Monday was my first “day off” from the HMCS visitor center. During this time I busied myself with researching my project (looking up information on tsunamis, the Cascadia subduction zone, and tsunami proof buildings) and practicing the Ocean Quest presentation. This was also the first day all week that I finally got to sleep in.

Tuesday was the last official day of training. The interns attended two special lectures about waves and wave energy. We also attended a brown bag lunch with all of the REU students and learned a bit more about the sea turtle that washed ashore in Newport. Tuesday was the first day that we actually helped to close up the visitor center at 5 PM. Nearly all of the centers light switches are cleverly hidden from view (an therefore impossible to find at a glance).

Wednesday was my first official day at the visitor center. I showed up for at around 9:15AM to start turning things on. I quickly found myself  helping Mark Farley fill up the new tsunami tank. We also noticed that we seem to be having some mortalities with some of the herring in an exhibit, we still have no idea why this is happening. We also got a few more behind the scenes information learning about when and what the different animals get fed during the week.

On Thursday I gave my second estuary walk tour. Once again I found myself with only two people attending. I did my best. We made an interesting find in the mud flats when I uncovered a polychaete worm with the “slurp stick”. After the tour I returned to man the front desk at the visitor center. We helped to get the visitor center in order for the 1:00 octopus feeding which usually brings in more people. After the feeding we decided that it would be a fun idea to measure out the dimensions of the Japanese dock that had washed ashore on Agate beach. This would be helpful for giving visitors a better idea of the size of the dock.

On Friday we helped Mark Farley with the wave machine again. Our job was to “calculate” the ideal parameters that would give us the biggest waves without splashing and shorting out the machinery. We did this for most of the day, at one point I was using a small umbrella in order to protect our computer from splashes generated by the wave maker. After finishing the calculations we proceeded to knock down a small lego building with a “tsunami”. Later I helped Mark move one of the other wave tanks out to his truck so that he could take it for repairs.

On Saturday we got an unexpected surprise. Apparently Senator Ron Wyden was given a closed lecture in the Library about Tsunami debris. For the first 2 hours of the day we were helping to direct people to the library for the lecture. This turned out to be very time consuming. We also had another octopus feeding that day. I was charged with getting a photo of the octopus in the event that he attempted to squeeze through the small hole (which he didn’t). We also continued to have problems with moralities. This time we noticed several of the herring behaving strangely (swimming near the surface as though they could not control their buoyancy properly).  I suggested to McKenzie that we might try setting up a video camera over the night to observe what is actually going on with the fish. She thought that it was a good idea and is considering it. After closing up the visitor center I ran over to the Oregon Coast Aquarium to ask how the sea turtle was doing (as visitors keep asking). Apparently the turtle is doing better and they plan to eventually release it down in Monterrey Bay.