The Amazing Adventures of Ryan and Coconut

Now that you know what marine ecology is, it’s time to go into some specifics of what we covered in our class in Nahant.

We started off with the physical, or abiotic (or “not living”), side of things. This includes the types of  places that marine organisms  inhabit, which we can describe in terms of location, time, or physical attributes. Location can include geographic  location (Boston Harbor  or Exuma Cays), distance from shore, or ocean depth, all of which substantially affect how plants and animals make a life. A deep-water fish in Antarctica is very different from a shallow-water, coral reef fish in the tropics. I’ll let you think about time and physical attributes on your own, lest I bore you with too much detail.

After this baseline understanding, we moved onto the biotic (or “living”) aspect, including how organisms interact with the abiotic environment. Do they use it for food or protection? Do they add more nutrients than they use up? Does the amount of space drive how many organisms can live there? These are all questions that differ in every environment and for every species. As you can imagine, these relationships can become very complex very quickly, which is why ecologists need to devote so much time trying to understand them.

In addition to interacting with their environment, plants and animals also interact with each other. They compete, cooperate, and eat each other, and these are not always mutually exclusive. They interact directly (e.g. sharks decrease the number of fish) and indirectly (e.g. sharks increase the number of shrimp because there are now less fish eating the shrimp).

Finally, we brought it all together and tried to figure out why it all matters. As humans, we tend to have a very strong impact on these systems and interactions. By building marinas, catching fish, establishing marine parks, or just driving our boats through the ocean, we alter the ocean and its inhabitants in a variety of ways. If we want to keep doing all of these things, we need to make sure we’re not causing irreparable damage. The more we study the ecology of the ocean, the better we will understand it, which will help us figure out how best we can use it for ourselves and for future generations.

Marine Ecology was my favorite class in Nahant, but that’s probably because it coincided most with what I want to do with my life (if you guessed marine ecology, you’d be right).

In case you’re not aware, ecology is essentially biology, but on a larger scale. So instead of trying to figure out how plants and animals eat or breathe or reproduce, as biologists would, ecologist try to figure out how plants and animals interact with each other and with their environment. That is, who is eating who? Which organisms are cooperating? Which are competing? And how are these things mediated by the physical environment, from the physical structure to the availability of nutrients, to the amount of heat and light that organisms receive. Think of biology as studying individual organisms and ecology as studying the whole environment.

Of course, with “marine” in the title, you can assume that we are focusing on all of those things mentioned above, but in the ocean. Because the ocean is so large, adding marine doesn’t really narrow it down much and a lot of the systems and processes overlap a lot with terrestrial work, so the overall concepts aren’t that different. But when we look at examples of how two species compete, we look at crabs and sea stars in the rocky intertidal, rather than squirrels and chipmunks in a forest.

One of the main differences between marine and terrestrial ecology is that the ocean is much more homogeneous than terrestrial environments (or at least we used to think so…this view may be changing). For example, the tides and ocean currents (such as the Gulf Stream) move nutrients in the ocean from one coast to the next and between the surface and the bottom so that the water everywhere is relatively well mixed. Compare this to land where nutrients in soils don’t move around too much and tend to accumulate in small areas, only to be disrupted by large disturbances such as floods or fires. Similarly, in the ocean, temperature changes very slowly and over very large scales. Average water temperature will fluctuate less than a degree Celsius over the course of a day when nearby air temperatures can swing 20 or more degrees Celsius.

Lest I bore you, I’ll leave it at that, especially since I don’t have any relevant pictures. In my next post, I’ll go into more detail of the concepts that we discussed in this class.

This may just be an empty promise, but I’m going to start writing here again. Partly because I have lots of great pictures and I want to make you jealous, but also because I think it is good practice to write about my experiences.

I may get a bit science-y at times, but we don’t do much else in this program, so it would be weird if that weren’t the case. I’m going to start back at the beginning in September, so try not to get too confused about what month you are currently living in.

So, four weeks of school later, and I am absolutely loving it. Being in school. Meeting really cool people. Living near Boston. Scuba diving. Collecting snails in the intertidal. Seaweed scavenger hunts. All of it. Amazing. I am very happy to be here.

The first week was pretty short. Lots of introductory stuff, not much class time. The second two weeks were all class time. One class each day (approximately 9am to 5pm, but occasionally 6am to 6pm). We spend the morning doing lectures, then we have lunch and go out in the field in the afternoon. After counting, collecting, or measuring a variety of things, we come back to a lab to look at it more closely and discuss what we found. Every day is different, but this is a common structure to give you an idea of what it is like.

The water is cool, but not as bad as I thought. Every Tuesday is Diving Research Methods where we essentially learn how to count, collect, and measure under water. The most difficult part of this is just figuring out how to carry a bunch of equipment under water and then not lose any of it before coming back up. Here are some pictures from the lab in Nahant.

This week we drove up to Maine. It was a seven hour drive each way. We were at the Eastern most point in the United States and so the first* to see the sun come up on Wednesday and Thursday. The tides here are around 20 feet, which makes for some interesting intertidal stuff and some fun scuba diving. About 6 of us stayed in tents and the rest stayed in an old coast guard station (the Eastern-most private property in the U.S.)**. The weather was absolutely gorgeous the whole time we were there, which is apparently pretty rare for Eastern Maine.

* Let’s just pretend that other countries don’t count for the moment.

** Everything around here (campsites, stores, parks, etc.) is prefaced with “Eastern-most”.

After a lot of looking around and a healthy amount of stress, Coconut and I moved into a studio in Lynn, MA this afternoon. It’s a pretty nice place, especially considering that it met all of my unrealistic requirements (4-month lease, allow pets, furnished, and close to school). I made a mess moving all of my stuff in, so for now you can see pictures here: Craigslist*

We also went to orientation for school today. Well, I went to orientation. Coconut sat in the car enjoying the cool air and the pitter patter of some light rain. I didn’t realize how many people worked at the marine lab. Besides the 19 interesting new friends that I’ll make as a part of my class, there’s another 30 or so people already working there that I’m excited to meet and learn from.

For the Fall semester, I’ll be here:

I’m taking Diving Research Methods, Marine Botany, Marine Ecology, Marine Invertebrate Zoology and Experimental Design. The courses are designed so that we spend most of our time in the field and not much time in the classroom. This is fantastic now, but I may not be so happy when it starts to get cold out. Either way, it should be a lot of fun. I may have to buy a waterproof camera to help you experience it all.

* I’ll post my own pictures soon as this listing will inevitably be removed sometime in the future.

We’re heading to Boston today. School starts on Tuesday. I’m very excited. Just need to buy my books and find somewhere to live.

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything in a while. My bad. I’ve either been driving 8 hours a day or in Nassau with limited internet. I know that these are weak excuses, but it’s really all I’ve got.

I’d like to keep up the blog because I think being in school (including taking classes in Panama and the San Juan islands) will result in a lot of interesting adventures and fantastic pictures. Hopefully, I can find a balance between posting every day and only posting once a month. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here are some pictures from our family cruise. Enjoy!