Experimental gear shipped to ZEN partners in 2011

Working with a large, global network of collaborators poses unique opportunities — as well as challenges. Before ZEN’s parallel experiments could start at the 15 widely scattered partner sites in 2011, the VIMS team had to purchase, fabricate, assemble, package, and ship the experimental materials to the sites located throughout the northern hemisphere. That summer we shipped out up to 6 crates and over 500 lbs of gear per site (that’s almost 3.8 tons total!). There was a lot to be done before we could pull on the dive booties and plunge into the water at our own site! For summer of 2014 the focus is on rigorous, controlled surveys and smaller scale experiments, which has the added benefit of less international shipping!

The past several months we’ve been entrenched in finishing processing the experimental samples, analyzing data and writing up the results. This is a big switch from our constantly on the go routine during field season, and gives us time to reflect on what an amazing past two years we’ve had with ZEN. In that vein, I’ve dug up two pre-blog posts, quick little snippets I wrote back in the summer of 2011 before we launched the ZENscience.org website.

August 2011: Fieldwork Happens

First attempt to set up the ZEN experiment in North Carolina

Out in the field, the one thing I dread most isn’t encountering sharks in the murky water, seeing lightning streak overhead, or being pursued by voracious horseflies. Nope – it’s Murphy’s Law. We’ve all experienced it. A perfectly planned experimental setup can go from a well rehearsed orchestra to utter cacophony in a split second simply because someone forgot to bring scissors or dropped the ruler overboard, or a rogue wave made off with a pencil.

Checking the seagrass

In our case, after placing and pounding 320 poles in the water we realized that our once lovely Zostera bed is now overgrown with Ruppia, a different type of seagrass. In our defense, the seagrass in the clearer water near the approach to the site was, in fact, Zostera. Murphy rears his ugly head, once again. How to deal with the mishap? Remove the poles, all 320 of them, call a few colleagues to find a new site, borrow a boat, and start over. This time everyone knew the drill and the setup went exceedingly smoothly. And, in the process we all learned how to distinguish the three local types of seagrass (Zostera, Ruppia, Halodule) by touch alone in the murky water. Turning Murphy into an educational experience – now that’s science! Having a team of graduate and undergraduate students who keep smiling? Priceless.

[Update: While I still despise coming up short on cable ties in the field, getting caught out on the water during a thunderstorm has quickly risen to fear #1. See the "Science is electric" blog post from 2012 to find out why.]

April 2011: When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight

Items customs agents from various countries disliked the most: plaster, t-shirts and dog food.

In preparing for ZEN the VIMS team became well versed in navigating international shipping. One of the things we learned early on was that customs agents are often quite literal. For instance, “300 blocks of 120 mL hardened dental plaster” can be translated into medical equipment and is subject to high tariffs. Doesn’t matter that the plaster has already been hardened and can’t be used to make casts of someone’s teeth – it’s all in the product description. And being vague isn’t much help either. Some countries want to know the composite materials of a t-shirt or line items of every ingredient in the dog food we used as fish bait, while for others the phrase “for education/research, not for resale” is sufficient. We are expecting that to some extent each country will have unique mesograzer assemblages and ecological interactions – why should we assume their import/export process to be the same?

[Update: I wrote this after a week of playing phone tag and emailing with shipping and customs agents to get our packages cleared and on their way to our international partners. Ultimately everything went through and there were no major delays or disruption of our partners' field schedules. Lesson learned? Leave at least a 3 week shipping allowance for international projects. And, keep UPS on speed dial!]

Matt Whalen

by Matt Whalen (VIMS,  PhD student at UC Davis)

As I was gearing up for this year’s ZEN experiment in Bodega Bay, CA, I realized that I never finished my story from last year’s experiments in Japan. (Where does all the time go?) Hopefully this belated entry will be a nice way to kick off the 2012 ZEN season.

“Banzai, banzai, banzai!” was one of the first things I heard as my father and I watched the sun rise over the top of Mt. Fuji. It was a long journey—especially if you count my childhood memories of my father’s stories of Japan and his promise that we would one day climb to the top of the iconic mountain—but it was well worth it. There is a saying that goes something like, “You would be a fool not to climb Mt. Fuji, but you would be an even bigger fool to do it twice.” Well, my momma didn’t raise no fool. I really enjoyed that hike and I’m proud to have completed it with my dad, who was only a year out of knee replacement surgery, but the mile-long conga line of hikers ascending just before sunrise made me wish for the relative isolation of many U.S. National Park peaks. This side trip with my dad marked a transition between ZEN experiments and the halfway point in my journey to Japan.

Up north, to the land of Sapporo and snow
The next stage of my ZEN adventure took me to the northern island of Hokkaido, which is far less populous than the ‘main island’ of Honshu and home to the large city and brewery of Sapporo. I was immediately struck at how different this place looked compared to Hiroshima. The architecture was more rustic and functional; the Japanese-style tile roofs of the south gave way to A-frame metallic roofs in Hokkaido with increased seasonality and snow fall in the north. The countryside was also more bucolic in a western sense, with acres of cattle pasture mixed with stretches of corn and soy. It actually bore a striking resemblance to parts of Virginia, where my ZEN adventure began.

Akkeshi Marine Station, Japan

My new digs were at the Akkeshi Marine Station just outside of the important fishing town of Akkeshi. Seated at the base of steep cliffs, the laboratory, dormitory, and flagship research vessel were the only manmade structures in sight for a large stretch of the coastline. The coast here bends inward forming the large Akkeshi Bay. On clear mornings, I could easily see the other side of the bay and wisps of inland mountains further in the distance. The bay leads to Akkeshi town,  ending in the narrow entrance to an estuary that is nearly as large as the bay itself.

Because it is almost completely enclosed, this estuary is referred to as a lake (Akkeshiko), but it is influenced by the tides throughout its extent and freshwater input comes largely from a single river. The lake is famous for its oysters and, more recently, Manila clams. More importantly for me, it has amazing meadows of seagrass. Nearly the entire estuary is covered with eelgrass whose leaves can grow over two meters in length (that’s over 6 feet!). When boating from one side of the lake to the other, it is necessary to stop and throw the motor in reverse every few hundred meters because the prop gets tangled in seagrass. On the plus side, with each subsequent field trip, we created a channel of sorts from all the lawn mowing and were able to minimize our impacts by following it all the way to our field site.

Unexpected challenges

Canoeing to the field site

For this node of the ZEN network, we faced a few challenges. The first challenge was the commute, which either involved a mowing expedition though the eelgrass meadow in a small motorboat or a half-hour drive to the far side of the lake where canoes could be launched in knee deep mud. This later choice was substantially slower but the drive took us through some gorgeous woods where we were ever vigilant for brown bears, which were often seen in those parts (not by any of us, fortunately or unfortunately!). If the potential threat of bears wasn’t enough to hurry us into the water, the clouds of mosquitoes surely helped us shave off a few minutes from the commute. I leave Virginia to fly halfway around the world and still found myself chased by the winged menaces!

Fieldwork in Japan

The second challenge was the physical labor involved with field work in such tall eelgrass. Our site was fairly deep, such that at low tide the water came up to just above my waist. With eelgrass well over a meter tall, this made movement between plots as slow as molasses and reduced visibility to the front of our dive masks. I’m used to working in low visibility water in Virginia, but the ribbon-like eelgrass tangling everything was a new beast entirely. We were constantly brushing eelgrass out of our faces while surveying or sampling. And, when we came up for air, we often had wads of grass tugging our snorkels out of our mouths and “Cousin It” inspired eelgrass hairdos. Needless to say, we had to take great care to not rip the eelgrass from the inside of plots or brush off the very epiphytes we were aiming to quantify.

Never judge a jelly by its size
The final challenge made for one of my more memorable and culturally engaging experiences during my time in Japan. It concerned an eelgrass critter that had also visited me on occasion in Hiroshima, a small jelly that densely occupied the ZEN site in Lake Akkeshi. They pack a pretty mild punch (it wouldn’t come close to a box jelly), but when you get stung repeatedly it can take a toll. I experienced some of the pain in Hiroshima, a sharp sting and a long-lasting dull ache, but I wasn’t prepared for Lake Akkeshi.

Sampling

We were finishing up some work on the weekend, so travel to the field site required both car and canoe. All was going smoothly, my Japanese collaborators and I by this point worked like a well oiled machine. That is, until I unintentionally swallowed some water stuck in my snorkel. Intense stinging in my mouth – that’s what I remember first. I spat and spat, but the stinging did not go away. Next my esophagus was on fire, and then my lower back and most of my joints began to ache. It was a deep ache, down to the bones, that made it hard to move or even think. I had swallowed part of a tiny jelly!

Luckily, I was surrounded by my new friends who loaded me back into the canoe and took me to shore. It took multiple canoe trips to get all the gear and people back to shore so I had to wait on the mudflat in between trips, still in my wetsuit since the mosquitoes were too bad to do anything else. Foundering in the mud with the stinging pain reaching a new peak, I vaguely remember hoping that this was not my day to finally see a brown bear. How I must have looked like an injured seal, covered in dark neoprene and writing in the mud! The decision was made to take me to the hospital, to which I couldn’t object by this time. I was largely incapacitated.

It was quite a while before we made it to the hospital, but I am happy to say that the experience was relatively easy. They had no problem treating me without my passport, and Dr. Hori (the project leader in Hiroshima) stayed with me to translate. To be honest, there was not much treatment that could be offered, although I was given some medicine to ease the pain. I was sent home with a goody bag of prescriptions that I needed more help translating, but I remained restless with pain. It took me another full day to recover completely. On Monday, I returned to the hospital to pay my bill, which was surprisingly modest. Luckily, after a handful of awkward and borderline comical exchanges about worker’s compensation back in the US, I was reimbursed in full. Being a marine ecologist does has its hazards, but I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.

Jellyfishing in Japan, a short movie made by Matt Whalen based on his encounters with jellies in Japan.

The beauty of it all
All in all, ZEN in Hokkaido was an amazing experience. The eelgrass system there is so full of life. When viewed underwater, the meadow looks more like a forest and, if you are patient and a little lucky, many of the creatures that thrive under the canopy come into view. Small mysid ‘shrimp’ are very abundant here and seem to be important grazers on algae that grow on eelgrass leaves. There are also many abundant species of fish that presumably eat a lot of those mysids and other small grazers. And, of course, there are the jellies. They are actually quite beautiful when you don’t have thousands of nematocysts (their harpoon-like stingers) firing into your tissues!

Mysids on Eelgrass Akkeshi, a short movie by Matt Whalen.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to be a member of the ZEN Japan team during 2011. The country and its people left many lasting impressions on me, and I yearn to go back. Hopefully now that I am based on the West Coast of the USA I will have more opportunities to collaborate with the colleagues and friends I made on my adventure. There are two graduate students traveling to Japan this summer to participate in round two of the Zostera Experimental Network (look for their posts from Japan this summer!) and I hope to live vicariously through them as they travel and conduct experiments. I will be keeping up with their stories from Bodega Bay, CA, where our excellent team has just finished installing a major component of this year’s experiment. I can’t wait to hear about how things go at the other sites and to make more ZEN memories this summer. Dewa mata!

The Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN) team formally emerged into public view for the first time at the Benthic Ecology Meeting this past week in Norfolk, Virginia. ZEN coordinator Dr. Pamela Reynolds (top center in the photo, in red) presented a first look at the results of our 2011 experiment evaluating the relative importance of grazing, nutrient loading, and abiotic forcing on dynamics of eelgrass (Zostera marina) communities across the Northern Hemisphere.

ZEN had representation from several of our 15 global sites, and a diverse group of PIs, grad students and undergrads, at BEM this year. These included teams from northern Japan (PI Massa Nakaoka and grad student Kyosuke Momota), Quebec (graduate students Julie Lemieux and Laetitia Joseph), Massachusetts (PI James Douglass), North Carolina (PI Erik Sotka, grad students Rachel Gittman and Nicole Kollars, technicians Danielle Abbey and Alyssa Popowich), and Virginia (Emmett Duffy, Pamela Reynolds, Paul Richardson).

The abstract of Pamela’s presentation:

A comparative-experimental approach reveals complex forcing among bottom-up and top-down processes in seagrass communities across the Northern Hemisphere

Pamela L. Reynolds (1); Emmett Duffy (1); Christoffer Boström (2); James Coyer (3); Mathieu Cusson (4); James Douglass (5); Johan Eklöf (6); Aschwin Engelen (7); Klemens Eriksson (3); Stein Fredriksen (8); Lars Gamfeldt (6); Masakazu Hori (9); Kevin Hovel (10); Katrin Iken (11); Per-Olav Moksnes (6); Masahiro Nakaoka (12); Mary O’Connor (13); Jeanine Olsen (3); Paul Richardson (1); Jennifer Ruesink (14); Erik Sotka (15); Jay Stachowicz (16); Jonas Thormar (8)

 

(1) Virginia Institute of Marine Science, (2) Åbo Akademi University, (3) University of Gronigen, (4) Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, (5) Northeastern University, (6) University of Gothenburg, (7) Universidade do Algarve, (8) University of Oslo, (9) Fisheries Research Agency, Japan, (10) San Diego State University, (11) University of Alaska Fairbanks, (12) Hokkaido University, (13) University of British Columbia, (14) University of Washington, (15) College of Charleston, (16) University of California Davis

 

Two fundamental challenges to prediction in ecology are complexity and idiosyncrasy. How do we evaluate the importance and generality of multiple, interacting factors in mediating ecological structure and processes? One promising way forward is the comparative-experimental approach, integrating standardized experiments with observational data. In summer 2011 the Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN), a collaboration among ecologists across 15 Northern Hemisphere sites, initiated parallel field experiments exploring bottom-up and top-down control in eelgrass (Zostera marina) communities. Eelgrass is among the most widespread marine plants, forming ecologically and economically important but threatened coastal habitats. We factorially added nutrients and excluded small crustaceans (mesograzers) using a degradable chemical deterrent for four weeks, and measured responses of associated plant and animal communities. As expected, results varied strongly across the global range. Our cage-free deterrent strongly reduced crustacean grazers; at several sites grazer exclusion released blooms of epiphytic algae and/or sessile invertebrates. In Chesapeake Bay, these blooms reduced eelgrass biomass after eight weeks, demonstrating mutualistic dependence between eelgrass and mesograzers. Surprisingly, nutrient addition had little effect on epiphytes, except in Massachusetts and Sweden where grazers are suppressed by mesopredators. Ongoing research is analyzing the relative influence of grazer diversity and environmental forcing in mediating these processes.

Analysis of the 2011 experiments is still under way–even as we swing into high gear for planning the 2012 experiment. We will be presenting the complete results of the 2011 experiment at the Ecological Society of America meeting in Portland (August 2012) and the 47th European Marine Biology Symposium in Arendal, Norway (September 2012). We hope to see you at one or another of these events!

Carolyn Prentice, UBC undergraduate at ZEN British Columbia site

My experience working on the ZEN project in Dr. Mary O’Connor’s lab this past summer was simply fantastic. It was great to have a summer job that I was really passionate about; anytime anyone asked me what I was doing for the summer, they were in for more than just a one-sentence answer! It was also great to share the experience with many other passionate biologists; we had an amazing group of workers and volunteers. Even when it was rainy and windy and our hands were numb, we knew we were lucky to be doing what we were doing! I am grateful to have had such an amazing opportunity, especially as an undergraduate and working on the ZEN project has certainly inspired me to continue studying the fascinating communities that inhabit Zostera marina beds. I am also excited to see the results of the ZEN projects from all of the different sites!

ZEN site in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada

A typical day for the crew at the ZEN B.C. site:
1. Pile into the U.B.C. Zoology van with equipment and keen volunteers.
2. Arrive at the field site, put on (leaky) chest waders and sun hats or rain jackets (typically the latter).
3. Head down the 300 or so stairs to the beach, pass all of the locals getting their daily exercise and wearing ‘what are you guys up to’ looks on their faces.
4. Head out onto the mud flats, try not to stop moving or risk getting stuck in the really sticky mud.
5. Go about whatever task we had set out to do that day. Meanwhile, enjoy the beautiful scenery – the nearby Gulf Islands, the B.C. Ferries sailing across the Straight of Georgia, and hundreds of foraging herons.
6. Walk back up the 300 or so stairs (great exercise!)
7. Empty the leaky waders.
8. Go to Tim Horton’s to get iced caps or hot chocolates (typically the latter) before heading back to U.B.C.
9. Go home feeling like the luckiest people in the world!

Matt Whalen

I was excited to participate in the ZEN project because of the preliminary work I did for my Master’s research under Dr. Emmett Duffy at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) to test the methods in seagrass. I was also excited for the chance to get up close and personal with eelgrass (Zostera marina) in different parts of the world. I had visited eelgrass beds in Boston, Massachusetts, Bodega Bay, California, and Vancouver, Canada while visiting grad schools, and played around in tropical seagrasses in Florida while helping out with a seahorse research project a few years ago, but the bulk of my research experience in seagrass was focused on the lower Chesapeake Bay. When I found out that I would be traveling to Japan to work on not one but two of the ZEN experiments, I felt like a boyhood dream had come true. Sappy, but it’s 100% accurate. My father lived in Japan for a number of years while he was in the navy, and growing up I heard a lot of stories about his time there that romanticized the whole thing for me. He even promised me (around the time I started tying my own shoes) that we would travel to Japan together one day to climb Mt. Fuji.

The timing of the trip could not have been more perfect. At the conclusion of my Master’s degree at VIMS and before beginning my PhD at UC Davis. I spent a month and a half in the land of the rising sun. My time was split between Hiroshima Prefecture, Tokyo and surrounding areas, and the northern island of Hokkaido. No amount of Japanese anime (my favorite series being Cowboy Bebop and my most recently viewed film a Japanese rendition of the Little Mermaid named Ponyo) could have prepared me for how amazing this trip would be. My first impressions were actually in the airport and during the flight. I had scored direct flights from Washington, D.C. to Tokyo and I flew with ANA (All Nippon Airways)…“Nippon” and “Nihon” are Japanese (Nihongo) for Japan, and I’m not sure how “Japan” came into use. As is often the case (for me, anyway), international flights are far superior to domestic US flights, and ANA exceeded anything I had experienced before (I’ll let the better-traveled out there decide whether ANA or international flights generally are superior).

I made a quick list of why these international flights were awesome:

1) Perhaps the most impressive, I was not charged for my checked baggage. I had two large bags, but they weren’t brought up as an issue on any of my six flights… amazing.

2) The in-flight food was actually good. We had sembei (rice crackers) for snacks near the beginning of the flight, salmon and antipasto for dinner, and rice with bacon and mushrooms, yogurt, and melon for breakfast. And, perhaps not surprisingly, as much green tea as we could handle throughout the flight.

3) Everyone who worked for ANA was exceedingly polite and helpful. Nearly everyone spoke some En

glish (I was ashamed throughout my trip that I did not speak more Japanese) and helped me when I was lost or confused. When I landed in Tokyo, I took so long going through customs that our baggage claim period had already finished, but my bags were waiting for me on a luggage cart near customer service and were delivered without hassle.

4) I had my own television screen with my choice of tv shows, movies, video games, and audio. I was pleased to find the new Beastie Boys album (to which I rocked out thoroughly), I watched a National Geographic special on Japan natural wonders, and I watched a few Japanese variety shows, which I became very fond of during my stay. All in all, this was the best travel experience of my life. But before this becomes a personal diary or a diatribe on airline policies or American culture, back to research.

View from dorm window

When I arrived in Hiroshima on 27 June 2011 it was dark but humid and warm. Four ZEN participants were waiting to pick me up: our fearless leader Dr. Masakazu Hori (Hori-san) of the National Research Institute of Fisheries and Environment of Inland Sea, his postdoc Dr. Hiromori Shimabukuro (Shima-san or Bukuro-san for short), PhD student Takehisa Yamakita, and Dr. Massa Nakaoka’s Master’s student Kyosuke Momota from Hokkaido University. They greeted me enthusiastically and we set off for the marine lab near Takehara City on the Seto Inland Sea. The next morning I awoke to find that I had an amazing view of the Seto Inland Sea from my dormitory room. I could see a multitude of small islands (the Seto Inland Sea has thousands), ferries shuttling people and cars between the islands and the mainland, and fishing boats that had both outboard motors and a small gaff sail to allow the boats to turn on a yen when fishing.

Research Vessel

On my first full day in Japan (day 2), we visited the Southern Japan ZEN field site to give me a chance to see the system and to collect samples for stable isotope analysis, which allows us to determine what the different animals in the system are eating by measuring the carbon and nitrogen content of their tissues. We traveled to the site on a very nice research vessel that is stored out of water due to the extreme tidal range found in the Seto Inland Sea (~ four meters or 13 feet) and has to be lowered into the water for each use. The site was about five minutes from the marine lab and located in a bay formed by a small island, which featured a large and dense bed of eelgrass along with a fringe of a congener, Zostera japonica, in the shallows and small patches of a more distantly related seagrass, Halophila ovalis, in deeper areas.

Eelgrass (Zostera marina)

This eelgrass bed was the most impressive I had ever seen. Much of it is completely submerged at low tide. The water was fairly warm and clear that day, so I spent a long time snorkeling around and got some great views. The blades of the eelgrass were the tallest I had ever seen, measuring in at over 1.5 meters (that’s around 5 feet!). That may not sound like much to someone used to bamboo or even giant kelp, but to someone used to seeing eelgrass that was on the order of a few tens of centimeters this was phenomenal. In the small amount of time I had been in Japan I had already begun to feel ungainly and too tall, but in this bed of eelgrass I felt small (although still ungainly).

If that wasn’t enough, Hori-san then took me to the largest continuous eelgrass bed in the Seto Inland Sea. Researchers (often those from Australia) sometimes refer to seagrass beds as meadows. I wondered why this was the case. I assumed it was just a terminological preference or a holdover from seminal research articles from different locations. To me a meadow implies something much larger than a bed. Here in the Seto Inland Sea, I could now understand the amount of space that a seagrass bed (ahem, meadow) is able to cover. We did not stay long, but we cruised with the boat on plane over a large extent and all I could see was dense seagrass flying past. I wish I had brought my fishing pole.

Collecting

On the next day we broke down the experiment (day 3, I showed up just in time), collecting the final samples for mesograzers, epiphytic algae, and eelgrass growth. We were out for many hours and a few of us began to complain of a stinging sensation. Apparently, there are lots of small jellyfish that inhabit the seagrass beds in this part of Japan, and they are small enough to get into your wetsuit through the neck if you are doing a lot of marine research. We were all stung many times. Each sting is no big deal, but the constant exposure becomes irritating and after a while I began to feel ill. My stomach started to cramp and my hips and lower back started to ache. I thought perhaps the bento box I had for lunch was not so fresh or my wetsuit was too tight (I had taken this wetsuit out into the field for three years in a row at this point so that seemed unlikely) or that I had gotten too much sun. We made it back to the lab and at this point I only wanted to lie down. Unfortunately, we had a huge mass of samples to offload and organize.

On a lighter note, there was a barbeque party waiting for us (organized by Dr. Jun Shoji and in honor of Kyosuke Momota, the “ace of the seagrass bed”) after our work was finished. It was a most gracious offering complete with signs for Momota-san, another student’s birthday, and one welcoming me! We ate well and enjoyed each other’s company as the sun set, but the beer didn’t seem to be helping what ailed me. I was still achy the next morning, but we had more field work to finish.

Welcome Barbecue

I forgot about the pain, which wasn’t that bad – just annoyingly constant, because the work was so much fun. We used a beach seine to sample small predators in the seagrass bed near the site of the experiment and we collected many cool critters including juvenile rockfish (Sebastes spp.) and juvenile pufferfish (the smallest one shown in the picture to the left). I also got a chance to speak with our research vessel’s captain, Iwasaki-san, about life in the area. I found out that he loved to go surfing, had been to Hawaii, and that he was married to a Basque woman. Amazing what you can find out about people even if you don’t speak the same first language. Later that day, we had to leave the Takehara Marine Station for Hatsukaichi City, where Hori-san’s lab was located and where we would finish processing samples for the southern Japan ZEN experiment. I was sad to leave this beautiful place with its perfectly set marine station and historical downtown (Takehara City), but I was excited to move on and see what more this country had in store. The trip took about two hours by car, but was only about 40 miles as the crow flies. By the time we got there, my pain had subsided and I talked to others that felt the same achiness after that long field day, and we chalked it up to the jellies.

Tiny pufferfish

In Hatsukaichi, I stayed in a very nice dormitory with Momota-san and a new companion, an honors undergraduate student Dr. Massa Nakaoka named Shotaro Aoe (pronounced “ah-way”). By day, we worked hard processing a large number of samples from the experiment, but by night we visited new places, including many delicious (oishi!) noodle shops, a local hot spring, downtown Hiroshima, and historic places from the samurai period. We also made a lot of food at the dorm (including shabu shabu and sukiyaki… Momota-san and Aoe-san can take all of the credit) and watched our fair share of Japanese variety shows. On the weekends, Hori-san was gracious enough to take me around, including to the famous Miyajima Island, and even invited me to his home for dinner (he made his soul food “Takoyaki” – Google it and, better yet, try it!). I became very comfortable at the dorm and the surrounding area and even set off on my own with a bike lent to me by none other than Hori-san. But, this also ended far too soon. I was off to Tokyo to meet my father, see the city, and head off to the mountain I dreamt about as a child before exploring the eelgrass meadows up north in Hokkaido.

Mt. Fuji

Stay tuned for Part 2…

Photos by Matt Whalen and the Southen Japan team.

Pamela Reynolds

There are few times in my life that I can honestly say that I was terrified. Feeling the Loma Prieta earthquake in ’89, (nearly) tripping over a cottonmouth snake, taking my qualifying exams all stand out. So does the 28^th  of June in 2011.

It started out as a normal day, or at least as normal as a day of fieldwork can go at the ZEN site in Virginia. It began with the usual flurry of activity in the early morning packing the experimental equipment and loading the boat, checking the associated weather websites and filling out the float plan, slathering on sunscreen and pulling on life jackets and dive booties. It was a typical hot, humid, and sunny summer field day in coastal Virginia.

As is customary, when we arrived at the site Captain Paul cranked up the VHF radio to the weather channel and its droning computerized voice began babbling in the background. We set anchor, grabbed our masks and associated collecting gear, hopped into the water, and got to work. We were collecting seagrass shoots to measure growth rates, which involved a lot of swimming and diving among our experimental plots in what we affectionately called the ZEN Pole Garden. On about plot number 22, half way through our collections shortly after 3 o’clock in the afternoon, it started. That dreaded cacophony over the VHF radio followed by the ominous blaring of the weather alarm and the warning statement that can mean only one thing – storm!

A typical bright, sunny morning of fieldwork

I never used to be afraid of lightning. I actually found it to be beautiful, exciting even; an awesome display of the raw power of nature ripping the sky above. My sentiments have changed. Eyes wide searching the horizon, we noticed some puffy clouds in the distance. But they were still far away, a barely visible smudge on the horizon. Captain Paul swam back to the boat and called the VIMS marine safety office for an update. Where was the storm? Should we head back? That morning the forecast had said 20% chance of rain. Would we miss it? The VHF radio blared again. “Thunderstorm warning for Williamsburg, York, Gloucester…” We grabbed our gear and made double time back to the boat and packed up. That benign smudge on the horizon was beginning to look a bit more ominous.

York River, Virginia

Over the droning of the VHF I could hear our marine safety officer’s voice on the other end of the phone say “You need to get your <fill in the explicative> home!” Paul hung up and started up the engine and we all held on tight. Cumulonimbus heads suddenly rose from the north and we began to see a line of haze that corresponded to rain. The storm was up across the river and heading toward us. Time to go home.

I wish we had photos, but we were too busy trying to save our <explicative>.  The storm blew in with furious force and the ride home was simultaneously amazing and beautiful, but we knew, potentially deadly. A descending dark gray ceiling of clouds bristling with electrical charge bathed the river in a light rarely seen. We zoomed up the York River in the research vessel Teal, crouched as low as possible, hands over head and ears to avoid the pounding rain buffeted by the wind, and we crossed our fingers that the next bolt of lightening missed. Being the highest point around, soaking wet, with a stainless steel steering wheel in his hands was not Paul’s idea of a good way to get a charge out of life. Nor mine. Paul put the hammer down and blasted home as fast and safely as our 150 hp Yamaha would push us.

We arrived just in time. The Teal slid into her berth and someone shouted “Line!” and someone else “Quick!” and then, “Save the samples!”

Wind gust at 4pm on 28 June 2011

In retrospect this may sound crazy, but after a long summer of fieldwork each small plastic bag, every tiny vial of specimens from the field is as precious as the rarest gem. Mindful to duck with each thunder crack and to remove the boat pugs so the rain didn’t sink the Teal, we tied off and scrambled up the dock with the cooler full of samples and dashed into the relative safety of the vessels office trailer. Ping-pong sized hail pummeled the trailer’s windows, 36 knot gusts of wind ripped into awnings, tin roofs crackled and crinkled above, the power flickered and died. We stood shivering in our wetsuits and life jackets amid growing puddles of water on the trailer floor. Five long minutes and the lights were back on. The clouds had trailed off into the distance. The sun, shining down more brightly than ever before, belied the storm’s existence. But all about were spreading puddles and a fresh, clean crispness to the air.

Temperature ascension on 28 June 2011

I was reminded by something my friends from North Carolina told me before I moved out East and started graduate school – if you don’t like the weather in the South, wait a few minutes and it will change. Especially in the summer time, where it seems like every afternoon has a 30% chance of thunderstorms which, when they do occur, pop up quickly and fiercely. Normally we think about racing to complete our fieldwork before the tide rises above our necks, but here we also have to move swiftly just in case those pretty, puffy white clouds on the horizon turn on us. No amount of scouring NOAA weather websites for the day’s forecast can entirely prepare you for being caught in a storm out on the marsh. But quick thinking in the field and good communication among the team makes sure everyone gets home safe, and with a cooler full of samples. Now, who wants to sort some seagrass?

Photos by JE Duffy, PL Reynolds; Figures from NOAA.

Akela collects mesograzers at Goodwin Island, Virginia USA

Last week I earned my Invertebrate Zoology team at Humboldt State University 10 extra credit points for successfully identifying a gammaridean and caprellid amphipod, a mysid shrimp, and several Palmonetesshrimps! How, you ask? One word: ZEN.

This past summer I was in the REU program at VIMS working with Dr. Duffy’s Marine Biodiversity Lab. The ZEN project had just begun when I arrived in Virginia and I quickly set to work making experimental equipment and processing seagrass samples. Coastal Virginia looks nothing like the rocky California Coast where I currently go to school at Humboldt State University, nor like where I grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii.

I have had few experiences as enriching, educational, and career-focusing as my internship with the VIMS ZEN team.  I had an up-close encounter with a juvenile terrapin who tried to nest in my hair, and an encounter with a sea nettle that wrapped my leg in a less than tender embrace. I became an expert at pouring cups of wet plaster, identifying a severed head or lone backside of the tiny amphipod Gammarus mucronatus, distinguishing between seagrasses Ruppia and Zostera, doing the sting-ray-shuffle, writing international UPS labels in the nick of time, and so much more.

Sadly, since my time at VIMS has ended, these skills have been poorly utilized. They have, however, given me a better understanding of marine ecology and the functioning of seagrass habitats, and they’ve earned me 10 extra credit points in Invertebrate Zoology! Emmett Duffy’s lab at VIMS is a craftily chosen group of people who have collectively helped to steer my interest in graduate studies towards subtidal ecosystems and their global presence and impact. I can’t wait to hear about where the ZEN is headed, and the progress that it has made. It was a summer well spent.

Showing off the field cage frames

Processing a mesograzer sample

New friend – a juvenile terrapin

Photos by JE Duffy, PL Reynolds, JP Richardson

Megan Gyoerkoe

One morning, bright and very early, the North Carolina ZEN team packed up the truck and with all the necessary materials for the initial set up of all 40 experimental plots for our experiment. We arrived at our field site behind the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium and the weather was absolutely beautiful, sunny and warm but with a cool breeze. The tide was calm and the Zostera seagrass beds were vast and lush. After briefly meeting with the aquarium staff our group got started right away, driving the 120+ poles needed to mark the experimental plots into the sediment. About half way through Pamela began to check some of the plots to make sure they had enough Zostera (we were aiming for a minimum of 80% cover). As it turns out what we thought were lush beds of Zostera were actually composed mainly of a different type of seagrass – Ruppia! You can understand that this is a problem given that we are working on the Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN) and not, well REN!

Checking the seagrass

We had spent all morning driving poles into the sediment only to discover that we had been deceived by the seagrass. In disbelief that we could have made such a mistake, we checked and double-checked the plots. Then we went on an extensive Zostera hunt, searching endlessly for a hint of a healthy Zostera bed, swimming through the seagrass even under the threat of being hit in the face by jumping mullets! Turns out it was all in vain and it was back to the drawing board for the ZEN-NC site. What had been an extensive Zostera bed two years before had been replaced almost entirely by Ruppia and some Halodule seagrasses. We spent hours pounding in the poles only to pull them back up the next day.

Re-setting up the plot poles

Fortunately, Pamela, Erik and Rachel were able to work out the logistics for us to work at a new site nearby in Middle Marsh that was actually filled with beautiful, lush Zostera. Even though we had to re-set all of the poles, it turned out to be a wonderful, protected site that was a pleasure to work in.

Field research is definitely a category on its own; it is pleasantly unpredictable, entertaining, exciting and occasionally slightly torturous. I can without a doubt say that I learned so much more than I expected to this summer. I think most importantly, I learned that with field work you definitely need to be prepared for anything and up for doing everything.

Erik Sotka loads up the rental van

Sometimes you will be given some PVC pipe, metal wire, mesh bags and zip-ties and will have to turn it all into a cage for keeping out predators. Sometimes your boat will get beached and you will be stuck till the tide comes in to rescue you. Sometimes you will get caught in the pouring rain. You may have to wrestle an American Eel or stand next to a young dogfish shark. Maybe you will get to have an urchin collecting competition or hunt for tiny crustaceans. You will potentially get pinched by a blue crab. You will most likely run out of zip-ties and chances are you will lose a bucket at least once. You might have to put 100 poles in a seagrass bed, only to take them right out again.

You just never really know what is going to happen any given day in the field. But, it is guaranteed that someone will come back bleeding (minor scrapes and bruises!) and everyone will have had plenty of laughs.

If I have any advice for anyone venturing into field research it is to:
1. Never forget an extra extra pair of scissors (you may not always need them, but you’ll always need them with you don’t have them)
2. Lather on the sunscreen
3. Always make time for Oreo breaks

Photos by PL Reynolds, C Pease

Paul Richardson

As Emmett’s lab manager in the Marine Biodiversity Lab at VIMS for the past 10 years there’s rarely been a dull moment. There is such an eclectic range of duties with this job that sometimes it’s hard to know what will come next. One day I may be driving a research vessel to field sites were we snorkel to collect samples in the Chesapeake Bay, the next I’m doing data analysis, or building materials for a mesocosm or field experiment, talking to a high school marine biology class, ordering lab supplies, or explaining to the woman at Wal-Mart that I really am buying all of their lingerie bags and knee high, queen sized, reinforced toe stockings for the purpose of science! The Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN) project has added yet more varied activities to the list.  Never before have we conducted such an expansive project coordinating with 14 other research groups from around the States and the world!
 

Lunch in the field

First I have to say that none of this would have been possible without the hard work of the crew: volunteers Kara Gadeken, Megan Gyoerkoe, Jack Hawkins, and John Ray; our REU intern Akela Kuwahara and others; and the VIMS crew of Emmett Duffy, Pamela Reynolds, Erin Ferer, Jon Lefcheck, Nathan Bowman, and Elizabeth Bush.  Marine ecology is a team sport and this crew knows how to play the game. Thanks!  Also, I’m amazed to learn that it appears that all of the ZEN partners not only attempted but finished their experiments as well. As a first step, last winter we held a conference where representatives from all of the groups met in Williamsburg, VA to hash out a plan for the project.  At this very productive meeting, it was great to meet all of the partners and certainly it was crucial to the success of the project.  With Jim Grace’s seminars on structural equation modeling, Jim Thomas’ amphipod workshop, and all of the work sessions and other activities, the ZEN conference deserves its own dedicated post. As for me, after the meeting I worked with Emmett and Pamela to compute our materials needs, costs, vendors etc. for the network of ZEN experiments while also building on Matt Whalen’s work to formulate an ideal recipe and method for churning out the abundance of deterrent and control blocks that would be needed. I began conducting small field experiments to this end in the fall of 2010.  In the spring after more trials we ultimately decided on a final mixture and we started churning them out.

Mixing plaster

Probably the single most important technique for industrializing the plaster pouring process was the deployment of a gallon sized Ziploc bag with pre-weighed plaster that we could dump into the mixing bowl and then dump back into the bag once mixed. This may sound trivial, but anything that saved a few minutes during the crucial moments before the plaster set was invaluable. Elizabeth pre-weighed the plaster so that we could just add water, mix, pour into a bag and dispense into the molds (urinalysis cups), like the Cake Boss.

Blocks were drying everywhere, even in Emmett Duffy's office!

In all, we made over 8,000 blocks.  We did batches of up to 25 blocks, no more, or the plaster would ‘kick’ and leave a prematurely hardened mess.  Even with all wires pre-bent and everything set out and prepped,  we had to keep the batches small because each mold had to be tapped many times to remove bubbles and set the wires.  On a good day, we could pour 440 blocks, or enough for one of the 15 sites. Unfortunately, mixing blocks was not the only game in town and we rarely achieved this level of production. The blocks had to dry for several days and be carefully  removed from their molds, weighed, and then packaged for shipping. On any given day we’d have several hundred blocks drying on shelves scattered about the lab and our offices, a constant reminder of our tight production schedule.

Nutrient bags

Aside from blocks, we also had to stitch together 1,800 double lined fiberglass window screen nutrient socks.  For this we employed two machines, Bessie and Breezy.  Bessie is the original Marine Biodiversity Laboratory (MBL) Consew industrial sewing machine, capable of 2500 individual stitches per minute. But, Bessie can be quite temperamental, and temperamental at 2500 stitches per minute can be serious. Breezy, our off the shelf Singer home machine who made a wispy, breezy sound (hence her name), was purchased when Bessie was having an off day. This was Kara’s machine and although Breezy didn’t stitch nearly as fast, she found that steady and slow wins the race; a classic tortoise versus the hare story.

Once stitched, each nutrient sock had to have two grommets installed for the closures.  Because of the 3,600 grommets, which everyone, mostly Elizabeth, banged into place, we weren’t very popular with our lab neighbors, or anyone with a headache. However, because of the 3,600 grommets, copious cable ties and plenty of PVC poles purchased for the ZEN initiative, we did become very popular with the local hardware stores. We were just doing our part to stimulate the local economy.

350 lbs of experimental gear shipped to each ZEN partner

Once we had assembled the 350 lbs of material for each of the partners, we shipped them out. Pamela did an amazing job coordinating with the partners, the shipping companies, brokers, customs agents, and our shipping office to make this happen. It was also nice to have Akela’s beautiful script to fill out the many required forms for shipping internationally. Simultaneously, while doing all of the above, we conducted our ZEN experiment here in Virginia. What am I doing now that the ZEN 2011 experimental field season is over? Today I mended some field gear, drove the boat to our field site, collected data, processed samples back in the lab, and ordered pencils. There’s rarely a dull moment in the VIMS Marine Biodiversity Lab! Photos by: JE Duffy, PL Reynolds, N Bowman