March, 2000 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 11 
still occur, and that the species continues to be 
locally viable. January is the end of the major 
spawning period for this species in the Gulf of 
California (Lopez-Martinez et al 1999). 
THE DEEP END, OFF & ON 
Towards the end of February your editor finally 
made his planned trek to the north. As 
mentioned in the NL last year, the goal of this 
trip was to save a series of samples from being 
discarded. Dr. Andrew Carey, Jr., who is 
retiring after a long and productive career at 
Oregon State University, was tasked with 
cleaning out a bio-curation facility prior to his 
departure. This building held many of the 
collections made by OSU oceanographic 
cruises over the years. Much of the material 
held in species lots was distributed to various 
institutions (including a large group of 
specimens from grab and trawl collections to 
the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles 
County), but no home could be found for one 
series of unsorted or partially sorted samples. 
The samples were taken with an epibenthic 
sled (EBS) which samples the upper sediment 
surface without digging too deep. It is towed 
for some distance over the bottom before 
filling, and, in consequence, tends to 
accumulate both large suites of animals, and 
rare species. Most of the samples were taken in 
1974-75 as part of the thesis work of Dr. John 
Dickinson, who investigated the taxonomy and 
ecology of the amphipods of the Cascadia 
Abyssal Plain (see Dickinson & Carey 1978). 
They came predominantly from two sites, one 
near the base of the continental slope, and one 
removed from the slope; both at depths of 
around 2800m. At each site a series of EBS 
tows was made, around 70 in total, not all 
successful. Those which best served the thesis 
work were partially sorted (amphipods were 
removed), but the rest remained unsorted. A 
few samples were also obtained from the mid 
to lower portions of the Cascadia Slope at 
depths between 713 and 1372m. As the mesh 
on the sampler is 1.0mm, and rewash was done 
on a 0.42mm screen, many tiny animals were 
retained including forams. Along with the 
forams were great gouts of fecal pellets, and 
some light but coarse glauconitic sands. 
Maintained in ethanol, they remain in excellent 
condition following decades of storage. 
Gene Ruff (who worked with Carey at OSU) 
had already selected and removed a portion of 
these samples, leaving 51 5-gallon buckets of 
material at risk of being discarded. 
Additionally there were four one-gallon 
containers from EBS tows in the Tanner Basin 
made with the same gear by R. R. Hessler in 
1971.1 picked up all this material from Dr. 
Carey, and trucked it down to Los Angeles. 
Some of the EBS tows yielded a great deal of 
material - one distributed into eight buckets! I 
plan to work on them when I can, but it will 
take many years before they are all sorted. The 
materials which result will eventually be 
deposited (with the remainder of my 
collections) at the Natural History Museum of 
Los Angeles County, but in the interim will 
remain with me. 
Others in SCAMIT interested in looking 
beyond their sampling grids for comparative 
material are welcome to contact me about 
borrowing material or participating in this 
particular labor of love (that is...sorting). I will 
be keeping Dr. Carey informed of what the 
samples contain, and from time to time will 
write up particularly notable finds for the 
SCAMIT NL. Based on examination of seven 
samples to date, there is little overlap (at least 
in non-polychaetes) between the fauna 
contained in these samples and that of even the 
deepest monitoring stations among SCAMIT 
organizations (305m). - Don Cadien 
(CSDLAC) 
MINUTES OF THE 13 MARCH 
MEETING 
The meeting was called to order at 
approximately 9:40 a.m.. Ron Velarde started 
by passing around an email request he’d 
received. The European Standards 
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