I joined the creative inquiry team for the spring semester and it has been a fantastic experience so far. It’s been eye-opening to be involved in research outside of a normal classroom environment. Being my first semester, it took a little while to adjust and get caught up on all the projects that were going on. I jumped in right in the middle of data finalization and poster preparations. Kylie and Dr. Childress, along with the rest of the team helped get me on track as soon as possible.

The CI team at the Benthic Ecology Meeting 

Over spring break, I had the privilege of attending the Benthic Ecology Meeting held in Jacksonville, Florida. This was a great opportunity to not only present research I had been working on, but also a wonderful chance to really get to know everyone on the team. The conference brought labs from all over the country and even some from Canada to present their research in the form of short talks and posters. Talks were spread over three days and covered a variety of interesting topics dealing with benthic ecology. We were invited to attend any and all of them while we were there. On Thursday night of the conference, those in the lab that had posters presented them to various judges and others interested in our projects. Two of our undergrads, Sarah and Brandt, and our graduate student, Kylie, gave talks on their research on coral ecology and parrotfish grazing effects in the Florida Keys. Their ability to clearly present their ideas and findings was a true indicator of the amount of work that this lab puts in, and I was so proud to be a part of the team. I can’t wait to continue in this creative inquiry and am so excited to begin working on a new project when we return in the fall.

 

My Creative Inquiry Experience

Me, Sarah Hoffmann (CI student), and Kylie Smith

Summer 2013 was my first trip down to the middle Florida Keys to assist Dr. Childress and Kylie Smith with data collection.  I was lucky enough to return to help again during fall break in October and recently took my last trip as a creative inquiry student over spring break.  With the end of the semester nearing I felt that writing a post reflecting upon my creative inquiry experience would be appropriate. 

Working underwater in the Keys

 Down in the Key we are working on collecting data for Kyle Smith’s master’s degree.  We sample 14 sites for parrotfish density, parrotfish feeding behavior, and reef substrate composition.  This year I have been working on the data we have collected pertaining to the parrotfish feeding behavior.  We follow fish around for approximately three minutes and we assess what they are choosing to eat based upon their species and age.  This data has allowed me to present a poster at two different campus events, the Clemson Biological Sciences Annual Student Symposium and the Focus on Creative Inquiry poster session.  In addition to the posters, I gave a talk at the annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Jacksonville, FL.  This was a huge opportunity for me because it was my first talk and it was the first time our lab had undergraduates (Sarah Hoffmann also gave a talk) giving a talk at this meeting.  It was a great learning experience and a terrifying, albeit rewarding task to tackle.   

2014 Focus on Creative Inquiry 

            I have been working on this project for four semesters now and the amount of knowledge and practical research skills I have gained is infinite.  The mentoring and teaching I received from participating in creative inquiry has helped to shape my desire to peruse a career in the marine sciences field.  Creative inquiry has afforded me the opportunity to travel down to the Keys three times over the past year and travel to two conferences, and for that I am immensely grateful.  I would not have the skills or knowledge without this program and I would encourage every undergraduate to find a creative inquiry project that would benefit their career goals and to do it. 

            This class has prepared me for the next step in my life as I go on to an internship working with sea turtles at the Bald Head Island Conservancy, and eventually when I enter graduate school.  While I am sad to be leaving and I am leaving grateful for the opportunities I was given in this creative inquiry. 

This semester, I presented a poster at both CBASS in February and Focus on Creative Inquiry in April with Julianna Ellis. The poster was titled “Do spiny lobsters prefer to associate with familiar individuals?” It was a great opportunity to present and explain the research we have been doing on juvenile Caribbean spiny lobsters not only this semester, but in the many semesters before. We were able to present our work to all different majors throughout Clemson University during the Focus on Creative Inquiry and talk about the work we have been doing. It was a great experience.

 After graduation in May, I’ll be starting dental school this summer at the Medical University of South Carolina. I’m very excited for this next step, but I’m very thankful for the time I have gotten to spend in Conservation of Marine Resources Lab these past three semesters!

This semester in Conservation of Marine Resources we got to present our data and hard work from the past two semesters. I worked on the goby modeling project. Last semester I spent a lot of time working on the data that we would enter into the model for both land-use and stream elevation. This required many hours of mapping streams in Hawaii wishing that I were there for real and not just through Google Earth! Once that data was imputed we were able to do preliminary runs changing the immigration rate from other islands. At the beginning of this semester we did a second run of the model looking at the potential impact of climate change, specifically increased drought and increased rainfall variability, on the Hawaiian goby population in terms of abundance, population structure, and phenotypic distribution. Overall we found that the populations would be fairly resilient to moderate changes in climate. We made a poster to show our data and were able to present it at three different events throughout the semester. The first was at CBASS which is a weekend planned for prospective graduate students to come visit campus. That was my first time presenting a research poster and I was glad that it was a fairly laid back and friendly environment. The second weekend of spring break the lab traveled to the Benthic Ecology Meeting, which was held in Jacksonville, FL this year. There were lots of people there and we got fancy name tags that made me feel very official.  During the poster presentation I got to meet a lot different people, a couple of which I will be working with this summer in the Florida Keys.  There were many talks on all different topics, as well as a video competition. The final event where I got to present our research was the Focus on Creative Inquiry Event. My favorite part of this was that there were so many different projects from every department on campus. Because all my classes are usually in the Biology department I don’t get to hear much about the research from other fields.  This summer I will be down in the Florida Keys working on my own project about juvenile lobster movement and I am looking forward to getting some field experience and hopefully continuing that project next year.

Spring Break 2014 Florida Keys

In the most recent field season (March 2014), I learned two main things: 1. Bring an extra prop; and 2. Wind is the most defining factor of a good vs. bad day in the field. Unfortunately, we learned these the hard way.

On our first day out in the water, it was a beautiful sunny day: no clouds, low wind, we have just made it past the long key bridge onto the ocean side and motor all of the sudden revs and dies. One of the scariest sounds I have ever heard is the sound of a dying motor in the middle of the ocean. We proceeded to take the cover off the motor only to realize that none of the four of us females on board know what a healthy motor looks like let alone a broken one. Naturally we call our local boat guy and proceed to motor in at about 7mph. An hour and a half of prime tanning boat time later, we take the prop in, get it re-spun, and have to wait 24 hours before taking the boat back out. So day 1 – maybe not a total success – but we learned what a spun hub was, decided it might be best to have an extra prop on board, and met a lovely mechanic in marathon who solved our very scary problems for about 90 bucks.

Next came the reality of facing high winds for the next 6 days – the only days we had to get research done. We were able to get 4 sites done the first day (not counting the prop incident).  Only mild sea sickness and fear for capsizing due to rolling waves crashing over the boat, but a success nonetheless. Day 2 we made it out to our sites a little battered and bruised from the waves knocking our little 18 foot boat around, but we found the site, anchored, and had water pouring over the bow of the boat due to the four foot seas. At this point we decided that we may be safer and have less of a chance of losing the university boat if we were on the beach with a corona in hand. Luckily we were able to get four more sites done on this trip (just over half) but our 18’ parker was no match for the 20 knot winds and 4’ seas that the Keys had planned for us. The moral of this story was to either a. get a bigger boat or b. have a longer field season with more room for windy days.

Even with all of the obstacles fate threw at us, this was still a (somewhat) successful trip. We all learned what the inside of a Yamaha motor looked like, that 100 feet of anchor line is not enough for an 18’ boat in 4’ seas, and that Uno is a great way to pass time on windy days. We even made it safely to the Benthic Ecology meetings and had successful presentations there. Overall a pretty eventful, informative, at some points terrifying, and exciting spring break for senior year.

In our first episode of Bottoms Up in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, we interview Kylie Smith, a graduate student researcher at Clemson University.

Corals, Algae, and Parrotfish...Oh My!

I had the opportunity to spend my summer down in the Middle Florida Keys with the Childress lab this summer.  I went down to assist Kylie with her data collection, but I also got the opportunity to learn about the diverse community of the Keys with the Marine Ecology class that Dr. Childress taught in June.  During the class most days were spent in class, luckily for us this meant being on the boat or in the water.  Snorkeling through the mangroves and on the reefs allowed us to get familiar with many of the species commonly seen.  Other days were spent carrying out different techniques to sample a site for diversity, or honing our lobster wrangling skills as well.  After we had explored different aspects of the Keys, independent projects were conducted using the techniques learned in the previous weeks.  This allowed the teams to choose a topic in the Keys that interested them. 
When the class ended I stayed for the month of July to assist Kylie in the field.  Kylie’s project examines the effects that competition from macroalgae and corallivory from parrotfish have on coral health.  In the past year I have been helping Kylie analyze photos, videos and data from her trip down to the Keys during the summer of 2012.  I was extremely excited to get out of the lab and get into the water, where I could see first hand the images I had only viewed from a computer screen.    

We began by taking survey data on 14 sites along Long Key.  The survey methods consisted of two divers swimming along a transect doing fish counts and behavioral observations on parrotfish.  There were also two other divers who swam down the transect and took video footage as well as pictures for later analysis of the reef’s composition.  Once we completed the surveys we began to put out cages to monitoring the effects of macroalgae and parrotfish on coral fragments.  This was a huge task we completed this summer.  12 cages were placed on 7 of the sites. 6 cages were left open, allowing parrotfish in, and 6 were closed, preventing anything from entering.  Each cage had coral transplant in it and either no algae, medium algae, or high algae.  These cages are to be monitored several times throughout this upcoming year in order to see the impact the level of algae and the presence of parrotfish have on the health of the coral fragments.

Putting the cages out was no small feat.  But through the wind and the rain we managed to secure 84 cages in the water.  One of the many things I took away from this summer was how valuable it is to be able to adapt to your environment.  We had to re-attempt our ideas numerous times before we achieved an effective method.  For example, many of our first cages ended up detaching from the substrate.  We had to attempt to change our original plans to try and secure them more effectively.  You never know what things can end up being helpful in the field.  Who would have thought a salad spinner would be a staple in preparing the algae for the cages?  Many times we struggled to come up with the best thing to do but once we finally got it the victory was so much sweeter.  The experiences I got this summer only added to my passion to continue in my path towards graduate school. 

During the spring semester of 2013, I studied abroad in Townsville, Australia at James Cook University.  Located in northern Queensland, it provided me with the unique opportunity to learn about marine biology within the context of the Great Barrier Reef.

 One of the classes I took focused on the life history strategies of reef corals and included a field trip to beautiful Orpheus Island National Park to observe and study corals. We were each assigned a coral species (mine was Lobophyllia hemprichii) and instructed to observe the distribution, competitive interactions, and the size of the colonies.  We also had to design an independent project based of what we noticed about our coral.

To determine the distribution and density of the coral, we laid three 10 x 2 meter transects and counted the colonies within the space. Competitive interactions were noted by simply swimming around and noting how the coral interacted with surrounding colonies. For the independent study, my partner and I decided to look at the distribution of Lobophyllia versus Symphyllia, a similar coral in the same family. We laid six 10 x 2 m transects, three shallow and three deep, and counted in the number of Lobophyllia and Symphyllia colonies along each one. We noticed in our observations that Symphyllia seemed to be more abundant in the shallower areas of the reef while Lobophyllia prevailed in the deeper areas. We hypothesized that Symphyllia may be able to tolerate the stresses of shallower areas while Lobophyllia outcompeted it for the deeper areas. 

Life at Sea - Emily O'Connor

This past spring semester I spent 90 days on a 112ft Schooner called the S/Y Argo. 25 Shipmates and I sailed from Tortolla, BVI to Tahiti via the Panama Canal and the Galapagos. We covered 6804 nautical miles and passed through the furthest point on Earth away from land. Life on board ship was organized by watch team and much of the day was taken up by cleaning, sitting in lectures, and cooking meals. However, the tasks always seemed to be put on hold for the frequent, but always exciting, visits from dolphins swimming at the bow or whales spotted off in the distance. 

One stop we made was to the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. There we  went on an all day hike to the second largest boiling lake in the world. Our fearless guide, Pancho, walked the whole thing barefoot. He brought a carton of eggs to show us just how hot the water was, and 8 minutes later we were snacking on hard boiled eggs cooked right in the stream. We also filled our water bottle with water from a fresh spring. Dominica's mountainous landscape was described by Christopher Columbus as a crumbled up piece of parchment paper. On the hike we learned a lot about the island's history and culture. We also got to see some of the places where the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie was filmed.

We did some diving  and saw first hand how abundant the lion fish are on the Caribbean reefs. Our guide killed 8 of them on just one dive. Similarly, on Bonaire, the lion fish have become a problem. They have lion fish festivals where people can cook and taste the fish prepared in different ways in an effort to promote fishing for the fish. Along the entire caribbean lion fish have become a problem and many of the islands are trying to battle the issue. In Dominica they would  try to feed the dead lion fish to eels in an effort to create predators for this otherwise unchallenged species.

Another unique experience we had was going though the Panama Canal. The Canal is set up with 3 locks on the Atlantic side, followed by a 50 mile long lake, and 3 locks on the Pacific side. For my research project we looked at the change in salinity going through the canal. There was a drastic change going through the locks because the lake is freshwater in contrast to the saltwater oceans. The range of the pH values went from 32-34 ppt at the entrances of the canal to less than 1 ppt in the lake. Through our data we were able to confirm the idea of the canal acting as a biological barrier due to pH that could prevent species from crossing from one ocean to the other.

One stop on our trip was to the Galapagos Islands. Because of a rather unfortunate mix up with the Ecuadorian Government and our permit we only got to spend three days on Santa Cruz. However, we were able to go diving and do some land tours. We saw giant tortoises, sea lions, hammerheads, Galapagos sharks, white tip sharks, eels, an electric ray, spotted eagle rays and even two orcas. We learned that sailors would stop in the Galapagos and pick up tortoises to keep in the hold of the boat for long passages across the Pacific. Because they could go for several months without food or water, they were a source of fresh meat for the sailors on the long passage across the Pacific.

Overall this trip was unforgettable. We were lucky enough to dive and visit some of the most amazing places in the world. It was an experience of a lifetime.

Summer Diving and Cassiopea Project

Every summer, my dad and I go on a dive trip to a different location. This year it was Cozumel, Mexico. It was such a beautiful place; the water was crystal clear every day we dove. Out of all the things we saw, my favorite was all of the sea turtles. There were a bunch of Loggerheads, and a few smaller green turtles. I think we even saw eight of them on one dive. The currents can be a bit strong, so it takes a lot of fighting to stay in one place and watch them. We always have a lot of fun swimming along, pretending to be one of the fish. I particularly enjoy diving more now that I’ve learned to identify many of the species that I see, including all of the different species of parrotfish.

Over the summer, I went down to the Key Marine Lab with Dr. Childress’ Marine Ecology class. My personal project was to count the number of Cassiopea jellyfish along transects, and compare the density to factors such as salinity and nutrients in the water. As the water was so shallow, we weren’t able to snorkel above the transects, as we’d just be kicking all the jellyfish and getting stung. So instead, we canoed down the line, counting the jellyfish on either side. This was tricky, because if you went too slowly, the canoe would shift around and float off course, but too fast, and you would zoom by and be unable to count all the jellyfish. I’m not sure how accurate our count was, because there were hundreds. The whole bottom was a carpet of jellyfish in some areas. Despite the difficulties, it was a fun day of data collection.

 

After we counted the jellyfish, and took water samples at each site, we were left with the task of analyzing each water sample for nitrates, and using the YSI to take the salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen. All of the tests behaved as they should, with the exception of dissolved oxygen. I’m not entirely sure what the issue was, but we ended up waiting a long time on each sample, but the reading would not settle out at any reasonable number. Eventually we just surrendered, and stuck to pH and salinity. If there’s one thing I learned from this project, it’s to never expect things to go according to plan. We ended up finding that as salinity increased, so did the jellyfish density. pH, on the other hand, had a negative correlation with jellyfish density. Interestingly, we also found that the higher the salinity was, the lower the pH, which was opposite from what we expected.