-3. GC 856 .0735 of OCEANOGRAPHY Progress Report The Development of Methods for Studying Physical and BiologicalProcessesinthe Nearshore Zone on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Reference 73-3 March 1973 OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY THE DEVELOPMENT OF METHODS FOR STUDYING PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN THE NEARSHORE ZONE ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF THE UNITED STATES Principal Investigator: Robert L. Holton Co-Principal Investigator: William P. Elliott L School of Oceanography, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331 PROGRESS REPORT 1 June1972 through 28 February 1973 Submitted to Eugene Water and Electric Board, Portland general Electric Pacific Power & Light Reference 73 -3 March 1973 STAFF Robert L. Holton, Ph.D. Principal Investigator WilliamP. Elliott, Ph.D. Co-Principal Investigator Janice Crawford, B.S. Kenneth Johnson, B.S. Carolyn Mullikin, B.S. Graduate Students Walter Pearson, M.S. Linda Smith, B.S. Leo Kowalski, Boat Operator In addition to the abovethe followingassisted at various times in the conduct of thefieldwork and data analysis but didnot receive financial support from thisproject. Their assistanceis gratefullyacknowledged here. Norman Farrow William Gilbert Vernon Johnson Donald Keene Jan Naidu PROGRESS REPORT Introduction The following progress report presents a summary of the work conducted through January of 1973 as specified in our proposal, "The Development of Methods for Studying Physical and Biological Processes in the Nearshore Zone onthe Pacific Coast of the United States," supported by the Eugene Water and Electric Board, Portland General Electric Company and the Pacific Power and Light Company. Although we started this program in the early summer of 1978 without adequate lead time to order equipment and hire personnel we have been able to make a meaningfulstart at achieving the goal of developing study methods for the nearshore zone. However, the progress is spotty. In the areas of sampling fish and benthic organisms a limitation on boats available, equipment on hand, and number of personnel hired resulted in little effort being expended in this area. The studiesof surface currents and of phytoplanktonand zooplankton distribution have been initiated and significantprogress has been made. In these cases the studies have been adequate to enableus to do a more effective job of planningfor futureneeds in thesestudyareas. We anticipate having significant programs in all areas during the 1973 working season. The logistic problem was difficult during the first year's operation. We plan to reduce this problem greatly during 1973 by shiftingour opera- tions to Newport andbasing most of our personnel there for the summer. This will increase our efficiency by allowingus to utilize both the existing weather and the time of our personnel more effectively. We feel that in general the only way to develop adequate methods is to take a particular method, use it to gather data under field conditions, and evaluatethe adequacy of the method by a careful examination of the data collected. This approach is reflected in the following discussion of the individual subprojects. 2 Working Vessels The experience that we had during the 1972 workingseason indicates that the Pacific City-style dory isa satisfactory vessel for working in this zone. It allows us to come through the surf and to the shore during many of the working days during the summer. It does not, however, allow us this ability on days when the swell is running high. It also is capable of handling the various types of sampling rigs thatwe need for this pro- gram. Although the dory itself is capable of doing the type of work that we desire, we find that the dory as equipped last summer did not give us as full and versatile a range of operation as we desire.In particular, we find two areas.in the dory operation that were less than completely satisfactory.The use of a conventional outboard engine, ina well, neces- sitates the use of an extra man for handling the doryas we are coming through the surf to the beach.This extra man is necessary to lift the motor to keep it from hitting on the sandas we are coming to the beach. This type of motor also leavesus without power when we are inside the surf zone and this requires extra manpower to hold the dory in place. The second area of deficiency was the lack of navigational equipment.This proved to be a safety problem on days whenwe were caught in a fog. We also find that we were unable to locate and replicatea station with any degree of accuracy without the help ofa triangulation from shore. To remedy this situation and to reduce theman power requirement imposed by such triangulationwe feel that a radar and fathometer system will aid us greatly in making the bestuse of the dory.We will also pro- pose the use of a jet powered dory to increase the efficiency ofour opera- tion. Although we did not haveany largeeffort directedtoward large animal sampling last summer, we did do enoughwork with the doryin the surf to deter- mine that it would bepossible toset a beach seine with the dory and then move the doryout of theway and pull the beach seine from the shore. We will use thedory for this typeof operation during the coming summer. We will also usethe dory topull conventionalottertrawls and bottom sampling devices throughthe surfzone underfavorableconditions. 3 Phytoplankton The data presented in AppendixI are representative of the phytoplankton data that were collected during the 1972 period. The procedure for the collection of these datais as follows: An NIO water sampling bottleis used for collection of one liter water samples. The use of this bottle allows sampling to occur at any depth from thesurface to the bottom within the nearshore zone. The bottle is an adaptionof the Nansen type reversing water sampler, which reverses and locks in place ata particular depth to take the desiredsample. The water sample so obtained is then processed in the followingway. The water from the NIObottle is placed ina one liter plastic bottle and the one liter plastic bottle is submerged in a water bathon the boat to maintain it at its correct temperature. The water bath is also designed to reproduce the approximate light intensity that the phytoplanktonwould be encountering at their depth of collection. This light intensity is reduced for lower samples by the successive additionof screens to the top of the water sampling container. The phytoplankton samplesare then trans- ferred to a shore-based station for filtering. Only six to eight samples are collected at one time before the trip to the shore-based facility. The samples typically spend about one hour between the timeof collection and the time of filtration. On the shore the water samples are processed ina tent, where we are able to filter them througha specially developed one liter filtering apparatus using a 0.8 micron filter. This filter willremove essentially all of the larger diatoms, which appear to makeup the majority of the plankton in this area. The filtering device isa pressure filter and in the work last summernitrogen gas was used to developthe pressure to push the liter of material through the filter. The filter, thus attained, is then frozen using dry ice in the field and retained inthis frozen condition until time for analysis. The processing of the frozen filtersin the laboratory is started by grinding them in a mixer ina solution of 90% double distilled acetone. The solution is then placed ina refrigerated centrifuge and spun down for 20 minutes. During this processing,care is taken to keep the samples constantly refrigerated and in the dark. This is necessary since both 4 light and heat will tend to alter the pigments. The supernatant liquid is then read in a spectrophotoneter at six different wave lengths. This raw data is then analyzed by a computer program to determine the pigment values as presented in Appendix I. The program calculates chlorophyll values based on two different methods that have been used by other investi- gators. The values given in Appendix I after the analysis are values for the chlorophyll content of the particular sample. Although, the chlorophyll content is not a direct measure of primary production in a marine ecosystem, it is in fact, a measure of the potential production fora system and is widely used in this way. The advantage to using this type of measurement lies in the fact that one is able to get a great number of measurements in a relatively short period of time. If a person is measuring the actual production by the various light bottle-dark bottle techniques it will be much more difficult to obtain a survey of a broad areaover a short period of time, since each sample requires a considerable incubation time andre- quires a longer time for analysis than the samples measured in theway we are measuring. Therefore, we propose to test the validity of this method asa survey method for primary production in a given region and to validate this method against measurements of primary productivity bya carbon-14 method during future years. The data that we have at this time illustratesome difficulties en- countered with this type of measurement. The greatest difficulty at this stage is our inability to obtain replicate samples thatare showing a consistent value. At this time we blame this on the fact that we have not had enough development time to standardizeour methods to allow us to operate more accurately in this area. Therefore, a first effort in the future year's work will be to use this method and to develop greaterpre- cision in its use so that we can get the variations between replicate samples taken at the same time and the same place down toa much lower level.