Southeast Alaska Tribal Ocean Research

04/07/2021

🌱 Spring and the plankton are here! 🌱

We’ve seen a noticeable increase during March of phytoplankton genera abundance in our network’s data tracker.

Chaetoceros was by far the most abundantly tracked phytoplankton in March. It was followed by Navicula and then Thalassiosira. Skeletonema just beat out Pseudo-nitzschia for the 4th spot. But don’t underestimate Pseudo-nitzschia— it is one of the plankton on our harmful algal blooms (HABs) watch list!

04/06/2021

Take a look at this snapshot of general blue mussel and butter clam paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs) trends throughout the SEATOR network.

03/18/2021

03/08/2021

Happy International Women’s Day to our partners and to the broader community!

SEATOR has so many amazing, inspirational women working behind the scenes every day. Thank you.

02/24/2021

New year, new plankton!

The most seen southeast Alaska phytoplankton genera for January 2021 were Pleurosigma, Coscinodiscus, Navicula, and Dictyocha. Dictyocha is a genera we do not typically have in the ‘most common’ category. Unlike the other phytoplankton in the group this month, Dictyocha is a Silicoflagellate! It has an external silica skeleton of hexagonal or other-shaped rings with spines radiating from the corners (Phyto’pedia, eoas.ubc.ca).

02/23/2021

Learn how SEATOR partners collect phytoplankton out in the field!

02/01/2021

Happy February! This year our special valentine is phytoplankton ❤️. Who are we kidding, they are our valentine every year!

01/26/2021

The year 2020 ended with top four phytoplankton Chaetoceros, Coscinodiscus, Navicula, and Skeletonema as the most observed genera in December throughout the SEATOR network.

What phytoplankton do you think 2021 will bring?

01/08/2021

Check out four years of the SEATOR Ocean Acidification (OA) program!

The Burke-o-lator CO2 analyzer runs continuously through the seasons measuring water from Sitka Harbor. In the summer, when sea surface temps are higher and the plankton begin to bloom, we see lower pCO2. In the winter when it’s cold and dark pCO2 increases. An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel consumption leads to due to an increase in carbonic acid. is an additional threat to food security as it can be harmful to shellfish and other sea creatures, which rely on calcium carbonate to build their shells. This data is accompanied by SEATOR partners collecting discrete data from across Southeast Alaska.

Can you spot the spring blooms?

12/22/2020

Dinoflagellates tend to, more or less, disappear from our partners’ winter phytoplankton observations. Therefore, our winter microscope slides are typically dotted with a smattering of diatoms. November’s most common genera reflect this winter trend with diatoms Chaetoceros, Coscinodiscus, Navicula, and Pleurosigma observed most often throughout the region last month.

11/30/2020

Our program focuses on the collection of blue mussels (Mytilus trossulus) to inform us about ambient paralytic shellfish toxin levels. Blue mussels are a great indicator species! They can filter up to 20 or more gallons of water each day! This means they will uptake and eliminate toxins more rapidly than other species of shellfish. As we're winding down in 2020, we wanted to share what we've found this year compared to others.

This graph shows paralytic shellfish toxin concentrations (PSTs) across the five years of testing in the STA-Environmental Research Lab. Each year is represented by different colors of dots, starting with lighter dots in 2016 and moving to the darkest dots in 2020. Values are plotted on a logarithmic scale to show differences more clearly. The red line indicates the FDA regulatory limit of 80 μg/100 mg of shellfish tissue. Values above the line are over this limit, while values falling below the line are below the limit.

Conditions in the summer and fall are favorable to plankton production - lots of sunlight and nutrients! This is true for Alexandrium, the species of plankton that produces PSTs. These are the times of year we typically see elevated shellfish toxin levels.

2020 started with an initial bloom in May during some sunny weather, but then levels fell as the rainy summer continued. Another sunny stretch of weather at the beginning of September produced a spike in levels in a couple of communities. It most mimics the year 2018 with the fall showing the greatest values, but not for weather. 2020 was typified by record-breaking rainfall in southeast Alaska, not only in the amount received, but also the number of days. This seemingly also put a damper on the PSP levels seen across the region. What will 2021 bring...?

Note: Kodiak blue mussel data were omitted for the summer of 2020 to highlight trends in southeast Alaska. While southeast Alaska had record-breaking rainfall in the summer of 2020, this was not the case for Kodiak Island. Kodiak experienced a sunnier and warmer summer than normal. Shellfish consistently tested over the limit for 2 months which precipitated a number of paralytic shellfish poison warnings by KANA.

11/25/2020

October saw a few top phytoplankton repeats, but the harmful algal bloom genus, Pseudo-nitzschia, reappeared to close out the season.

Pseudo-nitzschia can produce domoic acid, which can lead Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP) in humans. Although SEATOR monitors for pseudo-nitzschia blooms, and an increase in these diatoms is always noteworthy, there have been no documented cases of ASP in Alaska.