Marine Ecology

In the early summer months, undergraduate Emily Meyers would rise before the sun, sometimes around 3 or 4 a.m. Keeping time by the ocean tides, she’d cart her research materials to eelgrass beds near the Bodega Marine Laboratory. 

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Outside Eric Sanford’s office window, foamy waters crash against rocky shores and open up to the expansive blue of the Pacific Ocean. Here, at the Bodega Marine Laboratory, Sanford and colleagues in his lab work to understand how ocean acidification is changing the ecology and evolution of the planet’s marine life.

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Covering themselves in everything from algae to urchins, crabs know how to accessorize for safety. Sponge crabs use their back pair of legs “to hold an intact sponge over their body,” says Jay Stachowicz.

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Researchers measured the physical traits and defenses of 351 butterfly fish species compared to feeding style. The fish fell into two broad groups: hunters and grazers. Hunters, with deeper bodies and bigger spines, left the reefs; grazers remained in the relative safety of the reefs.

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An embedded reporter describes research at Bodega Marine Laboratory during a time when the stakes are high for marine life in an era of climate change, and where scientists are weighing the impacts as warming oceans acidify.

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Usually, the first weekend of April is when abalone divers pack up their wetsuits and fins and head off to campsites along the Sonoma and Mendocino coast. However, this year’s recreational abalone season is closed due to a population on the brink of collapse, so the diving community has rechanneled its efforts in a seemingly mad scheme to save the abalone, involving underwater vacuums, hookahs and purple sea urchins.

An experiment performed by UC Davis and Hasanuddin University scientists in the Indonesian Coral Triangle demonstrated one method of improving restoration outcomes. The results, published in the journal PNAS in November 2017, indicate that multiple seagrass species grown together are more successful and survive longer.

Read more at The California Aggie

Coral Triangle is a marine area located in the western Pacific Ocean with exceptional species diversity in coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and mangrove forests. Caring for these at-risk areas is crucial for preserving the numerous ecological functions and benefits these habitats provide. Dr. Susan Williams, Fulbright Specialist and UC Davis professor, has been working on improving seagrass meadow restoration in Indonesia.

Investigating El Niño weather pattern and the effects it has on redistribution of species, BML research coordinator Jackie Sones and ecology professor Eric Sanford have discovered red pelagic crabs on the Californian Northern Coastline. Because they are usually found off Baja California, Sones and Sanford suggest that the finding is indicative of how strong the most recent El Nino was. 

Many mysteries remain about life under the sea, like what happens to marine creatures between life stages of larvae and adulthood. These tiny creatures are extremely hard to track in the open ocean, so one marine ecologist is using robots to mimic the larvae’s motions in order to determine what control they have over their own fate.

PBS News Hour

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