by Katrina Lohan

In search of more Striostrea sp., Kristy and I, with our collaborator from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Mark Torchin, traveled to the beach at Veracruz at low tide. As we have been typically finding this species of oyster submerged in small ponds or attached to rocks in the intertidal, we were prepared to sample fast to beat the incoming tide.

To get to the right habitat, we had to carry all our gear about a mile from the beach, across a sand spit to the rocks that are exposed at low tide. Unfortunately for us, the sampling did not go particularly quickly. While these oysters tend to be large, they were also covered in mud and algae, making it difficult to distinguish between the rocks and the oysters. With each oyster that I was able to hammer off, the tide was slowly pushing me back into the rocks. Finally, Mark warned us that we should start heading back as we didn’t want the tide to trap us on these rocks by covering the sand spit before we had crossed it.

I quickly took a sample of the surface water, in the hopes that I can compare the parasites found in the surrounding water to the parasites found in the oysters. Then we started to head back, picking up a few more oysters along the way. As these oysters are big, they are also heavy! So our journey back to the beach was much slower than our journey out to the rocks. Thankfully we returned safely to the car, with all our gear and oysters, and headed back to the lab to process them.

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by Kristina Hill

The first thing on our to-do list for our Panama Part II adventure was to head to Playa Bique on the Pacific Coast of Panama to find more Striostrea sp. and Saccostrea palmula oysters. In order to get to Bique, we had to travel down an unpaved, rocky clay road that wended through lush green vegetation with white cows grazing on hillsides. The beautiful scenery distracted me enough that I didn’t feel my head hit the roof of the truck with every single bump in the road, and distracted Katrina enough that she was able to keep her breakfast!

We arrived at Bique to find a small village with brightly colored houses and friendly people. There were also several dogs in the village anxious to welcome us–as we unpacked our gear, one decided to mark his territory right on the side of our bucket! (Is there an old saying about a dog urinating on a bucket bringing scientists good luck? If not, there should be.) Then we tromped down a sandy, mangrove-lined path to the rocky intertidal, where we were able to find the oysters we were looking for.

The Striostrea species we found were large and seemed to like the tidal pools found in the rock formations at low tide. They were large oysters (we were finding 80-100 mm ones), and it looked like people were “harvesting” the meat and leaving the shells behind—it was very difficult to pry the oysters from the rocks without shucking them open. The Saccostrea palmula oysters we found were much smaller (20-60 mm), so they probably aren’t consumed from this location.

We headed back to the lab, cleaned our bucket and set straight to processing the oysters for metazoan and protistan parasite analyses.

Here’s to hoping the rest of our collections go as well!

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by Katrina Lohan

Our first trip to Panama felt like a whirlwind! We learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t for processing all the oysters we collected. We also learned that identifying oysters just by looking at them is really hard. To prepare for this trip, Kristy, Greg and I went to the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum to meet with our collaborator, Ellen Strong, who is the curator of all of the bivalves. She showed us the oyster collection, and the three of us spent a few hours examining the shells of the different oysters. I’m really glad we did, because we all left feeling much more confident in our ability to identify oysters in the field and in the lab–something that will be very useful!

Our current trip to Panama is expected to be three and a half weeks long, and we have an ambitious schedule. The first few days will be spent finishing our collections on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, then onto the Smithsonian’s Marine Station at Bocas del Toro for a week and half, and then back to the Naos Laboratory to finish sampling the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. It’s time to put those oyster identifying skills to the test!

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