Höfn

Dinoflagellates! These bizarre microorganisms are found all over the ocean, and occasionally freshwater lakes and ponds. Some are photosynthetic, some are predators, some are both! They are also the plankton responsible for toxic red tides. 

The first two pictures show Pyrocystis dinoflagellates.  These are closely related to the dinoflagellates that bioluminesce a bright blue along coastal waters. In the top picture, you can see a cell dividing its nucleus into two, as well as some sort of protective cyst in the lower right corner.

The 3rd picture is a bloom of Gymnodinium dinoflagellates, and the last picture is a close-up. See the nucleus?

More neat facts: some dinoflagellates have 215 billion base pairs in their genome. For comparison, the human genome is made up of about 3 billion base pairs! No one really knows why they have so much DNA, most of which is heavily modified and wrapped with re-purposed virus proteins. 

As it is Halloween here’s a still unsolved natural mystery.

Located in Judge C.R. Magney State Park, Minnesota, there is an unsolved geological mystery nicknamed The Devil’s Kettle. Mid way along the Brule River that runs through the Park the river splits in two to go around an outcrop of rhyolite. Here’s where it gets interesting, the split flows produce 2 waterfalls along side each other. The eastern flow drops around 15m (50ft) into a pool and continues off down stream. The western flow however drops 3m (10ft) into a pothole disappearing underground.

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Phytoplankton (Coccolithophore) bloom!

Phytoplankton bloom in the Bay of Biscay.

The waters off the western coast of France show swirls of green and turquoise as a result of a phytoplankton bloom associated with increasing springtime temperatures.

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Preparing to return home

Mixed Feelings  

Looking forward

Experiences

I can’t believe that in less than two days, my semester abroad will be over and I’ll be headed back to the United States. At this point, there are things that I miss about the U.S. and I am looking forward to go back, but on the other hand, there are also things that I do not miss. Likewise, there are lots of things that I will miss about Costa Rica (food, host family, etc..) but there are also other things that I am ready to leave behind.  

I’m in the middle of my finals week and past the worst part. I’ve been ready to be done with classes for a while, especially after seeing friends from home finishing the semester a month ago. I am also ready to start my REU (like an internship for science students) that I have been figuring out the logistics of since mid-March. However, this means that I will be home for less than 24 hours before I leave (I live in South Central Pennsylvania and my REU is in Rhode Island), which means that I have barely any time to spend with my family and pets.  

I’ve had so many experiences abroad that I don’t even know where to begin to articulate them to family and friends. And you can only understand some of them if you were here to experience them for yourself. Throughout, I’ve gotten more comfortable with public transportation, which barely exists at home, and is one thing that I will miss but will be difficult to convey to my family since if we want to go somewhere at home, we just drive there ourselves. While it’s more convenient, it is also so nice to know that if you do a bit a research, you can get to just about anywhere in Costa Rica by bus. I’m also much more comfortable with Spanish after spending a little more than four months here.

In sum, I will miss Costa Rica and hope that I can come back in the not so distant future. I will miss my host family and friends.

That was rather impressive

Blooms in the Baltic

Every summer, phytoplankton – microscopic plant-like organisms – spread across the North Atlantic, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles. Nutrient-rich, cooler waters tend to promote more growth among marine plants and phytoplankton than is found in tropical waters. Blooms this summer off Scandinavia seem to be particularly intense.

On July 18, 2018, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired a natural-color image of a swirling green phytoplankton bloom in the Gulf of Finland, a section of the Baltic Sea. Note how the phytoplankton trace the edges of a vortex; it is possible that this ocean eddy is pumping up nutrients from the depths.

Though it is impossible to know the phytoplankton type without sampling the water, three decades of satellite observations suggest that these green blooms are likely to be cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), an ancient type of marine bacteria that capture and store solar energy through photosynthesis (like plants).

In recent years, the proliferation of algae blooms in the Baltic Sea has led to the regular appearance of “dead zones” in the basin. Phytoplankton and cyanobacteria consume the abundant nutrients in the Baltic ¬and deplete the oxygen. According to researchers from Finland’s University of Turku, the dead zone this year is estimated to span about 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles).

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2uLK4aZ

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Marine Life of the Maritime Provinces, Canada

After months of work and waiting, here is at long last the full MARS commission. MARS (Marine Animal Response Society) is active in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and is called upon whenever a marine creature is found dead or in distress. These illustrations will be used to educate their volunteers and assist in making species identifications during strandings or at sea.

With 42 separate illustrations, this is my largest project to date - quite a load of work! But it was an absolute pleasure to do. I got to paint animals I have never painted before, as well as revisit some old friends. The diversity of species found in this one area is impressive and made for varied painting.

I’m pretty pleased seeing them all together like this, and I hope you’ll enjoy them too! 

The Ghost, Craig Parry’s photo of the famed white whale Migaloo won first place in the underwater world category at the 2017 Golden Turtle International Photography Competition in Moscow this week.