Greetings from Tillamook!

This past week has been quite an experience, to say the least. Remember a few weeks back when I spent 2 days doing subtidal dredge surveys in Yaquina bay around the NOAA dock? Well, I did the same thing in Tillamook Bay this week and I will be continuing for all of this week as well.

While the basic dredge idea is the same as before, we have different divers this time and A LOT more clams. It is a tad ridiculous how many clams we have, actually. Unfortunately we have been too busy on the boats to take many pictures, but I will try to get some this week.

We are doing this subtidal dredge survey to try and get an estimate of clam populations in Tillamook Bay. The SEACOR team has done intertidal population studies for the last 2 summers, and this is the first time they are doing a subtidal study. The recreational clam population was studied back in the 1970s, 1980s, and a general study was done in 1996. This provides us with the unique opportunity of tracking changes in the populations across decades. Its unfortunate I wont be around when the data is analyzed! But I am having a blast getting to see the wide variety of clams in the bay.

Luckily this time around I don’t have to pull up all our point markers and anchors by hand – we bought a pot puller to do most of the hard work for us. This is making a huge difference in my energy level, which is good because we have been averaging 10 hours out on the boat per day. Add on another hour or two measuring all the clams we got and that makes for a very long day, and week!

I spent my one full day off this weekend at the Oregon Country Fair. A huge group from Hatfield went and we had a blast! I really loved seeing all the people dressed up and all the craft booths.

Right after I got back from the fair I went straight back to Tillamook and I will be here until Thursday, so stay tuned next week for part 2!