adolescence and beyond. Tim married, started a family and took over the running of
the motel from his dad Bill; Matt set his goals on a different path. He attended
college and became a consulting hydrologist and traveled the world professionally.
He confided in me many years later that it was the excitement of watching our
activities that pushed his mind to consider new, scientific possibilities to shape his
life. Tim and his wife reworked the Lakeview, making it into more hospitable and
upscale place, and eliminating the possibility of our ever again molding it into our
temporary rustic needs as a laboratory. By then our work had wound down as well,
but I am getting ahead of myself here in telling our Mono Lake story.
31.2.2 Mono in ‘85: The Summer of Mickey and Methane
On this trip we came through Yosemite and headed directly for the Lakeview Lodge
where we spent the first day setting up our makeshift lab and then getting our
analytical equipment (gas chromatograph; epifluorescence microscope) up and running. Along with us was Jon Zehr, my postdoc at the time. The second day we
headed off to the lake, launching our boat from Danburg Beach on its northern shore.
Launching was easy, but recovery was always challenging because of westerly
afternoon winds would throw the boat off just when it needed to align properly
with the half-submerged trailer. Nonetheless, we persisted in this folly for several
years, including difficult winter excursions, because we knew of no other sites that
proved better. Eventually, we were able to access a better launch/recovery site on the
western shore, much aided by Tom Crowe who ran a kayak rental and zodiac
interpretive lake tour from that location. Tom was to prove an invaluable asset and
friend for us over the years, but once again, I am getting ahead of myself.
The first day on the lake we ran water column profiles and established that there
was a thermocline at about a depth of 16 m, which roughly coincided with the
pycnocline and oxycline (the depths below 16 m were anoxic), as well as a clear
redox-cline below which the water had appreciable dissolved methane, ammonia,
and sulfide. There was also a pronounced turbidity maximum at around this depth,
just as we had seen previously in Big Soda Lake. Yet water samples pulled from this
depth were not pink-hued but instead had a pale green color. When we examined the
water under the microscope, we did not see bacteria, but instead some oddly trilobite
particles, about 2–3 um, that fluoresced red, indicating the presence of chlorophyll a.
We were stumped because this did not conform to the paradigm we had co-opted
from BSL that we naively assumed would be extended to Mono Lake. Factual hubris
had struck home against our over-confident preconceptions! Chuck and Jon first
hypothesized that the particles were pollen grains blown into the lake from the
surrounding vegetation that accumulated at the density gradient. So they spent a
couple of days collecting pollen from sage, tumbleweed, mesquite, and other plants
that abound locally but could find no obvious matches. It wasn’t until Chuck
returned to our Menlo Park labs with some of the water samples, set up enrichment
cultures on the window shelf of his office that he found he could actually cultivate
668
R. S. Oremland
the motel from his dad Bill; Matt set his goals on a different path. He attended
college and became a consulting hydrologist and traveled the world professionally.
He confided in me many years later that it was the excitement of watching our
activities that pushed his mind to consider new, scientific possibilities to shape his
life. Tim and his wife reworked the Lakeview, making it into more hospitable and
upscale place, and eliminating the possibility of our ever again molding it into our
temporary rustic needs as a laboratory. By then our work had wound down as well,
but I am getting ahead of myself here in telling our Mono Lake story.
31.2.2 Mono in ‘85: The Summer of Mickey and Methane
On this trip we came through Yosemite and headed directly for the Lakeview Lodge
where we spent the first day setting up our makeshift lab and then getting our
analytical equipment (gas chromatograph; epifluorescence microscope) up and running. Along with us was Jon Zehr, my postdoc at the time. The second day we
headed off to the lake, launching our boat from Danburg Beach on its northern shore.
Launching was easy, but recovery was always challenging because of westerly
afternoon winds would throw the boat off just when it needed to align properly
with the half-submerged trailer. Nonetheless, we persisted in this folly for several
years, including difficult winter excursions, because we knew of no other sites that
proved better. Eventually, we were able to access a better launch/recovery site on the
western shore, much aided by Tom Crowe who ran a kayak rental and zodiac
interpretive lake tour from that location. Tom was to prove an invaluable asset and
friend for us over the years, but once again, I am getting ahead of myself.
The first day on the lake we ran water column profiles and established that there
was a thermocline at about a depth of 16 m, which roughly coincided with the
pycnocline and oxycline (the depths below 16 m were anoxic), as well as a clear
redox-cline below which the water had appreciable dissolved methane, ammonia,
and sulfide. There was also a pronounced turbidity maximum at around this depth,
just as we had seen previously in Big Soda Lake. Yet water samples pulled from this
depth were not pink-hued but instead had a pale green color. When we examined the
water under the microscope, we did not see bacteria, but instead some oddly trilobite
particles, about 2–3 um, that fluoresced red, indicating the presence of chlorophyll a.
We were stumped because this did not conform to the paradigm we had co-opted
from BSL that we naively assumed would be extended to Mono Lake. Factual hubris
had struck home against our over-confident preconceptions! Chuck and Jon first
hypothesized that the particles were pollen grains blown into the lake from the
surrounding vegetation that accumulated at the density gradient. So they spent a
couple of days collecting pollen from sage, tumbleweed, mesquite, and other plants
that abound locally but could find no obvious matches. It wasn’t until Chuck
returned to our Menlo Park labs with some of the water samples, set up enrichment
cultures on the window shelf of his office that he found he could actually cultivate
668
R. S. Oremland