Muscles needed for gathering Mussels!

Chrissy (front) and Brenda (yellow pants) searching for mussels.

Photo by Allison Gravis

Today Chrissy, Brenda and I gathered mussels at the Port Townsend boat haven. The warm weather made it quite enjoyable...almost as fun as wearing the rubber pants! We found a variety of beautiful mussels to attach to the pilings in one of our tanks. We also gathered some giant tube worms and a variety of chitons and limpets. I hope you are as excited as I am to see the Marine Exhibit re-open this April!

Collection Day

We spent the later part of Wednesday at North Beach collecting beautiful rocks and searching for interesting critters to put in our tanks before re-opening in April. Chrissy and Keith volunteered to snorkel despite the cold temperatures and low visibility. Liza, Cheqa (our high school intern) and I hobbled along the rocky shoreline as the tide slowly came back in. While assisting our snorkeling team we searched for crabs, limpets, chitons, unique snails, nudibranchs and other small animals under rocks.

Cheqa found a feather boa attached to a rock that will be a great addition to one of our tanks. The snorkeling team also found a Sea Lemon Nudibranch and some rocks encrusted with sponge for it to feed on! We will collect again before we re-open in April and could use 1 or 2 volunteers to help carry the heavy buckets!

The other animals we collected will remain a mystery until you visit on opening weekend in April!

Allie and Liza collecting chitons.

Cheqa our wonderful high school intern.

Cheqa holding a feather boa!

All pictures were taken by Jason Green.

Sunflower Star Treat

Last Tuesday, during Home Crew, we were lucky enough to see a sunflower star eating! Those of you who know sunflower stars know that it is rare to see these many-legged critters feeding, as they don't often show their underside to an audience. Luckily I had my camera, and took this video for all to see. Enjoy!


Press play button to view video.

Sound Toxins

Today Chris MacLachlan came in to look at plankton under the microscope on her day off due to an algal bloom in the water! She, like many other Citizen Science Volunteers (well trained community members that help with scientific research), spend time helping the Marine Science Center gather baseline data for an ongoing research project to monitor toxic phytoplankton in the Puget Sound for NOAA. PTMSC has three different sampling sites: Mystery Bay, the PTMSC dock and the Maritime Center. Volunteers measure: dissolved oxygen, salinity, temperature and environmental data. From Spring to Fall our Sound Toxin volunteers look at both whole water samples and concentrated plankton net tows under the microscope to see if toxic algae are present, do cell counts and preserve samples to send for further research by NOAA. This will later get processed to see if the toxins are staying in the cells or if they are leaching out in the the water. We hope that overtime this baseline data will help show if there is a correlation between environmental conditions and the levels of toxic plankton in the Puget Sound.

Chris MacLachlan has been with the Marine Science Center for over 10 years and has been helping with the Sound Toxins project for over 3 1/2 years. She said she never considered herself an invertebrate research type of person...but PTMSC has gotten the best of her!

Thank you to all of our volunteers, we wouldn't be the organization we are without your support.

Photo by Allison Gravis



Chris MacLachlan in our Lab! Photo by Allison Gravis



Alexandrium catenella. Photo by Jan Rines.




Pseudo-Nitzschia australis. Photo by Brian Bill.

The Legacy of Plastic

Over the last few weeks that the Natural History Exhibit has been open, I've heard some visitors say that they miss our temporary plastics exhibit that we had up until last fall. So, for those of you who miss the shocking message, I'm posting this video of a talk given by Captain Charles Moore. Captain Moore is the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Some of the images used in our exhibit were from his research team.



Can you think of some ways that you can reduce your use of plastic?

Orcas on Hydrophone!

I know I write about orcas on the hydrophones a lot, but... Go to OrcaSound.net right now, click on "Listen to OrcaSound on San Juan Island" (works on RealPlayer, iTunes, WinAmp), and hear some of our resident orcas! I hear at least J pod and, thanks to MarineTraffic.com, the cargo ship, Star of Sawara.

PTMSC on King 5 News

As I reported last Thursday, while teaching a class on Sound Underwater, we got a very special treat. While listening to ship noise on our hydrophone, we also heard orcas. Orcas! Chrissy McLean, PTMSC's Marine Program Coordinator, ran to confirm what we were hearing and also to call Orca Network so they could get out on the water to identify the orcas.

Last night, on King 5 News, this exciting story was reported. At the very end of the informative 2-minute segment, PTMSC was mentioned. Anchor Dennis Bounds said, "This most recent visit was first reported by a volunteer at the Port Townsend Marine [Science] Center who was letting a visiting class of third graders listen to some hydrophones when they suddenly heard dozens of approaching orcas."

To see the video, click on the image above. Thanks to blog reader Daphne for letting us know we were on the news!