Reflection:

Last week marks the midpoint of this summer and I am blown away at how fast it is going. I am also curious at how this project is turning out. In my mind, I had originally intended a scheduled progression of video creations throughout the summer. In reality, my progress is much more exponential than linear. Once familiarity with Adobe, ODFW, and ODFW’s network and file storage system was achieved, great things have been happening and will continue to happen.

Great happenings of last week:

I made two highlight videos! It was actually unexpected. My advisor, Mike, had a presentation to give at OIMB Wednesday and asked me Tuesday to edit and add new material to a previously compiled Cape Perpetua hypoxia series highlight video. Erin Cooper, who was actually a Sea Grant Postdoctoral Fellow at ODFW, and is now a PISCO Postdoctoral Fellow at ODFW (until she leaves for her new career in August), helped me pick out the new footage. Erin is kind of like my second advisor. She has been giving me good, solid advice on certain aspects of my project. She’s also a well-seasoned postdoc and provides GREAT advice and recommendations on applying to grad school. (Thank you Erin!) So, getting back to the hypoxia video, with Erin’s help I added new hypoxia footage from 2008 and 2010, edited it, and sent it over to Mike for his presentation. ‘Twas a good feeling.

But that’s not all! Wednesday morning Mike popped another surprise on me. At around 9:00am he called asking for a three-minute Redfish Rocks MR/MPA highlight video he could show in addition to the hypoxia video. He wanted it by 11am. Initially, I was worried…yes, I had been clipping a bunch of good Redfish Rock MR/MPA raw footage, but my clippings didn’t span the entire 64 hours of footage – they only included about 18 hours of it. I wanted a good representation. So I worked with what I had and scanned the other footage for what a somewhat variable representation. Although I didn’t achieve quite the variation I was looking for, the highlight video was completed at around 11am on the dot. My thoughts on it? I think it’s a great start. As I continue my raw clippage I hope to, ultimately, get a more well-rounded representation of Redfish Rocks. In addition to the ultimate representation I will be creating other unique, ‘side’ videos. I’ve already created a video of metridium from Dive 331. The visibility in this dive is pretty low but I wanted to (once again) give an well-rounded representation.

We’re in the process of putting both the Cape Perpetua Hypoxia Series video and the Redfish Rocks Pilot MR/MPA on YouTube. I’ve been running into some kinks with access to ODFW folders so that’s been delaying me. I will be sure to keep everyone informed once they are up. I’ll try to get the metridium video up once I have a good visibility metridium video put together so they can be displayed side by side for comparison.

Our Mid-Summer check-in with Sea Grant was Friday so we gathered in Corvallis to give short presentations on our projects, eat pizza, and help out with da Vinci Days at OSU. It was nice to see everyone and talk in a little more detail about our projects. Unfortuantely, while some of the other interns stayed to explore and help out at the Sea Grant booth for da Vinci Days, I had to head back to Newport to complete my 12 page physics exam. On a good note, I feel like I did pretty well!

This week I will continue my raw footage clipping and highlight video creating. I want to knock out Redfish so I can start Cape Perpetua. Also, no picture in my blog this time…the sand from the dunes of Florence claimed my camera lens. Ergh.