Preparing Westcott outplants at Point Whitney on June 4 2024

This post details activities at Point Whitney from 4 June 2024 and preparation of oysters for outplanting at Westcott on 7 June 2024.

Overview

Today we went to Point Whitney to prepare outplants for Westcott and conduct another round of weekly stressors.

Weekly probe measurements

AH took weekly measurements at 12:00. The only tank with oysters running is the left tank. Fluorometry measurements were 8 in this tank and 5 in the larval silos. We did not do any pulse feeding, Ariana topped off the food reservoir with full concentration food (2 buckets full).

Environmental measurements

tank	date	time	temp.C	pH.nbs	sal.psu	initials	notes
left	6/4/24	12:00	14.8	8.17	29.74	ash	tank
outdoor_tray	6/4/24	12:00	15	7.87	28.7	ash	large POGS
outdoor_tray	6/4/24	12:00	14.8	7.73	28.67	ash	small POGS
upweller	6/4/24	12:00	15.7	7.83	28.3	ash	common holding tank for all oysters

Weekly stressors

We conducted weekly temperature and fresh water stressors on Effort D and Effort E oysters from 11:55-12:25.

Conditions in the fresh water stress were:

Temperature (C) = 15.7
Salinity (psu) = 0.114
pH (nbs) = 7.97

Conditions in the temperature stress were:

Temperature (C) = 24.5
Salinity (psu) = 29.75
pH (nbs) = 7.67

Field outplant preparation - Westcott

Our overview document can be found here with information on specific Efforts.

Westcott has 32 available bags with 1/4” / 6 mm mesh for us to use for outplanting. We will fill these with available oysters from our thermal hardening efforts.

Effort B

We brought in oysters from Effort B (daily thermal hardening POGS seed) and sorted them into oysters that were too small for outplanting in 6 mm / 1/4” bags. We did this by separating oysters > 8-10 mm in both length and width from those that were < 8-10 mm in both length and width to ensure they wouldn’t drop out of the bags.

We then counted the total number from each treatment group (treated and control). Our goal was to get 10 total bags from this effort - 5 control and 5 treated.

To fill these bags, we will stock at a density of 50 animals per bag. We are not able to stock at 100 animals per bag because we did not have enough individuals that were large enough.

The remaining oysters that were too small will be left for other sampling (listed below).

We then counted oysters into individual tripour cups with 50 animals per cup totaling 5 groups of 50 per treatment. We then measured maximum length (mm) with a digital caliper for 15-20 individuals per bag to get an initial size estimate (data described below).

The animals were then put into an orange bag with a tag number. “UW-SR1” through “UW-SR5” for control and “UW-SR6” through “UW-SR10” for treated. We added a wet storage tag to the outside and inside of each bag with this tag number. The master list of tag numbers is below.

This resulted in 250 control and 250 treated animals in 10 bags ready for outplanting.

Effort D

We followed the same proceedure with oysters from Effort D weekly POGS seed temperature. We removed those that were too small, counted the ones that were left, and divided them among the remaining available bags. We stocked at a density of 100 animals per bag (they were much bigger than Effort B) with 11 bags of control animals (5-6 bags each from the duplicate treatment trays) and 11 bags of treated (5-6 bags each from the duplicate treatment trays).

We did size measurements on these as well and have some left over to do more things with!

Size measurements

We took measurements of maximum length (n=15 oysters measured per bag) as an initial size measurement for each outplant bag. The size data is recorded on GitHub here.

Grace is going to add size measurements to this when they outplant later this week.

Bags for outplanting

All bags were put in the outdoor tanks for holding until outplanting.

Steven is going to come pick up the oysters on Thursday the 6th and take to Westcott on Friday the 7th. The bags are bundled in three groups and labeled UW-SR1 to UW-SR32. They are in our same upweller tank on the right hand side.

They can be packaged with ice packs and wet paper towels with bubble wrap to keep the oysters from sitting directly on the ice packs. The cooler is next to the indoor white tanks.

Tag metadata and overview

All data is on GitHub here.

Here is our final table of tag metadata for outplanting at Westcott:

tag	number.animals	effort	description	treatment	site	date.deployed	size.range	length. Treatment
UW-SR1	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR2	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR3	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR4	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR5	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR6	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR7	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR8	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR9	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR10	50	Effort B	POGS 2023 seed daily temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	12-20 mm	2 months
UW-SR11	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR12	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR13	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR14	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR15	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR16	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR17	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR18	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR19	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR20	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR21	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Control	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR22	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR23	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR24	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR25	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR26	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR27	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR28	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR29	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR30	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR31	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months
UW-SR32	100	Effort D	POGS 2023 small seed weekly temperature hardening	Treated	Westcott	20240607	15-35 mm	3 months

Ariana sent this information to Matt H. at Point Whitney for their transfer permit to allow us to transfer to Westcott.

Oysters leftover from Efforts B and D that can be used for other sampling

We have 100-300 oysters left over or that were too small to outplant from Efforts B and D. Here are my ideas of things we could do:

Survivorship curve testing (as we want to do for the LCO project) in the lab to get acute stress test information
Sampling for metabolic assays and enzyme assays in the lab
Sampling for resazurin metabolic rate assays
Sampling for RNA/DNA, metabolomics, lipids, proteomics, etc. to keep in the freezer in case we want to work with these later on

We can make a plan in the next few weeks for these ideas.

Launching loggers for field outplant

I launched 5 loggers that Grace will add to a subset of bags to monitor temperature conditions in the outplants at Westcott.

logger	date.launched	time.launched	date.deployed	site	model	interval
22023412	20240606	08:00	20240607	Westcott	Hobo Tidbit MX Temp 5000	15 min
22023401	20240606	08:00	20240607	Westcott	Hobo Tidbit MX Temp 5000	15 min
22023396	20240606	08:00	20240607	Westcott	Hobo Tidbit MX Temp 5000	15 min
22023405	20240606	08:00	20240607	Westcott	Hobo Tidbit MX Temp 5000	15 min
22023393	20240606	08:00	20240607	Westcott	Hobo Tidbit MX Temp 5000	15 min

Receiving new seed from USDA POGS program

Today we received a shipment of 5,000 seed from each of 5 families from the USDA from Newport, OR. The seed looked good upon arrival (<24 hour shipping). The families are as follows: