I was lucky enough to attend the 42nd annual Larval Fish Conference this year in Victoria, British Columbia, and it surpassed all my expectations. The week started off with a larval fish identification workshop where we got to learn techniques from renowned larval fish experts (and see some really cool fish larvae!). The talks were impressive and thought-provoking, providing many new ideas for research and how to give an engaging talk. My favorite part was meeting all the larval fish ecologists whose publications I’ve been reading for my thesis. I spent most of my evenings exploring Victoria with other grad students attending the conference and left with many new friends from institutes all over the world! The trip ended with a whale watch, where we saw a pod of 5 Orcas. Overall, the Larval Fish Conference was a great experience that I hope to someday attend again!

Oral presentations:

Pringle, J. and Baumann, H. Sex-specific growth and mortality patterns in juvenile Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) from Connecticut waters. Talk. 42nd Larval Fish Conference, Victoria, BC, Canada 24-28 June 2018

Murray, C.S., Wiley, D., and Baumann, H. Early life stages of the northern sand lance Ammodytes dubius show high sensitivity to acidification and warming in a CO₂ × temperature factorial experiment. Talk. 42nd Larval Fish Conference, Victoria, BC, Canada 24-28 June 2018

Victoria04 — Harbor front with Parliament building

Victoria06 — Local celebrity, the one eyed seal