I’m embarrassed to write that I overslept today and didn’t roll out of the bunk until after 8 AM. I guess I “hit the wall” yesterday after getting to bed at 1:30 AM – there really was a time when I could always get up early, but, unlike my waistline, this ability has decreased.
Today has been a very busy day. The morning sub dive was a success and we are attempting to induce a variety of sea stars and sea urchins. Some of these species are not cooperating as we are too early or too late in their reproductive cycle. There is a degree of stress because we will be back in port on Saturday and we need to do some experiments on larval feeding. As our target species are living in rather cool water, development to the point of being able to capture particulate food requires a few days.
Young Craig (in contrast to Craig Young) and I have set up an experiment to examine the ability of larvae of snails to take up organic materials from seawater. On my last sub dive we collected a number of egg cases and from these, swimming larvae were released. These veliger larvae do not appear to have the ability to capture particulate foods, but we will see. Annie Pollard (U. Oregon) is performing an equivalent experiment using swimming embryos of the sea urchin Cidaris blakei. As both types of developmental stages are incapable of feeding (in the traditional sense) the results of these experiments should provide an opportunity for an interesting comparison. Craig and I are also beginning to measure the metabolism (oxygen consumption) of the snail larvae and we will then shift to work on the developmental stages of sea urchins. There seems to be too much to do and too little time…. A problem common to all research cruises.
News flash – a different sea urchin is spawning – Lytechinus euerces! We had two specimens and one was a male and the other was a female – what a stroke of luck. I started to work on metabolic coast of development of L. euerces perhaps 15 years ago and it will be nice to return to that project.
I have to give a lecture at 9:30 tonight and then it’s back to the lab…I think that it’s going to be a long night.