Estuarine Slime and fun with iMovie

For one of our projects we grow natural occurring benthic (def. bottom) algal communities on screens on a flume at the VIMS. Summertime yields reach 30g/m2/day dry weight of algae.  Our pumps push pulses of water down the flume, with no grazers, that stimulate maximum algal growth. Over the course of the 30 second decent over the flume the water column  nitrogen is reduced and dissolved oxygen is enhanced, which improves water quality. In essence, the algae "scrubs" out nutrient pollution.  Then the algae is harvested for biofuel research. Our flume technology has the highest bang for our buck of water treatment than any other available technology and ours is very low tech.

Anyhow, I wanted to post this only to share the beauty of the brown slime that you see growing on the rocks around your local rivers and bays.  If you put some of this slime of the estuary under a microscope you may find up to 60 different species. If you put some from the fresh part of the river you can find more than 200 species of algae.

Here are some examples:

The have silica shells (tests) that come in many shapes and sizes. See, brown slime is beautiful.

Here is a chain forming diatom called Berkeleya rutilans.  It produces brown filaments that you can see with the naked eye. Here's a closer look:

Some of them arrange themselves in a star like pattern like this Asterenollopsis.

The long one in the center of this picture is Navicula and just to the left you can see a centroid diatom.

If you're old enough to remember the folding rulers then you'll recognize the Pseudo-nitzchia in this video. Pseudo-nitzchia cells cooperate to move through the watercolumn using this folding ruler technique.  Pseudo-nitzchia is also produce domic acid that is responsible for the human illness of amnesic shellfish poisoning. Other diatoms are featured in the video as well as a wily polychaete dancing in a bucket called Glycera, that fishermen use for bait and that has a nice bite!

This is also my first time that I've created a video using iMovie.  I have a long way to go but I'd like to put many more iMovie creations in this blog in the near future.  The song is Girl from Beck.

There are also amphipod grazers that eat this stuff and I thought I'd share a few pics of these guys.  I could write many pages about the marine amphipod grazers but I won't at this point.  I'll only say that they are very important to underwater seagrass because the eat the algae that grows on the grass and they provide food for many fishes and other critters that live in the grassbeds.  Suffice it to say, we wouldn't have our important seagrasses without amphipods.

Also, I should go through my pics and get live ones. These were stored in alcohol and so they've lost much of their color.

Microprotopus

Dulichiella