Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Intertidal Times. Today is the second day of operation Sea Grant Ocean Summer Science Internship 2012. Yesterday we got started off with a bang. The team assembled at MIT at 9 o’clock sharp for introductions and to talk about the project we will be undertaking over the next four weeks, sampling and collecting data on The Boston Harbor Islands. Our team consists of our fearless leader, Kate, and the interns; Jeffrey, Pavlina, Carolann and myself (Isabelle.) After getting to know each we jumped right into the wilds of taxonomy in an effort to prepare ourselves for those species that we might encounter in the field. Tunicates, Arthropods, Copepods, and algae were discussed at length and the probability of finding each species during our sampling was calculated before we broke for lunch. After lunch Kate decided that it would be inhumane to make us identify different species of barnacles on a full stomach, so she whisked us off for a field trip down to Rowes Wharf on the Boston Harbor. 

For those of you who may not have noticed it is the Forth of July this week, which means that Boston is packed with people from around the country here to partake in our festivities and revel in our history. We managed to wend our way, without getting lost or run over by large groups of tourists, towards the waterfront to the research vessel The Song of The Whale. Kate has recently come back from a cruise aboard The Song of The Whale where she was tracking and listening to Right Whales. We were invited aboard to take a look around. The vessel was in a state of uproar since the crew is readying her to depart on a cruise to Iceland following the whales as they go. Jake, a crew member of The Song of The Whale and a friend of Kate’s, showed us around the boat; We got to see the hydrophones that they use to listen to whale songs and Jake talked to us about the different frequencies that whales use to communicate with each other and the properties of sound underwater.

Then it was on to the Lobster Lab at the New England Aquarium where we got a tour and learned about lobster shell disease and how what a lobster eats can effect its shell color. We also got to she the jelly culture lab, where they breed jellyfish, and the Right Whale research facility, where they conduct assays on whale fecal matter to detect stress hormones. Afterwards we walked around the Aquarium for awhile and looked at the fur seals and visited the sharks and rays. After an exhausting but informative and fun day we made our way back to MIT to collect our stuff excited about the next four weeks of marine science.

Yay science!

-Isabelle

Holding lobsters at the lab.

European Lobster. While believed not to get shell rot as badly as the American Lobster, the European Lobster gets it even worse.

Blue American Lobster.

An albino American Lobster. Researchers feed these lobsters a special diet to keep them white because it is easier to detect shell disease on white lobsters than on colored ones.