Just in case anyone was wondering… TIDE: Trophic Cascades and Interacting Control Possess within a Detritus Based Ecosystem.

Hello, my name is Nathan Andrews, and I am a TIDE REU (and proud of it!).  I am a Marine Biology major at the University of Rhode Island. I am a rising Junior and play rugby for the Rhody Men’s Rugby Club and for the Semiprofessional Rhode Island Rebellion League. I have a very vast interest in the Marine Bio World. My interest range from diatom genetics, to population dynamics of horseshoe crabs, to marine ecology and fish. During the school year, I work in the Rynearson Lab at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography as a lab intern researching diatom genetics and in the past I have worked as a marine educator for Save the Bay, Narragansett Bay, RI. You can only imagine the excitement that fell upon me as I read the job description for this REU position and applied to work as an undergraduate researcher for MBL, and get paid for it! It was a no-brainer.

I intend on using this fellowship to build upon my academic background, as well as gain experience in the Marine Ecology field. I am very interested in Oceanography and intend on going to graduate school to get masters in it. I love science, and my love for science is only matched by my love for the ocean and all of her wondrous functions, niches, and organisms. Science has so much to offer the world and so much ability to heal it, protect it, and renew it. Biology offers me five things: a rewarding career, fieldwork where I get my hands full of science, lab work where I test the truths of nature, and deriving scientific results, which when results are produced it yields new knowledge of the world around us. This excites me!

Life here at Marsh View Farm is awesome. Here, I live with other undergraduate researchers, Marshal, Caitlin, Wesley, and David, and our wonderfully scientifically inclined, helpful and most talented RA, Belle; all of whom are just as excited about marine science as I am! We are lead by Dr. James Nelson (aka Jimmy), who is extremely knowledgeable about everything that is remotely scientific and has been a phenomenal mentor thus far. In this TIDE program, we are more than just members of a scientific community; we are like a family here. We all work together on each other’s projects and we all pitch in when one of us needs help. Being a scientist, under these conditions and within this program is a great lifestyle, and it is something that I would gladly commit my life to.

Here at the marsh, as they say, the “tides wait for no one.” This could not be truer. Our lives are run by the tide. 3 days a week we lug a ton (literally a ton) of fertilizer out to the marsh on the TIDE John Boat, the Apeltes, and do a fill. We all pitch in to help the six projects going on here during the times when we are not catering to the tides to do the fill, once a month we take sediment core samples, once a month we pull about a 48hr shift and do flume nets, and once a month we do a week of sane net collecting 1000 chogs and about 2000 grass shrimp per creek and spend a couple weeks analyzing the collections. Lots and lots of Science!!! And each of these activities and the times that we get up to do them in the morning, afternoon and night, are dictated by the tides.

David and I are both being mentored by Jimmy. We are researching nekton of the marsh creeks, looking at mummichogs and striped bass population and energetics. I am particularly looking at growth, diet, and energetics. To determine the growth of the ‘chogs, we do a length frequency analysis. Once a month we do a week of sane net collecting 1000 chogs and about 2000 grass shrimp per creek and spend a couple weeks analyzing the collections. Each fish and shrimp is counted and measured. Chogs and shrimp are major food sources for the striped bass. ‘Chogs hatch on full moons and each month that they are born there is a certain survivorship. This can be determined through their size and number for that particular size range. Fish hatched during the same time are known as cohorts. These cohorts and there alteration in size can be monitored throughout the summer. This data can be used to assemble a graph that plots biomass over time and growth rate over time. The point immediately after the intersection of this two lines gives us a projection of where the max yield and max reproductive potential of the fish can be achieved to form a sustainable fishery. This is important to know because of the extreme interconnectedness of the ocean and her food web, we can monitor changes in other populations due to the change in the ‘chog population. The same analysis can be done for the shrimp.

I have not really gotten into the energetics and diet portions of this project so I will leave that and discussing flume netting for next time! I hope this gives you a good understanding of what is going on here in TIDE.  This is an amazing program and a fantastic opportunity for me. I am getting paid to do what I love! I get to go out almost every day and play in the mud and catch fish, every kid’s dream. I get to soak in the sun and enjoy the sites and sounds of the marsh. Sure we all may have to eat a few midges and swat away a few green-eyed flies, but I get to stay active and learn at the same time. This is my dream job, and I am living the dream.

Hello and welcome back to the marsh, everyone! This year is a very special year, as it is the 10^th anniversary of pumping fertilizer into the field. According to marriage.about.com, clearly the foremost authority on all things anniversary, the 10^th anniversary can be celebrated with gifts including a “tin paperweight” or “diamond jewelry.” The “tin paperweight anniversary” doesn’t bear the same gravitas as “Marshview: Diamond Edition,” so here we are.

I’m excited to be out in the creeks, as this is my very first year! My name is Jessica, but everyone calls me Belle. I’m the RA this year, filling some very big shoes with big thanks to those who came before me.  My interests include invertebrate physiology and food web ecology. I just graduated from Tufts University in the spring.  It’s been a fast-paced month as I’ve gotten caught up on the rhythms of the marsh, and now I have been joined by 4 wonderful undergrads to help.  Marshall Strong (Middlebury), Caitlin Bauer (Bryn Mawr), David Behringer (Washington and Jefferson), and Nate Andrews (URI) are all undertaking projects of their own, which they’ll write about later this summer! We’re all being mentored by Post-doc Jimmy Nelson, mummichogologist and a veritable jack-of-all-trades. I’ve been told he is called neither Dr. Jimmy nor Jimmy the Magnificent. This might need to be remedied.

Right now I’m working on teasing out the mechanisms of mud snail (Ilyanassa obsoleta) delivery to the marsh.  There are many more snails in fertilized creek than unfertilized creek, so I’m trying to explain how that might come about. I. obsoleta are absolutely everywhere on the mud flats, and understanding their population dynamics can help us work out the flow of energy through food webs in the marsh.

Mud snails lay eggs which hatch into swimming larvae called veligers. Those veligers swim around for a while until they find a spot they like to metamorphose into juveniles, no longer swimming little snails, and will develop into adults. I’ve laid out mesh netting which the snails will hopefully lay eggs upon, in an attempt to get a sense of how many eggs are getting laid at the various creeks.  Next, I will deploy scouring pads into the water column and will sort the critters that get trapped in there, to determine how many larvae are swimming around in the creeks. After that, we will try to find the juveniles by scraping through the creek mud and get some counts of adult survivorship.  Hopefully, through these investigations, we’ll get a better idea of why the snails are overrunning our creeks. (Though if you ask me: the more the merrier!)

With much thanks to Dr. Deegan and the other scientists who joined us this week to officially kick off our summer season, we go boldly into the marsh for this exciting tenth year of TIDE!

As a highly productive ecosystem, salt marshes are known for their diverse range of primary producers that can support a whole host of organisms, from microscopic invertebrates to large fish.  Fertilization of the tidal creeks results in a large increase in benthic microalgae, which is a main food source for primary consumers (benthic invertebrates).  The predominant secondary consumer in this system is the mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus), which feeds on both the benthic microalgae and the primary consumer invertebrates.

In recent years, however, decreases in mummichog densities have been observed in the fertilized tidal creeks—an unexpected occurrence in the face of such an apparent abundance of food.  Classic bottom-up theory of food web control predicts that increased primary production stimulates productivity at all higher trophic levels.  In this case, however, it seems that bottom-up control may be attenuated if nutrients stimulate inedible or inaccessible herbivores, which can end up dominating the primary consumer community.  This phenomenon is the idea of a trophic bottleneck.  If the majority of primary production is consumed by inedible herbivores (snails with large, tough shells) or inaccessible herbivores (high marsh invertebrates), secondary consumers can’t access that energy and are at a disadvantage.

As an REU intern for the TIDE project this summer, I am studying the effects of nutrient enrichment on the benthic invertebrates in the salt marsh, including those species that may be responsible for a trophic bottleneck in the Plum Island Estuary.  I investigated invertebrates in the three main salt marsh habitats: the mud flats, the tall Spartina alterniflora along the creek banks, and the high marsh.  The dominant invertebrate in the mud flats is the mudsnail, Nassarius obsoletus, (which is inedible because of its large, tough shell) and the edible infauna, which consist mainly of subsurface-feeding annelids.  Both the mud flats and the tall S. alterniflora are main feeding refuges for the mummichogs because they are flooded well over 50 percent of the time.  In the tall S. alterniflora, the main invertebrates are various species of edible infauna, which are also present in the high marsh.  In addition to these subsurface invertebrates, the high marsh supports amphipods, isopods, and Melampus bidentatus (small snails), which are all edible to mummichogs, but only accessible to these predators when the high marsh is flooded (roughly 4 percent of the time).  Both the inedible energy in the mudsnails and the inaccessible energy in the high marsh invertebrates can contribute to the trophic bottleneck problem.

In order to examine the surface invertebrates, I used to a 0.0625 square meter quadrat to randomly sample at points both in the mud flats and in the high marsh.  In the mud flats, I ran a 200 meter transect along the creek bottom and sampled at 20 random points along that line.  In the high marsh, I sampled at 10 points along the creek banks, where I clipped all the grass away within the quadrat to count and collect the invertebrates.  In the lab, I counted all the invertebrates and measured the shell heights of all the high marsh and mudflat snails.  Using the counts and measurements, I calculated the densities and biomass of the mudsnails, high marsh snails, amphipods, and isopods.

I sampled for infauna by taking small cores (6.6 cm diameter) from all three habitats.  I took 2 replicates in each habitat and did this 3 times for each of the two branches of all the creeks.  In the lab, I rinsed and sieved these cores before storing them in formalin to process throughout the fall.  I’ll be comparing my 2012 infauna results to infauna data from 2009, which I also processed this summer, using a microscope to count and identify the different annelid species.  In addition, I will examine my early season and late season data to measure growth throughout the summer.  By comparing the primary consumer communities between fertilized and reference creeks, I hope to determine whether nutrient enrichment is causing a trophic bottleneck in this salt marsh food web.

Welcome to the first (and probably only) issue of the Chog Blog! This week on the Chog Blog I have some great information to share with you about the lovable Mummichog! Known by scientists as Fundulus heteroclitus, it is a crucial secondary producer and primary predator in the salt marsh food web! But before we get too excited, I must share some background information about what we do here at TIDE and just how it ties into the daily life of a Mummichog.

The TIDE Project’s objective for the past 9 years has been to add nutrients to salt marsh creeks of the Plum Island Sound in order to determine the effects of eutrophication on the ecosystem. My role this year as an REU has been to continue the research previously done and determine how eutrophication is affecting Mummichog productivity. In order to do so I had to collect data to determine the density/m² and biomass/m² as well as a seasonal growth rate.

To go about collecting the necessary data, there are a few different methods involved. The first bit of information that we want is what the densities of the fish are in fertilized and non-fertilized creeks. We employed 30m² flume nets and trenched them into the marsh. The area that they enclose includes both types of habitat used by the Mummichog: high marsh and tall Spartina alterniflora (TSA). There are four of these nets on each branch of each creek which is a total of 24 flume nets. The fish and various other nekton were caught in these nets on the shoulder of the spring tides during June and July and have yet to be done again in August. The catch was then brought back to the lab where each individual organism was counted, weighed and measured to get the averages for each creek.

We have also conducted a length frequency analysis of Mummichogs to determine a relative growth rate for the season. For this, we used seine nets to catch approximately 1000 Mummichogs from each of the six creek banks. The fish were measured and the data entered into a histogram to visualize size classes and how they progressed from June to July. I must thank all the great REH’s that we had this summer: Nora, Molly, Patrick and Chris as well as budding marine biologist Jack who volunteered his time, for helping me tremendously with processing the oppressively large amount of Mummichogs that we caught!

The final project that I worked on was analyzing gut contents of Mummichogs from five different size classes from each creek. The size classes were 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70mm. As close to twenty fish as possible from each size class were obtained from each creek and then cut open to examine their guts. The percentage of animal to vegetable matter in their guts was recorded and also any solid organisms that were identifiable. An interesting observation I made was that Mummichogs in the 60 and 70mm size class in the right branch of West were consuming Melampus coffea. One individual even had as many as nine snails in its gut! Wow!

Now I know you all saw this coming but I hate to say that this issue of the Chog Blog is coming to a close. I am currently in the final stages of data analysis and assembling some beautiful figures to sum up my findings. I’d like to thank everyone who helped me along with my field work and got my feet off the ground! I’d also like to thank you, loyal reader, for taking the time to learn about what I’ve done here with TIDE as an REU this summer!

A salt marsh is comprised of fine sediments brought in from the sea, held together by the roots of plants. Without the roots of Spartina alterniflora in the low marsh and Spartina patens in the high marsh, the sediments have nothing to hold them together. They will break down and are washed back out to sea with the falling tide. In 2006 after 4 years of fertilization in Sweeney Creek, TIDE scientists began noticing a decrease in the structural stability of the creek banks and an increase in cracks and peat islands. The bed of tall Spartina alterniflora that lines the creek banks appeared to be breaking off into the creek, leaving a cliff bank lined with Spartina patens. They began studying two additional creeks, Clubhead and Nelson, in 2009 in order to measure these observations from the beginning.

This summer I am an REU for the TIDE project, and I am concentrating on quantifying the changes in geomorphology that have been observed. My goal was to count and measure the high marsh cracks in every creek, measure the width of the Spartina alterniflora band along the creeks, and to count and measure the peat islands. This data is to be used to compare the fertilized and reference creeks to determine if there is a significant difference and if this decrease in structural stability is being caused by the excess nutrients.

So far this summer I have finished the majority of my field work. With the help of Chris Haight, the other REU’s Harriet and Tim, as well as two REH’s Nora and Chris, I have been able to measure all the cracks and peat islands, as well as the band of Spartina alterniflora at every creek. To measure the cracks, we walked along the creek bank on both sides to feel for cracks with our feet. I recorded the measurements, as well as the location along the creek. When we measured islands, Chris H. walked in the creek and measured the islands, as well as counting the number of low marsh and high marsh crumbles.

Measuring the Spartina alterniflora band was a bit more complicated, as it took a few tries to get a system that worked. In the end, our method was to lay out a tape measure parallel to the creek on one side, and have two people on either side holding another tape measure that was perpendicular to the creek. A third person was in the middle of the creek. I held the end of the tape measure where the Spartina alterniflora stopped and it turned into high marsh, and I moved along the side of the creek and stopped at every meter. Chris would be in the middle reading where the Spartina alterniflora stopped on my side to where it began on the other, and Nora was on the other side of the creek to read where the Spartina alterniflora stopped and the Spartina patens began. This gave us the width of the Spartina alterniflora on both sides, as well as the width of the creek habitat that did not have vegetation.

I am now in the data analysis phase of my project, where I will be using the data the compare the fertilized and reference creeks. In addition to regular tank fills, we just finished the second round of flume netting, Chlorophyll-A samples, and routine water samples. Chris and I have begun taking sediment cores, and next week the N₂/Argon sampling begins.

I turn onto the sun-dappled dirt road.  The shagbark hickories and red oaks that line the road nod with familiarity.  Welcome back friend, they say.  I park and my nose can see faster than my eyes and finds more familiarity.  A rich, organic smell tinged with sulfur floods my mind with memories.  I walk the brief path through the trees and emerge into a sweeping openness of green and home.  I stand at the edge and take in marsh.  I have returned.

This is my tenth season on this marsh.  As I struggle to find an academic position, a friend joked that this may be the only way I get tenure (“ten-year”).  I will accept that promotion proudly, a young scientist educated in the open and salty halls of the marsh.  I step onto the marsh again for another lesson.

A tossed quadrat.  Clipped grass.  I am face-to-face with 100 coffee-bean snails that glide over the sediment surface.  This is Melampus bidentatus (the snail climbing the grass in the blog header is Melampus).  Just as the marsh is an ecosystem that shares qualities with its aquatic and terrestrial cousins, Melampus’s place in the family tree appears transitional.  Melampus is a pulmonate snail and just like you and me, breathes air.  It has highly vascularized tissues behind its head that act as a primitive lung.  Land snails and slugs in your garden breathe the same way, while true marine snails often have gills.  And while Melampus lives in a part of the marsh that’s not flooded 96% of the time, it still practices the rituals of its marine ancestors.  A week or two before the spring tides flood the high marsh in June, there is a scramble by Melampus, which are not known to scramble, to get eggs laid on the stems of Spartina patens and S. alterniflora.  When the water pours over the marsh during a full moon, veliger larvae, which look like tiny coiled snails with Dumbo-like ears, emerge and enter the water column.  This air-breathing snail has aquatic larvae.  After a few weeks, the larvae settle, the Dumbo-like flaps shrink and the snail becomes a tiny version of the adult.  This is Melampus’s marsh.

I start collecting snails.  There’s a piercing bite on my hand.  A greenhead (a horsefly with big green eyes) has found what little skin I have exposed.  With greenheads, as with mosquitoes, it is the female that seeks a blood meal to provide protein for her egg-laying.  Males are relegated to nectar and plant juices.  So she cuts into my hand with a handsaw-like mandibles and sucks up my blood.  She will lay eggs in the high marsh and from those eggs will emerge fat, tough wriggles of larvae that are voracious predators of the high marsh.  Isopods and amphipods take note.  This is the greenhead’s marsh.

I swat at her and miss.  I hope that the dragonflies that dart about the marsh will have better luck in catching her.  The dragonflies are early this year, as are the greenheads.  Insects aren’t typically thought of as marine invertebrates, but the aquatic naiad larvae in the salty ponds that dot the marsh suggests insects are important in this ecosystem of salt.  This is the dragonflies’ marsh.  Unless of course, the dragonfly finds itself in the beak of a swooping tree swallow that carries it to its nest.  Then this is the marsh of the swallow.  And it’s my blood that feeds the swallow.  This is my marsh.

In step with swallows, the dragonflies, and the snails, humans bring new and young recruits to the marsh each year.  This year we have another crop of bright and eager undergraduate and high-school students that have recruited to the marsh to sink in the mud, fall in the water, and participate in exciting science.  Throughout the summer you will hear about the many projects and brilliant science being conducted.  Chris Haight has returned for his fourth year and has emerged as a brilliant coordinator of the project and a fearless hauler of fertilizer.  We will miss him when he goes to graduate school at Columbia next year.  Jimmy Nelson returns for his second year as a post-doc and continues to chase the small, but tenacious, mummichog.

I have returned because ultimately, we all came from the sea.  And each year for the past ten, I have been compelled to return home.  I have returned because this is my marsh.

Below are some young scientists in action.  This is their marsh.

– David

The marsh has browned and we’ve had snow on the ground since last we wrote.  While we have not been up-to-date with our posts, rest assured that as the last green leaf of Spartina fades to brown it has seen a whirlwind of work.

Lest you’ve forgotten, the TIDE project is a long-term, large-scale fertilization project in the salt marshes of the Plum Island Estuary, MA.

On with the show.

I have had the fortune of spending 9 summers in the marshes of Plum Island as part of the TIDE project.  Each year I am impressed by the summer field team (undergraduate and graduate students and a post-doc sprinkled here or there).  I’m also impressed that these individuals come to this land of marsh to live together, work in the mud, the sun, and the bugs together and play together without any murderous eyes at the end of the summer.  This project has been incredibly fortunate to have such hard-working and good-spirit people working on it.  And this summer was no exception.  Below is the 2011 summer crew.

Eric Kretsch was an REU as part of the Plum Island LTER and is a student at U. of Rhode Island.  He worked closely with Jimmy Nelson, a post-doc, and looked at fish and shrimp community structure in the tidal creeks. 

Jimmy Nelson is a post-doc on the Plum Island LTER and his research is focused on the production and export of secondary production in the form on nekton from the tidal creeks.  That is, he looks at how much fish and shrimp biomass the marshes create and how much is then exported to the surrounding waters.  I study invertebrates.  So Jimmy studies fish and I study bait.

Imogene Robinson was a high school intern from the Governor’s Academy in Byfield, MA.  2011 was her second year on the TIDE project.  She was fearless in the field and worked with everyone on the project.  We don’t know how we could have made it without her!

Austin Ritter joined TIDE in 2010 and came back in 2011.  He worked with Dr. Sallie Sheldon of Middlebury College to look at benthic algal production in the tidal creeks and began his undergraduate thesis this year on the subject.

Anjali Merchant is also from Middlebury College and worked with Dr. Sheldon.  Anjali looked at the benthic algal communities.

Erik Yando joined TIDE in 2010 and returned in 2011.  He worked with Dr. Scott Warren from Connecticut College to examine the response of plant communities to nutrient enrichment.

Clara Chaisson is an undergraduate at Connecticut College and worked with Dr. Warren on estimating Spartina alterniflora production over the growing season.

Kate Morkeski is a Master’s-level research assistant at MBL and works closely with Dr. Bruce Peterson to look at marsh biogeochemistry.

Mike Lerner was an intern from Michigan University and his project focused on finding the presence of Burkholderia, a genus of microbe used in pollution remediation.

Meghan Short joined the TIDE project as an unpaid intern in 2009, just after her freshman year at Brown.  In 2011 she started work on her undergraduate thesis focused on above- and belowground decomposition dynamics of the high marsh plant, Spartina patens.

 

In August, Eric, Meghan, Clara, and Austin presented their work at the MBL Undergraduate Symposium.  TIDE and the Plum Island LTER were well represented!  Above, ‘big brother’ Jimmy fixes ‘little brother’ Eric’s tie.

I just like these photos.

Below are a series of photos featuring Chris Haight.  Chris joined TIDE in 2009 working with Dr. Warren at Connecticut College to look at plant communities. He returned in 2010 to look at plastic degradation in the marsh.  In 2011 he was hired as a Research Assistant and he was central to making the project run smoothly this year.  I dubbed him Tide Executive Facilitator but he should have been called Mr. I-can-do-it!. No matter the hour, the weather, the job or how long he had been working, Chris always said, “I can do it” when someone needed help or something needed doing.  Chris was a great TIDE Executive Facilitator and made everyone’s life much, much easier.  And as you can see below, he had a good time doing it. Thank you Chris!!

Below is most of the field crew from 2011 (Jimmy was absent on picture day).  To the field crew I say Thank You.  I, as well as the PI’s on the TIDE project (Linda Deegan, Bruce Peterson, John Fleeger, Scott Warren and Linda Deegan), appreciate your hard work and sharp minds.  Without you and others preceding you, this project would not exist.  Thank you.

Until next season…

– David

As of May 25^th, twenty-four different people have seen our TIDE creeks so far in 2011, we’ve had one sunny field day, and have only just accomplished our second tank fill for the season. More scientists, sunshine, and fertilizer are due any day. We’ve already lost track of how many batteries and pumps we’ve lugged out onto the Spartina marsh.

We first ventured out into the low pressure system that was late April for a round of shear vaning at all six creeks with our dear geomorphologists Carol and Zoe from Boston University. We were measuring the resistance of the sediment to torque applied with a specially designed vane in order to understand if the fractures, slumping, and sliding we see at our fertilized creek are related to decreased soil strength. The monotony of six hundred shear strength measurements was occasionally broken by an especially squishy or strong layer of mud, a shift in the weather from rain to merely fog-rain, or a traditional Welsh ballad. We do extend our thanks to Zoe for spending so many hours peering at the dial of the shear vane and to both Zoe and Carol for making light work of the Sweeney dripper platform construction, bringing us a victorious end to an otherwise rugged day.

For the next couple of weeks we left the marsh to its own devices: getting its chlorophyll mojo working, apparently, as it started to turn intensely green. Then we introduced it to the new Plum Island LTER postdoc Jimmy, who helped build the Clubhead dripper platform within hours of arriving from Florida.

Jimmy quickly showed the marsh who’s boss by carrying double the fertilizer of any other researcher and fixing water pumps that otherwise refused to start. We filled both tanks with fertilizer and allowed the marsh to ponder its fate over the weekend before the ides of May would once again flood Clubhead and Sweeney with good old sodium nitrate. Our target date for beginning the year’s nutrient addition is always May 15^th. Since it fell on a Sunday this year, we decided to give the marsh a day of rest and turn on the drippers shortly thereafter.

The week of the 16^th brought big tides of water and of people. Linda, Bruce, and Rich came up for a visit, and even Skyler and Xi stopped by.

We all had a bit of a scramble to install equipment, sample pre-fertilizer sediment porewater, and turn on the fertilizer drippers before MBL’s eight Science Journalism fellows and their leader, Chris, arrived at the end of the week. In the gathering gloom of Wednesday evening, enough of the pieces were in place, and it was go time. David and Jimmy flipped the switch at Clubhead, and Linda did the honors at Sweeney while Bruce and Kate wandered in the mist nearby. We all met halfway between the tanks for a foggy cheers to the beginning of another season of TIDE…

…Only to find out the next day that when it’s May in New England and the temperature lingers in the 40s, the pumps disagree with the whole idea. While dinner for fourteen set off the smoke detector—twice—bringing visitors from the Byfield Fire Department, Linda became a pinch-hitter and gave the presentation David had prepared for the journalists because he and Jimmy were on a nighttime safari to Sweeney to try to persuade the dripper to drip. They concluded that our coastal nutrient addition is meant to be a summer endeavor: in weather like this, the guaranteed-to-be-the-best tubing in the peristaltic dripper pumps is cold enough to lose all of its pliability, and the pumps give up.

Nutrients or none, sunshine or none, the journalists crammed a season’s worth of field work into two days with trips to Sweeney, West, and Plum Island Sound and measurements of geomorphology, nutrient flux, soil respiration, and invertebrate abundance.

A little more persuasion and slightly higher temperatures have allowed the pumps to cross some tides off their to-do lists. Austin and Meghan have arrived. We have continued our usual schtick by filling the tanks, checking in on the instruments, and sampling chlorophyll, curiously in the absence of David, who is rubbing elbows with some freshwater ecologists at the annual meeting of the North American Benthological Society and even hosting an invited session there on the connections between watersheds and estuaries.

As we have visited our fertilized creeks, we’ve been amazed to see some dramatic changes in their shape.

Peat blocks we knew and loved last summer have been sheared away, and more than a few chunks of the marsh surface—we can recognize them by their Spartina patens vegetation—are now in the bottom of the creek. The last few weeks have also brought some changes to the local landscape that aren’t caused by nutrient additions. Ipswich has a new windmill, conveniently placed near Sweeney Creek to allow us to precisely gauge rain-fog intensity by counting the number of blades visible. As we were building the Clubhead platform, the Murphys from Newburyport were here tearing down the ell of the barn and the fondly-remembered goat shed.

– Kate

I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats, in a cloud of suspense and disbelief, wondering, what happened to the TIDE blog?  Well have no fear, the Nor’easter has lifted from the marshes (both literally and figuratively) and it’s time to reflect again.

Since there has been a serious lack of TIDE blogging, I am going to heroically attempt to get you up to speed with our lives.

Before I get to the part about how David left us to become the next Crocodile Hunter in the Australian outback, let’s talk about week one.

August started with a bird survey!  O.K. now, everybody shout, hooray for birds!  I realize not everybody wants to get out of their seat and cheer for our feathered friends like I do, but I love birds and have been on three bird surveys along the Rowley River this August! Robert Buchsbaum (MA Audubon), Christina Kennedy and I have been able to set aside a couple of hours each week to survey along the Rowley’s expansive mudflats.  We have counted hundreds of birds, including semipalmated plovers and sandpipers, great and snowy egrets, least and common terns, willets, black-bellied plovers, and a dowitcher!

The plant peeps, set to work surveying the marsh; setting up their tripod and autolevel on the marsh platform.

Our dynamic REU team, also known as Mashley, made the trek down to Woods Hole with David to spend some quality time with the CHN machine to run their Spartina Patens litter.  They took some time to do a little exploring around the village.

Mister Samwise, in the wake of Austin’s departure, spent most of his time with light/dark bottles.

Kate and I diligently filled both tanks and collected marsh grasses for 15N NO3 analysis.  We braved the rain, midges, and sharp-blades of grass.

Week two!  Spring into action!

David made sure to fit in one last visit to American Barbeque with the crew on Friday before he relinquished his power for the next two weeks.  With tear-filled eyes, the crew presented him with a goodbye present of $20 to David’s new addiction: White Farms Ice Cream.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from assuming David’s role as project coordinator, spring tides wear you out!!!  We successfully seined over 200 mummichogs from the Rowley River in order to paint tag them for catch efficiencies.  These hearty fish managed to survive throughout the week in our laboratory aquarium, only be re-captured by our flume nets once again (a few crafty juveniles squirmed their way out).  Late evening/early morning flume netting was a success this month, with fish retained in every flume (including many silversides!).  Aside from falling in trap-door mosquito ditches (and getting soaked to the core), we were treated by a spectacular light display.  As the bioluminescence flashed brightly below us in the knee-deep water, Perseids meteor shower drew our attention to the night sky.

As with any spring tide, the tanks do not stay satiated for long.  Along with help from our extremely hardworking crew, we managed to complete four tank fills as well as a routine nutrient sampling.

Week three!  We love science!

Let me just take a moment to thank our Jill-of–all-trades, high school volunteer, Imogene.  She makes fieldwork look natural and is one impressive mosquito ditch hurdler.  None of us could have survived the summer without her!

While Meghan, Ashley, Ariella, Erik, and Sam prepared for their symposium presentations, Imogene and I spent Monday through Wednesday coring for benthic chlorophyll.  An archaeological discovery was made at both Clubhead and West Creeks during low tide: two glass bottles—one dating back to a time when Newburyport had a Coca-Cola factory (?).

On Wednesday, our fearless leader, Linda, arrived to take charge.  She immediately met with each of our presenters to review and edit their powerpoint slides.  Later that evening, she prepared a spectacular meal with vegetables sourced solely from her garden.  Stuffed zucchini, coleslaw, tomato salad, and corn on the cob.  Delicious!

With a solid meal in our bellies, we set off for our Woods Hole adventure on Thursday morning.  We arrived just in time to set up a small picnic on the shores of Eel Pond and relax before the symposium began at 1 P.M.  TIDE brought a strong and much-needed ecological perspective to the talks.  Meghan and Ashley each presented their work on invertebrate detritivores and microbial processing on litter.  Ariella and Erik each discussed the recent discovery of creek bank cracking and potential mechanisms driving this geomorphological change.  Sam and Austin, who could not attend the symposium, contributed a poster on their algae work to a poster session that was taking place in conjunction with the symposium.  Everyone did a fantastic job and should feel very proud of their work!!!

In the time it took to post this, David has returned and has contracted empty-nest syndrome.  While he was away, we lost Meghan, Ashley, Sam, and Chris to that thing we like to call SCHOOL.  Thanks for all your hard work, creativity, and humor!  We’ll miss you!

Until next time,

Enjoy the sun and blue skies!

– Sarah

Last week, the TIDE crew battled through the final week of July toward its culmination in the mid-summer All Scientists’ Meeting.

Just when we’d finished celebrating our victory over the giant trailer full of Nitrate, we were greeted by a new shipment to keep the tanks happy and our biceps in shape.

The Plant Crew resumed coring with a vengeance and took a record-tying ten cores this week. This concludes their coring for the summer, and brings their total up to 40! They also began surveying the marsh to get a profile of the creeks.

The algae duo, Sam and Austin, were accompanied by Sallie Sheldon for part of the week as they surveyed Rupia coverage in ponds. They also assessed productivity levels at the different creeks with two extensive light-dark bottle sampling events. The end of the week was also the end of the field season for Austin, who will surely be missed by all.

The REU’s, Ashley and Meghan, continued with their litter decomposition experiments, replacing deceased critters in Petri dishes and making final preparations to collect their litter bags. As part of those preparations, Imogene showed those microbes who’s boss by measuring their respiration with the IRGA machine.

Sarah and Kate continued with the saga of Sigma repair, and began to sort through the monumental amounts of data collected during the nutrient challenges.

PIs began to filter in at the start of the week, awaiting the mid-summer All Scientists’ Meeting on Thursday—an opportunity for TIDE-ers and others involved with our beloved marsh to share their summer’s progress and hear about others’ projects. The meeting started off with a presentation by the biogeochemistry crew, who shared the preliminary findings of July’s nutrient challenges. This was followed by presentations by other groups, as well as a general discussion of all things TIDE. All presentations were met with rapt attention.

Other important events during the meeting included the consumption of plenty of delicious lasagna, and a dip in the Rowley River.

…and of course, a trip to White Farms Ice Cream with the PIs.

The end of the week was celebrated with basketball…

…and awesome hairstyles.

– Ms. Meghan