The Search for the Manganese Oxidizers

Week 1:
Hey Everybody,
I am doing a 10 week internship this summer, at The Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction (CMOP), located at OHSU's Department of Science & Engineering in Beaverton Oregon.

CMOP’s mission statement is: “to improve significantly our scientific understanding of the river-to-ocean environment characterized by highly complex interactions among watersheds, estuaries and the ocean's continental shelf.”
http://www.stccmop.org/

Coastal margins, such as the Columbia River estuary, provide food, commerce and recreation, as well as supporting biodiversity. These ecosystems are important to humans as well as untold other species, and it is important for us to learn how to monitor these fragile ecosystems for signs of trouble. The Columbia River is polluted with everything from farm runoff to toxic plumes from the Hanford nuclear site, as well as subject to serious development and deforestation along its banks and diversion of water flow for farm irrigation and drinking water. All of these things can offset the balance of the estuary ecosystem, creating algal blooms which block sunlight from reaching the bottom of the river and use up the oxygen present in the water, eventually killing off other species that live there, such as fish. When something as seemingly insignificant as the nutrient concentration in the estuary is out of whack, it can have long term consequences all the way up the food chain, to us.

So how do we monitor an ecosystem? First we must find an indicator species. You could think of this as the canary in the coal mine, or the coral reefs for the ocean. We must find a species that will be easy to monitor, and will give us warning of potential trouble well before an event as major as an algal bloom. My mentor Suzanna and I are studying manganese oxidizing microbes as a possible indicator of estuary health.

On Thurs we went out on the R/V Forerunner to collect water samples from the lower Columbia River estuary, so on Mon, Tues and Wed I spent the days preparing growth media for any possible manganese oxidizing microbes we might find. I made 9 different kinds of agar plates (each had basic nutrients required, plus each had a different carbon source.) I also made several liquid media. The idea is to get as many different kinds of manganese oxidizing microbes as possible to grow. I poured a lot of plates on Wed!!

On Thurs we drove to Astoria OR, where we met the Forerunner. The Forerunner is about 40ft long. It has a wheel house and a below decks where the bunks are located. The bunk area became our temporary lab while we were on board. The main goal of our cruise was to find the estuary turbidity maxima (ETM) in the river. The ETM is caused by the ocean tide. As the tide comes in, a salt water wedge flows up the river, under the fresh water flowing out. The front edge of this incoming tide can create a cycling effect, which brings particles and nutrients from the estuary bottom upward, feeding microbes such as our manganese oxidizers. The best place for us to take our water samples was in the ETM because that is where we expected to find the most microbial life. There are 3 other CMOP interns, and each of us is working on a slightly different project, but all involving the ETM. We took many water samples Thurs, processing some of them through filters. We even went out as far as the mouth of the river. I could see the waves breaking and smell the salt water. I miss the ocean. Out at the mouth you could actually see a line where the fresh and salt water met.

On Friday, we have weekly meetings. We are all writing practice grant proposals, and we have a different speaker every Friday during lunch, as well as presenting to our peers what we’ve been up to all week. I also managed to plate some of our water samples onto several different kinds of plates.
The week ended with a picnic and ice cream.

Monday: Orientation, begin making up reagents which would go into the growth media.
Tuesday: Finish making reagents, make seawater:DI soln for liquid and plated media, make liquid media, lab meeting.
Wednesday: Make agar soln and add reagents, pour all plates.
Thursday: Sample collecting cruise on R/V Forerunner.
Friday: Grant writing class, noon speaker, plate collected water samples onto 3 of 9 kinds of plates, and a picnic.