We’re done with our OA experiment!

Saturday the #LabLadies gathered for a day of oyster shucking and sampling.

Figures 1 and 2. Roberts #LabLadies doing work.

Grace and I took water chemistry measurements, but I forgot to take a picture of the data sheet. I’ll do that next time I’m out there. Rhonda helped me sample my Pacific oysters. Like last time, I flash froze adductor, ctenidia, and mantle tissue samples in an ethanol dry ice bath. I also took extra ctenidia and put it in ethanol for DNA extraction. Gonad tissue samples were used for histology, and I measured the length of the oyster, and weight before and after removing the animal. I will use the last two metrics to calculate body weight for the oyster.

Laura had a handful of mortalities in her Olympia oysters. There were shells with evidence of a small burrowing worm. We didn’t see any of these worms on the oysters themselves, but it’s something I vaguely remember seeing in our tanks.

Figure 3. Interesting web-like decay in an Olympia oyster.

One important thing I did see was a “mud blister” on one of my ambient oysters that resembles an artifact from a Polydora sp. worm. I saved the shell in ethanol and took it to Chelsea Wood at SAFS, who semi-confirmed my suspicions. She is going to sequence what’s in the blister. Her concern is that this may be the first reported instance of this kind of worm in the Puget Sound region. Steven and I spoke about it, and besides santizing our oysters, there doesn’t seem to be much for us to do. The blister shouldn’t affect the oyster’s energetics in any way. I still took tissue samples from this oyster, so maybe we’ll glean something from that.

Figure 4. Blister on oyster shell.

On Tuesday, I’ll get pictures of the water chemistry data so I can update the chemistry data spreadsheet. After this, I’ll update the data spreadsheet and visualize my length and weight data and analyze the gonad histology from our February 4 sampling.