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Inspiration Dissemination is an award-winning radio program that occurs Sunday nights at 7PM Pacific on KBVR Corvallis, 88.7FM. Each week on the program, we host a different graduate student worker from Oregon State University to talk about their lives and passion for research here at the university. By presenting these stories, we can present the diverse, human element of graduate research that is often hidden from the public view.
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This show was founded in 2012 by Joey Hulbert and Zhian Kamvar. It has been made possible by all the current and former hosts of the show, Orange Media Network, the KBVR-FM students and staff, and of course the amazing graduate students at Oregon State University.
More than 4,000 graduate students in over 80 different programs of study.
Narrator 2:You guys are sort of all over the world it seems like.
Narrator:It's kind of mind blowing when you think about it.
Narrator 3:Here on Inspiration Dissemination. But there's actually photographs of this dataset stretching over a much longer period of time.
Narrator 2:They're now converted into basically mathematical shapes, we can now analyze the statistics of this shape.
Narrator:Good evening, listeners.
Alexander:Good evening, listeners.
Matt:You're tuned in to eighty eight point seven KBVR Corvallis. It's time for another episode of Inspiration Dissemination. I'm Matt Vaughn.
Taylor:And I'm Taylor Aziza. At Oregon State, we have more than 4,000 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in over 80 different programs of study. And here on Inspiration Dissemination, we feature the research and personal stories of one of these individuals each week. If you are a graduate student or a postdoc at OSU and you're interested in coming on the show or you just wanna find out more about all the awesome things going on at Oregon State, check out our blog at blogs.oregonstate.edu/inspiration, where you can find out all about our up and coming guests and links to our podcast pages.
Matt:This episode of Inspiration Dissemination is recorded live. And tonight on the show, we've got Alexander Bayliss, a second year PhD student in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. So welcome to the show.
Alexander:Thanks, Matt. Good to be here.
Matt:Great to have you on board. So yeah, why don't we start by you filling us in on what your research is looking at for your PhD?
Alexander:Yeah, totally. So we're looking at a couple different things and right now one of the things that we're most excited about is looking at harmful algal blooms along the Oregon and kind of US West Coast and we're specifically looking at a species of phytoplankton that that's really toxic and cause kind of a lot of ecological and economic damage as well.
Matt:Okay. And just for our listeners that aren't too familiar with the realm, so what is a phytoplankton?
Alexander:Absolutely. Great great question. So phytoplankton are are really neat. They're they're microscopic algae basically in the water and so often we think of plants as doing all the photosynthesis and kind of accumulating all the carbon but about half of the oxygen production on our planet is actually from these phytoplankton in the ocean. And so they're ubiquitous throughout the oceans.
Alexander:They're super important for the global carbon cycle, for oxygen production, and they're very very cool. But unlike plants, know, which we can see with our our eyes Mhmm. These little green guys are are microscopic and so they're, you know, anywhere from the size of a bacteria to maybe about a millimeter at the at the biggest. Wow.
Taylor:Yeah. That's amazing.
Matt:Pretty small and they're not all good by the sounds of it. It's not you said harmful algal blooms?
Alexander:Yeah. So so most of them are good and and really beneficial for the ecosystem. Mean, phytoplankton are what's really sustaining all marine ecosystems. All the fish that you have and that you eat for dinner, let's say, are the result of phytoplankton that are taking the sunlight, turning it to calories, and then the fish ultimately eat that. But there are times when these good phytoplankton go bad, you might say.
Alexander:And so a very, very small group of the phytoplankton throughout the world's oceans have the potential to be harmful. And this can be either because they have these sharp spines that come off that can really kind of get in the fish gills and stuff like that that can irritate them. Or in the case of Oregon, the most dominant one that we have here produces this really potent neurotoxin called domoic acid. This kind of gets into the central nervous system, it can be in people, it can be in things like whales and dolphins or other marine mammals and seabirds and it can cause a lot of problems for us namely, it's called amnesiac shellfish poisoning and can cause memory loss. If you have too much of it, you can even die.
Alexander:And for marine mammals and seabirds, see them kind of start to get stranded on the beaches. They're disoriented. They don't know where they are. And, know, obviously, that's that's a big problem.
Taylor:Yeah. Absolutely. So if they're microscopic, and you said that they have these blooms in the ocean, obviously, there has to be a ton of them for us to be able to even see them. Right?
Alexander:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, if you just have one or two of these, obviously, it's no big problem. But we're talking about when they bloom, hence harmful algal bloom, you have like, you know, hundreds of thousands to millions, you know, billions of these cells.
Alexander:And when they do that, they form this kind of dense aggregation on the surface because they're needing all the sunlight and they're changing the color of the water by doing that. And so the research that we're specifically doing is kind of looking at that color of the water and using ocean color and trying to see if we can identify these bad plankton from that. And so a lot of the plankton look fairly similar, know, they're all kind of green but there's a specific shade of green you might say that these plankton exhibit. And it's very cool NASA just recently put up this new satellite called the PACE satellite for plankton, aerosols, clouds and ecosystems. And this is a satellite that is what we call hyperspectral.
Alexander:And what hyperspectral basically means is that it has a really, really fine and detailed spectral resolution in the visible range. And so it's of seeing colors that that we can't even really imagine. I mean, about us as as people. Right? In our eyes, we have three different color receptors.
Alexander:We have a red, a green, and a blue. And all the colors that we see around us, you know, in the studio, anywhere on earth are kind of a combination of those three color receptors. But the satellite has, I mean, I think several 100 different ones. And so it's getting kind of a really detailed look at the the color of the ocean. We're using that to kind of see if we can identify this specific harmful algal bloom.
Matt:So does that mean it can see like several 100 times more colors than what we can see?
Alexander:Yeah. Exactly. And you get you get such resolution and detail that you you get kind of a full spectrum. And that that spectrum acts like a fingerprint. And that's what we're kind of trying to use right now to identify the these harmful species.
Taylor:Yeah. Definitely. Do they occur? You said, like, you can see them from space and you're looking for specific ones. Mhmm.
Taylor:But does that mean that a bloom is all one species, or how do you pick out the bad ones?
Alexander:Yeah. No. That's a great point. So generally, the blooms can be many different species. Right?
Alexander:And if you have this kind of aggregation of a ton of different species, it's really hard to pull out what you're looking for. It's really like a needle in a haystack. However, for us, you know, the times when these species become really a large problem are often when they they bloom so much that they're so dominant that they kind of overpower the ocean ocean color signal. And so specifically for this research when we're trying to find them, it's really when they've they've grown to such a large size that we're able to identify them. And whether that's an offshore bloom that's then going to, you know, migrate closer to shore, which can target like coastal communities or aquaculture, that's where where we're trying to target right now.
Taylor:Mhmm.
Alexander:But yeah. You know, I mean, these things are literally microscopic. So just seeing one or two, you know, not possible. You need a microscope for that. But when they start to aggregate, that's when you can use the satellite.
Alexander:And the satellite's fantastic because, I mean, think about it right now, to identify these guys, we have to send people out to the shore. And, you know, these are scientists, these are researchers, and when they go, they just take a point sample of the water. And then you have to look at it through a microscope and this, you know, takes a lot of time, you know, gas and money, all sorts of things. And then you're just looking at one little area, you know, one little beach along a huge, you know, West Coast. And so we do this up and down the coast, but there's only so much you can do.
Alexander:And so if you're able to use something like a satellite, you get a much bigger scope and you're able to kind of look at the whole, you know, whole West Coast, get everyday snapshots and that's kind of the goal with with this current project at least.
Matt:Wow. So before that satellite went up, that's primarily how it was conducted. Yeah. Just sampling.
Alexander:Mhmm. Absolutely. And even to this day, right, this is what we do and this is how we ground truth. I mean, it's it's one of kind of the the best and tried and true methods but it's difficult, it's costly and you're you're really just looking at a small spot, you know, you gotta extrapolate a lot. And often you're just looking at just that kind of coastal interface as well.
Taylor:Okay. So are they all green blooms? Because I've also heard of red tides. So they don't have to be just green. Right?
Alexander:No. No. Not necessarily. And and that's a great point. Red tides is red tides is another name for for harmful algal blooms but it's somewhat of a misnomer.
Alexander:There's there's a lot of species actually that are are harmful algal blooms or can form a red tide but are not red at all. But there are some that that are totally red. For us, the specific species that we're looking at, pseudonychia, which produces this stomach acid, this this potent neurotoxin, it actually makes the the water kind of this this soupy brown like a lot of other diatoms in our oceans. And and normally diatoms are are quite good. Diatoms are a specific type of phytoplankton that are very large.
Alexander:And because they're large, they're able to kind of efficiently move energy up to things like fishes. And so we typically see them as very beneficial. However, this specific diatom, pseudonychia, is toxic. So we're kind of actually trying to find just the very unique shade of brown that that has. And it's way too complex for our eyes to see, know, we can't really discern them.
Alexander:Growing these things in the lab, know, we'll have maybe several, nine or different, so different cultures of very healthy diatoms than, you know, several of the toxic Sudanicha and we can't distinguish them. But these new hyperspectral camera systems and these instruments such they have on this new NASA satellite, they're actually able to see this difference between them. So that's what we're Wow. Really excited about. We did this big project.
Alexander:This would have been about a year ago. Grew all these different cultures up in the lab and ran them through this camera system to see what we could find. And the way that they absorb the light that they're using for photosynthesis is nearly identical. But the way that they actually reflect the light based off their kind of internal geometries and structures and how they're shaped, how they form chains, their kind of unique morphologies, we found that there is a difference that's actually discernible, which was very cool.
Matt:Wow. And this camera system that you used in the lab is similar to this NASA satellite.
Alexander:Yes.
Matt:And it's giving you the same color back which I I guess is what you're using to identify the pseudo nature.
Alexander:Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely. So the NASA satellite, way up in space, it goes through all this atmosphere and all sorts of things to really look at the ocean. What we do is we took the cells in the lab, we grew them up, and then we looked at how they absorb and how they reflect light.
Alexander:And what the satellite ultimately sees is kind of a combination of that absorption and that reflection process. All the light that is reflected is what makes it to the satellite, but what is absorbed does not make it. And so we subtract the light that is absorbed by the reflection to get kind of the fingerprint. We've gone out on cruises with camera systems of our own that are similar to the NASA satellites, and we've been able to kind of ground truth this data in the field as well. And so that's what we're working on right now and are are quite excited because so far it looks pretty good.
Taylor:Yeah. So in the field, if you're trying to identify these little guys, two species, are are you out there with microscopes like rocking back and forth in the the bottom of the boat or how does that work?
Alexander:Yeah. Being on on the boat with a microscope is is pretty gnarly. Yeah. It's definitely one way to to get seasick pretty quick. But we're very fortunate we have something called an imaging flow cytobot and this is my my advisor Maria Kavanaugh.
Alexander:She has one of these in her lab and so we get to take them out. And it's a really cool system. It's fairly new and basically what it does is it pulls in maybe about five milliliters of water at a time and it'll push the water through this little kind of camera system with the laser and each time a cell goes through, you know, the laser will detect that a cell has gone through and it'll take us picture. So it takes a snapshot of every single phytoplankton that goes through. And doing that, we're kind of able to, you know, instead of looking through a microscope and having to count every cell, we're able to get total image data with the different, you know, biodiversity, the abundances, and all the different types of phytoplankton.
Alexander:And so we go out, this thing is measuring continuously, and we use that to, you know, see where the Pseudo Nichia is. And then at the same time, we'll look at the NASA satellite, see if we're seeing the the spectral signature or the fingerprint to compare, and then also we have our own camera systems that we'll be looking at as well.
Matt:You should just get those satellite lenses as glasses. Can you do that? What an idea. See all the colors?
Alexander:That would be that would be pretty cool. I've actually thought about something like that but I don't know how the heck you would you'd make that. They'd they'd be pretty hunky too. Think you'd be looking like a cyborg going around but it'd kinda neat. We've been talking too about you know maybe putting these same kind of cameras on drones and things because there's a lot of time along our coast where you have clouds and you you know you really can't access the water and for for local people, know, really interested in kind of their own bays or river estuaries and waterways, having something more portable on a drone might might be useful.
Matt:Yeah. And so your goal so you're looking at specific areas like coastal areas where or main areas of fishing or you more just at this stage looking to see if you can detect it and and fact checking that essentially in the field?
Alexander:Yeah. So I guess for us our our main hope is to kind of create an early warning system for for people. When I was a kid back down in in California and I mean this is along the whole West Coast but in in 2015 there was a really really bad bloom and it spread from from Baja all the way up to British Columbia and it was like nothing we'd ever seen before. I mean, almost every fishery along our coast was completely shut down. And, you know, I thought, okay, you know, it's kind of difficult to know where these things are going, that they're unpredictable.
Alexander:If we could have some way that kind of covers the whole coast, like, you know, using a satellite, maybe we'd be able to better predict or create models about where these things are happening in real time. And so it was kind of, yeah, thinking that we could maybe start to develop an early warning system, that's what we're doing right And so we've kind of found, I guess, a fingerprint, right, or or a model that the satellite works and we know, okay, this ideally, will let us see the pseudo nichia species but now we want to apply it and, know, put it into the field.
Matt:Cool. I could see, yeah, that would be really helpful just for the fishers as well as seafood market. Yeah. And I guess people are they bad for humans to swim in a big algal bloom?
Alexander:So these species in particular, could probably swim and you'd be fine. It's really the the bioaccumulation that makes them toxic. Mhmm. And so like think about a shellfish, right? A mussel or a clam.
Alexander:These things are filtering, you know, dozens of liters of water every minute or so. As they do that, they're pulling in all the phytoplankton because it's their food, but they also accumulate those toxins if there's this particularly harmful species in the water. And so the problem is then when, you know, a sea lion or a person goes and they eat that shellfish, they've just eaten something that's been accumulating toxins nonstop. And so we would call that that muscle or that clam, let's say, super hot. And that could, you know, kill you pretty quickly.
Alexander:But if you're just swimming through it, even if it's in a pretty big bloom, you're you're generally okay. At least on for the oceanic species. There's some some freshwater algae that are pretty nasty too that I don't think you'd wanna swim in. But in the ocean, you're you're fine to swim. I've never had any problems.
Taylor:That's so interesting. I feel like that's a common misconception that, if the water is a funny color, you know, you don't wanna swim in it because, like, you could get sick.
Alexander:Fair enough. Yeah.
Taylor:Yeah. But that's not the case.
Alexander:Not that I know of. At least for for pseudonychia and these other species, it's really the the bioaccumulation. So Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, that itself can be very dangerous.
Alexander:So, you know, when they have muscle closures and stuff and they say don't go out and harvest, I mean, that that is a concern. And there's there's some really cool people actually. Kathy LaFebre, I believe is her name, up in, I wanna say Washington, who's doing kind of look at low level accumulation of things like domoic acid, like these toxins from these harmful algal species, and seeing the effect that those have on people. But these are somewhat hard to identify because, you know, a very little bit of toxin will have a very little effect, and so it's hard to tell. But her her research is showing that there might be some some kind of levels of contamination from from very low things, this would still be from eating mussels with a little bit of contamination, not particularly from swimming in the water.
Alexander:I mean, I I won't go necessarily chugging down ocean water Yeah. When you go out. But I think, if you go swimming in a red tide and you drink a little bit of water, you'll generally be okay.
Taylor:You'll be okay. Yeah. I know that they're really it's really bad for pinniped species, like for sea lions and for seals. Yeah. In California, it's a big cause for concern when you start finding a lot of animals that have died from domoic acid.
Taylor:Yeah. So it's do you feel like it affects a certain kind of trophic level more so than others?
Alexander:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think kind of just based off the bioaccumulation that that we talked about, as you go higher up the food chain, you continue to bioaccumulate. Right? And so it becomes more and more dangerous.
Alexander:Also for higher level organisms like marine mammals, we're really reliant on our central nervous system. And we know that this toxin in particular really targets your central nervous system. It bonds to, I believe it acts as like a glutamate kind of molecule and so it'll bind to those same inhibitors but then cause these these downstream pretty toxic and bad effects. And so things like marine mammals, right, which are at the top of the food chain, they're eating, let's things like anchovies and sardines, which have been filter feeding through the water, collecting a lot of these phytoplankton, accumulating those toxins. Those are then maybe eaten by salmonids, which, you know, further concentrate those before, let's say, getting to the marine mammals.
Alexander:And so by the time the marine mammals, you know, the pinnipeds are eating these things, you know, eating their prey items, they've been essentially accumulating domic acid for a really long time, and that that makes it pretty dangerous for them. Whereas something at the base of the food web, probably not so bad. Also, I think, you know, the clams and oysters that are eating these things, their central nervous system obviously isn't like ours, and so I think it's not as significant as a problem for them, but that's a kind of emerging area of research that people really aren't so sure about.
Matt:And the fish that are being impacted, is that just through trophic moving up on the food web or is it coming in through their gills and impacting them through the gills?
Alexander:Yeah. So it depends on the species but specifically for the pseudo nichia along the Oregon Coast, I mean things that are filter feeding like anchovies and whatnot, know, they're they're directly pulling that up into their tissues as well. But let's even think about ones that maybe eat smaller zooplankton. And so zooplankton, right, are are similar to phytoplankton, but they're they're animals instead of doing photosynthesis. Right?
Alexander:They're just really kind of tiny animals on the sea that are typically eating these phytoplankton and these will also accumulate those toxins. So let's say you have a small forage fish that's eating a bunch of copepods, a very common type of zooplankton. You know, those copepods will accumulate the domoic acid or the toxin from the phytoplankton that'll then accumulate more into the anchovy or forage fish as they go out and eat more, which will ultimately make it to the the higher trophic level. So it's really the base of the food web, those those original predators that are kind of taking that stuff, then it just gets more and more as you go.
Matt:Wow.
Taylor:That's really interesting. It sounds like there would in theory then be kind of a lag. Like if you see a toxic algal bloom Mhmm. You're not the next day gonna see people getting sick from a fish. Right?
Taylor:It's something that is lagged or that happens later in time.
Alexander:Yeah. Absolutely. A 100%. And so normally even, let's say, you have a really huge bloom event and these events last typically, you know, maybe a couple weeks to a month at the most, Those toxins will stay inside those shellfish for, you know, up to ten weeks, let's say, for maybe like a razor clam or a muscle. And it depends on the organism, but they'll kind of shut down that fishery for an extended period of time after because those toxins do take time to accumulate.
Alexander:Like you said, there is a lag. You know, at the very onset, it may be not be that bad. But at the peak of the bloom, it can be pretty bad. And even weeks after the bloom, it can still be quite dangerous because those toxins have remained. It takes a long time for those to work out of the tissues of the animals, typically.
Alexander:Yeah.
Matt:And what can be done if anything? Is it just something that you need to ride out?
Alexander:Yeah. That's a that's a great question. I don't know. I mean I mean it really depends. So for us, for these pseudo nietzsche blooms, I mean these things can span the whole coastline, you know.
Alexander:It's really difficult like what can you do about that? We we don't know. And so that's why kind of our research is focusing on just saying, how can we how can we identify these things when they're when they're coming on, you know, as rapidly as possible and tell people where they're at. And that at least gives people a little bit of a chance to prepare, you know, and not be kind of caught off guard. But as for something to do about them, I I don't know.
Alexander:You know, it's hard to stop something that big. Before coming up to OSU, I worked in San Francisco for a little bit in the San Francisco Bay with with USGS and we would have, like, right as I was leaving, actually, we had a crazy harmful algal bloom there. Like like something I'd never seen before. I mean, the water was completely just pitch black, you know, fish were piling up along the shores. And I think that that's what kinda got me interested in this.
Alexander:But Yeah. Maybe in a in a smaller area like that or in like a local waterway or or lakes, I think you can reduce the nutrients that go into there. Right? Reduce the you call it the eutrophication of those systems by, you know, doing better wastewater management or or other certain practices and it it's really hard in urban areas. Right?
Alexander:But in these setups, when you're kind of in in a local small body of water, I think you can do things to prevent them. But generally, in a big, you know, in the whole ocean, not really. One thing that I have heard actually and I I haven't looked too much into this, but there's a group in Florida or potentially on the East Coast and they would go out and I think they they throw sediment like mud in the water and they would like their logic was that the mud would kind of rain down and it would catch some of the plankton and bring them down Sink to the them exactly. But I I don't know exactly how, you know, successful that was and it's certainly not applicable to the the entire US West Coast.
Matt:Well, yeah. I guess, you know, to do something about it, you need to first of all be able to tell when and where it's happening and and how big of a problem it's gonna be which I guess your research is is looking at that, looking to answer that. Yeah. And it really hasn't been possible until that satellite got up there. So it seems like it's a pretty new or rapidly evolving field for at least what can be done.
Matt:And yet, sounds like you're sort of setting the groundwork for that.
Alexander:Yeah. Thanks, man. I mean, there there have been a lot of people before me doing doing a ton of work, we're really really stoked to be building on, you know, kind of some of things that they've done to to start looking at this right now. And, yeah, I mean, the the launch of the satellite is pretty unprecedented having a, you know, what we would call hyper spectral, like a really, really high spectral resolution satellite go up. It I mean, this one has global coverage around the entire world.
Alexander:Yeah. I think that that's the first time that's ever happened. There have been some others in previous years that have had this kind of resolution, but they can only look, you know, at this kind of specific area. They they couldn't really do this full global coverage every few days. And so it's pretty impressive.
Alexander:And we're we're really hoping that this would be great to to look at and track habs. Not even along The US West Coast, I mean, groups on the East Coast, you know, groups around the entire world. Sudanichi isn't, you know, a problem just locally for us, and there's all sorts of other harmful species. And that's one of the things that the satellite was really kind of made and geared to do. So it's a it's a pretty exciting time for
Matt:sure for the community.
Taylor:I feel like Matt and I are both nerding out about the satellite because I have a lot of Okay. So when you're like when you're, let's say, on about in person, you're trying to like kind of, like you said, ground truth this data from the satellite.
Alexander:Mhmm.
Taylor:You just said the satellite is global. So how do you get the pictures from the satellite at the exact time that you're there in person?
Alexander:Yeah. So the satellite is boosting around the earth incredibly quickly. I think it doesn't orbit around the earth about every 90 minutes.
Taylor:Oh my gosh.
Alexander:Yeah. And so as it's going around the earth every 90 minutes, you know, it's kind of constantly what's the name for this? It's it's a polar orbiting satellite basically. It kind of passes over a certain part of the earth every day about the same time, about 01:00. Mhmm.
Alexander:And so when we're out on the water, we kind of pick a spot that we want to be usually at about 01:00 just afternoon. Yeah. Afternoon, you know, the sun's still high, you have a lot of light, it's easy to take an image, but it's not kind of directly in line with the sun, you don't have as much sun glint. You know, if you have a lot of glint on the water, it's really hard to see the, you know, what's in the water. It's the same thing for the satellite.
Alexander:Mhmm. And so we go out just at this time and there's a little NASA website you can go to that when the satellite's gonna be overhead. And then as the satellite's going over, we'll take a water sample. We'll run it through the imaging flow cytobot to see if there's pseudo nichia or whatever other species are present. And then we'll also take kind of a picture of the water with our own hyperspectral cameras.
Alexander:We have a couple system. There's systems around these profilers and you throw them off the boat and you we call it fishing for photons. They're on these kind of like long line and you drop them down and they go down maybe, I don't know, thirty, forty meters and you reel them up and the whole way they're kind of recording all the light that's leaving the water. And so it's kind of capturing exactly what the satellite sees and that way we can compare it to the satellite data to make sure that satellite data is good. We're ground truthing that satellite data and at the same time start to build our our models, our algorithm to see, okay, if Pseudo Nietzsche is here, do we still see that fingerprint in the field?
Alexander:And when are the instances, you know, when when we see that and that works, and when are the instances where that doesn't work as well?
Taylor:What scale is the satellite?
Alexander:What what do you mean?
Taylor:Like, if like, what's the what's the closest it can zoom in?
Alexander:Yeah. Yeah. So this satellite, the NASA PACE satellite, I believe is one kilometer by one kilometer.
Matt:Wow.
Alexander:So fairly big. Yeah. Big footprint. But when you're out there, you know, in in the middle of the ocean Yeah. That that's not that bad.
Alexander:Yeah. Yeah. There's other satellites that are really cool that have, you know, maybe 30 meter resolution and 30 meter. The satellite tech is getting really crazy these days. I think some have as low as three even.
Alexander:Wow. Wow. So it just depends on different applications. But Yeah. For us with these kind of, you know, big scale blooms, one kilometer generally works pretty well.
Matt:It's just taking photos the whole time it's orbiting?
Alexander:Yep. Absolutely. And then it goes to this huge database. I mean, can just imagine, right, how much every day. And so if you need this, you can access it.
Alexander:NASA hosts it all and it's all free for everyone. And so it's pretty
Taylor:That's amazing. So you said it stands for plankton, aerosols, what are the other two?
Alexander:PACE, p a c e. So it's plankton, aerosols, clouds, ecosystems.
Taylor:Okay.
Alexander:And so, there's like a lot of atmospheric, we would call them bands on this as well. And basically, are just colored channels and like I think this is gonna be in the the ultraviolet and the infrared as well that people will use to study like aerosols in the atmosphere and Mhmm. Things like clouds. There's a bunch of kind of terrestrial groups as well that are using it now for land cover and seeing what kind of, you know, types of trees just like we're trying to see what types of plankton in the water, foresters and whatnot are looking at what types of trees and tree communities are in the, you know, around the world.
Taylor:Wow. That's awesome. What a cool resource.
Alexander:Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty neat.
Matt:I'll give you a really cool time lapse data as well.
Alexander:Absolutely.
Matt:Can you see it on a clear night sky?
Alexander:Could you see pace?
Taylor:Can see pace?
Alexander:That's a that's a great question. I think honestly
Taylor:Well, you couldn't hear. Right? Because it's 1PM it passes over.
Matt:Yeah. But like it's
Taylor:Somewhere else.
Alexander:It's going
Matt:around but yeah. Somewhere I think I think
Alexander:potentially. I mean, you do see a lot of satellites. Right? Like you'll see the ISS and stuff. But I've never actually looked out at at a night sky, you know, and tried to But I don't I don't see why you couldn't, you know.
Alexander:But it's flying really fast.
Taylor:Blank and you'll miss it.
Alexander:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But but it's there, know, you could see it if you looked up in the night sky.
Matt:Yeah. Cool.
Taylor:That's amazing. Well, if you could, could you just define you know, we're talking a lot about plankton and these harmful algal blooms. What is kind of your main research? Like your main number one question in your dissertation?
Alexander:Oh, jeez. That's a good question. Give me a second to think. I guess, in my dissertation work, I kind of have three main questions. And so I've kind of broadly been interested in, you know, these marine ecosystems for a long time and how energy makes it to things like fish that we care about.
Alexander:And so one of my questions is, you know, just looking at the phytoplankton community and trying to see, you how much of that energy the phytoplankton is taking from the sunlight and how is that making it to things like fish. That sustains us, that sustains our commercial fisheries and whatnot. The second question, is built off of this, is really focused on, okay, what disrupts these processes? And these are things like harmful algal blooms, right, that totally restructure the ecosystem. And so for that chapter, the the one that we're talking about here, I guess the main question is seeing, can we identify this toxic species in a crazy complex ocean, right, in real time to give habitat managers, aquaculturists, coastal communities, fishers the resources that they need to be better prepared to, you know, fish a different place, pull your oysters out of the water.
Alexander:How can we help these communities out? And then the last chapter that we're doing for the dissertation is kind of focused on the hyperspectral camera systems that we talked about. So these things can be sold by commercial institutions for honestly exceedingly crazy prices, would say. I mean, we're talking $50,000 plus
Taylor:Wow.
Alexander:For something like this. And and that that makes it, I think, pretty prohibitively expensive, you know, for a lot of people that are in this kind of work or, you know, they'd want to set up their own kind of monitoring station. And so working with an ocean optics lab with doctor Andrew Barnard here at OSU, we've been designing some of our own instrumentation that that's a lot more affordable. We have some prototypes that are about a $150 that work pretty well. Wow.
Alexander:And then we've we've been making another set actually that are about a thousand dollars, but fully hyperspectral and and work kind of just as well honestly as their commercial counterparts. And so we've been pretty happy about that. We actually just had some nice fields where we're testing these out and one of these systems is is still on a the sailboat right now sailing across The Pacific. And so we're getting good kind of matchup data and it's doing pretty well.
Taylor:Wow. Do they have any cool acronym names? Yeah.
Alexander:The little sensor that we did, we we call it Ocean Eye.
Taylor:I knew it. Knew it would have a cool name.
Alexander:Yeah. Looking at the ocean, think oh, what what do we name it for?
Matt:Oceanographers especially, I feel.
Alexander:They love love the acronyms. Excuse me. Absolutely. But yeah, it's like ocean and coastal ecosystems, autonomous network and I think the I is ecosystem yield evaluator. So we're looking at, right, how much of this phytoplankton is there, how much productivity is in the water, how is this supporting fisheries, things like that.
Matt:And so how good so you go out you go out in the ocean and you're sampling there and you've checked that with the satellite. So how good are you at predicting the algal blooms? Like, are you pretty much if you get that wavelength or that indicator, can you pretty confidently say, yep, this is gonna be or is a algal bloom?
Alexander:Yeah. Great question. So at least right now with the satellite, I mean, can always tell when there is a an algal bloom at least because we're very confident. Okay. Know this color.
Alexander:We know that there's algae here. But to know that it's this specific harmful algae, that's what we're working on right now. And what we found with our most recent field data is that we were sailing down and once we hit about San Francisco on the West Coast, there's a big Sudanicha bloom. And we saw that we did have this fingerprint which was very cool. We know, okay, you know, this is kind of confirming our our results.
Alexander:But as we continued further down from San Francisco into the Monterey Bay, throughout that whole way there was still some Sudanese in the water but the fingerprint grew more faint and we couldn't really see it until we got into the middle of Monterey Bay, the bloom picked up again and it was very strong and present. So I guess one of the main issues right now is you know, what are the detection limits for this fingerprint approach does it work? We know that it works, you know, in very dense blooms and and it seems to be strong there. But, know, at what level is there too little pseudoeagia for us to detect? And kind of like Taylor was talking about earlier, you know, if there's other species there that are kind of contaminating that that signature, right, that that fingerprint, we're we're working right now to quantify what those limits are.
Alexander:Mhmm. Yeah. And so I I would say definitively so far, we've confirmed at least, you know, we have more work to do, but we confirm that when there is a dense bloom in the field, we do see this. But, yeah, you know, how dense does that have to be? That's what we're we're trying to see.
Matt:Yeah.
Taylor:Yeah. That's really interesting. When I when I lived in California, I worked with, NOAA in a program called Upwell, where we would take this tiny plane and fly and look for sea turtles and for cetacean species and things. But we saw a lot of red tide, and we had a code for it of like red tide on because then we couldn't count anything, and then red tide off. Oh, really?
Taylor:So we saw these, you know, really small aggregations of it all the time, which was really, you know, I was surprised by that. So I wonder like at what scale you guys are looking for.
Alexander:Interesting. What was the scale that you were seeing these kind of red tides when you're out there?
Taylor:I mean, I can only measure it in seconds, you know? It was like five seconds on, two seconds off, back on kind of thing. And it would be for like small spatial scales. Mhmm.
Matt:Well, like with your eye.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. Because they're just right above the surface of the water in this plane with a glass bottom. So you're just looking straight down and you just have this field of view of that. You're looking to this little window.
Taylor:So you when red tide's on, we're not counting.
Alexander:Mhmm.
Taylor:And then red tide was off, we could go back to counting. Yeah. With your naked eye.
Matt:Interesting. And pseudo nichio, you can't. Can you see it when you're on the boat?
Alexander:What do you mean?
Matt:Like Like what Taylor was saying with the red tide.
Taylor:Like from sea level.
Alexander:Yeah. I guess it it's pretty difficult when you're on the boat. For us, generally, I mean, sometimes there'll be like windrows or certain kind of currents or oceanographic features where you have like a big kind of string of it and it's very distinct against the water that's right next to it, right, having pure blue water versus something that's very dark brown or red. But generally, when we kind of enter these blooms, it's it's this kind of gradient and then, you know, you just get to this whole sea of of red or brown and, you know, you know that something's there but you don't know exactly what it is. Yeah.
Alexander:And with our eyes, right, I can't look at this and say, okay, I know this is pseudonychia versus some other diatom. There are certain species that are that are like a, you know, like almost like a hot pink and some that are that are very red that you can kind of start to tease apart, you know, what these are that are are more distinct. The reason that we picked pseudo nicha was because it it's kind of tricky, you know, like these other beneficial species, these other diatoms, these large plankton are typically, you know, very good for the system, but they look so much like pseudo nature that it's hard. And so we ourselves can't detect it. It's really just through this new technologies that we're able to kind of start and disentangle this.
Taylor:How long has this been an issue? Like how long have people been studying pseudo nuchia or looking out for it or studying harmful algal blooms?
Alexander:Yeah. That's a great question. I don't know off the top of my head, but I know harmful algal blooms has been a problem for a really long time. Mhmm. I mean, people talk about in the Bible, right, they talk about in the seas turned red and all the fish died.
Alexander:Right. People say this is kind of the first recorded harmful algal bloom. Yeah. And for us at least, I mean we've known that harmful algal blooms have been a big problem for aquaculture kind of around the world for a long time but it wasn't really Sudanicha wasn't really known as a big problem until I think I want to say it was the nineteen eighties Mhmm. Maybe 1987 over in Prince Edward Island which is on the East Coast.
Alexander:It's a part of Canada. There's a really bad bloom and I think several people died and and a lot Yeah. Got sick. And we didn't really know people weren't monitoring for Pseudohnicha until then. But essentially they had a big bloom and it contaminated a bunch of shellfish and then there were, you know, a fair number of mortalities and a lot of people got sick.
Alexander:So that's when it kind of came on our radar. Mhmm. And so for the last, I mean, thirty some odd years now, we've been monitoring for it pretty consistently.
Matt:And do you find it's increasing? Like the number of blooms,
Alexander:the Yeah. Another good question. That that's really up for scientific debate. We've definitely been observing a significant increase. However, whether that's because our observing and monitoring has also been increasing at the same time Mhmm.
Alexander:You know, it's hard to kind of disentangle those two. Generally though, it it it seems like the two are or that that pseudo niche is increasing. And now at least, we see it almost every year along the Oregon Coast. And you know, it varies in its abundance. So sometimes it's just kind of a small amount that's not too bad, but you know, they can also be really really bad.
Alexander:It I would say it seems like increasing though.
Matt:Yeah. Feels like that for me too not being in the field at all of what you're doing. But yeah, what what makes one really bad versus one not so bad?
Alexander:Yeah. Pseudo Nietzsche is pretty tricky and that's because there's maybe, let's say, 50 or 60 species that I know of and about half of them produce stomach acid. So not all of them produce this toxin. And also the ones that can produce this toxin don't produce it all the time. And so it's possible that you actually have a really big pseudo neecha bloom, but they're not kind of induced to produce this toxin.
Alexander:Yeah. Then there's no problems. But at the same time, you could have, you know, certain conditions that make them want to produce this toxin. This is also something that's kind of a big question in the field is why are pseudonychia making these toxin? We don't really know.
Alexander:Yeah. We believe that kind of under warming conditions such as, you know, let's say from climate change, warm water seem to kind of induce toxin production more. And so species are more toxic when the waters are warmer. It also seems that potentially under certain nutrient limitations, they're producing more toxin. And so potentially if there's a a phosphorus or an iron limitation in the water, these species appear to be more toxic as well.
Alexander:And so, yeah, nobody really knows why, but there's a couple different guesses. People think it might also be to deter grazing from predators. You know, if they have these toxin, maybe things like copepods, these zooplankton don't want to eat them as much, But it's kind of a huge debate in the field.
Matt:Yeah. And you said they have these, just on their morphology, spines. Right? Or is that for a different species?
Alexander:Not not for pseudonychia. Another species, Ketosis, will have these large spikes out and, that can be to catch light, that can be to adjust their buoyancy, but also anti grazing. But pseudo nachia is a bit unique. They they form kind of these really long chains, almost like a like a pencil, I guess. They're they're rather thin and that kind of allows them to glide through the water.
Alexander:So despite being a plankton, plankton means a wanderer or drifter. You know, they're they're guys that are just kind of moved around by the current. They don't really swim too much on their own. Despite this, Sudanichi actually has a pretty surprising ability to move around and is actually quite motile.
Matt:And that's because they're like linking together with other individuals?
Alexander:Yeah. They they link together and form these super long chains and they're able to kind of excrete, how how would I say this, like some kind of intracellular material outside on along a valve that that's called a wraith. And what they do is they kind of push out their intracellular material and kind of use it like a like a sail almost to glide and and sail through the water. Wow. And so they they can kind of move along a lot along these lateral lines and yeah, I think they use that to, you know, scour for nutrients, get to places where there's better light, maybe avoid predators and things like that.
Alexander:But yeah. But so they're they're pretty impressive little buggers. And, yeah, we don't really know why they produce toxins or or how, but definitely the blooms that are are really bad are in the conditions where they they do produce these these toxins a lot. The the twenty fifteen one that we've talked about where it was really bad, it was coinciding with that warm blob.
Taylor:The blob.
Alexander:Yeah. Yeah. Like this really big kind of oceanographic feature where we had fairly anomalously warm waters off the coast of Alaska that made it down to The US West Coast and, you know, at the same time we have the Pseudo Neutia bloom. So, you know, tens of thousands of marine mammals stranded or dead. I think there was over a 100,000 seabirds, the common murres that, you know, died at the same time both from emaciation, from from less food, and also from this, you know, ridiculous, just harmful bloom.
Taylor:Yeah. I this might be a dumb question and obviously I'm just interested in it because I study whales. But do you get these kind of blooms in really cold environments like the Arctic where some of the whales are kind of migrating and that's their main feeding ground? Are they at risk for getting domoic acid?
Alexander:Yeah. Great question. So there is a researcher at I think actually Kathy LaFebre is also working on this with some other people, Brian Bill up at NOAA in in Seattle and several others, but they're finding that the Arctic as it's warming is having more and more of this noic acid and now these other species. And actually something that's quite crazy is many of lots of phytoplankton have the ability to form what we call a resting stage. And so instead of just dying, they'll go and they'll form like these little cysts almost, like like eggs you can think about where they go dormant for a period of time.
Alexander:And so the Arctic is fairly shallow. A lot of these phytoplankton have been here in these resting stages for, you know, several decades, some even hundreds of years. And these things can still be alive after I think the oldest record is maybe nine hundred years where a cell is still viable after this resting stage. Wow. Yep.
Alexander:And so now with this warming water that's starting to kind of reach the bottom of the ocean where these these species are, we're seeing this huge flux actually of harmful species that are starting to come back alive and come to the surface. And these are moist These are mostly young.
Taylor:The zombies.
Alexander:Yeah. No. No. Absolutely. They're mostly, an another type of, harmful algal bloom, adenoflagellate.
Alexander:And these guys have little flagellas, they can swim straight up to the sun. These are kind of the classic hab species, we would say. But, they're becoming very, very common in in the Arctic, especially in the Gulf Of Alaska. And so these researchers out here looking at this and they've done some time series and I think it's pretty off the charts actually. So I would say the Arctic is one of the most at risk places right now it seems or at least the most at risk of significant change.
Matt:Yeah. So all these ones that are dormant, they're mainly in the Arctic or in the polar regions, and they're getting impacted by increased ocean temperature, is causing them or or something else related to it for them to be a zombie.
Alexander:Yeah. Kind of. I mean, we have these kind of resting stages here as well. But for us, let's say you have a huge phytoplankton bloom in the summer and we have this upwelling in Oregon where basically all this kind of cold and dense and nutrient rich water comes up from the bottom and goes to the surface. As it's doing this, you know, this this water has a ton of nutrients.
Alexander:It's great for the phytoplankton. These phytoplankton that had previously previously been in a resting stage kind of catch a ride on that and get to the surface. They have this big bloom, you know, they're all mating and spreading their genes and you know, dividing and everything and becoming food mostly for the food, you know, for the food web. And then as this bloom gets advected offshore, they eventually run out of nutrients and so they form that resting stage and they sink down to the bottom and they wait for the next year, for that next upwelling cycle to bring them up again. And so it's kind of this like a this little like ocean conveyor belt, you know, carousel that goes around every year for for most phytoplankton.
Alexander:But in the Arctic, these guys have been sitting there for a long time. You know, it's not this kind of annual phenomenon and they've they've been waiting, I would say, for this warm water. And so now it's particularly bad because you have things that have been waiting for, you know, decades to hundreds of years that all of a sudden are all coming out at once. So I think that's why the Arctic in particular is is kind of a in a in a bit of a precarious spot. And in the Southern Ocean, you know, the Antarctic, I think they're they're having their own issues, it's typically a bit deeper.
Alexander:It's not so shallow like the Arctic and so, yeah, a bit of a different scenario.
Matt:Wow. I had no idea they did that.
Taylor:Me either.
Matt:Algae zombies are also doing a big conga line, you know, to be able to swim around.
Taylor:Yeah. It's kind of charming.
Alexander:No. They're they're pretty crazy things for sure.
Taylor:Wow. It's amazing. I think jellyfish can do that too. Like they just revert back to being a polyp and then they they say they're like immortal quote unquote. It's amazing.
Alexander:Oh.
Taylor:All these sea creatures are adapted to do that.
Matt:Yeah. Are you so are you going out on these cruises? Are they multi science cruises and you're hitching a ride and sampling and doing your thing or are you going out looking for pseudo nature on the boat specifically?
Alexander:Yeah. Great question. So almost every cruise that I get to go on is kind of a cruise of opportunity. And so I'm definitely going out looking for for Pseudo Nietzsche and and other things, but we usually have kind of one primary mission that we're that we're there for that's not necessarily related to my research. And so a lot of the research that we go on is is for this new NASA PACE satellite.
Alexander:And so we'll go out and we'll kind of help to to calibrate and validate its products and and ground truth it. You know, you shoot a satellite up to space. It's all these really finely precisely, you know, tuned optical instruments and cameras. And then you imagine you you throw it on a rocket ship, right, and blast it into space and all these things, right, a lot of things can go wrong. And and not only that, when you're up in space, you're looking at the ocean, not a ton of light actually comes out of the ocean.
Alexander:And so, you know, a lot of the light that you see is actually from the atmosphere. So there's a lot of, we would call it, atmospheric, you know, interaction or or, you know, something that kind of messes with the data. I think about 10% of the light you get is from the ocean and the other 90% is generally from the atmosphere. And so we have to do this big correction for that. And part of it part of that correction is going out and ground truthing that data.
Alexander:We then match the data that we get on you know, at sea level at the same time that satellite goes over to what the satellite actually sees, and that kinda helps us to create calibration of this correction factor. And that guarantees that kind of the global scientific community, you know, not even just in the area that we are, can use this data and trust this data and have accurate things. The last cruise that we went on was actually on this sailing vessel too and this was really cool. But it's basically this this French philanthropist boat who who really likes ocean science and and stuff like this. They're they're going out to the Coral Sea to do this big kind of two year mission studying coral health and, you know, bleaching and things like that.
Alexander:And we were able to to catch a ride from from France through the Panama Canal, I think they're they're going to Japan right now. Wow. We just got back from the Atlantic trip and, you know, we're able to do kind of the satellite work the whole way and and look for Pseudo Nietzsche as well.
Matt:Cool.
Alexander:Yeah. It was super wicked.
Taylor:I think it's a really interesting point about research cruises because I think I didn't understand what they were until I went on one. And I think it's it's useful to know that, like, it's not just one science project.
Alexander:Oh, yeah.
Taylor:It's so many people and it's usually twenty four hour operations.
Alexander:Yeah.
Taylor:And it's basically a bunch of people trying to maximize the amount of like data and information they can get Mhmm. On this boat. And so I think that's really interesting.
Matt:Working around the clock.
Taylor:Yeah. Literally. Yeah.
Alexander:No. It's crazy. I mean, right? Because normally they break it up. Here's your night shift people.
Alexander:Here's your day shift people. Yeah, I mean, not a minute of the boat is wasted. No. But like the NOAA vessels, they can be like like $40,000 a day or something. Yeah.
Alexander:Just crazy. So you know, everyone really wants to get the the most that they can. Mhmm.
Taylor:Yeah. But they're awesome because it's just it's so collaborative and you get to like help other people collect data and I think it's a really awesome example of interdisciplinary science and collaborative Yeah.
Matt:Have you been to all the oceans of the world?
Taylor:Oh, good question.
Alexander:No. No. I I wish that one day I would I would like to. I've done Pacific for for most of my work. I've been fortunate to do Atlantic too for a bit.
Alexander:I I haven't done the Indian, I haven't done the Southern, and I haven't spent much time in the Arctic at all. But yeah, mostly mostly I've been in the Pacific and and a little bit of the Atlantic. One one day we'll we'll get them all. We'll we'll see.
Matt:And how many days at sea do you think roughly that you've got? Because they sound like long cruises based on what you've described so far.
Alexander:Yeah. They can be. I'd say most cruises are generally about three to four weeks. Oh, how many cruises total? I've probably got maybe a little over a year at sea, think, total.
Taylor:You can get a captain's license.
Alexander:Don't know you're gonna I I could actually. I thought about it but Yeah. I like doing the science a little bit more, I think.
Taylor:Wow. That's a lot of time at sea. Do get seasick?
Alexander:Yeah. Always the first day. I'm my guts out. Yeah, you you throw up on the side, you just keep working and by by the second and third day, you're usually pretty good.
Taylor:Yeah. That's a secret no one tells you. So many marine scientists get violently ill.
Alexander:Yeah. No. Yeah. Hundred percent.
Taylor:It's crazy.
Alexander:Yeah. But you, you know, you get used to it pretty quickly, I'd say.
Taylor:Yeah.
Alexander:So not too bad.
Matt:You got it.
Alexander:Yeah. Yeah. You should probably
Taylor:have a choice.
Alexander:Sink or swim totally. Especially, I mean, the Oregon Coast, you know, when we go out in the winter, I mean, it's not particularly pretty out there.
Matt:So Yeah. No.
Alexander:But you know, yeah. Everyone's also going through it. You get some great camaraderie and, you know, cruises are just they're so cool. Everyone's always so stoked and, you know, happy to work together and it's it's a good spot to be.
Matt:That's awesome. Yeah. So I wanted to ask, where do you see the field going? There's all this the satellites being put up. There's it sounds like there's all these crazy advances.
Alexander:Yeah. You
Matt:mentioned something with drones.
Alexander:Mhmm.
Matt:And your third chapter, I believe you said you were making these things that are tens of thousands of dollars, 500 or $1,000 or more affordable. But like, yeah, I'm just curious to see if you thought about where you see it going on, how accurately you can predict or see different different sorts of bloom or or different sorts of plankton.
Alexander:Yeah. Great question. I think that this new satellite that's gone up is is pretty cool. I mean, it's been in the works for I think twenty years now before they they got it off and launch, you know. NASA is really excited about it.
Alexander:The whole community is really excited about it. And it's kind of like like our generation satellite, know, like all the grad students are now are super stoked on it and and Yeah. Very excited and it it's really cool. So I think we're gonna have some pretty cool advances. It's only been up for maybe a year and a half now.
Alexander:And so, know, it takes some time for the data to come in and everything and people start to work on it. But I think we're gonna see a lot of really cool and interesting papers coming from from this. As for kind of other things like with with the sensors that I'm making, I guess the the goal is really just to to make this stuff more accessible. You know, I I think if if more people have the ability to do it, you're gonna get a lot more data out, you're gonna have a lot more scientists or people that are working together and I think that that'll kinda owe to some advances as well. In the open source community, I see it becoming more and more vibrant, more and more dominant, know.
Alexander:I mean, I work with people here on campus. We have this innovation lab down at Hatfield, OSU's coastal campus that is also doing a lot of things like this and you know, as we make science more accessible and open sources, we kind of democratize, you know, the instrumentation. I think we're gonna get a lot more people, a lot more perspectives, a lot more background and and with that you kind of have a lot more ideas and the ideas are really what start to shape the science. And so that in collaboration with, you know, you know, we we can't do an open source satellite just yet. So that in collaboration, you know, these really cool kind of, you know, industry standard things that are that are coming out that are that are pretty cutting edge with with open source data, you know, especially that I think I can really see shaping the field and doing some pretty good advances and and progresses for us.
Alexander:And so I'm looking forward to that. And and especially too, you know, it creates this collaborative environment where where people are working on these problems together. I mean, so often it's so hard to just, you know, be, you know, throwing all you got at one problem but maybe there's just something you just don't see. And by by making it more accessible to other people and bringing people into the conversation, you know, they they kind of make up for your shortcomings. And so Mhmm.
Alexander:I think I see the community become more open. I see people joining it and I think yeah. I think it'll be really good.
Matt:That's really cool. Yeah. I
Taylor:love that. Do you see I know like in the Antarctic, they'll do citizen science projects where they'll give people lots of, satellite images of penguin colonies and they'll use just the average everyday person to like help them count penguins and get estimates.
Alexander:That's cool.
Taylor:Do you see any like opportunities for citizen science in the field of like plankton ecology?
Alexander:A 100% I do. And I actually know a few people that are doing things like this. One of my old advisors down at Santa Cruz, Rave Cudela, they have a project where basically you kind of go to the pier, you take a picture of the water and they have I think an application or a website basically where based off the picture of the water it tells you about, you know, here's likely the types of plankton. Excuse me. Here's likely the types of plankton that you have in the water, here's potentially the abundance and and things like that.
Alexander:And so it's pretty neat and and quite cool. And you know, they're not the only lab that that does stuff like this. Think there's several others too but that's just kind of one example. Over at the University of Maine, I know there's one of the students had made this application too that you download on your phone. Think what's it called?
Alexander:I'm blanking on the name. It's like watercolor or vision or something like this. But you take a picture of the water with your phone and it does kind of all these calculations on it to give you, you know, similar data as well like and so I think, yeah, I could definitely see kind of more community involvement being a really big deal. And one of the hardest parts is, like we said before, going out to the water and taking a water sample yourself. And so, you know, if you can get communities that'll go out and start to look at and do identification on the ground level, that'd be really cool.
Alexander:Something that my lab is doing, my advisor and one of her previous students, Raquel, started this project where they go out and they have the local fishers actually take water samples and bring them back so we can run them on our imaging flow cytobot. And so, you know, these fishers are the ones that are ideally, I mean, at the end of the day, ultimately most affected by pseudo nachia because it really affects their livelihood. And so they're they're actually quite interested in it. And so these people will go out, they will, you know, be fishing at their spots and then maybe on the way back when they're transiting, they'll stop and they'll take a water sample and then they'll note down, okay, here's the time we took this, here's the, you know, the location and then they'll bring that back for us to analyze and kind of based off of that, that helps us to, you know, develop more models to predict Sunnichi and know, you know, where these things are. And this isn't exactly in real time but it's helping us to make these kind of more real time models.
Alexander:It also gets the fishermen and local community, you know, involved in the conversation. So often, right, there's this this disconnect between the the scientists and the people that, you know, this is actually really affecting. So bridging that gap, think, is is really important. It's a it's a really cool project that they're doing.
Taylor:That's amazing. I love that.
Matt:Yeah. It's hard to believe you're only in your second year. So what what else where do you go within your PhD? Like is it just you're trying to get more data, more cruises over the next couple of years or
Alexander:Yeah. So a couple of things. Right now we're kind of refining the instruments that we've been making before and it's always yeah. You know, more data is always always better. Mhmm.
Alexander:But we're pretty fortunate to have been able to participate in helping with, you know, several other cruises that have gone on so far and we actually have a quite a bit of data right now. And so a lot of it's just working through that data. I mean, are these are pretty crazy data sets. We were talking the imaging flow side of bot alone. You can get, you know, tens of thousands of pictures every 20 minutes.
Alexander:Yeah. And so you can imagine it's it's a lot to go through that. We we have these kind of these machine learning classification algorithms that'll go through and they'll they'll pull out and say, we think these species are are this and whatnot. But it's really a lot of people in in the Kavanaugh lab that go through and and make these models and these distributions and things that that help a lot to do that. And then of course processing the satellite data, you know, these are really large data sets and so that's kind of what we're working on right now.
Alexander:But there's several cruises coming up. We have one in May and potentially one in September as well that we're hoping to get some more data out. The September cruise are especially really good because that's typically the the time of year when when pseudo niche is very abundant.
Taylor:Yeah. Definitely. Speaking of being in your second year and because it's getting a little bit close to 8PM, we would love if you would take us through kind of your journey to this point. You know, were you a little kid, like obsessed with plankton?
Alexander:Yeah, totally. Swimming in all them red tides, trying to drink I've the always been a swimmer actually since since as long as I can remember it. I think that that's what kind of got me really interested in water and really started to to kind of love the ocean. We I you know, when I was really young, we spent a lot of time in Idaho, but then we're in California when I was, you know, still a kid and and spent most of my my adolescence there and we'd go down to Monterey Bay and you know I just I absolutely love the ocean. The Monterey Bay Aquarium too was a huge spot for me just like standing in front of you know the Calforce exhibit and stuff.
Alexander:I just thought wow you know this is the coolest stuff ever. And I used to volunteer. We we have this observatory behind it was behind my my house back in in California in San Jose called the Lake Observatory. So when I was a little kid, we we go out and we'd like look at the stars, you know, I'd help volunteer there. And so I think I kinda always had this, you know, this fascination with like the ocean from spending time in Monterey Bay and then also, you know, with with space and stuff from working at this observatory.
Alexander:I think, doing this kind of like a satellite and pseudo nature work was kind of this this perfect blend for of that for me. I went to to Santa Cruz for my undergrad, which is right by the water. I think fell just like totally more in love with it. I worked in this lab doing phytoplankton stuff my freshman year and continued through through various labs all the way up to my senior year. And then, spent a couple years with USGS and then with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute as well where I kind of started to get really hooked on the optics and fall in love with that.
Alexander:And then like I had mentioned at the end of my USGS career, we saw that really big bloom in San Francisco Bay. I mean like, I love this bay like, you know, we like it's just such a beautiful place to be and system and every day, you know, well, we'd go out maybe four times a month or so to to do research and and collect samples and you know, you wake up on the boat and it's just birds singing and stuff. You're on the Pacific Flyway, it's beautiful. And one day I wake up and it's just totally silent. Like it's so eerie and weird and you know, I'm not really thinking anything of it but I'm brushing my teeth and whatnot and I I lean over the boat to spit it spit out my toothpaste and it's just pitch black.
Alexander:And you know, it's just this this habit that was just crazy. And all the birds left and over the next couple weeks just everything died. Mhmm. I mean like uncountable numbers, know, everything you can name like I mean we had leopard sharks, we had you know, striped bass, anchovies just piling along the shores. Yeah.
Alexander:And then when the hab kind of finally died out, they all all the phytoplankton sink down and they created this kind of hypoxic zone and so even the crabs, you know, stuff at the very bottom didn't didn't make it. So I think I was like, okay. You know, I'd I'd like to start looking at this a little bit.
Taylor:Yeah. How'd you make that decision to go from kind of working in, I guess, industry to or I guess government technically to grad school?
Alexander:Yeah. Let's see. I think I always kinda knew that I wanted to go to grad school. And I think that was because in undergrad when I was kind of really trying to figure out what to do, the oceanographers in the labs that I would work with were just some of the coolest people and they were so fun to hang out and they seemed to really be enjoying what they were doing, know. And so an undergrad I graduated kind of right as COVID had started and I was working this diving gig that I really liked but I I knew eventually I wanna go to grad school but I I sure didn't wanna be on kind of, you know, Zoom classes.
Alexander:It just wasn't for me. Yeah. I was super fortunate to score this gig with with USGS and I mean just a super cool lab. It's it's the Kern lab down there and they have this incredible data set like seventy years
Taylor:Wow.
Alexander:In San Francisco Bay and it's all public. If you guys are interested, I mean, you can look it up. It's it's really really cool. But yeah, I knew I wanted go to grad school. I'd been working with phytoplankton and this was close to me in Santa Cruz and and growing up in the Bay Area, it kind of just made sense.
Alexander:And I mean, was one of the best jobs I've ever had. The people were so nice and cool and it's just an incredible lab and then so I I kind liked government and then going to MBARI which is you know research institute kind of more industry ask. I liked it a lot. It was also very cool and I got a lot of technical experience but I knew I kind of wanted to you know do my own research and and have my own projects and stuff. And so that really led me to grad school and and OSU has a a great program for oceanography and, you know, we have a lot of habs here and and stuff like that and there's really good mentors.
Alexander:I figured this would be a great spot.
Taylor:You were like, send me where the habs are. Where's the ocean looking weird?
Alexander:Yeah, exactly.
Taylor:That's amazing.
Matt:That's cool. Yeah. It sounds like you've had a ton of different experiences.
Alexander:Yeah.
Matt:Yeah. What I guess we should move on to our traditions now. Right?
Taylor:Yes.
Matt:Yeah. So our first tradition, Taylor, do you remember it?
Taylor:Every week you do this to me. Our first tradition is your favorite thing about your research. Take that, Matt.
Alexander:Favorite thing about my research would probably be the people. Yeah. I feel like and and the field work. I feel like I'm really lucky to work in a field where, you know, if you do this stuff, it's because you're really passionate about it, you know. And that just means that the people are generally really happy and stoked to be be there and be working on it.
Alexander:So, you know, everyone has a pretty good vibe and it's it's just quite nice. And people at Oceanographers I feel like are also crazy. I mean, you meet people with the coolest hobbies, you know, they just do all sorts of stuff. They love being outside and Mhmm. And whatnot and it's always a great time.
Alexander:Plus, I mean, you know, sailing at sea with like a bunch of great friends is just Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a fantastic time.
Matt:Yeah. It's really important to have a great community. Yeah. Makes everything a lot better. Mhmm.
Matt:What's the this isn't a tradition but I just wanna know what the craziest, I guess, non human thing you've seen on a boat is.
Alexander:Craziest non human thing
Matt:not a human interaction like out on the sea or just while you're out on a boat, like, what sort of the craziest coolest thing you've seen on the ocean?
Taylor:It better be a whale.
Alexander:Sorry. I don't think it's a whale.
Matt:Quite too big. We
Alexander:were on I was doing night shift on one of the one of a NOAA cruise. It was like a cruise where they go out and they look at kind of all the fish the sea and we had these huge nets that we were pulling up from I don't know how deep but it came up with there were a couple things. These like kind of dragon viper fish that I would say were just pretty wicked. I mean they're like, you know, just all black and they have these huge face with just massive jaws and I think that was pretty neat. These squid that I had never seen before that like had this kind of bioluminescence and like you know were just kind of shooting off these different colors with their chromatophores and I think I think that would be probably one of my favorite thing while while sailing or or bioluminescence I would say just in general.
Alexander:I don't think there's been a single cruise we've been on in in any place where there hasn't been bioluminescence at least one night.
Taylor:Mean It's something else.
Alexander:Yeah. It's just incredible and it's and it's everywhere, you know? Yeah. It's it's really phenomenal. Yeah.
Alexander:Pretty pretty impressive stuff. A great
Taylor:question, Matt.
Matt:Add it to the traditions. Well, our second actual tradition question
Taylor:Do you remember Matt?
Matt:I do. I've actually got it written here just in case I forgot. But if you can give some advice to anyone Mhmm. An audience of your choosing, what Okay. What advice would you give?
Alexander:Yeah. Good question. I think that I would echo some advice given to me by one of my undergrad mentors at is at Santa Cruz, Matt McCarthy. Incredible person and when I was kinda talking to him about wanting to go to grad school, he had, you know, a big piece of advice for me and he said, you know, if at any point you're doing anything and you'd rather be doing something else, stop what you're doing and go do
Matt:that. Mhmm.
Alexander:And I I don't think I really understood it in the moment but now being here and kind of, you know, doing the research that I do, found that the the people who I think really enjoy their stuff, who are really really passionate about what they're doing are are some of the most successful. And you know that that success can even just be that you're stoked to do it you know and totally happy and those people, you know, they they don't burn out that much. They're they're really passionate, so they they do it a lot and they get really good at it. And I think, yeah, the best advice that I could give would be do what you're passionate about. You know, that doesn't have to be science, whatever it is, you know, try to stick to that and I think you'll you'll be doing pretty good then.
Matt:Yeah. I love that. That's great.
Taylor:It sounds like a lesson too on work life balance. Like when your body and your mind is telling you like, hey, we're not having fun anymore. Mhmm. Like, you have to take a second to take care of yourself.
Alexander:Yeah. I've been trying to learn that. It's It's a job. Grad students, I
Taylor:would say. Every grad student struggles with that. Yeah. But I agree. I feel like the most successful people and the most, like, I guess the happiest mentors that I've had have been people with really good work life balance and who are really encouraging about me having my own work life balance and being like, why are you texting me on a Saturday kind of thing, know, like go have fun.
Taylor:Yep. And I feel like that's a great lesson and one that every grad student should be trying to practice.
Matt:Yeah. And I think if you're if you're following something and doing something you truly love, like it doesn't really feel like work. Absolutely. Like it is a lot less stressful if you're if you're you've yeah, realized you're not doing something. You're doing something and you don't wanna do something, you'd rather be doing something else than try and pivot there.
Alexander:Mhmm.
Matt:And you've got that flexibility somewhat in your PhD. So it's really cool to see you embody that advice as well.
Alexander:Thanks, man. Do my best.
Taylor:Well, third tradition? Who's taking
Matt:Third tradition? We'll say it at the same time. Your outro song.
Alexander:My outro song is Anything Can Happen by the Clean because Oceanography had a had a swear word in it. Also this song I I really like it. It's one of my my friends Nick Tufalaro who who might be listening. He got me kind of really into the optics as well and he showed me this band, some New Zealand group. Pretty cool.
Alexander:I like him a lot.
Matt:Cool. Well, we'll get that playing but yeah, just wanted to say a huge thanks for coming on the show.
Alexander:Thank you guys.
Matt:Yeah. It's super inspirational and I love your enthusiasm and can't wait to see You're not even halfway through your PhD, so can't wait to see where you end up.
Alexander:Thanks man. I appreciate it.
Taylor:Yeah. Thanks so much. I took a whole semester of biological oceanography and I feel like I learned more in this hour about plankton than I took in the whole semester.
Alexander:Very kind of you to say.
Taylor:So, yeah. Thanks, Alex, for coming on and good night Corvallis.
Matt:Good night Corvallis. Good night.
Narrator:Thank you for listening. If you want to support the show, tell your friends about it and give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and follow us on Twitter and Facebook at KBVRID.
Narrator:This theme music was performed by the OSU drumline and the intro jingle was created by Olin Hamant. Special thanks to the supporting staff at KBVR that allow the show and podcast to be possible.
Narrator:This show was started by Jean Camvar and Joey Holbert in 2012. To learn about our current hosts, other graduate students at Oregon State, or if you want to be part of the show, visit our website at blogs.oregonstate.edu/inspiration. Thanks again for listening, and stay curious, my friends.