July 17^th, 2019:

Today officially marks one month of being a Sea Grant Scholar. This week is also the half way point of our program—5 weeks down 5 more to go! Crazy how fast time is flying—I swear just yesterday I met all the Scholars at the Corvallis orientation with super aesthetic donuts and banana bread.

Since my last blog, the “Intertidal Survey” baton has been passed down to me; I’m officially in charge of leading Intertidal Sea Star Surveys on my own! I’ve been training for this the minute I stepped foot in the Marine Reserves office—it’s super exciting to finally take on this responsibility. As the designated Intertidal Survey Leader, I’ll be recruiting volunteers and overseeing sea star data collection at both Otter Rock and Cascade Head for the remainder of the Marine Reserves’ low tide series. We record data on sea star species abundance, size (measured from the tip of the sea star’s arm to the middle of the body), and health; there are specific health affliction codes assigned to the varying degrees of SSWD disease symptoms (lesions, deflation, twisted arms, lost arms, disintegration etc.), and it’s our job in the field to categorize both the healthy and diseased sea stars as accurately as we can! Yesterday was my first day conducting the surveys at Otter Rock and it was a ton of fun. Autumn (my roommate and fellow Scholar) came to volunteer, and a few of us got waist-deep in water to record data in a tide pool that was washed by the tide (I had never even flooded a boot before this, so it was pretty fun to get wet in the field!) Tomorrow I’m doing the same thing with a different group of volunteers (including Suhn, another Scholar!) at Cascade Head—personally my favorite Marine Reserve :)

I’m just now realizing I forgot to give an update on my intertidal graveyard shift! This “shift” wasn’t technically a “shift” because it didn’t involve the Marine Reserves team nor my Sea Grant job at all; I was helping a CSUN graduate student, Jenn Fields (also stationed at the Hatfield Center), collect data and run water samples at Otter Rock. Let me begin by saying I have mad respect for Jenn and her project team—they pulled two intertidal all-nighters back to back, each time working for 8+ hours. Though we ended up working around 9-10 hours, pulling the all-nighter with them the first night surprisingly went a lot quicker than I had envisioned, probably because we were constantly kept busy. Overall, I’m really glad I went out to experience the rocky intertidal from dusk to dawn—can definitely say it was a “once in a lifetime” experience.

I’m not going to conclude this blog without an apartment-baking update; to add to the running list of baked goods, we have: a Dutch baby (a fluffy skillet pancake—I had never heard of this before Autumn) and homemade granola. Though this doesn’t exactly fall under the category of “desserts”, I’ve also been making myself skillet-popped popcorn every night from organic kernels I got from Oceana, the natural food store in town. Still, though, the salty/buttery combo contributes to the amazing “you-can-tell-we-just-cooked-something” scent perpetually wafting in our apartment. Continuing on the topic of food, Autumn and I went to the dock last weekend to pick up fresh Red Snapper from a boat coming back from a morning fishing trip! We both seared it on a cast-iron skillet and basted it with butter and fresh rosemary (courtesy of Autumn’s rosemary shrub she bought from the store). I can honestly say that meal made my list of Top 3 favorite fish dishes I ever had—will definitely buy fresh seafood from the docks again. If I’m feeling a bit more adventurous next time, I’ll buy a live Dungeness crab and attempt to prepare it!

I’m really looking forward to this upcoming week; the four other Scholars I haven’t seen since orientation will be joining us “Hatfield-stationed Scholars” for a beach picnic, professional development day, and a weekend camping trip! Will keep you posted on this action-packed week in the blogs to come! :)