Marine Biology

Well we’ve nearly been here a month and I’ve written a bunch of blogs about our adventures but I have yet to tell anyone what we’re doing, so here it goes.

There are 8 students from various universities in Alabama that have come to the MSS to study due to an NSF (nation science foundation) grant that my advisor received. The official class title through Auburn University is Red Sea Biology but its not a class as much as a month long seminar and research project. We have lecture from a different person every morning (I did one on techniques in population ecology) and then we spend the rest of our day working on independent research projects.

Of there 8 students there are basically 3 groups of projects. One group is doing respiration rates of the anemone and anemonefish. This project is more lab based but they all still get to dive a lot. The second group is working with zooxanthellea in the anemones. Zooxanthellea are the symbiotic algae that live in the anemones, and the students working on this take tentacle clippings from anemones from different depths, microhabitats, and light intensities to determine how algae concentration varies with the parameters. The third group is the field ecology, population dynamics group. The three students in this group have projects that overlap some but I feel like this group has more variation amongst the groups. One projected is anemone population structure (there isn’t much else you can do in this short of a time period), the second is fish population structure (also it is hard to do because of time but more possible to get size change than the anemones), and finally mine projected encompasses both of these.

To explain my project better I’ll give some quick background. In the Red Sea there is only one species of anemonefish but several species of anemone that it is mutualistic with. Of the species that the anemonefish is mutualistic with there are two species that it lives with almost all of the time. There has been anecdotal evidence that juvenile anemonfish with one species of anemone and that adult anemonefish live with the other, thus the one anemone serves as a nursery. My project is to test and see if this is true. So essentially I’m trying to answer 3 questions:
1) Do adult anemonefish only live with anemone species A or does it live with anemone species A and B?
2) If adult anemonefish only live with anemone species A then is anemone B a true nursery or simply a less preferred alternative host?
3) If anemone B is a true nursery then do anemonefish slow there growth to remain in B until there is an opening in A or do they grow continually and then die when they become too big for anemone B?
I will not be able to answer all of these questions this year but hopefully if they collected good data next year as well I will be able to answer them all. With that said I should be able to answer the first question and part of the second this year so it will feel like I have done something.

In order to do my project there are certain types of data that I needed to collected. The first was the anemone data. This is basically the same data that I collect for my thesis work so it wasn’t that hard for me too. What I collected was the sizes (length and width to create surface area) of all of the anemones in the site as well as their depth, microhabitat (if they are on sand or rock or ect.) and then how many anemonefish they host. After this I needed to collect data on all of the anemonefish in the site. This was more difficult. At this point I have collected all of the data that I could on them and I have only caught about half (~70) fish. This was mostly because it is really had to catch the fish. I spent 10 or so dives trying and I did well but to catch all of the fish it would take a month in itself. To catch the fish I had to dive with 5x4 inch nets (that you would use in an aquarium) and catch the fish with them. It turns out that the water is a 3-D environment and fish know this so they would swim like crazy in all directions so that they wouldn’t get caught, I’m actually surprised that I caught as many as I did. After I caught a fish in the nets I had to transfer the fish to a clear Ziploc bag so that I could measure it and take a picture of it. I’m pretty sure that transferring the fish was harder than catching them. This is where the fish tended to get away and I had to catch them all over again. If I managed to not let them escape I got my measurements, photograph, and then I was able to fin clip (cut of part of the dorsal fin for later identification) them and let them go. To fully answer the nursery question I need to know how much each individual fish grows over the next year, so I took pictures of most of them so that they could be individually identified next year, I don’t know if this will work but I guess we’ll find out. Another complication that we discovered is that the fish learned what the nets were so when they saw them they tried even harder to escape, this made it more difficult as time went on.

That's all on the projects. Here are bunch of cool underwater pictures that several members of the group and I took. Thanks for reading!!!!

Here is a video of me doing the worm underwater!!!!!!

The last crusade

Indian Jones goes flying past on a horse in an attempt to reach the Holy Grail before the Nazi’s do. His horse is going as fast as it can through narrow trails in the cliffs and he finally reaches his destination, a huge building carved out of the side of a mountain…

This huge building is the treasury at Petra, an ancient Nabataean City in the middle of Jordan. 2000 years ago Petra was the largest trading center in the Middle East. Travelers came from African, Europe, China, India, and the rest of Arabia to trade goods in the market places in this giant stone city. It’s believed that 30,000 people lived in Petra year round and that many hundreds of thousands more passed through each year. As you all may know the Middle East is a big desert, thus without a lot of planning large masses of people cannot live in one area because there is not enough water. This was not a problem in Petra because the Nabataeans carved massive rain troughs that lead to large cisterns out of the sand stone cliffs that the city was built in. This and some well-hidden natural springs provide enough water for the locals and all of the traders that came through. Despite the abundance of water visitors did not get it cheaply, the Nabataeans make as much profit from selling water as they did trade (this might not be true but they did make a lot off of water).


Around 100 AD Petra, like most of the rest of the known world, came under control of the Roman Empire. The Romans did not take it in battle but negotiated control of the city. Essentially they called it part of the Roman Empire and made profit off of the city but life did not change for the average citizen. In the forth century Petra was under control of the Byzantine Empire (The Roman/Catholic Empire) and in the 5th century a large Christian Church was built. The church is now known as the mosaic because of the tile mosaics on the floor of the church. The beginning of the end for the city of Petra was in 363 when a large earthquake destroyed a lot of the city. This combined with change in culture and trade caused the Petra to go from a metropolis to a ghost town unknown to the rest of the world for 1500 years.

The city of Petra is currently only about 25% excavated but in this 25% there are some very large very beautiful buildings. The whole city was carved out of the side of the mountain yet the artistry and architecture is still amazing. The inside of treasure room, along with all of the other large buildings, is perfectly square with all the corners at perfect 90 angles. What surprised me about these buildings is that most of them have only one room. They carve out one huge room and then that’s it. I don’t know if its because structure is less stable if more rooms or made, or if their culture didn’t need more than one room but either way I did not expect that.

When we entered Petra we had to walk for about a mile before we reached the treasury, which is the first building when you enter the city. As we continued from there were many large buildings. They largest building in the city is the temple. The temple area was where they had town meetings, held elections, and other things similar to that. The excavation of this site is being down by Brown University and the man in charge happened to be there when we were so he told us some of the details about what they have done. Around the edges of the temple there were large stone pillar with 4 elephant heads at the top. He told us that they have excavated 660 elephant heads so far. Overall the temple was very cool stop as we walked through the city.

From the temple we continued walking through the city until we reached the point where it became much more difficult to walk. From there we walked an hour uphill, at noon, in about 110 degree heat to reach a large temple on top of a mountain. I don’t know why such a remote place was chosen for a temple but it was a great site to see. After a short break 2 of us broke off from the rest of the group and went on our own adventure. We walked down the mountain to the mosaic, and then to the home of the 4th century bishop that lived in the city. The two of us had talked about how we wanted to find real treasure and adventure so we just wandered away from the main area and into the desert. We had learned that there were still lots of coins from when it was a trade center so we were hoping to find some. We didn’t find any coins but we did find lots of 2000-year-old pottery. This was really cool. The pottery was not just left sitting around, so what we think happened was at some point grave robbers had come searching for treasure and in the process broke a bunch of pottery and left it above the ground. To see artifacts from such an ancient civilization was truly amazing. From the desert we wandered back to the treasury and then walked back to the hotel, over all it was a 7 or 8 mile day.

Hope you enjoyed, the next one will be on marine biology!!!

An evening with the Bedouins

For our first weekend in Jordan we went on a field trip to Wadi Rum, which is about an hours drive from the MSS. Wadi Rum, which means desert of mountains, is essentially national park, but unlike in the states it is a desert instead of a forest. We arrived at about 5:30 and, after being shown to our tents, we went for an evening jeep tour of the area. When they told us we were going for a jeep tour I thought it would be like African safari jeeps, which were very well maintained land rovers not small Toyota pickups with benches in the back. It didn’t matter what vehicle we were in the tour was still great. Wadi Rum isn’t the typical desert that you think of, it is of course very sandy with little plant and animal life but there are also giant sandstone mountains. These mountains are probably 1000 feel high or so (that is just a guess I don’t really know) with very steep faces. The landscape made for some great photography. We made several stops along the “jeep” tour and were able to explore the area a bit. At one spot we were able to climb a large dune and then we started to climb one of the mountains but were unable to get very high before we can to go back to the jeep. At another stop were we able to hieroglyphics of the ancient Bedouins. These drawing were about 2000 years old and there were many of them throughout the area. Apparently where we were was way people used to travel from Saudi Arabia to Jerusalem and the Bedouins would mark on the stones so that travelers would be able to find their way back and forth. Another stop we made was at the camp where Lawrence of Arabia lived while he trained the Bedouins to fight the Turks. His face was carved out in the stone as a tribute.

After the jeep tour we returned to the camp for dinner. Dinner was a traditional Jordanian meal with Humus, pitas, and, lamb. It was very good. During dinner there were Bedouins playing music and singing. The Jordanian tourists there knew the songs so it must have been traditional Jordanian music but it could have also been the newest hit song from the radio, I really have no idea. After dinner all the Jordanians were dancing and they eventually convinced all of us to come and join them. The Jordanians are terrible dancers. They were basically jumping and flinging there are arms around with no pattern or rhythm. Not wanting to out shine them we all did the same thing. That is until one of the guys in our group started doing the Soljaboy dance. It was basically one of those things that you’ll only do once in our life so you might as well enjoy it while your there. After we were tired of dancing we all walked a mile or so away from the camp to lie in the desert and look at the starts. It was so dark and the sky was so clear that I was able to see more stars than I have ever seen. There were also a lot of shooting stays so it really made for a great hour of looking up. Following the stargazing we were all pretty tired so we decided that it was time to call it a night.

The following morning we got one of the biggest surprises of the trip. They were frying eggs for us. After a week of pitas for breakfast the egg tasted like a 5 star meal. So after a quick meal we were able to go and ride some camels. We didn’t go for a long camel ride but no one had done it before so it was enjoyable for all. After a clumsy dismount of the camels we had time to kill before we left so we decided to climb that mountain that out camp was at the base of. This was probably the best part of the trip. The climb wasn’t too difficult but there were some challenges along the way. I reached the highest point before the others and quickly discovered that this was the highest that I had ever been without being in a plane. The view from the top was great and there was a nice cool breeze so I just sat and enjoyed it for a long time. Once the others made it we put the camera on self-timer and took a nice group photo. After a couple more minutes of enjoying the view we had to slowly make our way back down. This proved to be more difficult than climbing up, especially since I was wearing flip-flops. After a few wrong turns we all made it back down and then got on the bus to return to the MSS.

Thanks for reading.

(If you can't tell this last picture is me on top of the mountain. I'm so small because everyone else is so far away and I'm so high up.)

Arrival at the Marine Science Station

We reached the Israel-Jordan border about 30 minutes before closing so we were the only people there. This made it much easier to cross than I had expected. We basically paid the fee, got our passports stamped, walked to the Jordan side, put our stuff through an x-ray machine that no one was watching, got another stamp, and then got in the van to go to the marine science station. One part that was different was in the no man’s land between Israel and Jordan there was a fenced in area where we were walking and outside of the fence there was an active mine field with sniper towers on both sides of the border. That was something that you don’t see in the states. We were all pretty tired after a couple of long days of traveling so we essentially dropped of our stuff at the MSS, then went to get some food, and then went right to bed.

The next day we had a tour of the MSS. You could tell that the buildings had been built in the early 80’s and I don’t think that much have been done with them since then. With that said it will work for the kind of research that we are doing in our month long trip. Following our tour and lunch we were able to go for a snorkel of the marine protected area around that is owned by the MSS. The reef all along the shore is known as a fringe reef. There are several types of coral reefs; patch reef, fringe reef, barrier reef, and atoll. A fringe reef starts at the shore and goes out. Patch reefs are small isolated reef areas that are not connected to others. Barrier reefs start as patch reefs but as they continue to grow towards the sea the inner parts of the reef start to die and eventually you end up with sea, coral reef, open sea/lagoon area, and then land. The final one an atoll is when you start with a reef area that grow out circular and eventually the middle dies and you have a large circle that sometimes have land right inside it and water in the middle. I don’t have any under water photos yet but here is one of the reef from a small hill on the shore. Where it is darker the water gets deeps. Where it is really light is where the reef is. There are two light patches a little of shore, those are patches of coral reef. The Gulf of Aqaba where we are is like the end of the African rift valley so it gets really deep here. It is 400 meters in the middle and farther south where Saudi Arabia and Egypt are on either side it goes to 800 meters. Directly across from where we are is Eliat, Isreal and just south of that is Egypt. We are also about 10 km from the Saudi boarder so it is so you can essentially see 3 other countries from here.



As the week went on we had several guest lecturers come in and had workshops on different scientific techniques. In the afternoon we work on our individual research projects. My project requires me to tag and measure all of the anemones in the site as well as catching all of the anemonefish, bringing them to the lab to weigh, measure, photograph, and fin clip so my work is pretty much all diving which is nice. It is also a lot of work, especially with everyone one else working on their own projects. To find, mark, and tag an entire site takes a long time so it will probably take me the whole month to measure the anemones and the more I think about the fish stuff the more that I realize that it is going to be very hard to do in this short a period of time without much help. But I guess well see how it goes.

In Islamic culture Friday and Saturday are the weekend because Friday is the holy day so this Friday and Saturday we’ll be going to Wadi Rum which is basically a big park, I’ll have pictures a story about that soon.

Peace out

A crazy day in Jerusalem

As I mentioned in my last post we spent our first night in the middle east in Jerusalem. It had been a long day so I think that we were all as excited about sleep as being over seas. Because of jet lag the sleep didn't last very long. I think I went to bed at midnight and woke up by 6. That ended up working out pretty well because it gave me an chance to go to the roof of the hostel and see all of the old part of Jerusalem day. The way all of the building were constructed made it look like I had traveled back in time. Another thing that makes Jerusalem such an interesting place is that it is so diverse. From the roof I could see at least 2 mosques, 3 churches, and a couple of temples all within walking distance of each other. I don't know if there is anywhere else in the world were that is possible.

After a breakfast of pita bread and jam we left the hostel for our 3 hour whirlwind tour of the city. The old city is not a very big area so our hostel was not very far from some of the best sites. It was about a five minute walk from the hostel through the bazaar to the security gates to get into the Jewish quarter. No matter what way you enter the Jewish quarter it's required that you go through security that is very similar to airport security. Once we passed through security we came out into a big open area. It turns out that this location we entered, known as the western wall, is the holiest location in all of Judaism. The western wall is only remnants of Herod's Temple, or the Holy Temple, and is in the same location as Solomon's temple. Jerusalem was under the control of Jordan until until 1967 when Israel took it back during the 6 days war. This was the first time that the Jews were able to go this this holy place in nearly 100 years. When we were at the wall it was Jerusalem Day, which celebrated the end of the 6 days war so the wall was very busy that day. Our group was able to go up to the wall but there was a women's and a men's side so we could not all go together. In order to approach the wall the women had to wear shalls and the men had to wear yarmulkes. They had cardboard ones for guests for guest to wear. It was really amazing to approach such a holy place, it really gives you a different perspective to see all that history in one place.


After leaving the wall itself we past through more security in order to go on top of the wall. On top of the wall, where the Holy Temple used to stand is were the Dome of the Rock now stands. When the Jews were first allowed back to the wall the Muslims that were on top at the mosque would throw stones at the people praying. It is no longer like this but there is still a lot of tension. The Jews want to buy the land that is above the wall to build a new temple but the Muslims refuse to sell it because the Dome of the Rock is one of their most holy places. We were able to go up to the Dome of the Rock but they were only allowing Muslims in that day so we were unable to enter.

From the Dome of the Rock we walked around part of the wall surrounding the old city and were able to see many other parts of the city. One part of particular interest was also very near the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall. Here there was a very large Jewish cemetary that lead to the Garden of Gethemane. We were not to see the garden but it was still cool. At this point we returned to the hostel to pack and to depart for Eliat. The main difference between coming and going was that when we arrived the bazaar was empty and when we left there were thousands of people out there. It turns out the vendors aren't happy when you bash your suitcase full of clothes and your other big bag full of dive gear into their tables. Who knew? Any who it took a while but we were able to make it back out of the bazaar and to the street and we got some taxi's and caught a ride to the bus station. From there we could a bus to Eliat and crossed the boarder to Aqaba. There were a couple of interesting things about the bus. First it was a charter bus yet once the seats were full the made people sit and stand in the aisle. The other thing was the off duty soldiers were riding around with the m-16's in civilian clothes (m-16's are big automatic rifles). We ended up getting to the marine lab in Aqaba at like 9 and from there crashed.

This was a long one, hope you enjoyed!!!

So this is the second day that we've been at the marine science
station in Aqaba, Jordan and the first day that we've had internet.
It turns out that we you use a foreign IP address everything comes up
in the language of that country. I couldn't figure out how to sign into
my account because it was all in Arabic. I still don't know if I'll
be able to do it again but it should be easier from here on out. I'm
going to post some of the pics from Jerusalem so that you can see the
Dome of the Rock and a night shot of the Bazaar where we ate dinner.
The next day before we left we had a three hour whirlwind tour of
Jerusalem. I'll get more into what we did in my next blog but I'll
mention that I didn't get any shots of the bazaar during the day
because it was so crazy. There were people running around and yelling
and kids shooting squirt guns and yelling Arabic obscenities at us.
I'm leaving this one short and will make sure that I have a good one
for tomorrow.

Thanks for all the comments on the last one, and go ahead and send
this to anyone you want. I'll start to get into more marine biology
as time goes on so look forward to some great under water pics.

A day of traveling

After a good nights sleep I'm awake and ready for a morning of touring Jerusalem.  We arrived at a hostel in the Muslim quarter last night at 8 pm (12 EST) after a 12 hour flight, an hour or so of waiting in line to get our passports checked, and then another hour of driving.  The hostel is located in a bazaar so it is not accessible by cars, this made it difficult to haul all of our luggage.  All of us had 2 checked bags and some carry-ons so the 10 minute walk through the bazaar was rather interesting.  It was made more fun by the people driving tractors up and down the allies.  To get to the bazaar where the hostel was located the taxi driver dropped us off at the gate of Damascus.  The original gate was build in 2 A.D. by the Romans but has since been destroyed.  The new gate, the one currently standing, was built in 1592 by the Ottomans.  When you enter the gate it looks like you entering through a castle wall, which I find very cool. 

After dropping off our things at the hostel we went to a local place for a dinner that Nanette had set up earlier.  This was local arabic food and was very good.  There were 3 courses and the meal must have taken 2 hours.  I was pretty hungry so it was hard for me not to fill up on the first course.  The first thing they brought us was pita bread and humas, next was salad with a lemon dressing, and finally we a spicy chicken with rice, potatoes, and carrots.  It was definitely a good meal and make us very sleepy.  After dinner we returned to the hostel and discovered there was a covered roof area with no walls that gave us a great view of the oldest part of the city.  From here there was a great view of the Dome of the Rock.  The Dome of the Rock was built in 691, making it the oldest Islamic building the world.  Like everything in the old city the Dome of the Rock has been under the control of many different empires over time and it is still historically important to many different cultures but is known as one of the most holy places in Islamic culture.

(I'm having some technical difficulties with the pictures so you'll have to wait on them!!)