Biologicos Ambulantes

The Western Society of Naturalists is driven by a kind of unstated credo, personified by the students of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, where I started graduate school one million years ago.  Biologicos ambulantes is what we used to call it (I first heard this term from a forever biologist named Mark Silberstein).  The idea is that you are hooked.  You will always do marine biology, so don't pretend.  You will move to wherever you can support yourself doing science.  Graduate students at Moss Landing sleep in the backs of trucks.  On old professors' floors, wherever they can.  They party hard all night, and then get up the next day in time for the first lecture at 8AM. 

Saturday night was the "auction".  A raucous, hilarious affair, with drag queens and a noted scientist (unnoted here) with a killer stand-up routine.  This guy egged the assembled nerds on and on, till the audience had coughed up literally thousands of dollars, all of which goes to next year's student travel fund.

Our research was well received.  Although my reputation is as a cross-disciplinary neuroethologist (no relation to the previous paragraph), my buddies are mostly community ecologists of one sort or another.  Greg Cailliet, Dan Reed, Jim Barry, Jim Estes, Mark Carr, Jim Harvey, John Oliver, Pete Slattery, and on and on.  These guys are all excellent, established scientists, who do community ecology for a living.  So I was a bit nervous that our "discovery", that a scavenger can be transformed into a raging predator inside a marine reserve, would either be rejected, or trivialized.

Neither happened.  They were almost as stoked as I am about our data.

Here's a movie we showed next to the poster.  Note the failure of the ink to deter the attacking lobster. 

So Saturday night was pure celebration.  The wine flowed, the bids flew.  I finally dragged my ass to bed at 12:30, but the party was just getting going.  Moss Landing Marine labs just missed winning the Tequila Trophy, but they readily helped the winners (was it San Diego State University?) swig down the tequila, as I was walking out the door.  I heard later that the party spiraled up the ten floors of the hotel into the wee hours until "security" finally put the thing to rest. 

But they were ALL there at 8AM for Jim Estes' lecture on the importance of top predators for the global carbon budget.  I saw my ex-technician and undergraduate apprentice, Brian Hoover.  This guy has the invaluable combination of smarts, off-kilter perspective, and rebel that will make him famous.  He is almost already there.  Well done, Brian.  I see John going down that slippery slope into the briny, but we shall see.

Transitions

The last few days have been crazy.  Sunday I came off island with a raggedy-ann poster in my computer.  The three of us have been trying desperately to get the data we need to make our points.  Some luck came our way.  The last caged lobster ate a sea hare, and the other cage with no lobster still had its original 5 sea hares.  Now we write.  But first, John and Dan had to pull out the cages and store them in a safe place.  We will be deploying them again, as soon as we get our feet under us.

Here’s an embedded jpeg of our poster.  John has printed out the 3’X4’ version, and will soon bring it to Venice for our drive to Monterey.

You  can clearly see how damn BUSY this thing is.    Blame it on the alternative hypotheses! 

Every poster I’ve ever done had too much writing, and this one is a prime example.  Dan will be standing up there ready to explain the poster in words to anyone passing by.  

Pretend you are one of them.  Oh, jeez, I'll never see all the posters I want if I stop here! 

Maybe I will stop for a second, though.  The map looks pretty cool (now click on the image and get the close-up; admit it, we've caught you)

Ok.  Fine.  You move on. I don't care.  The behavioral findings in the first 3 figures are still the sexiest damn story I’ve been involved with for a long time.  We are completely stoked.

So in an hour or so, John and Dan will show up, and we’ll drive my Prius up to Monterey, posters in hand!

Day before yesterday, I came off the supply boat at Fisherman's Cove, loaded with champagne and fruit for fruit salad, and  “Jack S. Fogbound”  fixings.  I had invited Gerry Smith, our treasured Diving Officer, and a slew of other staff from the marine lab, over for lunch.  We took pictures, and I toasted everyone.  While the boys put away all the diving stuff and stored the cages, I made fruit salad and Jack S Fogbounds.  The latter is an unbelievable sandwich that was invented by Shirley Brokaw in the early 60s when her husband and two boys (my buddies) owned a 26 foot tugboat with a tiny stove.  You take a small French bread roll,  cut it, smear it with mustard and mayonnaise, a couple of slices of the best salami you can buy, some sharp sharp Canadian cheddar from Trader Joes, some onions, then close it up in a sheet of aluminum foil.  Pop 8 of them into a small oven at 350 degrees until it starts smelling nice (ca 15 min), and then serve to your 8 guests.  If its cold, these sandwiches warm your hands as you unwrap them.  Mmmmmmmm good, they are.

I toasted the staff for all their help, but mainly I toasted Dan and John.  These two guys have been working like madmen for 9 weeks on this project, and earned not a dime.  I am eternally grateful for that.  Twas a rich wonderful campaign.   

Then we kicked them out, went for “one last swim” (a Siwash tradition), and headed home to Alamitos Bay. 

Worked 16 hours on the poster yesterday, and now we leave.  Whew.  Getting too old for this.

TestingAlternateHypotheses!

We’re desperately trying to finish two posters for the Western Society of Naturalists Meeting. It is coming right up. 

Here’s the story line for the lobster poster.  You are all familiar with it already.  Indeed some of you have actually driven it with your perceptive comments.  But here it is again.

This research story is about how relief from fishing pressure can transform a species from one with little or no effect on its ecological community, into a keystone predator, whose eating habits have overriding influences on that community.

Our central hypothesis is that lobsters fished by humans live in a world of over-abundant food. When protected from such fishing pressure, lobsters survive and grow and compete much more strongly with each other.  This drastically broadens their list of acceptable food, because they are getting very hungry.

This hypothesis is supported by the fact that lobsters outside of Marine Life Protected Areas (“reserves”) have never been observed to attack a sea hare.  We found this as well.  In addition, we found that a large percentage of lobsters inside preserves readily attack sea hares.

We have now actually tested several alternative hypotheses consistent with these attack observations.

 H_A’s:

1.    1.)  Lobsters are attacking because there is something in the water (perhaps crowding pheromones, for example) that directly makes them more aggressive. Rob, Howard, Chris

Test:  Lobsters that attacked in the reserve were held in identical lab conditions as lobsters from outside the reserve.  

This figure shows that lobsters caught off the preserve (we did not test these behaviorally, but their responses were 94% certain to be “no pounce”.) needed to starve in the lab for 7 days before they would attack a sea hare.  The attack readiness of lobsters from inside the reserve depended on their behavior.  Lobsters that did not attack proffered sea hares in the field waited statistically just as long as the outsiders.  Lobsters that DID attack sea hares inside the reserve were ready to eat in the lab much sooner (a little more than 2 days).  Because the conditions were identical in these experiments, the lobster’s state, rather than something about its environment seems to be driving its behavior.

2.) Lobsters that fail to attack a sea hare are just not hungry (Klaus).  We finally tested this experiment with three dives, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as we thought it was.   86% percent of sea hares that showed no interest in sea hares, nevertheless pounced upon and ate (attacked) the shrimp we offered them.  This isn’t a complete negation.  These no-pouncers do appear to be a bit more shy about shrimp than the attackers, 100% of whom ate the shrimp.  Nevertheless, it appears to be primarily the unacceptable taste of sea hares, rather than a general aversion to eating, that explains the absence of pounce/attack behavior.

3.) Lobsters only eat sea hares because they are dropping out of the sky.  Attached, “normal” sea hares would be unappealing (Rob and John).  

Our cage results are in.  We performed 7 different control enclosure experiments, i.e., provisioned for 1 or 2 days cages with 5 sea hares in them.  We lost no sea hares (!) in these controls.  By contrast, when we enclosed lobsters which showed attack behavior, we found that 6 of the nine enclosed lobsters ate at least one sea hare, and some ate as many as 4 animals per day!

Things that go bump in the night.

I have a good friend who was once swallowed to the chest by a great white shark erupting from below him as he treaded water off Point Conception.  The shark spit him out in mid air, and he miraculously survived.  I heard the story from him a couple of years later, and as he bent his legs into the position they were caught in by the shark, the scars came scarily into register, forming a perfect shark jaw.

But what really sticks with me is when he said that the only inkling he had that the beast was organic, and not some inanimate submarine or torpedo, was that he could feel the torque of the tail strokes as the shark rose out of the sea.  I have no idea how Rob ever gets back in the water after that, and have nothing but awestruck admiration for his continued “waterman” existence.   

A few nights ago, the three of us were together, diving, again.  We decided to do the lobster-seahare-shrimp shuffle that we do so well.   I looking forward to inhaling and exhaling to stay a little up, and descend a little as we present first the sea hare, and then the shrimp.   We cut up some jumbo shrimp, cause that is all we have, and putt out to see if we could do the dance again. 

What happened to the magic?  It started with the dive plan.  John was to hold and present the sea hares.  As soon as the lobster responded (or not) to the sea hare, I would move in with the shrimp.  Dan was lighting and filming.  I decided to increase our overall efficiency, so I told John to go ahead and look for more lobster nearby during the short time I was presenting shrimp to the subject lobster.  Dan didn’t hear me say that. 

Second, there was a bit of a surge running.  Not enough to dominate, just enough to throw you off balance.

We moor the whaler to Siwash on the buoy closest to the south-side cliffs, get our gear on, and descend. 

John presents to the first lobster.  No Pounce.  This is the critical behavior for this dive, for our contention is that lobsters will reject sea hare as food, but not food in general.  I descend down with the shrimp, by exhaling to sink, but the surge throws off my presentation.  Meanwhile, John has moved on as instructed.  The lobster finally attacks the shrimp, as we had expected.  Fine. But the lighting to record this behavior is gone.  I look up, and Dan is swimming after John who has located another lobster.  I try to motion to Dan to stay with the lobster while I present the shrimp, but I’m not at all sure he gets what I mean. 

It’s dark.  The visibility sucks, and we’re moving back and forth with the surge.  John is getting frustrated.  He spooks a couple of lobsters in a row; they tail-flip before he can put the sea hare on them.  I’m feeling the creeping frustration.  Finally, John does a successful presentation. Another No Pounce.  I move in with the shrimp.  Can’t get the shrimp to the lobster for all the surge.  The lobster is moving, but not yet spooked.  Finally he runs into the shrimp. He attacks, and again the lighting suddenly disappears.   Exasperated, I look around for Dan.  He’s chasing John again.  I’m breathing hard.  Suddenly, wham!  Something hits my tank so hard I feel a little whiplash.  I’m startled, and a bit angry cause I think it is either Dan or John.  I look over my shoulder and there is a HUGE shape there.  I remember uttering a loud shout, very much like I do in a movie theater when the monster suddenly attacks.  I turn to face….......... an overhang.  We had moved into an unfamiliar area that has a very high rock with an overhang.  Apparently, my frustrated breathing had made me more buoyant and less aware, so I was floating up, probably pretty quickly.  I THOUGHT I was staying in one place so when I hit the rock, it felt like something was hitting me hard.

I drop down to where John and Dan are.  All this time, John just noticed I was having “buoyancy control problems.” 

He moves his hands like the umpire calling the runner safe.  This means stop and adjust your buoyancy compensator until you are neutral again.  I do this.  Adrenaline still coursing through my veins.  I think of my friend in the jaws of an inanimate behemoth.  Sometimes this life gets just a little too rich.

Experiments widen perspective

Ocean is like glass.  The Catalina Flyer is flying.  I’ve just done my tet-a-tet with John and Dan; they coming to Catalina on the same boat I’m taking to the mainland.  The boys are back from their Halloween activities to do some more research.  Last night was very exciting.   We’ve finally gotten our cages right, but, up till last night, still no data!

I managed to talk a CSU Long Beach grad student, Stephen Trbovitch, into diving with me, so we could end our latest cage-enclosure experiment.

Early afternoon, two days ago (two days after the gale), Dan and I planted 5 sea hares in the two now sea-hare tight cages.  Couldn’t dive on them night before last, but last night Steven and I checked out the damage.  Cage 2 still had 5 sea hares.   Rats.  They had all crawled up on the ceiling.  The lobster was right next to a group of three of them, looking like he was ready to pounce.  But we ended the experiment anyway.  Caught and measured this not-so-hungry lobster and let him go.

Then, we went to Cage 1.  This cage had only 2 sea hares!  This is very cool, for the cage itself is now fully sea-hare tight.  So this is our first unequivocal evidence that lobsters will hunt down sea hares that have had time to settle down.   Again, we measured the lobster, and let him go.

So, this result means that Rob’s (see alternative hypothesis blogs) alternative that lobsters are only attacking sea hares cause we are dropping them out of the water column, is weakened.  This also means that the student’s  “handout” alternative hypothesis is weakened.  The captured lobster in Cage 1 had to first shake off the insult of being captured and constrained in a cage.  Then he had to forage for his dinner.  He found the sea hares in a way he has never before done, not even remotely resembling a gift from a diver happening by with a handout. 

So, Stephen and I set up the next replicate experiment.  We went searching for attacking lobsters, and found a monster.  Put him into cage 1, left cage 2 with no lobster as a control, and went back to the surface.  Steven went to the Halloween party.  I tested lobsters in our waterfront tanks (more on that later), and then worked on the poster for the meeting in Monterey weekend after next.  It’s coming along, but time is running out.  I foresee panic setting in this week.

Here’s the map Dan’s been working on (rough draft.  I know, the legend colors are wrong).  You can see the location (pink circles) of our 7 dives outside reserves and 14 dives inside them.  Next comes the attack data as a function of location.  Stay tuned!