BANGOR (AP) – A University of Maine graduate student is using hundreds of navel oranges to learn more about circulation patterns in the Gulf of Maine and how they affect the ecology of seaweed.
Jessica Muhlin, 25, found that the genetic structure of brown algae, commonly called rockweed, growing in three spots along the Schoodic Peninsula were the same, but was different at a fourth site.
Muhlin wondered if the circulation patterns around the peninsula were affecting how far the seaweed’s reproductive cells were traveling, and whether that was contributing to changes in the plant’s genetic structure.
So she bought 500 oranges last fall, put an e-mail address and phone number on each one using a permanent marker and enlisted fishermen and the nonprofit Friends of Schoodic group to throw them in the ocean.
She used oranges because they’re inexpensive, biodegradable, buoyant and visible. Then she waited to see where they would be found.
“It’s like a message in a bottle that is just waiting, and I’d love to collect the information,” she said.
The Acadia National Park Service found two the next day. Four more were spotted to the north in Wonsqueak Harbor. One was found floating 41/2 miles south of Schoodic, and another was retrieved three weeks later by a lobsterman in Frenchboro, more than 30 miles away.
In all, 54 of the oranges were found. That’s a return rate of about 11 percent, a figure that pleases Muhlin.
“With the volume of ocean I put the oranges into, I was amazed that I got any information back,” she said.
She doubts there’ll be any more sightings of her oranges but plans to send out another batch or two in the spring.
The orange experiment is a test run for the bigger part of her research project in which she’ll deploy two drifting devices with global positioning equipment that can transmit steady streams of information about their travel patterns.
The data will offer more definitive information on the circulation patterns at Schoodic, and her findings could give insight about genetic changes in seaweed in other locations, she said.
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