New Hobby - Fire dancing

Lene and I were at someone's birthday the other night and one of the guests turned out to be a fire dancer who brought her fire poi with her.  Fire poi are kevlar pads attached to chains with handles at the end for you to slip your fingers through.  The pads are dipped in fuel and once lit will burn for a couple of minutes.    She showed us a few things and let anyone who wanted to try them have a go.  I think both Lene and I are hooked now and we are looking to get a pair of our own to keep practicing with.

I snapped a bunch of pictures of everyone trying it out and miraculously no one set themselves on fire.  In the pictures everyone looks like an expert since who would be spinning chains of fire around if they didn't know what they were doing?

Fortunately, even if you hit yourself with one of the chains, they tend not to burn you (or leave scorch marks on your clothes).  We all tied our hair back as a precaution but other than that it felt pretty safe.  The whooshing noise the poi make as you whirl them around puts you in your own little world and its definitely an experience I would recommend to anyone who has the chance.

I'll try to get a video up later.

Fab four Phyla part two: Cnidarians

A large christmas anemone with its tentacles partially exposed to air.

Cnidarians are named after the venomous cells that distinguish them, called cnidocytes.  Cnidocytes release their poison through an organelle within the cell called a cnidocyst or nematocyst.  These stings vary greatly in severity with some being easily strong enough to kill a person while others would hardly be noticed.  Cnidarians include animals like anenomes and sea jellies with both having jelly like bodies, a hollow gut, tentacles and stinging cells. Fortunately, the cnidarians found around here are not dangerous.  We occasionally have a Lion's Mane jelly wash up on shore which could give you a nasty sting, but nothing fatal.

Burrowing anemones

A burrowing anemone colored green by a symbiotic algae

While tidepooling, anenomes are the most common cnidarian encountered though often times people won't recognize them; anemones, being 90% water, look like formless blobs when the tide goes out.  The best place to see an anemone with all its tentacles out is in a tide pool or hanging off the side of a dock.  Anemones are always great fun to introduce to a group.  We encourage people to "shake hands" with an anemone by touching its tentacles.  The anemones here aren't powerful enough to give a painful sting but you can definitely feel the effects of the harpoon like nematocysts firing into your finger.  The nematocysts are like a spring loaded trap; they are set off by anything brushing against them.   Our anemone's nematocysts are weak enough that it only feels as if the tentacles have a strong adhesive on them which is a lot of fun to show to the groups.  The truly bold can give the anemones a kiss; because the skin on your lips is thinner and more sensitive than on your fingers you will actually feel a little bit of a sting.

Orange colonial anemones about the size of a fingernail

One of the reasons we don't have the extraordinarily poisonous animals often found in more tropical waters is food.  Places like the Caribbean with its vast expanses of sand, warm water and beautiful reefs are more like deserts.  Colder water nearer to the poles is able to hold much more dissolved oxygen which allows it to support more life.  During the summer months, when the days are nearly endless, phytoplankton (plankton that uses photosynthesis) flourish, providing a source of food for practically everything else in the ocean.  Because food is so abundant here, animals are not as concerned with protecting themselves or hunting with expensive (in terms of resources) toxins.  They would rather put their energy towards reproduction and growth.  Where prey is scarcer animals need to spend more resources to protect themselves and to ensure that if they inject something with their poison they will get a return on that expenditure.  They can't afford to let an animal escape since something might not come along later.  In Alaskan waters, there is so much food to go around that many animals can afford to wait, they know they'll  have a shot at something sooner or later.

Fab four Phyla part one: Echinoderms

When we take groups out tidepooling they are going to see a lot of new and interesting animals and 80% of these animals fall into one of four different phyla.  Phyla are on of the levels of classification scientists use to  where the broadest group is a Kingdom and it increases in specificity until you reach the species level.  All together you have Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.  We rarely use scientific names when referring to animals but we like people to know the four main phyla that we see on our beaches.  Our fab four phyla are Cnidaria (anemones and jellies), Arthropoda (crabs, shrimp, barnacles), Echinodermata (urchins, stars, cucumbers) and Mollusca (clams, octopus, snails).

As the name implies, Brittle Stars lose their arms very easily

The first phyla I'd like to talk about is Echinodermata.  Echino means spiny (think of an echidna) and dermata refers to skin (as in a dermatologist) so Echinoderm translates to "spiny skin".  Sea urchins are the eponymous animal for this phyla and don't outwardly resemble their cousins, sea stars and sea cucumbers.  However, all Echinoderms share the distinct characteristics of pentaradial symmetry, the ability to regenerate, and water vascular system that enables them to move.  

A beautiful Rose star

For our groups, Sea stars are the most popular invertebrates and people are always excited to see them.  This works out since there are a lot of cool things we can show people about them.  Sea stars have a dot on their dorsal side called a madreporite or mother pore which serves as a hydraulic intake valve.  By pulling in water through this pore they are able to move their tube feet which act as tiny suction cups.  They use this hydraulic action to pull open mussels and clams and eat them.  Once they have a mussel shell open even a millimeter, the sea star will slide its stomach out of it's body and inside the mussel shell in order to eat it.  Sea stars also have tiny pinchers called pedicilleria which allow them to protect the gills that cover their dorsal side.  They don't want kelp or barnacles to settle on them and the pedicilleria defend this vulnerable spot.  These pinchers are strong enough to tear out arm hair (as I often demonstrate) or they can also be used to attach a sea star to a kid's fleece.

Stimpson's Sun Star

Urchins, the next member or this group, are not nearly as dangerous here as they are are in tropical waters.  Our urchins don't have poisonous spines and are completely safe to handle.  Urchins eat algae using their five teeth and their tube feet are extra long so they can extend past their spines.  Urchins are also capable of seeing color, though this ability is not well understood by scientists.  They have proven in experiments that urchins are able to associate color with food and that urchins can see the entire color spectrum but they are unable to figure out how the urchins can see.  

 

A True Star nestled amongst Green Urchins

The last member of the Echinoderms is the sea cucumber.  Although not readily apparent, sea cucumbers also have penta radial symmetry if you stand them on their ends like a cylinder.  They also have tube feet which they use to hang onto the rocks and mud they bury themselves in.  The cool fact about cucumbers that we quote endlessly to our groups is their ability to eviscerate themselves to distract predators.  They will spit out their guts as an offering/distraction if something is harassing them enough and then they will regrow their insides if given enough time.  Sea cucumbers eat by pushing their mouth parts out in a feathery fan which they can use to collect plankton and other detritus out of the water or mud.  

Sunflower Star

The largest member of the Echinoderms that we find in our tide pools is the sunflower star.  These stars can often reach three feet in diameter and have up to twenty four arms.  Compared to the other sea stars, sunflower stars are extremely soft because they are holding more water.  They use this extra water to operate more tube feet (over 15,000 of them!) and can move much faster than other sea stars because of this.  They are extremely voracious predators and will often eat other sea stars when given the chance.  Because their body is so soft, these creatures prefer the lower inter-tidal zone and cannot be out of water for very long.

Sunflower Star's tube feet

It's good to be back

I've been back in Alaska a little over a month now and while some things have changed, everything is still very familiar.  We've had our first round of groups and were lucky to have had phenomenal conditions; the sun was shining and we've already had the biggest tides of the year.  These ultra big tides give us a twenty eight and a half foot tidal variation which really must be seen to be believed.  Generally, over two days of tidepooling with good negative tides we will find anywhere between 65 and 100 different species.  These species can range from giant sunflower stars more than three feet across to tiny little tube worms the size of a rice grain.

Our dock on a big negative tide (you can touch the tops
 of those pilings on a really high tide).

We've had a few days off this past week for the Easter break; during the spring time we cater exclusively to school groups so our breaks coincided with Alaska's schools.  The timing couldn't have been better as Lene arrived from Norway shortly before Easter and just in time for both of our birthdays.  While I've been in town it's been fun catching up with people I haven't seen since I was last here and showing Lene around.  She's gotten herself a good used bike and is starting to learn her way around town.  I also took a refresher course for my cpr and first aid since my last course was a couple years ago.

Nearly full moon framed by the ghost forest

 We've also been checking out some of the bars and seeing some great live music, most notably from the Holy Santos Gang, a really amazing local band here in Homer.  I first saw them two years ago when I was last here and they were a great band then.  They are truly excellent now and I'm looking forward to seeing them play more often now that I'm back in Homer.

Sara posing for pictures instead of tidepooling

We are coming up on our big stretch of the season where we do most of our work and I'm hoping that everything goes smoothly.  The job is a lot of fun but it can be exhausting.  Our usual schedule has us getting up and starting to work with the group around 7:30 and though not obligated to, we often take the kids on evening hikes or arrange games for them to play by the campfire until they are in their yurts around 9:30pm.  School groups normally come out for two night stays at our field station and we will often work three groups in a row.

Pelagic cormorants and gulls in front of Poot's Peak

It's pretty funny when you've finally managed to tire a class out on their last day at the station and the boat that picks them up drops off a brand new school group full of energy.  As long as you stay healthy everything is good; getting sick is the biggest worry while working here since everyone is so busy it's hard to take a sick day.  Losing your voice is the worst since it becomes so much more difficult to control a bunch of fifth graders outside if you can't make yourself heard.  But I wouldn't keep coming back for more if I didn't love it and I do love living and working across the bay.

Transects! Go Data!

p.s.  I know I've been a little slack about updating, I'll try to keep the updates coming a little more frequently in the following months.

Hundreds of murres in the water off Gull Island
(enlarge this picture to see them all)