“Summer” at the Visitor’s Center

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On this most summer of holidays, while her home state experiences powerful summer storms and heat waves, intern Diana adjusts to her summer home and job:

As a native Marylander, I have been thrown into an environment of cold northwest water and weather.  I was definitely not used to wearing pants in the summer or having my hooded sweatshirt as a necessity to my wardrobe.

The first challenge I faced was understanding how the west coast worked in terms of upwelling and the cold temperature of the water here.  Once I understood this, I could then understand why the biodiversity that lives and flourishes here can actually do so. I am still learning, and I probably always will be for at least this summer if not more, because the Oregon coast is a complex world.

The next step to fitting in here at Hatfield for the summer was to learn about the Visitor’s Center itself. I had to learn about the animals that live here, the activities and free choice learning aspects that are displayed as well as what my project for the summer here would be.  That is a frustrating task in itself. I do know a good bit about marine biology and ecology, but this place was intense. This is mainly because I have only seen a few science centers and aquariums that use the water around them as their water for the marine animals. Hatfield completely relies on the bay its saltwater wedge. If something happens to the water in the bay, then all heck breaks loose in the science center because that’s the water we use. I know it’s filtered a million times in many different ways, but sometimes things still make it through and that’s what effects the marine environment such as bacteria, invertebrates, etc.

Then, there are the surprises I have gotten while working at this job for almost 2 weeks…the Visitors.  No matter how many changes in the center, from the animals to the water quality to the behavior, the visitors still surprise me the most. Each family and person is different, from the moment they walk in the door and are asked for a donation rather than an entrance fee. Some give a little, some give and wish they could give more. There are people who are from out of town who just want to see the octopus and people from landlocked states and have never seen an estuary before. You also get visitors who know nothing about the Oregon coast or marine ecology. Then, before you know it there’s a kid who comes in and knows more about sea stars than you would ever know, no matter how much you studied. Each visitor has their own story, and that is what makes my job so exciting because not only is science ever changing, but so are the people that want to learn.

Same old changes

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Note: This will be my last post as a regular blogger, though most of you will have observed that Katie has taken over as Your Friend and Humble Narrator in recent weeks. You’ll still hear from me. I have much work to do on my project—work that will warrant intermittent updates within the physical context I am studying. Otherwise, I will be working with the animals again due to my appointment as Visitor Center aquarist.

“Who the f*** knows and who the f*** cares?”

The words were on a pin. The pin was on a boonie hat, among many other pins endorsing various causes. The boonie hat was on an old man—an Alaska Native, by my reckoning—riding the Number 3 bus through downtown Anchorage.

“Who the f*** knows and who the f*** cares?”

I thought about that pin for several minutes before I realized why. Those two questions, though glib in intent, inform much of our work. If you ask them of yourself, sincerely and urgently, you might detect some familiarity in them.

Along with several of my colleagues, I spent last week in Anchorage at the National Marine Educators Association conference. We mingled with fellow educators (formal and informal), remembered Bill Hastie (whom I never had the good fortune to meet), explored the city’s FCL facilities and shared research.

The sharing is really it, isn’t it? I think the reasons for exchanging knowledge freely and graciously are more immediate than we tend to recognize. I hear a lot of talk about protecting resources for the future and making the world a better place than it was. I think it’s simpler than that.

Our world has also faced problems. Problems and their solutions change over time. Creation and destruction are not discrete chronological points. They are continuous, ever-present processes. When we exert ourselves toward the preservation of the things that matter—to us or to someone or something else—we save the world. We’re not saving it from the past or for the future, but right in that place at that moment—not a step toward a final goal, but a valuable act in itself. That’s the way it’s done. It’s the way people have always done it, and we’ll never be finished.

“Who the f*** knows and who the f*** cares?”

Let’s find out. Go save the world today.

Tales of the first week

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Another of our interns, Julie Nance, gives us a run-down of her first week at HMSC.

We had a very busy first week at Hatfield!  It has been full of some incredible trainings.  Our first adventure was tromping around in the mud with Dr. John Chapman.  We collected mud shrimp for his research on the mud shrimp’s isopod parasite and were able to see this critter first-hand.  We then had a series of trainings on the estuary tour including a power point presentation, and going on the estuary walk with 3 different presenters so we could see different styles and create our own.  This weekend we began presenting the tours ourselves with a seasoned presenter accompanying us.

We also had the pleasure of going to the Cobblestone beach tide pools at Yaquina Head, and saw a variety of invertebrates and some fish.  We have also been taken through a tour of all the animals at the visitor center by the aquarists, and Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan taught us all about the salt water system.  Amidst all this excellent scientific information, we also learned about visitor center closing procedures, money counting, and the Ocean Quest presentation which we will begin giving to the public next week.

Brian, Nick and Diana will start doing the visitor center programming this week- specifically the estuary walk and helping out at the visitor center.  This week will also be filled with a lot of research in order to begin our projects.  If any of us appear to be missing, there’s a good chance we can be found at the library with our noses buried in the resources available to get the ball rolling on our wave and climate change projects.

Meet the HMSC VC Interns!

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The Visitor Center has four interns working with us in the exhibits and interpreting with the public this summer. We’ll be bringing you updates and occasional posts from them. Meet our first: Diana Roman, Westminster, MD

 

 

Diana just graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. She earned a B.A. in Biology with an emphasis in ecology and a minor in Art History (the only person in her graduating class to earn any sort of a minor, she was told). For her degree, she took classes in limnology and the ecology of Maryland plants, studied and researched for a semester in Australia, and wrote a senior thesis in neuroscience. Diana came to OSU for the summer to try her hand at a marine education job, as she pins down what she would like to study in graduate school. “I know a lot more about what I don’t want to do at this point, than exactly what I want to do.”

After the first week, she’s surprised at how tired she is, but also at how different visitor backgrounds are. She’s encountered visitors who live on the coast who are very familiar with the tides, and people from Utah, for example, who have never encountered the types of marine creatures found in the ocean. “It makes me wonder about what kids are learning in landlocked states if they can’t apply it,” Diana says, if their ocean science is not connected to the local waterways.

This summer, she’s most looking forward to trying out a 40-hour-a-week job as well as her own project. She and two of our other interns will be investigating visitor use of the wave tanks, and she’s hoping to concentrate on the erosion/near-shore tank. She’s already noticed a difference in erosion mitigation on the West Coast vs. the Chesapeake Bay. Here, riprap, aka “dynamic revetment,” is widely used, designed to absorb wave energy better as the pieces bounce up and down with waves. On the Chesapeake Bay, however, erosion abatement is more frequently done with natural materials.

She’s already diving in to life at the Visitor Center. As the interns “opened” for the first time this morning, turning on exhibits and lights and checking that things are working, she said she already saved the shrimp tank from overflowing. She also hosted her first West-Coast estuary walk, where visitors were surprised it was her first.

Follow the blog to see how her wave tank project develops over the summer.

Summertime Blues

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Normally, once the majority of undergrads have finished their third term finals and graduation is a teary memory, there is a calm that overcomes campus that those of us here year-round have come to expect. Don’t get me wrong, the undergrads are the reason for this institution, but there are an awful lot of them (and more each year).

However, this year, I’m in a bit of a pickle. My study is specifically trying to target the general adult public, that is, those with a high-school degrees but maybe not a lot of undergraduate experience. At Hatfield, we generally have a slightly higher-educated population than I need. Also, my experiment takes an hour, so the casual visitor is unlikely to break from their group for that long. And my local campus population, at least my local congregation of said population, has just skedaddled for the summer.

So I’m busy trying to find anywhere those remaining might be: the very few residence halls that remain open (which also requires navigating some tricky flier-posting rules), the occasionally-open dining halls, lecture halls which might still have classes and bulletin boards nearby and the library, MU, and some local eateries. I’m also heading to the community college where many students are cross-registered and where they might be knocking out some core courses during the summer on the cheap(er). Hm, maybe I should post a flier at the local store where my incentive gift cards are from? In truth, this is really still just a convenience sample, as I am not plastering fliers all over Corvallis, let alone anywhere else in the state or country. At least, not at this point …

Any ideas welcome! Where do you go to find your research subjects?

Smile …

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After weeks and months of spec’ing particular cameras, photographing the VC from all angles, and poring over software to handle our massive (for us) suite of video devices, the first cameras are being installed.

 

You’d think after all that scoping the installation would go quickly. It is, to a point. First we have to find ethernet cables long enough to run to all the drops we have (easier since we installed extra drops for just this purpose), then we have to make sure the ethernet ports are activated, then we have to figure out which IP address goes to which camera, and finally, we have to position the camera, probably the trickiest part.

We have a good head start from all the work McKenzie did, but Gene and I still spent a couple of hours figuring the right height, angle, and zoom so the first 10 could be permanently mounted. Near the wave tanks, too, we’ll have two cameras on poles that will be secured with straps, so they will be somewhat moveable if we cover the angles in another way. The angle, zoom, and focus will be re-done after each is mounted, of course, but a first-pass assured us we had the position right to capture the parts of the exhibit we were hoping to capture. And, of course, we’ve moved exhibits around since the last time we planned camera locations …

Behind the scenes, we have the computer system and software setup to watch what’s going on, though we still need to set up remote access to view the cameras. For now, we’re getting close to having eyes on the VC entrance and exit points, the octopus tank, the touch tanks, and the wave tanks. It’s cool to see what was only a plan actually start to be put in place, and relatively on schedule, too!