SoundHAB: Looking for bloom water

[Stephanie Moore]

I would like to enlist your help in finding some Alexandrium and
Heterosigma bloom water to conduct laboratory experiments for two
different projects this year.

The first project is funded by Washington Sea Grant and is a sister
project to the PS-AHAB project that is funded by NOAA ECOHAB
(www.tiny.cc/psahab). We are looking for Alexandrium bloom water so
that we can determine the mandatory dormancy period of newly formed
cysts (we successfully trialed a method to coax vegetaive cells into
producing resting cysts last month using bloom water from
Quartermaster Harbor). The mandatory dormancy period is the
"maturation" time for cysts. During this time, cysts cannot germinate
even if environmental conditions are favorable. The mandatory dormancy
period could be as little as a few weeks or as much as 6 months. We
will determine this time period in the laboratory and will also
determine if it differs with temperature.

The second project is a new collaborative effort with the MBARI.
During June and July this year, we successfully deployed a new
biosensor in Friday Harbor called the Environmental Sample Processor.
More about the ESP can be seen in this you tube video:
http://youtu.be/zqNLiKy8nl8. Before the deployment this year, we
created a quick standard curve for Heterosigma using culture in the
labortaory. We would like to collect natural bloom water and recreate
the standard curves for both Alexandrium and Heterosigma. We believe
this will give us a more accurate curve to estimate cell abundances.

Please contact me if you find blooms of these critters. I will reward
you with a PS-AHAB hoodie for helping us out :-)

Thanks in advance and I hope you are all enjoying your summer,

Steph
stephanie.moore at noaa.gov
206.860.3327