A few months ago, researchers from the Coastal Studies Center traveled up the coast to Rockland, a scenic, artsy fishing town with some fantastic marine life. Students and professors from the College of William and Mary, Stony Brook University, and Bowdoin College donned their snorkel gear  and wet suits before they walked down the nearly mile long interconnected slabs of granite known as the Rockland Breakwater.

The goal for the day was to collect sea stars and sea urchins for various projects at the college. Amy Johnson’s lab is working with the biomechanics of the various species—how their size affects how they move. Jon Allen’s lab (from William and Mary) is studying elements of sea star reproduction through experimentation.
Sea stars of all sizes were easily found in cracks and behind some of the larger rocks, out of the way of direct wave exposure. Sea urchins were grouped in colonies, and could be particularly difficult to pry off of the rock surface, not only because of their spines, but because when you removed one, all of the others in the area would cling tighter to the rock.

There were occasional hazards, primarily slippery rock, sharp barnacles, and very, very cold water. Despite the 80 degree day, the water was in the low 50s and researchers needed frequent breaks to warm up.

At the end, researchers sorted out the findings into what they needed–sea stars and urchins that would live in the marine lab for the remainder of the summer, throwing back all those that would not be used for research.

Interested in how sea stars move? Check out this underwater video filmed in the Marine Lab from David Conover’s Sea Shore Digital Diaries course from last year.

As professors prepare and plan for the autumn debut of the Bowdoin Marine Science Semester (BMSS) at the Coastal Studies Center, it is a nice time to reflect on some invaluable historic resources that the college has to offer.

The Schooner Bowdoin was a sailing vessel built in the early 1920s intended and designed for Arctic exploration. After being stranded for several years on an expedition to Crocker Land, Bowdoin alumnus Donald B. Macmillan decided to commission a ship that could withstand such conditions. The Schooner Bowdoin is 88 ft long, 21 ft wide, and equipped with a thick, sturdy frame and a large rudder to protect against ice. Throughout many exploratory expeditions to the arctic, this ship and its captain cultivated Bowdoin’s arctic legacy, placing itself at the forefront of polar research.

Now, the Schooner Bowdoin is in use at the Marine Maritime Academy as a training vessel for northward sailing. Last year, Bowdoin’s growing marine science program allowed for a weekend sailing expedition for biology students to gain a small taste of what living and working on a boat is like as a scientist. After a successful weekend, BMSS plans on making this an annual excursion.

The Bowdoin Marine Science Semester is a small, tight-knit program where students take all of their classes at the Coastal Studies Center, utilizing the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in their coursework and special projects. This semester is designed to give students incredible research tools, knowledge and experiences that will draw from Bowdoin’s previously underused resources.

BMSS also plans to offer a trip to Hurricane Island and a 10 day research expedition to Baja, California.

Last summer, Aidan Short ’15 analyzed the DNA of the stomach  contents of the invasive European Green Crab. His project provides some insight into Bowdoin student research opportunities and Maine coastal ecology.

For more information, check out the Bowdoin Daily Sun.

Science to Story, the second of Professor David Conover’s two courses offered this academic year, examines the translation of science into stories and digital media that successfully engage public attention.

This semester, students began the immersion into science communication by analyzing psychological and behavioral studies relating people to climate change. Early research included an introduction to Dan Kahan’s study on the Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus and Anthony Lieserowitz’s work on the public’s perception of climate change. Furthermore, the class had the opportunity to speak with MIT’s Professor of Atmospheric Science, Kerry Emanuel, as well as with Discovery Channel’s executive producer, Paul Gasek, in order to get a better sense for what real-world challenges arise when communicating science to the public. Students have viewed various films and television shows such as The Day After Tomorrow, Earth Underwater, and the 2014 Emmy Award winning television series Years of Living Dangerously, analyzing these productions for their accuracy and effectiveness in conveying climate science.

Throughout the course of the semester, students have taken a creative approach to filming and editing and will continue to practice setting up green screen shoots and interviews as they prepare for a major final production. The class has spent time filming at the Coastal Studies Center working with Marine Biology Professors David Carlon and Sarah Kingston. While scientific accuracy and creativity are paramount, students are encouraged to take strong consideration of who their audience is and how the tones and undertones of their productions shape the way viewers connect with the scientific concepts being presented.

Perspectives on Climate Change is an early semester submission by Emi Gaal ‘15.

Written for Hurricane Island by Sarah Kingston

Bowdoin College is running two new field-based courses this fall out of their Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island: Dimensions of Marine Biodiversity (David Carlon, Director of the Coastal Studies Center) and Marine Molecular Ecology and Evolution (Sarah Kingston, Doherty Marine Biology Postdoctoral Scholar). Students and Instructors from both courses spent a weekend on Hurricane Island in October, 2014 as a portion of their field seasons.

The Dimensions of Biodiversity class is starting the collection and curation of a long-term dataset to assess changes in the intertidal community as climate changes in the Gulf of Maine. The Marine Molecular Ecology and Evolution course is executing a population level study of Littorine snails (periwinkle snails) in the Gulf of Maine (utilizing next generation sequencing technology).

The Bowdoin group arrived on a bit of a grey Friday afternoon. Despite the cloudy skies, the ride over from Rockland was a beautiful panorama of rocky shores and pine-crested islands. Hurricane was welcoming with warm food and drink as well as cozy cabins. The students were embarking on quite the field adventure, given the rain in the forecast for the next day.

The Bowdoin visitors targeted two sites: a sheltered section at Gibbon Point, and an exposed, wave-impacted, portion across from Two Bush Island. The Dimensions of Biodiversity class installed permanent markers (bolts drilled into the rock) for three different tidal level transects: low, medium, and high. They dutifully collected the first year’s worth of data using quadrats and microquadrats to subsample the area along the transects. Students noted presence and abundance of organisms in the community like algae, snails, crabs, and barnacles. The Marine Molecular Ecology and Evolution students collected Littorina saxatilis from rocky crevices in the upper intertidal as well as Littorina obtusata hiding amongst the rockweed in the mid- and lower intertidal before helping their classmates on the transect surveys.

Rain, from mist to a steady fall, persisted throughout Saturday’s work. The chilly water did not dampen spirits, however, as students and instructors alike explored tide pools, even happening upon a resident starfish.

Nightfall brought about another warm meal gathering. Students shook off the cold, damp day, and embarked on course discussions and mid-term studying. Hurricane Island turned out to be the perfect place to focus on scholarship after a long day in the field.

This summer, I worked on three different projects. For my primary project, I assisted Dave Carlon in his research on parrotfish speciation. Professor Carlon has found evidence of speciation through hybridization in parrotfish in the Pacific, and he and I extracted DNA from fin and scale samples and amplified specific genes (both nuclear and mitochondrial) using PCR. PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, is a biochemical technology used to amplify the number of copies of a particular stretch of DNA, generating thousands of copies of small pieces. We then confirmed the success of this amplification using gel electrophoresis. Once those initial steps were completed, we prepared samples and sent them away to have the specific genes sequenced. Genetic data was then analyzed in a computer program called Geneious. If, for example, we observed distinctly different patterns of similarity between the mitochondrial versus nuclear genes, that lent support to the hypothesis that some of our parrotfish species arose through hybridization. Speciation through hybridization has not been frequently observed in the wild, which is part of what made our project so interesting.

Additionally, I helped Aiden Short with his study of the diet of green crabs. He collected many crabs from several sites, and I helped him by dissecting them and collecting tissue samples. We collected muscle samples from their claws and then remove their entire stomachs. Aiden used next generation sequencing to discern what the crabs were eating and in what quantity–an improvement from the old technique which mostly consisted of looking at their stomach contents under a microscope–and he used the claw muscle as a safeguard to ensure that he wasn’t including the crabs’ own DNA in his analysis of their stomach contents. His project was especially interesting because green crabs are an invasive species here in Maine, and they’ve been implicated in the decline in quality of our eelgrass beds and possibly even soft shell clam populations. (Soft shell clams are economically important to our state, and eelgrass beds have huge environmental importance.)

Finally, I assisted Sarah Kingston in her study of calcification rates in blue mussels. Sarah collected blue mussels from various sites, labeled each individual mussel, and took the mass of the mussels. Then she divided the muscles into different tanks held at different temperatures and acidities. Her schemes were selected to simulate likely conditions under climate change. At the end of her testing period, she collected all the muscles, reweighed them to see how the masses of their shells changed (calcification rates), and took tissue samples from every mussel. We spent three days opening the mussels and collecting their feet and adductor muscles. One likely use of the tissue samples will be to look for connections between their genomes and responses to different temperature and pH schemes. I also assisted in further sample collections with the mussels and acted as mussel caretaker, feeding them and recording day-to-day information about temperature, pH, CO2 concentration, and so on.

Working for the Marine Lab this summer, and on such a wide variety of projects, was very rewarding. This experience has inspired me to pursue more research opportunities in the future.

On Friday, September 26th, 12:00-1:00 pm Jon Witman will join students and faculty in the ES Common Room, Adams Hall for an informal lunch and a short video about Cashes Ledge in the Gulf of Maine— one of the most dynamic hotspots of biodiversity in New England and the entire North Atlantic, an area where he conducts research and collaborates on conservation efforts. Professor Witman will also share his insight into field-study based marine science programs – an area particularly relevant to Bowdoin as it prepares to launch the new Marine Science Semester program next fall.

Professor  Witman is professor of Biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. Having spent a lifetime studying and researching marine ecology around the world – and more specifically in six out of the planet’s seven oceans – Professor Witman is passionate about developing and promoting marine conservation science.

He received a B.A, M.S and Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire. Witman has taught at Northeastern University, where he helped develop the Three Seas Marine Biology Program. He has also worked as a collaborating scientist at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the Galapagos Islands. His research interests primarily include the effects of large-scale processes on local communities, benthic-pelagic coupling, biodiversity and supply-sided and trophic ecology. Currently, his lab is conducting research focused around three themes: 1) physical forcing of marine benthic ecosystems, 2) studies on the origin vs. the maintenance of pattern, and 3) marine biodiversity. How community structuring processes vary with scale is a consideration that pervades all aspects of the lab’s research.

Professor Witman will be delivering a lecture on Thursday, September 25th, 4:00-5:00 pm in Druck 20 on the development of marine communities in the era of climate change.

Image:http://www.witmanlab.com/