Talk NERRdy to Me: Joyce Block

Talk NERRdy to Me is a monthly column about leaders and luminaries from across our 30 Reserves. This month, NERRA’s curious carouser Nik Charov interviewed Joyce Block, Davidson Fellow at the Padilla Bay Reserve. She’s been raising baby green crabs for months, from egg to instar. Why would anyone do that?!

Nik: Joyce Block, Margaret A. Davidson Fellow at the Padilla Bay Reserve, up in the northwest corner of the Lower 48—you are on Day 51 of an experiment that has not allowed you to have a day off. Why is that?

Joyce: Because I am culturing 192 European green crab larvae to find out how temperature affects their development, survival, and stage duration! It requires daily monitoring, looking at them under the scopes. Their feeding trays need to be cleaned every day after I transfer the larvae, and the transferring process is very tedious. They’re also getting so big that they don’t fit in the pipette I’ve been using.

Nik: You’ll need a turkey baster, at some point! There are 192 larvae?

Joyce: Back on January 20th, my female crab hatched 200,000 …! I’d been monitoring her for months, ever since I received her on November 8th. This has been a long, committed, dedicated journey.. In the pictures here, you can see the bright orange and yellow brood she’s carrying. There are over 200,000 eggs in there. 

By mid-December, we were getting close. When she hatched, it was an explosion. I grew up in South Dakota. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a serious blizzard where you can’t see anything. You can’t even see your hand. That’s what it was like. The hatching jar I had put her in was completely packed with all of these wildly moving zoea 1 larvae.

Nik: Did you have to count and sort all 200,000?

Joyce: I randomly suctioned out a small population from that big hatch. I shouldn’t say “I,” because I have two volunteers that helped me. They alternate the days they come in, so I never have to be alone doing this, which is just heaven. I’m so grateful. They’re my larval angels that descended from the skies and here to help me. 

Nik: This is your Davidson Research Fellowship project? Or a Master’s capstone project? 

Joyce: Yes/and. The Padilla Bay Reserve wants to know because the estuary is now receiving more green crabs. They want to know the temperature thresholds for the European green crab to inform the modelers at the University of Washington, so they can make a more accurate forecast about where and when to expect these populations to pop up and ultimately get more boots on the ground for trapping.

Nik: Forgive me for sounding a little East Coast-centric here, but: we’ve had green crabs for 200 years! They were only found in your part of the world, the Salish Sea and Puget Sound, in 2019?

Joyce: I think it was San Juan Island, sometime in the early 2000s. Definitely not 200 years.

Nik: So, meh! We’ve got billions of them in the Gulf of Maine. I say: just give up! Hand the keys to the estuary over to the green crabs. It’s over.

Joyce: Never! Truly, it’s quite fascinating to see, as you can see in these visualization graphs, the demarcation of how well the survival is and what the stage duration is …

Nik: I see your lines. What conclusions can you draw so far?

Joyce: Well, the effects of higher temperatures on larval development. I have four temperatures, ranging from 12 to 18°C, across eight incubators. On day 51, my two 18°C incubators are done. They’ve gone through all five larval stages and now all the way to juvenile instar. The first one to do that—this is what’s really remarkable—was on day 39. …You’re making a face. Are you familiar with the larval stages of Carcinus maenas? 

Nik: Of course I am! (Editor: he’s not.) We do tons of green crab research at the Wells Reserve. But perhaps for our readers…

Joyce: There are five larval stages. The last is the megalopa, which is a transitional larval stage that is more planktonic than benthic. That’s why I wanted to go as far as I could with the transition of the megalopa to the juveniles. In my experiment’s warmest water, it took only 39 days for the first crab larva to become a juvenile instar. For the coldest temperature, 12°C, it took 63 days. That 27 day difference is significant; Getting to maturity faster gives green grabs a competitive advantage over native crabs. 

Nik: Ah-ha! So warmer water equals faster adolescence. They’re like hothouse tomatoes!

Joyce: They’re through it all in close to a month. That’s something that Sylvia Yang, the research director at Padilla Bay and Nicole Burnett, who’s also my mentor over there, are really amazed by. 

Nik: So all we have to do is cool the water down! Slow those suckers in their tracks. I don’t see what the problem is, Joyce.

Joyce: It’s true. 10°C seems to be the breaking point for these larvae. Are you working on that cooling?

Nik: Every day. I drive an electric car and I recycle. Problem-solving! But what’s your stake in all this? Why crabs, why now? 

Joyce: Well, there’s a full story about me on Western Washington University’s blog. This is my second phase in life. I’m molting as well, from a high school biology teacher to a marine conservation scientist. And the reason is that it’s been my passion my whole life. I love kids and I really enjoyed teaching… until COVID hit, and then I was so done.

Nik: Through with crabby juveniles, you decided to start working with juvenile crabbies?

Joyce: As a science teacher, I always invited local scientists to my classroom to keep biology and marine biology real for my students. I started a marine biology class 25 years ago in a desert town three hours from the ocean and took my students to Padilla Bay every semester. 

Nik: That’s three or four hours away, right? Were you taking them on a day trip??? 

Joyce: Our Padilla Bay trips were day trips, sometimes starting at 4:00 AM. We also visited Deception Pass and Rosario Beach to maximize the experience. I chose the lowest tides and had students do transect sampling of the rocky intertidal at Rosario. In the afternoon, we explored the mud flats and estuary at Padilla Bay. We brought plankton samples back to the classroom to study. These trips were the heart of the marine biology semester, giving students hands-on experience with Washington’s marine environments.

Nik: You said it was a desert town. I imagine that somebody who loves the ocean but is three hours from the coast decided to teach a marine biology class so that she could get some beach time.

Joyce: Yep! Before moving to Wenatchee, I worked on a fishing boat and did student teaching in Alaska. I I was offered jobs in Wenatchee and Colorado but chose Wenatchee because I loved mountaineering and climbing. I figured I could bring the ocean to my students, and my principal supported it. 

Since childhood, I’ve been drawn to water and have lived an adventurous life across the Pacific Northwest, Australia, even Nepal. But listen, I’m the seventh of 11 kids from a 360-acre South Dakota dairy farm, with five sloughs, always mucking around with ducks and getting into trouble. Being a farm kid made me curious about different life forms. I’ve always loved nature, especially the ocean. As for the crabs, it’s really the larvae that drew me in. 

Joyce with her fur babies, Rumi and Tika (top), and hiking in North Cascades (bottom). 

Nik: Growing up on a farm, you probably did a lot of cow and chicken raising, but you never got to see the embryos! They always came out fully-formed. So in this second career, you’ve become an invertebrate doula.

Joyce: I was a free-range, outdoor kid. I brought that to my classroom. I started an Earth Club in our high school where we did fundraising, hiking, and trail building. At the end of the year, we camped on San Juan Island and sometimes saw killer whales and humpbacks. I also took the kids kayaking, and they still stop me in Wenatchee to tell me how special that was. They just loved it. 

Nik: I lived out in Friday Harbor for a month back in 2011. That’s a special place: bald eagles, orca, dolphins. Wild stuff. We pulled oysters right out of the water and ate them… I hear your core values coming through like curiosity and biophilia. It must have been hard to see kids over the course of your career moving away from the outdoors.

Joyce: A lot of them, their parents don’t take them camping. I think it’s a societal or cultural shift. Sad.

Nik: You were once named Science Teacher of the Year in Washington State, and more recently, Conservation Educator of the Year. So I guess teaching just… got too easy? 

Joyce: When I stopped teaching, I knew I wanted to return to school, to keep learning. This is my second master’s from Western. I decided to go only if I could do something meaningful and useful. I love esoteric science, but I feel we’re at a turning point for the world, culture, and environment, especially the ocean. My motivation this time is to be part of a team contributing something positive. There’s so much negativity around the environment, politics, and people, and I needed to shift away from that. Working in public schools was emotionally draining, especially seeing hostile attitudes reflected in the students. It was heartbreaking and miserable. I realized I needed to align with my core values and step into a world where people put their hearts and minds and souls toward something positive.

Nik: I also hear in your voice that it’s been 51 days that you’ve been basically sitting on this nest and doing all this mothering. What happens when you have to kill all these children? Because you don’t get to release them.

Joyce: I’m actually really glad you asked, because it’s really hard. I’ve already started. I know it shouldn’t be hard. My advisor says, “Remember, they’re the bad guys.” But it’s hard when you’ve spent all this time and energy to support these little larvae to keep them going. I don’t know, I’m a sensitive person.

Nik: You haven’t given any of these larvae names, have you, Joyce?

Joyce: Only one! Here’s why! We named them Val, because that is the larva that became our first megalopa on Valentine’s Day. That’s really been the fun part, too. I’ve seen thousands of zoea, but I’ve never seen a megalopa larva until doing this experiment.

 And then when the megs started turning into juvenile instars and—here’s my favorite part—they leave that huge molt. They just ditch it. It’s just like, “I’m done with this.” And sometimes it gets stuck to their eyeballs and they’re trying to get it off! 

Nik: You have adorable children. They’re just darling. …I hope you crush them underfoot. Does this turn into a published paper now with the Padilla Bay Reserve?

Joyce: To answer that honestly, I don’t know. I think so, but I’m not sure. It depends on the publishers. 

Nik: Is this a paper that will be written up and submitted?

Joyce: Yes!

Nik: Fantastic. Lead author?

Joyce: Maybe. This is my first time doing something like this.

Nik: How is the Davidson Fellowship helping all of this? Would this have been possible without federal funding? 

Joyce: I am deeply grateful to the NOAA Davidson Fellowship! Last year, I was on the Western Washington University Grad School Scholarship for environmental science, juggling graduate classes and 20 hours a week as a TA. It was incredibly difficult to maintain high-quality work, and I couldn’t have managed without the Fellowship. Larval culturing is tough, and I had to learn everything myself. Now, I’m over the moon! My survival rate is off the charts—mid to high 80s—with no deaths for the first month. Others who have cultured crabs are amazed at my results. Being part of this life cycle, from undifferentiated balls to tiny creatures eating brine shrimp, has been cathartic and it consumed all my time and energy. Without the Fellowship, I couldn’t have succeeded.

Nik: You put in the time, Joyce. 

Joyce: I’ve climbed big mountains, including Imja Tse (Island Peak) in Nepal at 20,305 feet. I lived and taught in the Himalayas for two years, spending every break in the mountains. It was the hardest climb I’ve ever done, full of trying moments. This experience has been similar—following a circuitous path, monitoring and adjusting along the way. But I didn’t do it alone. I wouldn’t be here without the NOAA Davidson Fellowship, my amazing advisor, Brian Bingham, Sylvia Yang and Nicole Burnett at Padilla Bay, and my two dedicated volunteers, Colleen Ebright and Gene McKeen. I’m surrounded by an all-star team, and we did this together.

Nik: You are literally beaming with pride and excitement. Isn’t this why so many of us go into science? We love nature, we’re curious. The work keeps us going, and it’s what’s going to have to keep us going. 

Joyce: Thank you. It’s been quite a journey, and truthfully—I’m pretty toast. I’m really ready for spring break. My husband is like, “Do I even know you anymore?”

Nik: Science is hard. Parenting is hard. But they are rewarding.

“Lady Blue” gravid EGC from Tokeland Washington received 8 November 2024 (left image) and her brood tissue development on 19 November 2024 showing the separation stage of egg development. 30% of each egg case is devoid of cells and two infoldings are evident in the egg mass.