Fall 2026 lab survival assessment plan

Plan for Fall 2026 lab survival assessments from closing field experiments

Overview

I will update this post as we do collections with more specific information.

Below I have outlined our plan for lab survival assessments of oysters collected from our field deployments at Baywater (10K seed project), Sequim Bay (Effort A thermal hardening), and Goose Point (Effort E salinity and thermal hardening).

General protocol

These experiments will follow the same protocol we used in our last round of survival assays.

We will conduct these assays by placing oysters in individual cups and letting them sit at the target temperature of 34-35°C for ~50 hours.

We will need to be sure to randomize the location of replicates from each bag as we did on the last round of assays.

Assays will be conducted for each “experiment/field site” separately. THe experiments are described below.

Experiment 1: 10K Seed Oysters (Baywater)

These oysters will be collected from Baywater and brought back to UW campus and placed in the FTR tanks. I will post the tag numbers when we do the collections.

There will be 5 bags brought back to FTR with the oysters for this experiment:

1. “10K FW 35C” (tag number TBD)
   
2. “10K 35C” (tag number TBD)
   
3. “10K PolyIC” (tag number TBD)
   
4. “10K FW” (tag number TBD)
   
5. “10K Control” (tag number TBD)

There will be one bag per treatment group and each bag will have 30-40 oysters. The experiment will be done using n=30 oysters per bag (n=150 total oysters). This will therefore be done in 2 rounds with half done each round. This will be n=75 oysters per round or n=15 oysters per bag per round.

This experiment should be run first with the two rounds done one right after the other.

Experiment 2: Effort A Oysters (Sequim)

These oysters will be collected from Sequim Bay and brought back to UW campus and placed in the FTR tanks. I will post the tag numbers when we do the collections.

There will be 2 bags brought back to FTR with the oysters for this experiment:

1. “Effort A Treated” (tag number TBD)
   
2. “Effort A Control” (tag number TBD)

There will be one bag per treatment group and each bag will have 30-40 oysters. The experiment will be done using n=30 oysters per bag (n=60 total oysters). This will therefore be done in 1 round with all 60 oysters.

This experiment should be run after the 10K work is done.

Experiment 3: Effort E Oysters (Goose Point)

These oysters will be collected from Goose Point and brought back to UW campus and placed in the FTR tanks. I will post the tag numbers when we do the collections.

There will be 4 bags brought back to FTR with the oysters for this experiment:

1. “Effort E FW Control” (tag number TBD)
   
2. “Effort E FW Treated” (tag number TBD)
   
3. “Effort E Temp Control” (tag number TBD)
   
4. “Effort E Temp Treated” (tag number TBD)

There will be one bag per treatment group and each bag will have 30-40 oysters. The experiment will be done using n=30 oysters per bag (n=120 total oysters). This will therefore be done in 2 rounds with half done each round. This will be n=60 oysters per round or n=15 oysters per bag per round.

This experiment should be run after the Effort A Sequim experiment with the two rounds done one right after the other.

Data recording

Data sheets will need to include the following:

• Round, time, date, initials, cup number, live/dead, and temperature, as done previously
• Bag tag number (TBD)
• Also include the site (e.g., Goose Point) and the experiment (e.g., “10K”), and the treatment (e.g., “Effort E FW Control”)