MCC's Marine Biology Study Ablog 2024

  Students had the opportunity to take part in a long-term monitoring project of intertidal diversity with CEDO researchers at a sandy beach site out front of Playa bonita.  CEDO researchers introduced students to Quadrat sampling, a classic research method used in ecology to study biodiversity.  Students were asked to identify, count, and record all species within quadrats placed along 30 meter transects along the beach.  It is tedious work sometimes - ask about how many red-fingered hermit crabs they had to count in some of their quadrats!  But nonetheless very valuable research, as this research helps to promote beach certifications here in Puerto Penasco.  Please ask your friend or loved one how beach certifications are helping to encourage developers to play a part in maintaining some of the amazing intertidal biodiversity Puerto Penasco has to offer.    

 Yesterday (5/27/24) at 9:30am we came across a guitar fish or a ' Rhinobatidae', its a  cartilaginous fish, similar to a ray or skate .  Although it was dead it was a cool sight given we just caught and observed a string ray. These two creatures look alike and have very similar features, but they are drastically different. Guitar fish are known for their elongated body with a flattened head on trunk, and small wings. They are endangered at a global level, they migrate seasonally to give birth so they are vulnerable to fishing activities. Common guitarfish mostly eat fish and invertebrates, like mollusks and crustaceans. The common guitarfish live in shallow, sandy, and muddy habitats, this is why we found this particular one at Cholla Bay. Guitar have many other threats other than fisheries, they are mostly captured for their fins to meet high demand for shark fins.  As said previously guitarfish are a group of skates, which are most commonly confused with stingrays. The most

  On Friday, we attended a lecture held by Paloma about marine mammals. In the lecture, Paloma told us about the great biodiversity in the Sea of Cortez and the different kinds of mammals found in the sea. Mammals like Sperm Whales, Pygmy Sperm Whales, Blue Whales, Humpback Whales, Fin Whales, Gray Whales, Sea Lions, False/Killer Whales, and perhaps one of the most interesting and trajic is the Vaquita.  The Vaquita is a type of "toothed" whale (as seen in the attached picture the jaw bone of the whale) that is only found in the Sea of Cortez. It is relatively small at about 1.5 meters in length. One of the most trajic facts about the Vaquita is that there is only about 10-12 individuals in the Sea of Cortez due to over fishing and dangerous gilnet entanglement.  There has been many unsuccessful attempts to preserve the Vaquita and possibly bring the population back up. Paloma told us about the newborn Vaquita that had washed ashore barely alive. The baby was brought to CEDO

Throughout the week we got to experience many different forms of life. Some of these forms of life are so small, or in such weird places that you wouldn’t even expect them to be alive. There were several different organisms that we found living on top of other organisms.  Epibiota is life that is living on top of life. This could be algae growing on top of a clam, or barnacles growing on a hermit crab shell. This picture is of algae with bryozoans living on top of it. When I first saw this I would have just assumed that it was salt or maybe the color of the algae, but I learned that it is actually a living organism on top of the algae. Each tiny hole in the white substance has a little organism living in it that will pop out to feed.  While this shell is not currently living, it might have once been a part of epibiota. You can see that the inside of the shell has spaghetti-like squiggles all over it. These are from tube worms that will create a casing on a hard surface to live in. Ther

 The last major event that was listed for the itinerary was something I was definitely looking forward to the most, which was going to the Isla San Jorge, also known as bird island. This was because I not only would be riding a boat for the first time, but I'd also be snorkeling with Sea Lions! It took us to get there by boat for around an hour, and did a monitoring survey of how many sea lions were either cubs/pups, or got entangled with netting, whether it'd be on the head or the tail. After this, we spent a while in the ocean with our snorkeling gear and struggled with swimming properly because of the waves. We made sure to keep our distance by at least 20 feet since the male sea lions get extremely territorial, but the female sea lions were the complete opposite. They would come in groups of around five or more and would come up to us very closely, while swimming right below us and then coming back up again, just so they could get a reaction out from us, which worked.  The

 This morning we went tide pooling at Cholla Bay, which is also known as The Mudflats. The first characteristic of this area is the long stretch of mud and shells covering the beach. It’s still crazy to me that during high tide all of this covered. Molluscs are seen everywhere here, you hear crunching as you walk because we are stepping on tons of their little shells. Some molluscs we saw were moon snails, cone snails and pen shells. We haven’t yet identified one the first creature we came across, it might be a burrowing sand anemone.  We also came across two more octopuses, the specific types being a Pygmy (the one with the eggs hatching) and Fitch. These octopuses were found in clam shells, they can crawl into these small spaces because they don’t have bones. They also have the ability to close the clam shell, showing how intelligent and agile these creatures are. When it comes to finding octopuses, Whitney seems to be the one to go to because she is 3 for 3 on all the octopuses we h

  Today, we visited a mudflat in Cholla Bay when the ocean pulled back. In this mudflat, we found many clams, shells, crabs, scallops, cockerels, a stingray, and two octopi! The entire mudflat was covered in the current and previous homes of many crabs and mollusks. One of the most famous of the mollusks found today was the Moonsnails.  The mudflats are home to many creatures! The most exciting find of the day was a Pygmy Octopus covering up her eggs. Upon retrieval of the critter, the eggs began to hatch! Tons of tiny pygmy octopus flew out of the mother's home shell. As shown in the video attached, the mother protected her young and they continued to hatch all around her and swim around the container.  A pygmy octopus can be found on muddy beaches along the shore. Oftentimes they are hiding under debris, trash, clam shells, rocks, and any empty containers around. Todays octomom was found inside an empty bivalve and her small black eggs were lay in the same area. Pygmy octopus are

  5/25

 Today, Sunday the 26th we went out the Cholla bay to go tide pooling. On this adventure we experienced a went sand that resembles mud with minimal hard surface areas. When first entering the estuary we had to climb down a few rocks but then was really only surrounded by this flat almost muddy area. In the sand we really did not see much as without a hard surface there is no where the organism is able to attach itself or hide for shelter. There was some rocks here and there and a lot of clam shells where I found most of the life in cholla bay. So it is life living or within other animals that are no longer with us. Their shells are repurposed into a shelter to keep the living growing within the bay. Towards the end of us exploring the flats we came across a stingray! Now the ray was quite small but non the less intimidating if you were unsure of its barb. This little ray did not seem to have a barb, this could be due to the ray loosing it when defending itself, but alas this is somethi

 Right as you pull up to the CEDO parking lot you can see this huge whale skeleton staring back at you. It is a Fin Whale Skeleton or ' Balaenopte ra physalus ' which is a species of baleen whale, and the second largest cetacean after the blue whale. Fin whales are usually around 61-66ft and 100,000 lbs, which is a little longer than a ten-pin bowling lane. Fin whales are found all around the world in deep oceans but are mainly found in the northern hemisphere. The fin whale gets its name from the easy-to-spot fin on its back near its tail. Fin whales were hunted for quite a while by  commercial fishers, for their baleen, oil, and meat. For many years street lamps were the burning fat of whales. This is why their population has been severely lowered and is listed as endangered in the Northern Atlantic.   You may be wondering how this amazing creature ended up dead and saved by the CEDO team. One day in 1984 along the Northern Gulf of California a fin whale ended up in the shall

  While tide pooling on the beach next to CEDO one of my classmates found a fancy looking clam that I had never even heard of before. It looked like it had no shell and a lot of hair like structures extending out around the edges of its opening. These structures are sticky tentacles that are used to filter feed. I didn’t know much about clams, and have definitely never seen a clam move around before. This clam has a small muscular foot that can help move it around as well as anchor onto objects.  This is definitely the prettiest and most unique clam that I have ever seen! -Amber:)

  Today we went kayaking in the Morua estuary in Puerto Peñasco. Some of us had never kayaked before so it was a new experience. Learning to kayak wasn’t as difficult as I thought, and I’m very proud of myself for not falling into the water! An estuary is a body of water that is partially enclosed by land. This is an important area for animals to use to breed and hatch their young. The water is brackish, which means that it is salt water, but the salt water from the ocean is mixed with freshwater from a river that is flowing into it. We learned that this particular estuary that we were in no longer had the freshwater from the river flowing into it. The CEDO biologist told us that the river water dried up about 15 years ago and now the estuary has a very high salinity. The average salinity of the ocean is 35, while this particular estuary had a salinity of about 80.  We stopped in the marshy part of the estuary and there were fiddler crabs EVERYWHERE on the shores. Fiddler crabs are a s

 The second tide pool that we visited was an intertidal beach next to the busy streets of the city of Puerto Penasco, while having it covered with large, steep rocks and boulders. Even though this was quite difficult to walk across, stumbling and falling a few times, it's the ideal hiding place for smaller organisms to crawl around and rest while not getting noticed and hunted by larger predators. A few examples of these that we had found are the sea urchin, bristle sea star, twin spotted octopus, and the sea hare. When I sat down after attempting not to fall and eat the numerous rocks, I noticed a large rock with what appeared to be some form of a tiny mollusk, with almost the same type of foot as a snail, but had a bumpy back that wasn't covered by a shell. I didn't recognize what it was, and even my instructors couldn't figure out what it was. After the search, we went a little farther away from the research facility where we were staying at and went kayaking at De M

 Today, we encountered the shells of several types of bivalve mollusks at Cholla Bay. We saw examples of these animals in both the estuary and mixed intertidal environments. These four shells below belong to the bivalves scallop, clam, mussel, and cockle. These animals are filter feeders and attach themselves to hard surfaces or bury themselves in the sand. They are in the phylum Mollusca and the class Bivavlia, which means two-valves. They live within the two shells of calcium carbonate, which they secrete from their mantle. The shells are held together by the adductor muscle, which allows the bivalve to open and close its shell. The oyster shell was especially pretty inside due to the presence of the nacre, which is the "mother of pearl." What amazing creatures! -Candace Hickey

On our kayaking trip through an estuary, we encountered the intertidal animal, the Fiddler crab. The male crabs have an enlarged cheliped that serves no useful function other than to attract females. The larger the cheliped, the more attractive it is to the female. This physical difference between the male and the female is called sexual dimorphism. Fiddler crabs are in the phylum Arthropoda. This phylum is characterized by its jointed limbs and exoskeleton made of chitin. We were able to visualize the old exoskeletons the crabs molted in order to grow larger. Their highly developed sensory organs helped them to be aware of our presence and caused them to continuously move away from us. Candace Hickey

 This morning on the 26th we went out to Chola Bay, this area was really special, the slope of the land is very gradual so when low tide occurs the water goes very far out, exposing a lot of surface. The terrain was mostly sand with some larger rocks dispersed throughout. Here we found a lot of marine animals, the land was littered with hermit crabs and shells to a degree that you couldn't help but step on them in order to get around. We found a lot of snails, clams, murex, gorgonians, fiddler crabs and blue crabs. Our professor Whitney H. found two blue crabs mating under a rock she flipped over, this time they were actually mating as one was female and the other male, unlike our interesting crab find on the first day of tide pooling, we could tell this because of the pattern of their ventral side. Some our most exciting finds were made here, among them, an eel, pigmy octopus, and I was lucky enough to find a sting ray, which the group was able to catch. One of the pigmy octopus w

 Today, we got to see several examples of Echinoderms. We saw an Urchin, a Sun Star, and several types of Brittle Star. These animals were identified as echinoderms because they had radial symmetry and an endoskeleton. They also had the classic "spiny skin" for which the phylum is named.  We were able to visualize the way the seastar uses its water vascular system to walk as we watched the Sun Seastar's tubule feet suction onto our hands and move about in the specimen container. We found them among the basalt boulders and mixed substrate in the intertidal area near downtown Puerto Penasco. These amazing animals were found mostly between intertidal zones 3 and 4. We knew this because we saw a couple of clusters of a specific type of Anemone resembling Cheerios that belong in zone 4. -Candace Hickey  

  Cholla Bay was our last area that we studied it is an intertidal estuary. The sea was incredibly far out during low tide it would take like 5-10 minute to walk from the sea at low tide to the area that the sea will be at high tide. It was a very muddy kind of texture walking. At first all I saw was just millions upon millions of snails they were literally everywhere. We could not find anything for a good while that was until we found an octopus that sealed itself in a clam shell. When we opened the clam shell the octopus was guarding its eggs. They immediately started hatching though which we assume is due to a stress response due to the fact that they should have hatched at high tide instead. As seen in the picture you can see the baby octopuses which are honestly very adorable, you can even see their little tentacles. Afterwards we were able to find another octopus in another clam shell, we did have to pry it open because the octopus was holding it shut. As we were planning on maki

 Today we learned more about how different marine mammals adapt to their environment. Specifically how whales adapt to their different ecosystems.and environments. They have adapted to their environment in these different ways: - blubber - hydrodynamic body shape - modified circulatory system - muscles with myoglobin - flexible ribs (water pressure) - able to produce a high frequency of sound (communication) Blubber helps the whales minimize heat loss, this is especially important for whales in cold places. In addition, helping the whale with buoyancy.  Hydrodynamic body shape helps the whales move swiftly and easily in and throughout different water currants. Specifically, a streamlined body shape delays the separation of flow, creates lower drag when they swim, and therefore decreases their locomotor cost. . Modified circulatory system This circulatory system helps to maintain body temperature, dissipate body heat,  A modified circulatory system is used to maintain, adjust, or conser