Pokemon???? No actually a creature from the ocean

While trying to figure out what I wanted to blog about for my final blog, I was just looking through sciencedaily for any stories that may catch my attention.  I was having no luck, until I saw a picture of what I thought was a made-up creature, until my girlfriend convinced me otherwise.  This creature was actually a "blue dragon" sea slug, of course instantly I had to dive into this and find more truth about this species.  The species name is actually Glaucus atlanticus which is in the picture below.

Instantly two things popped into my head, one I want one and two is this creature from this world.  Well answer to question one is that they are from off the coast of Africa, so obtaining one is going to be pretty much be impossible unless I smuggle it back into the states after I go on a random trip to Africa.  The answer to question two I answered already apparently it is from off the coast of Africa.  Now what I find unbelievable is that this little guy will actually feed on the man o war jellyfish which is in the picture below, and absorb the venom from it and store it in its fingertip appendages.
 
This brings up why I am so in love with water and the ocean itself.  It is unbelievable what life is in the big blue ocean, the colors and body shape of these organisms is unbelievable.  I have attached another picture of the Glaucus atlanticus below to see the absolute incredible features this organism possesses.  I would love to one day be able to work in the ocean with creatures like this, and be able to see these creatures in their natural habitats.

Now at the end of my search I was just looking through some pictures of how incredible some of these creatures look but their was one that made me laugh, and brought me back to when I was in elementary school.  I have to ask you one question which one is Pikachu and which one is the slug, you tell me ?

Long Journeys at a Young Age

In the last two weeks I have talked about pancreas disease in salmon and the tracking of animals in nature.  Well, this week I'm connecting both of those ideas into one.  A group of scientist are tracking the migration of young salmon into the ocean from their freshwater homes in rivers.  One interesting finding in this study was that they believed the fish would travel north up the coast, but the actual finding was that these fish move north, south and straight out from the river.  How they tracked these salmon, was by an using acoustic telemetry system, which means they put tags on these fish and tracked them on different frequencies.  Some of these tags can be seen in my previous blog about tracking.

One thing that has always interested me about some fish species such as salmon, is their ability to live in both fresh and salt water habitats.  The proper term for this ability is anadromous, which means that the fish is born in freshwater spends about the first year of its life there and then moves out into the sea/ocean, until ready to spawn back in a freshwater river.  To the left here is a picture of a Chinook Salmon.  

The main focus was to look at under what conditions do these fish migrate best.  The main conditions are the current and the water temperature of the ocean.  They state in their paper that Pacific Hake (right) move up shallow when the water is warm enough feeding on these juvenile fish as they migrate for the first time.  The current is a huge player in this because the fish use it to migrate up the coast, moving anywhere from 20 to 60 miles a day.  What was surprising though was that they found the strongest and fast fish in the study, steel head,  were preyed upon most heavily when moving out of the rivers by birds such as cormorants(below).

I mentioned the bird species cormorants above, what is interesting about them in terms of those of us that live around Lake Champlain is their recent population surge.  Everyone that I know says "Look at all those cormorants" or "I hate those birds", well what people don't realize is that these birds were once in trouble, but recently due to conservation efforts have begun to surge.  This species is an apex predator, and feeds heavily on fish in the lake.  Anyone who goes out on the lake can tell you where these birds like to roost, I have seen them turn a once beautiful island into a wasteland.  

This article was very interesting to me because I have been to fisheries in the Adirondacks that raise salmon that are stocked in the rivers around our area and into Lake Champlain itself.  I have also been able to radio track smallmouth and largemouth bass, but I can tell you that there is a lot of money pumped into the trout and salmon side of the Lake Champlain.  If a productive salmon and trout population could establish itself there would be a lot of happy people.  Myself personally am bias towards warm water species of fish, but I wouldn't mind doing research on any type of fish species.  There are jobs for those who want to work with fish, such organizations are NYDEC, Trout Unlimited, LCRI, ect... .  At the bottom of this article I have attached a link to the original paper, and I would suggest many of you take a look at it because it is quite interesting.  

Is the Research Worth the Cost?

This week I stumbled upon a very interesting story that was recently posted on sciencedaily, but also published Methods in Ecology and Evolution.  The name of the paper that was published was Calculating the Ecological of Animal-Borne Instruments on Aquatic Organisms.  The paper was hit home on a couple different fronts because it was just today in class that we were talking about sea turtles and their travels across the ocean.  Well, in this paper they made fiberglass casts of sea turtles to simulate drag from the object that is on the organism.  This was also interesting to me at the point that in working with the LCRI, I got to tag and track smallmouth and largemouth bass throughout Lake Champlain.  I never really considered the idea this could be very detrimental to the fish.  Below I have attached a picture of what a fiberglass cast looks like that was used in the experiment's process.  


This paper really struck me as an interesting idea to research because scientist are always investigating what humans do to animals or how they act in nature, well now it's time to see how scientist themselves affect animals.  After saying that I had to dig a little bit deeper than what was only posted on sciencedaily, and I found some very interesting information.  

These are just a couple examples of tags that are used and how they can be attached to fish.

The most striking information that they found from their research is that these animals can have their migratory routes and ability to survive and reproduce negatively affected.  These researchers may be doing work to help, but in actuality hurt the endangered species even more.  These researchers formatted an equation, C_D = F_D/0·5 ρU²A, the breakdown of this formula can be found on the link above attached to the title of the article.  The images they had attached to their paper were very interesting, one showed the migratory patterns of the turtles throughout the world and another showed the permits for tagging turtles per year. 

 

After reading the results and discussion portions of this paper, they stated that they had found that a turtle with a mount on it had its drag increased by 43%, which correlated to increase it's energy intake 143%.  This evidence does in fact show what I was worried about which these animals that are under extreme stresses of migration, are now becoming dependent on consuming for food which in return could increase predatory risks.  The believe by these turtles having to use the extra fats that they have stored, the reproduction success could also be negatively affected.



I hope that we can find ways to help these turtles, that doesn't hurt their populations anymore than they are struggling already.  I don't know about all of you reading, but I one day would like to take my family so we can all swim with these beautiful giants.

Pancreas Disease in Salmon

Trout and Salmon are thought to be some of the most eloquent freshwater fish species that live in North America.  Fly-fisherman travel from all across the state to fish for them in the Adirondacks, especially in Lake Placid.  Thus, why they are the most stocked fish family in New York state by the NYDEC.  I myself am bias to bass as an angler, but I have caught my fair share of salmon and trout, and I realize that they are a more fragile species when it comes to handling.  I will be giving a speech this week in my communicating biology class on handling of rainbow trout, so when I read this article in sciencedaily about Pancreas Disease in Salmon I thought it would tie in perfectly.

Rainbow trout, Onchorhynchus mykiss   

       
Atlantic Salmon, Salmo salar

It has come to the attention of many salmon fish farmers that their stock has been dying from some sort of disease.  The study performed by Anne Stene she has realized that this disease is Pancreas Disease, which is detrimental to Salmonids.  What is really scary is that infected or dead fish can pass on this virus through the wind or the current of the ocean.  What was also found was that the fat from the dead fish would float to the top of the water and if the fish were to come in contact with this fat they would also become infected.  Like I have mentioned in previous posts there are millions of people who depend on the ocean for their lively hood, so with a disease that can be passed on so easily from one fish farm to the next this is a huge topic.  Another factor that is critical is the virus's life period that the ocean allows it to possess, with the water being normal cold and quite clean it can survive for long periods of time.  If those of you have read my recent posts about the ocean water temperature increasing, this is just another result of the water temperature rising.  An interesting finding was that the salmon were not affected when they were in their smolt/fry stages of life.  
Atlantic Salmon in smolt stage of life

In Lake Champlain the NYDEC has been stocking Atlantic Landlocked Salmon for years, trying to get them to reproduce in the wild to create a wild ALS population, but with water temperatures rising, competition with other species like bass, and the abundance of alewives can make the salmon infertile due to a thiamine deficiency from alewives.  I would like to hopefully get a job one day in the NYDEC, and there is plenty of work to be done in this field of study.  Now after reading the article that has been posted, it is important that as many of you read it that are fish farmers or care for salmon, because it is crucial that infection be stopped before the growth phase can be met with rising water temperatures.  This is when the virus is at its most dangerous state, so with getting rid of infected or dead fish, and fat from those fish it is possible to counteract the damage that can be done.  

Tiny Organisms, Big Change

Last week I talked about an article published in sciencedaily that addressed how the ocean is warming and how the ocean is becoming less productive.  This week another report was published on how a cold water plankton species (C. finmarchicus) is struggling to hold on and may go extinct.  This just sheds more light on how much the oceans and the life inside them are struggling.  It's just not at the level of the ocean, I have seen this first hand on our lake, and currently a researcher at the Lake Champlain Research Institute is delving into a similar situation with Mysids in Lake Champlain.  Mysids for those of you who do not know are like a freshwater shrimp, and I have had the pleasure of getting to see them first hand.  This species was thought to be abundant in Lake Champlain, but warming conditions and the abundance of alewives in the lake have caused this species to struggle.

This article talks about how ocean fisheries are also going to see change with this plankton species possibly going extinct.  Certain species such as the very similar warm water species of plankton will thrive as the cold water species gets pushed out.  This is interesting because I can also relate this to another situation that I have seen in Lake Champlain, this one having to do with trout and salmon species not being as abundant as the lake warms and now we see bass taking over the lake.  This situation addresses an idea on Lake Champlain that can be considered profitable money wise through bass tournament organizations such as FLW, but on the ocean like I mentioned last week around 470-880 million people are dependent on the ocean.  This warming on a large scale could affect fishery markets huge declining populations of cod and hake, fishermen who are dependent on these fish could lose jobs, but it may be possible that we could see these species and another thrive.

Calanoid copepods are a plankton species that are a vital food source for fish larvae and therefore important for all commercial fisheries

With these two papers being recently posted in less than two weeks, it raises an interesting question in my mind that, what can we expect next week?  What I find interesting about ecosystems is how such a little organism can make such a huge change.  My main question about this species was directly answered in this paper itself, and that was could be see this species adapt and live with these warming conditions.  Unfortunately, it seems to be very unlikely due to the short life of these organisms that usually lasts a year at longest, I am very interested to see how the research with the Mysids will look in comparison to this research.  It makes me wonder if the Mysids will have a similar fate, as these plankton.  At the end of the day my personal opinion on the matter at hand is that global warming is inevitable because the planet has gone through cooling and warming periods, but we get to see the survival of the fittest.

What May Come from the Beautiful Blue

After reading an article that has been posted recently in ScienceDaily, "World Ocean Systems Undermined by Climate Change 2100", it has made me wonder how my children will see the ocean and the rest of our world one day.  This article addresses many issues that us as humans have done that will impact our oceans in negative ways.  These researchers predict that productivity and biodiversity will see negative effects, the oceans will be begin to warm and have less dissolved oxygen.  The authors/scientists in this article really drive home the point by explaining that anywhere from 470-880 million people are dependent on what the ocean produces and contributes to society.  Even after reading an article such as this, it is hard for myself to come to terms with what will happen to our oceans if what is mentioned in the article does happen as said.  I like to think of myself as an environmentally friendly person and definitely a person who loves to be on, near, or around water, I'm just hoping that one day people will be fortunate enough to enjoy it as much as I have.




Vibrant coral reef. No corner of the world ocean will be untouched by climate change by 2100, according to a new study. (Credit: © vlad61_61 / Fotolia)