Traveling For Work

A Phytoplankton Growth Experiment in Alaska

I knew as an undergraduate that I wanted to see as much of the world as possible, and that having a career that included traveling would make that easier.  So I focused on careers where traveling would be guaranteed.  Now I am finishing my PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences.  As part of my PhD research I have traveled to Alaska multiple times, Rhode Island, Oahu in Hawaii, and Spain, not to forget I had the opportunity to move across the continent to California for four years which drastically increased my ability to road trip to new states and national parks. 

In the Anchorage airport with all of my equipment for one of my many fieldwork trips to Alaska.

In this post I am just going to focus on one work trip, the trip I am on right now in Kasitsna Bay, Alaska, just a few miles away from Homer.  There are no roads to get to Kasitsna Bay.  The only way to the laboratory is by boat (or by small plane to a nearby airport).  We opted for a water taxi.  Water taxies are much like regular taxies in the less rustic world.  We call a water taxi service and tell them where we are and where we want to go.  A little while later the taxi picks us you up from a dock or pier (in our case from the Homer Spit) and brings us where we want to go (the Kasitnsa Bay labs).

The Kasitsna Bay Labs in southern Alaska where our experiment is currently being conducted.

Kasitsna Bay is on the west coast of the Kenai Peninsula.  It is backed by mountains and abundant wildlife due to the rainforest like character of the peninsula.  There are more black bears in this area than people.  Last time I was here two years ago I saw a mother black bear cross the road with her two cubs.  I've also seen more wild sea otters and bald eagles in this area in two weeks than I ever thought I would see in my life.  The sea otter population in this area skyrocketed after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, when thousands of sea otters were relocated to this area.  The locals call them sea rats or speed bump (for boats, jokingly of course).  Some of my fellow researchers have encountered some rather fearless sea otters who hopped on the dock with him, probably begging for food.

One of the many sea otters I've spotted in Kasitsna Bay.  I saw this one from a water taxi.

Halibut and salmon fishing are career staples in this area, and the freezers of the field station living areas are packed to the brim with frozen fish filets previous researchers have caught and left for those who follow to enjoy.  Last night while talking with some local workers, they showed me their catch of 6 large rock fish, not bad for 3 hours work.

This area of the ocean experience very large tides, up to and sometimes over 24 ft.  Special docks and piers have been constructed that will rise and lower with the tide.  The best time to unload a boat is at high tide, as the ramp is at less of an incline.

Tides in this area can top 24 ft.  The top photo shows low tide at the Kasitsna Bay dock while the bottom photo shows high tide 6 hours later.

Back to the experiment.  I am in Alaska to study phytoplankton (a type of algae).  Phytoplankton are microscopic organism that photosynthesizes its food, much like any plant on land.  These micro-organisms are probably more common to nonscientists in the form of red tides or harmful algal blooms.  However, they form the base of every ocean ecosystem as tiny animals eat them, which then fish eat in turn, and so on and so on.  Also like land plants phytoplankton need nutrients to grow, most notably nitrogen and silica.  I am here to determine what source of nutrients (rivers or groundwater or a mixture of both) to the North Pacific phytoplankton like to eat best.

The stream we collected river water from for use in our experiment.  Down stream a few hundred feet it drains into the sea.  One of my collaborators sits patiently filtering river water for use in the experiment.

To address the question of what phytoplankton like to eat, we have designed an experiment where we feed phytoplankton collected from the ocean different nutrients, nutrient combinations, or nutrient sources (river water or groundwater).  Day 1 saw us setting up the experiment by collecting groundwater and river water from a local stream and hole we dug on the beach.

The incubation tank set up at the end of the dock for 4 days.

After we collected the ground and river water, we took a boat out into the middle of the Cook Inlet to collect our phytoplankton-containig ocean water into large carboys with spigots.  This ocean water was then divided into many different clear plastic bottles with different colored caps.  Each color combination represents a different "treatment".

Treatment means that we fed the phytoplankton either some nutrients, like nitrate or silica, or some of the groundwater or river water we collected, which inherently contains nutrients.  All of the bottles then get thrown into a large tank on the pier through which ocean water is continually pumped to maintain the correct temperature.  The phytoplankton then photosynthesize the sunlit as they live in the bottles, growing and multiplying as they would in the wild.  Every 24 hours for 4 days, we collect three bottles of each color combination (treatment group) and collect samples to measure nutrient concentration and phytoplankton growth.

Each sample type (nutrients, chlorophyll, etc.) much be processed differently to ensure the most accuracy.  For nutrients we must remove any organisms from the seawater that might eat the nutrients and lower the nutrients concentrations in the water artificially.  This filtering set up is how we remove organisms from the water in the incubation bottles of this experiment.

When we get back to the University of California Santa Cruz we will analyze some of the samples we collected, and we will ship some off for analysis elsewhere.  After we have all the data, we will know what the favorite nutrients these phytoplankton like to eat and which nutrient sources (groundwater or rivers) best supply them to the ocean.  I will write the results up as a research article and submit them for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.