Stephanie Guyotte, UR- Fishy business

Gambierdiscus dinoflagellates ( from google)

Gambierdiscus dinoflagellates (from google)

After searching our Daytona State library one article titled "Epidemiology of Ciguatera in Florida" stood out. In this article the authors discuss their methods and results of searching out ciguatera cases in Florida. Their methods included sending out surveys to fishermen and people who could have had possible cases of ciguatera poisoning. From the study they gathered the following information from the people who could have had ciguatera; county of residence, age, gender, race and ethnicity, origin of fish, and case notes on fish meal. Then asked if they experienced any of the following symptoms during their bout with possible food poisoning (I say food poisoning because people commonly think that they only have food poisoning when it could really be ciguatera poisoning); “Have you ever experienced vomiting and/or diarrhea combined with numbness around the mouth or hands, or weakness in the legs, or reversal of hot and cold sensations after eating saltwater fish?” (and other questions).  From this they were able to categorize the ciguatera Vs. the food poisoning cases and where the fish may have come from and what type of fish it was. The article also mentions the link between Gambierdiscus dinoflagellates and how growth rates might be expected as water temperatures increase. While this article takes a different scientific approach of a survey then what I plan on doing with a collect and sample method, this article proves that the Gambierdiscus dinoflagellates are in Florida (and provides ample amounts of information). So now its up to me to try and find them!

Most common three fish types consumed in ciguatera outbreaks reported to FDOH by ethnicity

Type of fish	Confirmed outbreaks* (FDOH reports)		Likely and possible cases (fishermen survey)
	Hispanic n (%)	Non-Hispanic n (%)	Hispanic n (%)	Non-Hispanic n (%)
Barracuda	29 (76)	3 (7)	10 (24)	19 (9)
Grouper	4 (11)	26 (58)	6 (14)	70 (34)
Amberjack	0	7 (16)	4 (10)	12 (6)
Other	5 (13)	9 (20)	22 (52)	102 (50)
P value	< 0.0001		0.007

Reference:    
Radke, E. G., Reich, A., & Morris, J. G. (2015). Epidemiology of Ciguatera in Florida. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 93(2), 425–432. http://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.14-0400  

Kelly-Ann UR - Making the Right Choices

     When preforming any kind of quantitative analysis, it is important to know how precise you need your data to be, as well as any time and cost constraints that you may have.  Ideally, you would always want to be precise as possible.  However, generally speaking, more precise methods tend to cost more and take more time.  
     Fortunately, my research revolves around nitrate in freshwater bodies.  Determining the level of nitrate in water is something that multiple analytical techniques can accomplish.  I will have the luxury of choosing one that best fits my precision needs while staying within my constraints for this project.
     Nitrate levels can be determined rather quickly, in less than ten minutes after the sample has been prepared, using voltammetry.  This process uses a copper-modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE).  To prepare the sample for this method the sample should be filtered if there is a high level of turbidity and the pH should be adjusted to 1 using sulfuric acid.  Reagents of potassium chloride and copper (II) sulfate are added to the sample as well.  This method has a detection range of 10 to 300 μM.
     Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy can also be used to determine nitrate levels in a water sample.  Spectroscopy looks at absorption patters in a series of dilutions of a single sample.  Samples must be thoroughly filtered before analysis.  This method requires more equipment than the GCE, however, it has a longer range of detection (1-00mg/L).

The Ion-Exchange Method

     Yet another method for analyzing nitrate levels in freshwater is the ion-exchange method.  This is one of the most widely used methods due to its high level of reliability and accuracy.  There are six steps to this method: pretreatment, extraction, elution, neutralization, removal of interfering ions, and drying for stable isotope analysis.  Although precise, this process is both lengthy and costly.
     The methods I have covered for quantitative nitrate analysis in freshwater samples are only three of many.  Before I make a decision on which method I am going to use for my analysis I need to determine if any of the equipment I will need is already available for me.  

Works Cited

• Gajaraj, S., Fan, C., Lin, M., & Hu, Z. (2013). Quantitative detection of nitrate in water and wastewater by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Environ Monit Assess. doi:10.1007/s10661-012-2975-4
• Li, W., Song, Y., Xu, H., Chen, L., Dai, W., & Dong, M. (2015). Ion-exchange method in the collection of nitrate from freshwater ecosystems for nitrogen and oxygen isotope analysis. Enviornmental Science and Pollution Research, 2213, 9575-9588. doi:10.1007/s11356-015-4522-7
• Luo, X., Wu, J., & Ying, Y. (2013). Voltammetric detection of nitrate in water sample based on in situ copper-modified electrode. Ionics, 19(8), 1171-1177. doi:10.1007/s11581-012-0839-0

Christian Vinciquerra UR, Seining 101

I hope everyone had a great week and found some sort of water source to take a sample from! On February 10th, our lab was lucky to have the Marine Science Center's, Special Projects Coordinator, Chad Macfie. Chad went over what our lab on February 17th will basically cover and the procedures of completing it. He showed us what a seine net is, what are its purposes, and how to use one. He also taught us how to use a dichotomous key for fish identification. The way it works is it asks you a question with two choices and depending on your previous answers, the key will narrow down the fish until you find the one you’re looking for. Luckily for me I had the opportunity to use both seine nets and dichotomous keys at Seacamp over the summer for experiments so I have some basic knowledge of the expectations to come Friday morning. Along with showing us fish seining methods, we were given some important terminology that is often used in marine biology such as fish stock, population, recruitment, maximum sustainable yield, optimal yield, catch per unit effort, and catch per unit area. All the terms having an important meaning that help scientists monitor the fish populations and allow them to regulate species numbers for fisherman.  With the terminology came the numbers that must be recorded along with the research we’re collecting. Much of the data we are recording is math based and will take some time to analyze and calculate.

Relationship between CPUE and CPUA
            from recent lab experiments in Ponce Inlet

          Our assignment this week was to create a graph from the data that recent labs collected doing the same exact experiment in the same locations. For mine I chose to see if there was a correlation between the CPUE and CPUA. As you can see in my graph, there is a positive relationship between the two with a R² value of 0.88967.  This graph shows that as more fish are caught per minute, there are more fish in one squared meter. There are two outliers. One is 524 CPUE with a CPUA of 2.4. The other is 273 CPUE and 2.1 CPUA.

Casie UR - Good, Bad and Ugly

After doing some research on the Water Hyacinth I have discovered several disturbing and unusual facts.  The first thing is that this weed is on the quarantine list. The second is that though it is rather harmful to the environment it can be used for some incredible things. I would first like to tell you about the negative impacts that the Water Hyacinth has on the environment. The Water Hyacinth threatens biodiversity by out-competing other indigenous plants and by doing this it disrupts the natural ecosystem of the area that it is effecting. With global temperatures on the rise it allows this weed to grow more rapidly. The Water Hyacinth also causes oxygen depletion in the water that it lives in. When the weed dies, it decomposes and therefore decreases oxygen. This weed clogs water ways and can cause floods. It can also disrupt any recreational activities in the area. There have been many attempts to get rid of this invasive weed. Environmentalist and other individuals have tried pulling out the weed by using machinery, chemicals have been used and biological methods were implemented. All the no avail. The weed grows so rapidly that we simply cannot keep up with its propagation. The seeds are viable for up to 20 years (Patel, S. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol (2012)).

Researchers have instead shifted their idea of how to get rid of this weed to what can it be used for. There are many things that this weed can do for the water. The Water Hyacinth has an affinity toward heavy metals and it will decrease the amount of heavy metal in the water. It can be used to filter and treat waste water and can be used in dye removal. The Water Hyacinth can be used as a food source and to create bio-fuel.  There have been studies using the Water Hyacinth in domestic water purification (Patel, S. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol (2012)).

Although this weed is encroaching on the environment and causing many disturbing problems there are ways in which we can use it to help our own economic concerns. 

(Patel, S. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol (2012))

 Patel, Seema. "Threats, Management and Envisaged Utilizations of Aquatic Weed Eichhornia Crassipes: An Overview." Reviews in Environmental Science and Bio/Technology 11.3 (2012): 249-59. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.

Monica Barrick, UR- There ain't no sunshine when she's gone

There seems to be many experiments done to see how the angle of the solar panel effects the performance. Conclusions are similar, stating the relationship between optimum tilt angle and the geographic latitude was confirmed. The tilt angles always differed drastically between winter and summer months. The swing angle of the sun is also a very important parameter for calculating the maximum power of that time of the day. The sun is where all the crazy math comes in, I don't think I'll have have to do these equations because they are already done for me but I will see/give examples. Now, both of these experiments were done at different locations, the only difference of my experiment will be the size of the solar panels and I will have different results since my latitude/longitude location is different. It will also be conducted during the winter months instead of the summer. Methods and materials will not be as dramatic as the other experiments, one actually used a "sun simulator" which I will be using the actually sun.

Here is an example of equations to determine angles of the sun and solar panel (I am not sure what this means yet but I will try my best to go the extra mile!)

λ = ∠EAB − ∠DAB as ∠EAB = 90◦

∠BAC = 180◦ − (φ + αs),  ∠DAB = 180◦ − ∠BAC (winter situation)

I am not able to use the graphs on the website due to copy right but here is an example of what my graph could look like.

GRAPH LINK I will only be comparing Volts to the angle of 3 different solar panels.

Bibliography:

Sethi, V., Sumathy, K., Yuvarajan, S., & Pal, D. (2014). Maximum power output of a solar PV module at various latitudes as influenced by the swing angle of the sun. International Journal Of Sustainable Energy, 33(3), 500-505.doi:10.1080/14786451.2012.761219

 

Calabrò, E. (2009). Determining optimum tilt angles of photovoltaic panels at typical north-tropical latitudes. Journal Of Renewable & Sustainable Energy, 1(3), 033104. doi:10.1063/1.3148272

Dylan Radford UR, Lab Gets Interesting!

Hello class! Our previous class session was a lot more fun than the last. I have never been exposed to the way a marine biologist conducts his research like I was on Friday. Chad Macfie from the Ponce Inlet, Marine Discovery center came to talk to us about the lab that we would be participating in during the next class session. The labs purpose is to basically compute the number or abundance of fish in the Area . I am not a fisher man and I have really only fished about 10 times in my entire life so I'm not too familiar with fish biology and their identification methods. Because I didn't have much Knowledge on this it made it more interesting to see the different ways to ID a fish species by looking at its fins, Mouth, shape and teeth. Another point that I thought was awesome about Chad's presentation was when he explained the sein net technique for when we are capturing the fish. I had never seen a net quit like this, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how my lab partners and I try to control this net. The next part of the presentation was about recording your information and using it for a graph. There is a lot of information that needs to be recorded so it looked pretty overwhelming at first. After he had explain what all of it meant we used the information collected from previous years in a graph. This is the graph that I made for the information we were given.

My Graph For Previous Information

The purpose of my graph was to see how the Catch Per Unit Effort(CPUE) for changed over time in both the Mangrove and Ponce areas. From my graph I can tell that for three out of the five years the test was ran Mangrove had a higher catch per unit effort than Ponce but on the other hand, Mangroves results were more scattered where in Ponce you can see there is a positive trend. I cant wait to conduct the experiment myself and create a new graph showing different results. This will be my first lab experiment that I have ever done at DSC so I am excited and a little nervous that I will fall behind but I wont know until we go for it!

Lyle UR We struck PLASTIC

This week has been a great week for me and for science. On Saturday I went out and gathered some samples for my research from four different sites in the Inter-coastal water way. It was a beautiful day out on the water. It was about 10:30 by the time I got out there which was good because it was on an outgoing tide and when gathering oysters it is easier to reach them when the tide is out.

Me at the first sampling site

I had to wait until Wednesday to actually get into the lab and get a first glimpse of the oysters under a microscope. Dr. Woodall had set me up with the microscope and an extra light to make sure that I could see soemthing if there was anything unusual in my sample. Dr. Woodall didn't think that I would find spherical micro beads, she thought if anything I would find micro fibers (MF) if anything. Well about Ten minutes into looking at an oyster under the microscope, EUREKA,  I found a piece of what I thought might be a MF. I called for Dr. Woodall to come to take a look and she got so excited that I really had found one. After the excitement calmed down a little bit we got the MF over to the computer that way we could get a photograph of it. I still can not believe that I found MF in the oyster. Oh, and I didn't just find one piece of MF, I found Seven pieces in the one oyster.I could not be any happier and sad at the same time right now. Happy that I actually found something but kind of sad that there is MF in our beautiful waters. There is still so much work that needs to be done after finding this. This was also only the first site that I had sampled. I still have three other sites that I sampled from and I am expecting the same results from those sites.

The first MF found!!!!!!!!