Mason: The Worm Plan

For those who don’t know me yet I am Mason Sylvester and I am doing a project on earthworms and how chemical fertilizers impact them. I am measure this by how many die in a fish tank over a three week period. Time might change but is going to be around the time frame. The types of worms that I am going to be using are night crawlers which are the most common type of earthworm we have around here or that everyone is familiar with.The picture to the right is a night crawler. Their vertical burrowing earthworms which is perfect for my project. The way I am going to be doing this is I will have 4 fish tanks that are five gallons each and then I will put soil from my backyard that is not been fertilized and then put ten worms in. From their I will spray water four times a week, that number might change but should be around four. I will then put fertilizer into three of the tanks and using the instructions on the fertilizer so I don’t have anything that is different from any of the tanks except the amount that is being applied. The type of fertilizer I used will be in the link I provide (fertilizer) . The fourth tank will not have any fertilizer. They will be place in a dark area with no sunlight so they don’t fry.  After three weeks I will count the number of dead worms for each tank and record the data into a graph for comparison.  I will also put organic matter into each fish tank for food so that they don’t die of starvation instead of the fertilizer.

Angela, CUR - Freshwater Jellyfish?

I'm still looking for my ideal long-term garbage research location up here in Oregon. This weekend I visited Dorena Lake, which unexpectedly turned out to be a trash mecca, but is located 50 minutes too far from my house for weekly research on my currently limited gas budget.

Dorena Lake

In addition to the usual suspects: plastic bottles, Styrofoam cups, wrappers, and cans, I came across a myriad collection of broken glass. In my two and a half years of collecting trash I have never seen so much glass; however, something else I found had me more confused.

Bryozoan Colony?

Bryozoan Colony with Statoblasts?

It seems the dam holding back the water in Dorena Lake had recently been opened to release some of it because the shore was incredibly muddy and littered with dozens of jellyfish-like blobs. After some googling, I believe these blobs are Bryozoans, which according to the Missouri Department of Conservation are "microscopic aquatic invertebrates that live in colonies." Fascinatingly, as gross as they look, these filter feeders actually help keep the water clean. I was wondering if the little black spots in the last image are fish eggs, but - according to the Encyclopedia of Life - the individual organisms in the colony reproduce via "seedlike statoblasts", thus I am assuming the black specs are offspring.

Mason Sylvester, UR: Tremors

I plan on taking four fish tanks (size TBD) and collecting worms for each of the tanks. My initial estimate is ten worms per tank to make it an easy number but may change after calculating the cubic feet of soil space to make sure to have a round number of worms per cubic feet.  I will then put fertilizer in three of the tanks with soil that has not been fertilized and in the fourth tank will have just the base soil soil.  I will place the ten worms (TBD) into the tanks and record their behavior for a specified amount of time (TBD), recording their behavior, including mortality in a worst case scenario.

After gathering my base soil to use in the tanks, I will test to make sure it does not contain any fertilizers.  The three tanks that will contain fertilizer will be marked to contain less than the recommend amount, the recommend amount, and more than the recommend amount to cover the three scales of fertilizer use.

My next blog will include the specific details as in the amounts of worms, fertilizers and soil.  I will also include the type of worms I will be using and the fertilizer brand I have chosen.  After a little research I was planning to use this brand of fertilizer but am not 100% sure yet.  It has a 32-0-4 ratio of nitrogen, phosphate and potash respectively and is measured by percentage (ex. Nitrogen has 32%).

Cathy CUR, Plastic its Everywhere!!

Over the past few weeks I have been working on developing my method, and locating plastic in the sediment samples. My method has come along way I have learned that when I am wet sieveing the samples I need to only sieve a small amount about 200mL at a time, to reduce the smallest sieve (75um) from clogging. I have also determined my sampling locations, a natural out fall and a man made outfall. My natural out fall is in Spruce Creek by the south bridge, and my man made is in the Canal st canal in New Symera Beach.

Scanning Electron Microscope of the yellow stuff

Once I sieved the sample from the Canal St location, I took a sample of the sample and viewed it under a microscope. As I begun looking at my sample I stated noticing a high amount of yellow particles about 100 flecks in about a teaspoon sample. Every time I tried to isolate the yellow stuff from the rest of the sample or remove it, the yellow stuff would crumble. But I did manage to isolate some of the yellow stuff. So once I got what I felt was enough about 0.001g, I sent it off with Paul to analyze it with the scanning electron microscope. The chemical makeup of the stuff showed that it contained high amounts of silica, and calcium. So far the more I look at the Canal St sample under the microscope the more plastic I find.

Plastic found so far in the Canal St sample

More Fun to come, I do have my Spruce Creek sample sieved I plan on investigating it in the coming week. I am also meeting with Paul to gain a better understanding of the yellow stuff, and I plan on exploring down town New Symera in search of where the yellow stuff would come from.

Samantha, UR--Capture of the V. Aureus

     Phytoplankton come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are bacteria, some are protists, and most are single-celled plants.  In my continuing research to identify phytoplankton in and near the Indian River Lagoon I have come across some different types of these plankton that I would like to discuss with you.  My first successful  invasion was in a smaller river in Volusia County, the Tomoka River.  On September 18, a cloudy day out in the river I casted my plankton net out in the open river and immediately after went back to the lab to see what interesting organisms I may have found and boy did i find.  

Volvox and Copepod floating together

   

   Volvox, which are freshwater blue-green algae was of the first organism I was able to spot.  Volvox are mostly freshwater organisms and having been a cloudy day and a lot of precipitation in the water may have been the cause of these organisms in my plankton samples.  This organism was also the most interesting and relevant to my research.  The sample that showed up numerous Volvox organisms were taken closer to a canal where there were houses with "beautiful" green grass, assuming that this grass stays so nice due to mass amounts of fertilizer.  The problem with this is, most fertilizer used on the yards of these homes are located on the river, which the fertilizer will runoff into the surrounding water causing an overabundance of Nitrogen, which is a core ingredient in most fertilizers.  Why would this have anything to do with Volvox being present and why is it important? Well, Volvox contribute to the production of oxygen and serve as a food for a number of aquatic animals.  Volvox Aureus, the most commonly found volvox and the species I found in my plankton sample can form harmful algal blooms in warm water with high Nitrogen Content.

Volvox spotted in my plankton sample

Volvox and Copepod floating naturally in my sample

Jody OCE2905, What am I'm doing this semester????

What I'm doing is setting up a continuous water quality study of three tributaries that discharge into the IRL. Titled---Establishing Sampling Sites to Conduct a Continuous Study of Water Quality of Three Fresh Water Discharges into the Indian River Lagoon

Names and locations are, a natural discharge Spruce Creek at the crossing of the southernmost bridge on US1, (Man-made) Canal Street discharge at New Smyrna Beach, and (Man-made) Tenth Street Canal at the New Smyrna Beach and Edgewater city limits on Riverside Drive Bridge. While water quality data was collected on site and included water temperature, salinity, pH, and dissolved O_2, as well as observations, tide level and direction, wind speed, and air temperature were also recorded. Water samples were then collected using a Van Dorn, samples were then transferred to 500ml Nalgene Bottles placed on ice then transported back to the laboratory and analyzed for turbidity, total inorganic nitrogen and total phosphates. Next I built a excel spreadsheet containing all the data, and then I will build a graph displaying the pertinent findings.
More to come!!!!

Excel Spreadsheet

Mason: The burrowers

USDA Worms

So I have happened to come across an article by the United States Department of Agriculture and they have done some research on the benefits of earthworms and what impacts them. I have found out that there are three categories of earthworms but two of them help with your everyday garden or lawn. The Endogeic type of worm is a topsoil worm and eats most of the organic matter on the top. They create a maze of tunnels in the soil which they can use to spread nutrients to all parts of the plant. The other kind that beneficial is Lumbricus and is a deep burrowing worm. These are the worms that make drainage tunnels to the deeper parts of the plant to provide nutrients to it. All of the worms create cast rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Another interesting fact about worms is that if you use harmful pesticides on the plants and the chemicals runoff into the drainage tunnels the worms actually slow down and block the tunnels so that the chemicals don’t go further down into the soil. Also if you put lime on your plants it can increase their population in the area because they like their soil in with a neutral ph level and they also like to feed on calcium.  That’s all I have for now I will they a link to the article for you guys to see.

Samantha, UR--Oxygen is a big deal !

   Is it possible that tiny microscopic single cell organisms could be greatly effecting our water? Although these organisms may not be able to be seen with the naked eye they are one of the most critical organisms of marine life. Phytoplankton have an intense impact on a healthy area of water, and an over abundance of nutrients could lead to an imbalance of phytoplankton and cause major problems. Along with the data of water quality in the area I have been working my way to capture and identify plankton in certain body's of water specifically in canals. In doing so I will be attempting to compare species of plankton present in a man made canal opposed to a natural canal.
     
        My identification process is still in progress however I have developed some important crucial data during my field research that could  have a huge impact on a mass amount of plankton  present and could eventually lead to something known as an algae bloom.  A bloom occurs due to mass amounts of nutrients being deposited into the water creating an ideal environment for phytoplankton activity. Algae blooms can be very harmful to marine organisms causing fish deaths as well as effecting humans causing Nausea or sickness.  I traveled to two different canals in the area one being Spruce Creek South Bridge (SCSB) located in Volusia County, this is a natural canal as well as Canal Street, canal in New Smyrna Beach (Volusia County), which is a man made canal.

             While out in the field, I began to take water quality samples, checking salinity, pH, oxygen levels ex.  In doing so I came to realize a significant detail of the water quality in which could greatly effect my research of plankton identification.  Canal street canal seemed to be hypoxic ! This meaning that the levels of oxygen were so low that there is basically no oxygen in that particular body of water. If phytoplankton populations grows to an excessive amount, the amount of unstable oxygen  in the water can be depleted. Oxygen deportation has two algal bloom related causes; respiration and decomposition.  Algae and Cyanobacteria consume oxygen at night when there is no light for photosynthesis to occur.  If there is a bloom, the phytoplankton can consume more oxygen than produced. Likewise, if large portions of the algal bloom die off at once, bacteria will start to consume oxygen in order to decompose the dead algae.  This can reduce oxygen concentrations to below sustainable levels.  If oxygen levels get too low, fish and other aquatic creatures may die.

Mason, UR--a wormy situation

 So I have done some research on what worms do for the environment and it turns out that when they go into the soil to burrow they also make these holes that provides water and carbon dioxide to enter into the deeper parts of the soil. They also make these cast things, I think it is their poop but don't know for sure now that fertilize the soil. They get the nutrients from the organic waste by eating it and then making the cast. I also found out that when you put fertilizer on soil with worms in it can kill the worms. It makes the soil acidic and kills them. I will try to keep you guys up to date.

Samantha, UR: Wanderers

135 manatees, 300 pelicans, 76 dolphins have been snuffed out of the Ocean in the last decade due to what Scientist are calling "The Perfect Storm."  Cold snaps in the Indian River lagoon in 2009, 2010 as well as 2011 with temperatures dipping as low as 39 degrees fahrenheit are believed to be accountable for the deaths and injuries of the marine organisms who call the lagoon their home.  







 ( Image of blue-green algae blooms in the Indian River Lagoon)

 

                                      

             Aside from the cold snaps, Scientists believe that a major impact of these mortalities come down to one main issue, pollution. This semester  I will be researching and observing different types of phytoplankton (ocean wanderers) living in these lagoons especially the toxic plankton contributing to a very critical "bloom" in Central Florida's lagoon systems.  These blooms are caused due to an overload of nutrients wasted out into our water systems as a result of human activity. The blooms are hovering the surface of the sea, intervening with the food supply and photosynthetic process of seagrass, a main source of nutrients and food for the herbivores of the area.  With knowledge of amount of chlorophyll in the waters along with the different species of plankton present, my goal is to be able to link these species of phytoplankton to specific blooms in the river and Educate others on the importance of Toxic water runoff.

Robin Kelly, CUR.... Concrete Oyster Mats

Hello Everyone,
I am Robin and I am a CUR (continuing undergraduate researcher) I have been working on the cost effectiveness of concrete based oyster mats vs plastic based oyster mats. I have demonstrated the cost effectiveness in the construction of the two mats in my earlier work and now I hope to show that they are just as effective in the water collecting spat.

Much thanks to Dr. Woodall and Annie Roddenberry for their knowledge and wisdom of research set up, oysters, and technology. The research has and is moving along with great data to record.






I want to tell everyone how much fun this is to me as well as a learning experience that will carry over into my new career. Personally for me watching something grow from something you designed could not be more satisfying.

Mason Sylvester: Man Myth Legend

Hi, my name is Mason and I am sorry that this is late. I have been caught up in my work schedule and my new school schedule. Some things you probably want to know about me is that I am an Eagle Scout and have been in scouting since I have been in kindergarten. Even after I became an Eagle Scout I have still been in scouting helping younger kids achieve their goals of becoming an Eagle Scout or just learning about the outdoors. Ever since I started in scouting I have been fascinated with the outdoors and all its glory. I have always tried to make every camp out just so that I could be outdoors for an extended period of time. I love everything that is outside and dirty. I have decided to do my research on pollution of worms and how it impacts the environment. I have made this choice because I recently seen the Godzilla movie from 1998 and from the beginning the main character is researching worms and I thought why not and did some research on it. Hopefully I can find out if certain pesticides impact worms and their beneficial output.

Brent Meister-CUR: An interesting life

           

Eagle scout banquet

my friends and I

Hello everyone. I am sorry this is so late but work has been really busy. As you know from class my name is Brent Meister and like i mentioned in class, my research is on noise pollution in the Indian River Lagoon. First, here is a little bit about myself. To start I am an eagle scout in the Boy Scouts of America with many years experience and not to mention I am wilderness first aid trained.Through scouting I meet a lot of interesting people who have influenced my decisions in my life. The most important of which is Chad Truxall From the Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna. We have become very good friends over the years, occasionally go surfing together in the morning, but he has done nothing but strengthen my love for the sea. I also have a lot of native friends who have taught me to respect the land as well as traveling and performing with them, which is tons of fun. I am planning on continuing my research in marine noise pollution because you don't really see anything in this area about it. We constantly travel over bridges, use boats, and are constantly building new things around your water ways. My goal, through my research, is to find our just how much noise we are putting into our water ways and how it is affecting the ecosystem and the animals that live in it.

one of my sound samples

Cathy CUR, Intro/Things I do not think you know, but should

Hello Everyone!!!

My name is Cathy for those of you who do not know, and I am a counting undergraduate researcher at Daytona State College. My current research project is on plastic in the Indian River Lagoon(IRL). When I originally took Dr. Woodall's oceanography class way back when my research was on copper levels in the Tomoka River. I have always been fascinated by the water ways of Florida specifically South Florida, ever scene I was a small child. I am originally from Boynton Beach, which is about three hours south of Daytona Beach. My husband and I relocated to the Daytona Beach area about a year and half ago. We moved this way because my husband, Fawaaz, is a Ph.D student at Embry Riddle, in Human Factors.

Plastic Microbeads

Plastic Pollution is a growing problem not just in our area, but across the globe. We live in a country that tends to live a fast pace, single use lifestyle. Meaning we tend not reuse items (ex: paper plates, straws, plastic bags) because that would require us to spend more time washing items and/or recycling. Another area of plastic pollution is mircobeads. Microbeads can be found in most of the personal care products that are on the market. The beads are used as a scrubbing agent in these items. Now before plastic was wildly used, soap companies used to use sand, salt, or rocks as the scrubbing agent. They stopped this practice because plastic is so cheap and easy to come by. Some companies have stopped the use of the plastic beads and gone back to their old ways. Which is a wounderful thing!!!

Some products that contain Microbeads

Why do we care about these microscopic beads we care because they are effecting our health. These plastic microbeads are on average less than 1mm in size. When we wash our face or brush our teeth with these product, we are rising the beads down our drains, which leads them into the swearer system and untimely out to the ocean. Our water treatment facility do not filter out these beads because of their size. Once the beads enter the ocean they deposit on the ocean floor, and bottom feeding fish eat the beads thinking they are food. Then the food chain comes into play and a bigger fish eats the little fish and we  as the top of this food chain eat the fish. If you do not know plastic is manufactured using chemicals that for the most part are untested or harmful to humans.

If you would like more information about mircobeads this website has been a great help in my understanding of the beads and the growing problem.

JODY'S/INTRO/FOR/OCE2905

Ever since my first deep sea fishing experience with my father and a couple of his salty dog friends at the age of 7, have I been fascinated with everything ocean. I have never forgotten the experiences of that day. Being the late 1960s well before loran (long range navigation) or gps, these guys where able to, using only a watch, tachometer, and compass find a reef marked by only a black buoy the size of a 5 gallon bucket 18 miles off shore. Well outside the visual range of the coast, not a easy feat considering wind, current and wave conditions, dynamics that could only be factored in by what is called dead reckoning. I'm still astonished by how in tune with their environment these men where and how well they were at it, we where within visual range of that buoy within 5 minutes of when they said start looking for it, even after a two and a half hour voyage.
My recollection of the Atlantic ocean around this part of Florida back then was a far cry from the one we see today because of mans negative impact on it. Not only was there considerably more visible life in the sea back then on the surface like flying fish, sea turtles, manta rays, porpoises, and whales. (as well as no plastic.) But one very rarely returned without anything in the cooler, as far as catch, like one so often will now.
This is one of the many reasons why I have a sense of duty for the Earth and its oceans which was the #1 reason for me selecting the EST program so that through this degree I might be given a chance to make a positive impact on the environment. I feel man has become out of sync with his environment and it is my goal to personally get back in tune with it. 

Intro - Samantha Edel

        We're just a conceited naked ape, but in our minds we're some divine legend and we see ourselves as some sort of god, seeing we can decide what will live and what will die, what will be saved and what will be destroyed, but honestly we're just a bunch of primates out of control.”
- Captain Paul Watson

             Florida has always been my dream.  There was not a year my family missed the beautiful sunshine state or the magical world of Disney or what was always my favorite, SeaWorld.  Ever since I can remember I was fascinated by the marine life I saw right before my eyes jumping through rings and splashing around with that grin on their face.  Lights flashing and trainers whistling, it seemed like the most amazing job in the world. 

                 However, what I failed to realize until my later years was that a dolphins’ smile is nature’s greatest deception.   No aquarium no tank, however spacious it may be can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. With this knowledge I soon began to do more research and more until finally, I became outraged.  Four years later and with a lot more knowledge I continue to study ways that we as humans effect the Earth, continental and oceanic as well as the organisms surrounding.  I would like to attain a degree in Marine Science and Geology to therefore continue research and educate others on the extreme harm humans contribute to their only form of life as we know.

Angela, CUR - The Goldilocks of Trash Collection

My name is Angela Boney and as you can see from my original introductory post, I took the OCE1001 Lab during the fall 2013 semester. Throughout this semester I plan to read your posts and hope to provide some useful feedback. My individual research project pertained to plastic debris found on Florida's beaches - since then, the effects of trash (especially plastic) in bodies of water has become a small obsession.

After completing my AA at Daytona State College, I moved to Oregon this summer, and in and around hiking, gardening, and home renovations, I've been looking for the ideal long-term floating garbage research spot: one not too far away, safe to research on my own, and the right kind of trash.

Weeding in Oregon

I specifically mention "floating" because during a garbage collection event I participated in at Alton Baker Park (12 minutes from my house) we spent our time going through homeless people's dens along the Willamette River and were told to never collect along this route on our own. The only thing we found in the water was a bag - filled with beer bottles - tethered to a tree. So, based on my criteria, the site was close enough but not the type of trash I'm looking for and potentially dangerous on my own.

McKenzie River: 1st time I've had to wear a life vest while
collecting trash.

On another day, I participated in the McKenzie Watershed Council's annual river clean up. After driving 40 minutes I knew the site along the McKenzie River was too far gas budget wise, but due to strong currents and slippery rocks it also turned out to be too dangerous on my own, however it had the ideal type of trash: Styrofoam cups, plastic utensils, straws, broken pieces of plastic, fishing bobbers and tons of fishing line - all items that could wash down river and eventually into the ocean.

Beach in Florence, OR

As my list of imperfect river trash collection sites has been growing longer while I'm looking for the one that is just right, I did of course drive the hour and twenty minutes to the closest beach (which a true Oregonian calls a coast). Other than one lonely plastic food storage container rolling along with the wind, Florence's beach is rather a graveyard for washed ashore logs than a trash collection site.

In addition to finding the ideal research site, eventually gaining employment, and continuing home renovations, I'm also biding my time until I qualify for in-state tuition at University of Oregon. I'm debating between the Chemistry and the General Science program, the latter would allow me to take a myriad of courses in Biology, Chemistry, as well as ones pertaining to the Environment.