I arrived in Oregon in June, of 2016, having never eaten an oyster, let alone studied them. Since then I’ve learned about their life cycle, importance to the environment, their service as a harvestable resource and have developed the unnatural ability to know the phase of the moon and the times of the low tides. It has been a little over a year since the oysters I’ve been cultivating in Netarts Bay were initially deployed and so it’s time to write a blog post.
The growth has been more physical than mental for the oysters. They’ve gone from a few millimeters to an average of over 5 cm in length. My growth, on the other hand, has been much more mental. I’ve had the opportunity to work with and learn from some incredible people in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, here at Oregon State University. I’ve been extremely lucky to work with my advisor Dr. Alyssa Shiel, as well as Drs. George Waldbusser and Adam Kent on this research funded by Oregon Sea Grant. I’ve also had the opportunity to work with an amazing set of graduate students and who’ve taught me so much in the past year.
So what have I been doing over the past year and why? Read more in the following weeks as the series continues on my website, http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/wensmans/.
—Sophie Wensman
