Undergraduate assistants Lauren Schnal, Madalyn Murray (and Mnemiopsis!)

Counting and measuring ctenophores

Frankel scholar (and undergraduate assistant) Madalyn Murray on the RV 'Three Quarter Time'

Jellyfishing

It's been a long, busy summer. "Cteam Ctenophore" (consisting of myself and several undergraduate assistants) has been running weekly plankton tows from the boat in Great South Bay and collecting ctenophores for numerous laboratory 'experiments', such as gut content analysis, growth rates, feeding rates, and egg production. The ctenophores bloomed in late July this year, about 2 weeks later than 2008, which agrees well with a general lag in Long Island waters of 2 weeks likely due to the very cool (and long) winter we had, followed by an unusually cool spring and summer. We ran a few large-scale mesocosm experiments in the bay, until the ctenophores became so abundant they infultrated all of our tanks, including the non-ctenophore treatments! We will continue boat sampling through October to monitor the population dynamics of Mnemiopsis leidyi as well as any other ctenophore species which may appear in the bay. The ctenophores decreased zooplankton abundance very quickly in the bay and subsequently declined in abundance themselves. Once zooplankton abundance increases, we suspect that we may get a second pulse, or bloom, of M. leidyi unless Beroe ovata, a predatory ctenophore that feeds on M. leidyi, arrives as it did in the fall of 2008. Stay tuned....