Gearing up for another Olympia oyster project for 2018. This time we’ll closely monitor gonad activity in broodstock overwintered in different temperatures. We’ll use wild Fidalgo Bay (North Sound) and Dyes Inlet (Central Sound) oysters collected in early November, tempeatures being 6degC & 10degC.

Friday I launched 6 HOBO data loggers (4 pendants, 2 U22) to record temperature & light at 15 minute intervals; with the settings I should get data for ~300 days, but I plan to retrieve much earlier than that.

Sunday night I joined Stuart at Fidalgo Bay to collect broodstock and install a few HOBO temperature loggers. We collected ~1,600 over ~3.5 hrs. Oysters are accessible at around +1. I installed 3 loggers. The following are coordinates as per my iPhone. Stuart used an app to take more precise coordinates, need to get from him):

1. ~ +2’, tied to a piling @ the Trestle (48-28’40”N, 122-34’27”W)
2. SE corner of the sunken barge, at tidal height where many oysters were collected
3. NW corner of sunken barge, at lowest tidal height of collected oysters

Monday morning Grace & I helped PSRF scrub the ~1,600 FB oysters. There were many of us (~4-7 for ~3 hours). Ryan treated the cleaned broodstock in a bleach bath, as per his protocol. I sampled polychaete worms found embedded between clustered oysters by soaking the separate oysters in fresh water and collecting worms that fully emerged, then preserved them in alcohol. Worms were very delicate, so pulling them out of their burrows was not possible.

Monday night PSRF collected broodstock from Dyes Inlet (numbers TBD). Brian Allen installed HOBO data loggers there for me and recorded GPS coordinates. Info from Brian (google earth file in my email):

Open the attachment in Google Earth. Tried to make them really low profile; not the best spot to deploy gear in security terms - I’ve lost things here. GPS and the aerial image will be your best bet to recover - I should go with or do it myself when that time comes. Don’t think there is any security risk before May or so.
I have your loggers tied to rebar candy cane with 6” orange flag tape. Loggers are positioned at the benthic surface, in the oyster bed complex where we collect.
As you go north, the elevation drops 6” at each site. The highest (pendant 1) is about the +4’ MLLW.

I also asked PSRF to put one of the 3 HOBO temp. loggers designated for Dyes Inlet in Clam Bay with the FB broodstock. Unsure whether this happened.

Here are some photos from the Monday cleaning party & from my worm collection. NOTE: Fidalgo Bay Olympias are beautiful and perfect animals for experiment. They are large and most of them are singles.