Field Experiences in South Texas
The University of Texas Marine Science Institute

REUfest is a summer research program for undergraduates at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute. Student projects take advantage of the wide variety of coastal habitats near the Institute, including shallow bays, hypersaline lagoons, seagrass beds, estuaries, mangroves, and marshes.

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July Enriquez

June 25th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Reu ExperienceHELLO!!!My name is July Enriquez, I am Chemistry major from UTB-TSC. This summer, I will be working with Dr. Min, an assistant professor at Marine Sciences Institute. I’m doing a research about The Distribution of fluoride concentrations in freshwater and seawater of the south Texas bays and near shore Gulf of Mexico region as an indicator of mixing behavior and potential pollution of marine environment. My purpose is identify High concentrations of fluoride in any south Texas bay , river or Gulf of México to make comparisons  between their levels of fluorides , identify main sources of possible pollution and to answer several questions concerning the distribution of fluorides in South Texas Bays, Gulf of Mexico, and Rivers such as What are the distribution and mixing behavior of dissolved fluoride in south Texas bays and near  shore Gulf of Mexico?, What factors may contribute to the development of high concentrations of fluoride in these local environments? Can high concentrations of fluoride be an indicator of pollution in estuarine and sea water?. I will use analytical methods such as Colorimetric and spectrophotometer to determine and quantify concentrations of fluorides in water. I expect to find High Concentrations of halides in these Local environments!!!

Dylan Brandenburg

June 25th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Under the guidance of Dr. McClelland, I will be spending my summer researching the effects that different environments have on oysters.  By analyzing the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in oyster tissue, we should be able to get an idea of what the oysters are filtering from the water and assimilating into their tissues.  The salinity of the bays in south Texas is highly variable.  Oysters can be found near estuaries as well as in locations very near the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.  The ship channel from UTMSI to the upper reaches of San Antonio Bay follows a salinity gradient which represents marine through estuarine environments.  By collecting oysters in numerous locations along the way and referencing their isotopic signatures to data recorded at nearby monitoring stations, we hope to be able to determine how an oyster reacts to various conditions-especially that of changing salinity.  Additionally, I am keeping oysters in a controlled environment at FAML.  I will be removing them throughout the summer for isotopic analyses, in order to get an idea of assimilation rates among different sizes.  A more ambitious goal for the summer is to be able to shuck an oyster, run some tissue through the mass spectrometer and determine the environmental conditions that the oyster has been in over a given period of time.  Think of an oyster as a natural, mini monitoring station.  Ask not what you can do for your oyster…(Sorry, JFK)     feeding oysters

Matt Pimentel

June 23rd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Microscopy!

Microscopy!

Hi everyone! My name is Matt Pimentel, and I am a third year, Biology major, from UCLA. This summer I will be working with Dr. Ed Buskey, a professor at the Marine Science Institute and research director for the NERR. One aspect of Dr. Buskey’s research involves studying grazer interactions in harmful algal blooms. Protozoans have been found to play an increasingly important role as grazers of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and are thought to assert top-down control on HAB dynamics. We are interested in determining whether or not it is feasible to utilize species-specific molecular tags to identify ingestion of HAB species, specifically ingestion of the red tide dinoflagellate Karenia brevis by the heterotrophic dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans. We would also like to be able to determine the limitations of molecular tagging such as the concentrations at which, and the duration which, detection of ingested K. brevis is possible. This would enable us to determine HAB-grazer interactions and identify potentially important grazers involved in suppressing and/or controlling HABs, and understand how potential grazers change after ingesting HAB species (i.e. behaviorally, growth, reproduction, etc.). Therefore we will be able to quantify protozoan importance as a grazer in natural plankton assemblages involved in top-down control of HABs and, in the future, investigate HAB food chain dynamics to concretely establish how red tide toxins travel through the food web.

Stephanie Miller

June 22nd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Hello everyone!  I am Stephanie Miller, a rising senior from Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina majoring in Marine Science with minors in Chemistry and Coastal GeolCollecting water samplesogy.  This summer at UTMSI, I am working under Dr. Chris Shank.  My research primarily focuses on CDOM (chromophoric dissolved organic matter).  I am taking daily water samples from the MSI Pier, weekly samples from the Port Aransas Pier, and bi-weekly samples from some of the area’s surrounding bays (Copano, Mesquite, and Aransas) to determine the origin and fate of CDOM in the area.  I have never done chemical research so I am really learning a lot.  The instruments I am using are the UV/Vis Spectrophotometer, the Fluoromax Spectrofluorometer, and the Shimadzu TOC-V with TN unit to measure absorbance coefficients, excitation-emission matrices, and dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen levels of all my samples.  By combining these results I should be able to determine whether the CDOM in my test sites originated from terrestrial or marine sources.  Also, I am studying the change in CDOM with climate (rain vs. drought conditions) and tide.

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