Monday 8/24/15

Had a long chat with my advisor, Cathy, about the status of my fieldwork- what data I had collected, what I was leaving behind, plans for a stressor experiment- as well as plans for funding next summer. Puget Sound Restoration Fund has approved me to conduct a common garden experiment next summer with olys from California, Puget Sound, and British Columbia. My hope is to use this rangewide common garden to contextualize the regional-scale one I did this summer.

Tile culling

• SSA_7: 9
• SSA_8: 83
• HCB_1: 160
• HCB_2: 310
• HCB_3: 384
• Took pictures of tiles that were culled last Thursday but didn’t have pictures for.

Growth Rate Experiment

Started taking pictures of larvae from the growth rate experiments conducted earlier in the summer. This was done using an adaptor to attach a phone to the eyepiece of a microscope. Labelling scheme (until I think of a better one) is Population+Replicate_Growth rate experiment (1 or 2)_date sample was taken. Also did live/dead counts of the entire sample.

• SS3_G1_7/12: 25L/15D
• SS1_G1_7/12: 57L/8D
• SS3_G1_7/15: 38L/14D
• SS2_G1_7/12: 64 L/9D

Tile Set B

• Cleaned out the tanks from tile set B. Cut off the tiles and randomized them among the wire “cages” in the large tank with the other tiles from Set_A.

Tuesday 8/25/15

Cultch Set

• SS>450A + SS>450B -> SS> 450B; SS>1000
• SS_new -> SS>450B; dump
• HC > 450 ->  HC > 1000
• HC_new -> HC > 450; dump

Tile culling

• HC_B_1: 42
• HC_B_2: 103 from front, 164 from back
• HC_B_3: 67 front, 42 back
• HC_B_4: 4
• HC_B_7: 4 front, 13 back
• HC_B_8: 12 front, 3 back
• HC_B_10: 9 back
• HC_B_11: 1 back
• HC_B_12: 2 back
• HC_B_14: 86 front, 5 back
• SS_B_1: 7 back (none on front)
• SS_B_2: 4 back (none on front)
• SS_B_3: 0/3
• SS_B_7: 0/10
• SS_B_8: 0/2
• SS_B_9: 0/5
• SS_B_10: 0/7
• SS_B_11: 0/6
• SS_B_13: 0/1
• NF_B_1: 0/27
• NF_B_2: 95/120
• NF_B_3: 0/13
• NF_B_4: 77/270
• NF_B_5: 8/12
• NF_B_6: 208/92
• NF_B_7: 0/2
• NF_B_8: 18/10
• NF_B_9: 8/19
• NF_B_10: 70/48
• NF_B_11: 11/17
• NF_B_12: 10/27
• NF_B_13: 1/12
• NF_B_14: 0/2

Wednesday 8/26/15

• Dropped off samples and borrowed materials at the Roberts lab.

Thursday 8/27/15

The little oyster babies are leaving the nest for the big open ocean! I started out the day finishing up any culling that was needed. I also looked over previously culled tiles to make sure that at least 1 cm of space was around each oyster.

Culling

Steven Roberts came to help with the deployment. While I finished up culling, he made labels for the trays but cutting small PVC pipe into 1 inch pieces and etching numbers onto them. We’re also putting waterproof paper in a tube with the tray number.

12 tiles (4 per population) were attached to each tray with zipties. The populations were ordered in the same way for each section of each tray (NF, HC, SS).

Tray with tiles attached

Pictures were taken of each tile next to a ruler to measure size at deployment of the oysters.

7 trays were filled up with with tiles. To minimize the effects of location within a stack of trays, we put 4 trays in a stack with a 2′ spacer between the top 2 and bottom 2 trays. An additional tray was used as a cover to keep out predators. We made 2 of these stacks, with an empty tray in Stack 2.

Stack of trays with oyster tiles ready for deployment

Order of tiles and trays

The trays were hung of the dock at Manchester by ~20 foot rope. One of the stacks seemed to float (which was odd), so we tied on clam bags with rocks to both stacks.