RI intertidalling

This weekend was the first weekend of the semester that I wasn't in Nahant, which was a bit of a relief. I really love being in Nahant and doing research there, but constantly traveling and doing homework on the train/in the lab is a little tiring. Nevertheless, I still got to go out into the field over part of the weekend to help set up an algal transplant experiment in Little Compton, RI.

Field site in Little Compton. I love how you can see the diversity of reds, greens and browns from a distance here.

Intertidal cormorants!

 Kylla's been setting up reciprocal transplants of Fucus vesiculosus (which Wikipedia says is the 'bladder wrack' - I don't know the common names for any algae!) from the low and high limits of its intertidal range, at sites spanning ~500 m of New England coastline to figure out if low and high zone Fucus show different survival rates and nutrient uptake, and if the patterns vary geographically. This weekend we set up the transplant for one 'south of the Cape' site in RI.

This means abducting the algae and re-attaching them either to the same tide height or the other end of their range over the course of 2 days' fieldwork. We have (bright! coloured!) cable ties around the algae to act as anchors into the z-spar on the rock. There are also temperature loggers deployed at the low and high tide height to monitor temperatures experienced by the transplanted Fucus.

 

Scuba Smurf helped out too. Here he is with the numbered setup and Fucus transplanted to the high zone!

Scuba Smurf with the little PVC hut that holds the temperature logger. 

Yay for interspecific variation!!

Old field romping

We're into the second week of Fall classes so things should be settling down somewhat. Yay for classes that have a field trip the second week. And yay for classes that make small sotongs and their marine friends do terrestrial fieldwork.

Yesterday we drove about 45 minutes from Providence and sampled old field communities in Glocester, RI for an experimental design class. I'm always slightly surprised by how big the quadrats for terrestrial work are...I'm not sure if this is a general pattern. We quantified white pine abundances at different distances from the forest edge, and milkweed abundances on 10 x 10 m grids.

Old field with goldenrod and milkweed, and the forest edge in the background.

Counting milkweed in a square metre quadrat on a 10 x 10 grid.

Also, everything was remarkably clean, i.e. there was nothing wet or slimy or particularly smelly. I guess everything is weather-dependent (we got a tiny bit of rain) but still, nothing comparable to algae-covered butt.

Scuba Smurf came along too. Somewhat out of his element, but he quickly made friends with the milkweed.