Plants and Professional Aquariums

Jan102010

Written by Ava

Jennifer Frazer feels at peace when she visits aquariums and watches the fish and plants float by. She relates it to a spiritual awakening.

And yet, aquariums aren't even her field or specialty.

Jennifer is a plant lover and a science writer. She's a biologist and a blogger. And despite not knowing a whole lot about plants that live in water or owning her own aquarium, she's been kind enough to answer our questions about climate change, marine algae, marine conservation, professional aquariums, and more.

After you're done reading this very thorough (and wonderful!) Q&A, head on over to her blog, The Artful Amoeba, and read about more of Jennifer's adventures with plants. You'll get as turned on by the plant world as we were after we read it, thanks to the enthusiasm in her voice.

Read on!

How did your fascination with plants begin? Was it something that was always with you or did it come through a specific incident?

I can't say there was a specific moment I became fascinated with plants, but the beginning was definitely when I took botany and taxonomy of vascular plants in my senior year of college. I'd always been interested in studying the spectrum of life and plants were certainly part of that. But when I saw how beautiful many of the cells of plants were under the microscope, and when I started learning about the crazy life cycles of and bizarre varieties of all sorts of plants, some I'd heard of before but many I hadn't, I was hooked.

What do you know about plants that live in water?

Not too much, unfortunately! The more I learn, the less I realize I know. I know most about freshwater aquatic plants. One aquatic plant many people are familiar with is duckweed – Lemna minor. Duckweed is actually a very reduced flowering plant, not algae or pond scum like many people think. It's actually in the same family as the common houseplant called the peace lily, which most people would never guess (if they even know what peace lilies are). I also studied water lotuses and water lilies (which are in a completely different group). Water lotuses are amazing creatures that have uber-hydrophobic leaves that mechanically repel water. If you ever drop water on lotus leaves, you'll see it acts like mercury and literally rolls off in beads. Scientists have been studying these leaves with the hope of replicating the property in commercial goods. Water lotuses also have seeds that can remain viable for hundreds and possibly thousands of years, edible underground stems called rhizomes that are the Swiss cheese of vegetables and often turn up in stir-fries, and one of the most amazing flowers you'll ever see. They can even make their own heat to attract pollinators to sleep in them overnight when the petals close like space-heated bedrooms. Suprisingly, their closest living relatives appear to be sycamore trees, not water lilies. Water lilies, on the other hand, seem now to be one of the most ancient flowering plant lineages on Earth. One of the current contenders for the world's first flowering plant (Archaefructus) also appears to be an aquatic, so it may well be flowers evolved aquatically!

What is your experience with marine algae?

I've never lived around the sea for a significant time, so what I know is limited to a few brief beach encounters and botany class. On beaches, I've delighted in picking up the golden brown and occasionally red algae that I've seen washed up there. Algae with gas bladders are nature's bubble wrap! : ) But marine algae also have some of the most amazing life cycles imaginable. Red algae, in particular, do some amazingly crazy genetic gymanstics. So for instance, in the genus Polysiphonia, a male red alga releases its single-celled (and tail-less) sperm called spermatia which have to be carried – by water currents and chance alone – to an egg embedded in a female red alga, an entirely different plant. The resulting zygote divides while still attached to the female into a diploid (which means, like us, it has two copies of all its genes) plant called a carposporophyte that lives symbiotically/parasitically on its mother.

This, in turn, divides over and over to make diploid carpospores, each of which can float through the water , land, and make another diploid plant called a tetrasporophite, in which meiosis, or cell division that halves the number of genes, takes place. This little guy then makes haploid spores called tetraspores, that land and become either a haploid male or female plant. The double amplification of a single fertilized cell by carpospores an tetraspores helps over to over come the (as my botany text puts it) “sexual disability” of having tailless sperm that only occasionally luck out and blunder into an egg. : ) And it can get far, far weirder. Many algae are like this in that one species may produce threee or more types of individual plants that may or may not look anything alike, and may or may not be attached to the parent plant. A common saltwater plant called sea lettuce – Ulva, a green alga that is also a true plant – has a similar dance of different haploid/diploid plant types, though its various forms all look the same no matter how many copies of their chromosomes they have – a diaphanous green sheet, exactly two cells thick.

You said you know a bit about freshwater Chara, which you studied in biology lab a little bit. What did you learn?

Oops! Turns out after consulting my notes that we looked at Elodea, not Chara, though we may well have looked at that too and I just didn't write it down. We studied Elodea in basic biology in college chiefly as a model organism for studying chloroplasts, the little green balls of photosynthetic pigment in plant cells that make energy from sunlight, and cytoplasmic streaming. So if you have Elodea in your aquarium, it makes a very easy way to impress your guests if you happen to have a microscope. Just put a little sample of one leaf under the scope and focus in – and try to look at cells closer to the mid-rib of the leaf. You should be able to easily see both chloroplasts and cytoplasmic streaming – the way cells keep their contents (called the cytoplasm) constantly stirred. Under the scope, they kinda look like little lava lamps. You can also have fun with osmosis by adding a saltwater solution to the slide or tray you have the plant in. If you have the plant under a coverslip, suck the old water out with a paper towel touched to one side while adding saltwater to the other side. Under the scope you'll be able to see the cells membranes pull away from their cell walls and shrivel up as the water moves osmotically into the salt solution. If you haven't mummified them completely, replace the saltwater with distlled water, and you should be able to see the cells spring back.

I seem to recall Chara also has some fun biology – I believe each one of the stalks between nodes is a single cell – making them one of the longest cells on Earth. I seem to recall the real champion is a nerve cell somewhere in giraffes, but that cell is harder to see. : )

You prefer visiting large aquariums rather then owning your own. Why is that ?

I have trouble keeping houseplants alive. I would not want to subject any creature with eyeballs to that treatment. Owning an aquarium takes time and dedication, and right now I'm spending my time and dedication working on my blog and an emerging freelance career. I view aquariums kind of like I view my condo hot tub: I love taking a dip there occasionally and am happy to share it and help contribute to its upkeep, but I'd never want to have to keep one of those suckers maintained myself. On the other hand, professional aquaria can keep alive a variety and quantity of organisms I'd never be able to manage even if I was the world's best home aquarist.

What do you feel when you visit a large professional aquarium?

Excitement. Awe. Joy. Peace.

It is very much a spiritual, almost religious feeling. I have an endless stamina for museum visits, and aquariums are living museums – almost cathedrals -- to me. I can spend all day on my feet happily wandering the halls. Professional aquaria allow me access to a world that – as a landlocked person – I can only regularly experience in pictures and videos. And no picture or HD YouTube video will ever replace the experience of watching the tube feet of a sea urchin popping on and off the glass as it creeps across right before your eyes, or the color of a cuttlefish as its skin flickers, or the silky feel of a ray and the startling connection you might feel to it as a swims underneath your fingers in petting tanks.

Two of the most profound experiences of your life happened at sea. Tell me about these moments.

When I was a freshman in college I got my heart broken for the first time, which is never quite so painful as it is the first time when you're clueless. It was winter in upstate New York, and the sun hadn't shone for months. I got depressed. Then spring break rolled around, and my family had planned a trip to the Florida Keys. With the help of sunshine and a good Jane Austen novel, I managed to feel a little better. Then my dad asked if we'd like to go scuba diving. I remember that for $100 they offered a half day lesson and half day dive. We decided to give it a try.

So we dutifully spent our morning in the pool, and then they took us off shore to go diving on a reef. We only got 30 minutes to be hauled around by professional divers by our tanks. As soon as we were 30 feet down among the corals, I was suddenly surrounded by a blizzard of sparkling color and beautiful forms – by all of the creatures I'd only ever seen before in books or on TV or in aquaria. There was a moray eel, peeping out from its hidey hole in the rocks, a lobster, and a nurse shark. A baracuda cruised by. But better than all that were the corals – jewel-toned, Dr. Seussian, and delicately waving everywhere. No documentary can ever prepare you for being surrounded by creatures like that in real life. For the 30 minutes we were down there, I forgot my troubles for the first time in weeks. When I emerged from the sea, I was a new woman. It helped solidify my already-growing decision to become a biology major. And needless to say, I felt much, much better when I went home.

The second experience happened when I was about 25 and living in Boston the summer before I went to MIT for my second graduate degree. My boyfriend at the time and I decided to go on a whale watch through the New England Aquarium, which believe I joined that day. We were on a big catamaran, it was summer, and we traveled out to a big humpback whale pod. They were forming bubble nets while feeding – blowing bubbles and then surfacing in circles mouths agape, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. One younger whale – still huge -- leaped and breached just on the other side of the boat from us, in that slow-motion oh-my-god-something-that-big-can-jump?! ker-splash that takes your breath away. But what really moved me was when one adult whale slowly swam directly under where I was standing on the railing of the catamaran. It was as broad as a bus and its size finally hit home. As it slipped quietly by underneath me, I started crying. I was really moved. I don't mean to get all tree-huggery, but I really do feel an almost religious connection to life on Earth. That feeling is how I know sharing this passion is what I'm supposed to do with my life.

One of my many dreams, by the way, is to swim with whales. So I guess that proves I'm not just obsessed with slime molds, lichens, and amoebae. : )

Summarize your blog The Artful Amoeba and your goals for the site.

The Artful Amoeba is a project I've been thinking about for a long time, but not as a blog. Since at least the time I was about 22 or 23 I've wanted to write a funny, popular book about the diversity of life – something that would make both Ph.D.s in biology and curious 10-year-olds laugh and learn something. A classic – a book people would buy as graduation gifts or Christmas gifts like “The Way Things Work”, but funny and colorful like Gary Larson's “There's a Hair in My Dirt”. In the six years I studied biology I learned about so many different kinds of creatures that I found utterly fascinating, that are right there in textbooks, that have been known about and drawn and described for hundreds of years – but about which the public knows utterly nothing. Even things they think they know well – say, a fern – have hidden stories and structures right under their noses that are amazing to see and understand once you know about them. My mission in life is to show people this hidden life – in a funny, engaging way for the joy of learning, but also with the hope they might see why they're worth fighting for. Because they're very much endangered by us right now. I don't mean to paint people as bad guys, because no one intended for this to happen. But it's the way things have turned out. We're losing these creatures forever because of apathy and ignorance.

As for the book, it became clear to me that that was not going to happen as long as I had to hold down a day job. When I won the AAAS Science Journalism Award a few years ago and went to Boston to pick it up, I met with the faculty and students of my old science journalism program and the director suggested starting a blog instead. Valuing my free time, I'd never wanted to get any more entangled electronically than I had to, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a great way it would be to reach the public. Short blog posts would be much more feasible than cranking out an entire book. And the whole point of the book is to reach people. It dawned on me that the blog would be even better than a book because it would accumulate over time, be freely available, and allow me to build a following and converse with my readers. This, in turn, could help me write the book later on.

If you could have a position in an aquarium or doing something with sea creatures, would you take it? Why or why not? If yes, what would you do?

I would definitely take a position in an aquarium if it was involved with public outreach. I don't think I'd be very good or very happy cleaning tanks or feeding fish. But I would absolutely adore a position where I could talk to the public about biodiversity and all the different kinds of sea life they see. Not just fish, you know, but anemones, mollusks, marine worms, algae, corals, jellyfish, ctenophores, sea pens, star fish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, shellfish, barnacles, and the countless varieties of marine copepods, phytoplankton, zooplankton, marine archaea and bacteria and viruses! The ocean is absolutely chock full of viruses, and most people have no idea. Of course, they are usually the sort of viruses that infect bacteria, not us. I'd love to have a job giving lectures and public presentations about all these things, their biology, what they look like under microscopes, and who they're related too. I'd especially love it if if I could also have some time to work on my blog and write books and freelance articles for magazines and books.

Do you think aquarium owners can be marine conservationists?

Yes! As long as they are careful to obtain non-threatened or endangered organisms through ethical, legal, sustainable means (and I read recently that this is becoming a bigger problem with overharvesting of marine invertebrates in Florida), I think aquarium owners can be one of the best advocates we have for life on Earth. In my opinion (knowing next to nothing about the subject before you asked this question) it is your responsbility as the keeper of your creatures is to make sure both that you can care for them well but also that there are plenty more where they came from. On the other hand, aquarium owners have living billboards in their homes for the sorts of species we need to protect but that many people may not think of as necessarily cute, cuddly or worthy of notice or protection. I have a story I tell on my blog of working in a plant nursery the summer after I graduated college and helping a man looking for an ostrich fern. He was stunned to see we had five or six kinds of ferns – he had no idea there were so many kinds. There are tens of thousands of fern species on Earth. And we're lucky if people know there are five or six.

There are many, many more kinds of aquatic life, and there are probably many people who come into your home who have never visited a professional aquarium or dived on a reef. So show people. People who own aquariums must do so for a reason – beauty, delight, whatever. Share that infectious love with those who see your aquarium. Learn as much as you can about the organisms you keep, and tell people who are curious – and let's face it, that's pretty much anyone who looks at an aquarium – all about them. Show them why they are so beautiful, so amazing, so endearing, and so very worth saving for the future. And give them, when it seems natural to the conversation, one or two gentle, non-obnoxious suggestions things they could do to help protect and conserve similar life. They could include printing and using the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Wallet Card, or buying less new stuff, or conserving resources, or fighting climate change and ocean acidification, or contributing to a conservation organization. As an aquarium owner, you can be a one-person educational squad helping people to see there aren't just two kinds of fish -- poison or tasty – and that there is so much more than simply fish in the sea.