share a home cooked meal behind the curtains that divided the registration room
from their home. It was my birthday and was meant to be a surprise (which it was)
and included a home-baked cake. We became, in essence, their adopted sons. As we
drove home, I noted how the area had changed: Hazen, barely a dot on a map as a
former railroad stop was now being leveled for single family homes, and the two lane
highway 95A was being widened to four lanes. Fernley was now a bedroom
community of dozens of more single family homes for folks working in Reno.
And that was the last time I saw Fallon. I would have liked to have said farewell to
Al and Julia too, and I did in a way by whispering those words under my breath as we
drove north to I-80 as my eyes welled up with tears.
31.1.6 Afterthought
We did observe what is referred to as a “bacterial plate” located in the BSL water
column in proximity to the thermocline/oxycline at about 20 m depth (Cloern et al.
1983a). The transmissometer analog readout (just a light source and a photocell
separated by 1 meter “yardstick”) would peg at 0 after recording at nearly 100% in
the waters above that depth. When we drew up water from 20 m, it had a definite
pink hue which became pronounced upon filtration. I even scuba dove to that depth
where the plate had the appearance of a grey fog, the red end of the light spectrum
being attenuated within the upper few meters depth. The plate was composed of
photosynthetic bacteria, mostly Ectothiorhodospira, that situated themselves at the
interface where there were reducing compounds present (e.g., sulfide and arsenite)
which these microbes could use as an electron source to carry out anoxygenic
photosynthesis. Our experience with this bacterial plate was to cloud our interpretation of what ensued when we began working at Mono Lake. The work at BSL,
nonetheless, continued without my presence. Chad Saltikov and his students were
interested in isolating phototrophs from the plate along with Shelley Hoeft McCann
who continued to characterize the isolates (Hernandez Maldonado et al. 2016; Hoeft
McCann et al. 2017). Larry Miller facilitated the operations and Mike Rosen was
often along to futz with his tufa samples.
31 Salty, Alkali-Laced Tales (Mostly True) from the Great Basin Desert, California. . .
663
from their home. It was my birthday and was meant to be a surprise (which it was)
and included a home-baked cake. We became, in essence, their adopted sons. As we
drove home, I noted how the area had changed: Hazen, barely a dot on a map as a
former railroad stop was now being leveled for single family homes, and the two lane
highway 95A was being widened to four lanes. Fernley was now a bedroom
community of dozens of more single family homes for folks working in Reno.
And that was the last time I saw Fallon. I would have liked to have said farewell to
Al and Julia too, and I did in a way by whispering those words under my breath as we
drove north to I-80 as my eyes welled up with tears.
31.1.6 Afterthought
We did observe what is referred to as a “bacterial plate” located in the BSL water
column in proximity to the thermocline/oxycline at about 20 m depth (Cloern et al.
1983a). The transmissometer analog readout (just a light source and a photocell
separated by 1 meter “yardstick”) would peg at 0 after recording at nearly 100% in
the waters above that depth. When we drew up water from 20 m, it had a definite
pink hue which became pronounced upon filtration. I even scuba dove to that depth
where the plate had the appearance of a grey fog, the red end of the light spectrum
being attenuated within the upper few meters depth. The plate was composed of
photosynthetic bacteria, mostly Ectothiorhodospira, that situated themselves at the
interface where there were reducing compounds present (e.g., sulfide and arsenite)
which these microbes could use as an electron source to carry out anoxygenic
photosynthesis. Our experience with this bacterial plate was to cloud our interpretation of what ensued when we began working at Mono Lake. The work at BSL,
nonetheless, continued without my presence. Chad Saltikov and his students were
interested in isolating phototrophs from the plate along with Shelley Hoeft McCann
who continued to characterize the isolates (Hernandez Maldonado et al. 2016; Hoeft
McCann et al. 2017). Larry Miller facilitated the operations and Mike Rosen was
often along to futz with his tufa samples.
31 Salty, Alkali-Laced Tales (Mostly True) from the Great Basin Desert, California. . .
663