FSML: A culture facility for small marine organisms at Shannon Point Marine Center

Western Washington University, Bellingham WA

Investigators

Abstract

The Shannon Point Marine Center (SPMC; https://www.wwu.edu/spmc/) has historically relied on culture methods to study how small marine organisms grow, feed, and respond to environmental pressures such as ocean acidification. Single-celled algae and non-photosynthetic protists are also used as foods for other marine organisms that are the focus of research at SPMC, including larger zooplankton, endangered pinto abalone, and threatened Pacific herring. This award supports the acquisition of equipment used for culturing small marine organisms, particularly single-celled planktonic (free-floating) algae and their direct consumers. The new culture facility will be used by students at a variety of levels in both classroom and independent research settings, and will involve new faculty from the main campus in research at the marine laboratory. The facility will also support increased collaboration with area resource management. The new instrumentation will enable isolation and identification of small marine organisms (stereomicroscope), maintenance of these organisms in culture (environmental chambers, laminar flow hood, autoclave) and characterization of their abundance and condition (flow cytometer). Research areas at SPMC that are dependent on the ability to isolate and culture small marine organisms include protist chemical signaling and defense ecology, ocean acidification effects on regional zooplankton and larval fish biology, invertebrate developmental biology and ecology, chemical defense studies, and symbiosis research. New research areas that will require the requested isolation and culturing facilities include culture of endangered pinto abalone and expansion of ocean acidification studies to threatened stocks of Pacific herring. Student involvement with the culture facility will occur through multiple avenues, including a summer REU program (pending), our graduate Marine and Estuarine Science program, and the capstone projects envisioned for the new undergraduate major in Marine and Coastal Sciences. Several of the projects that will use the culture facility have regional conservation impacts, including testing larval herring diet-development relationships, and developing methods for culture of endangered pinto abalone. Through these and other avenues, the culture facility will form or strengthen existing partnerships with area agencies and stakeholders who have interest in aquaculture pilot projects (e.g. Puget Sound Restoration Fund, Washington Department of Ecology) or environmental impact research (e.g. WA Ocean Acidification Center). Finally, the culture facility will improve our ability to provide cultures of heterotrophic dinoflagellates and ciliates to researchers worldwide, a service that has led to numerous significant publications in plankton ecology, biogeochemistry, and phylogenetics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.