Mumford Cove

Feeling the pulse of Mumford Cove

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23 March 2023. For almost 8 years now, the Evolutionary Fish Ecology Lab has conducted research in nearby Mumford Cove, a small, eelgrass covered embayment on eastern Long Island Sound. Using a set of battery-powered probes we have continuously measured temperature, pH, oxygen, salinity, and depth in 30 min intervals in the Cove - almost 120,000 times. This ongoing effort is not funded by any grant or institution; instead, it has been sustained over all these years by the firm belief in the prescient, if undervalued societal service of monitoring, an activity without short-term reward but important long-term benefits in understanding how ecosystems change on short and long time-scales. To commemorate the effort, we simply thought that it is time to show you some data, some pictures, and draw some early, cautious conclusions about the very interesting case of Mumford Cove. Have a look!

Fig01---Mumford-Cove-sketch
Fig.1: Schematic section of the upper part of Mumford Cove, showing the deployed probe (blue) between the bottom anchor (grey) and a subsurface float (orange), marked by a surface float (white). The probe sits in the deepest part of the Cove (Channel), at constant 50 cm distance to the bottom, but variable water level above (red histogram).

"Future generations will certainly have better theories, tools, models, and computers, but they will still depend on the data and measurements taken here and now."

Aerial01
Aerial view of Mumford Cove (Picture: Jamie Vaudrey)

[Collaboration] Nina and Aryn visit from Cornell University

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On 19-20 July, our lab temporarily transformed into a genetics laboratory, as Nina Therkildsen and her post-doc Aryn Pierce Wilder visited us from Cornell University (Therkildsen Lab). Their lab also shares the fascination for the Atlantic silverside as a model organism and has set out to eventually assemble the fully annotated genome of this species.

During their visit, they could accompany us for our bi-weekly beach seining in Mumford Cove, where we collected juveniles born this year as well as the last few spawning ripe adults at the end of the season. It was a great summer morning and fun for everyone.

In the lab, Nina and Aryn went on dissecting different types of tissue (muscle, liver, spleen, gills, fins) from a few specimens destined for genetic analyses. In the Rankin lab, we tried a novel procedure on this species, i.e., making haploid embryos by fertilizing strip-spawned eggs with sperm that was UV-radiated before.

Thank you for visiting, Nina and Aryn, and we will see you back in fall, when Nina will give a Friday seminar on 11 November 2016. We’re looking forward to what she will have to report!