Another installment of adventure in science at Bahia de los Angeles on the Gulf of California. This year, I am once again working with students from Ocean Discovery Institute to exapand on what we have learned about feeding assays and DNA sequencing to develop more insight into the diet of Elysia diomedea, and how kleptoplast photosynthesis makes them taste bad.

Drew and I left San Diego with a truck full of stuff, including the tanks, sump and chiller for a slug setup, as well as a perfectly functioning PCR thermocycler from NIH surplus.  Drove through Calexico to Mexicali, caught route 5 south through San Felipe.  The road was largely good, but the unpaved section in the middle still not finished.

USD truck parked on the Mexicali side of the border. 6/20/18

We arrived in Bahia about 5:30, and stopped for the usual photo from the hills leading into town.  When we arrived at the station, the setup crew was working away, although the station was mostly ready for business.

View of Bahia de Los Angeles from the hills above town. 6/20/18

We spent the rest of the evening starting to get organized.  I also found out that we currently do not have a permit for collecting the slugs (all other activities have been approved), so it is not 100% clear that we will be able to do any work.

The next morning, I was eager to get started on assembling the lab space.  It looked as though everything survived shipping from Maryland to San Diego and the drive to Bahia.  We got some new tables, and strung some cords to safely manage electricity flow to the tanks, chiller, freezer, and other lab equipment.

Lab area ready to be set up. 6/21/18

Then we got to set up the tanks.  All the plumbing I had assembled in Maryland connected nicely, but the connectors for the chiller were too small for the ¾” tubing used for the rest of the system.  I could swear we double checked that.  That meant we needed to head to “Home Depot,” the local construction supply lot.  Fortunately, Ric, the Ocean Discovery fellow who is assisting me this summer speaks excellent Spanish, so he could easily explain what we were trying to do.

The very nice owner was pessimistic that he would have the right adaptor, but he found one.  Then Ric told him we needed two, and his pessimism increased.  He miraculously managed to produce another.  However, he had no hose for the connection, so he gave us directions to the other, larger supply lot that we had never heard of.  It was indeed larger, and they had lots of hose.  We bought 3 meters, to have some extra for a siphon hose, and were on our way.

Tanks set up , plumbed and ready for water. 6/21/18

The tank was quickly assembled, and we hauled buckets of sea water to fill up the two tanks and sump.  The water was brown from a dinoflagellate bloom, and looked kind of yucky.  We hoped the skimmer woul clear it out.  Once the tanks were full, we turned the main pump on for a test and cleaned up the splashed water so that we could look for leaks.  It all seemed just right, but water kept on pooling on the floor.  Sure enough, there was a crack on the bottom of the sump, presumably from shipping.  After some discussion and back and forth, Ric and I drove back to Home Depot to get adhesives for a possible fix.  The guy was amused that we were back, and showed us what he had.  We bought the multi-purpose adhesive and some silicone sealer just to be sure.

It was time for the first snorkel.  I put on my wetsuit and headed into the water in front of the staff house.  The door for charging the camera opened promptly after I entered the water and that was the end of that.  Oy.  Nonetheless I looked at a lot of Codium, and was grunted at and bitten by many very aggressive damsels.  Most importantly, I found about 4 small slugs up in front of the house, and called it a day.

Small Elysia diomedea in bay in front of station. 6/23/18

I borrowed Drew’s nearly identical camera for a snorkel on the next day, and went out with Ric in the same area. The visibility was still crummy, but I managed to find a small slug on Codium after a bit, and brought both up to show Ric.  Soon enough, he was finding his own, and we found quite a few, taking some good photos. Without a permit, however, the slugs will stay in the bay for now.

Ric with yet another slug. 6/23/18

Elysia diomedea in Bahia. 6/23/18

The lab was set up, there were plentiful slugs in front of the station, and the students would be arriving that night, so it looks pretty good for a successful time in the field.

Lab just about ready to go, with slug tanks (left) extraction table (middle) and PCR table (right). 6/23/18

In Bahia, there is always some drama.  In this case, it appeared in the form of permits.  It turned out that all of the group’s collecting activities, which included an enormous range of fishes, crustaceans, anemones, and molluscs, were approved, with the exception of my project.  For some reason, maybe something I wrote set off alarm bells, the collection  of Elysia diomedea and marine algae required approval from a different agency.

Stay tuned…