Sadly, I had to miss the Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar presentations that happened last week. I had a good excuse however. I was presenting the research that I completed last summer at the annual Ecological Society of America conference. This year, the conference was located in Louisville, Kentucky. My research was looking at the burrowing habits of the Northern Idaho ground squirrel.

With an attendance just shy of 3000 people, I was a bit intimidated at the thought of presenting a poster. I was pleasantly surprised by the reality however. Everyone was very friendly and I received some great feedback on my poster. 

I only spent one of the days presenting, so I had the rest of the week to attend various talks and workshops. There were so many things going on at once, it was hard to choose how to spend my time.

The week was not all work however. I made sure to take some breaks and explore the city. One of the highlights of my Kentucky experience was the river cruise I went on. It was a 2-hour ride down the Ohio river, which is bordered by both Kentucky and Indiana. I also had a great time exploring the city at night with my fellow Doris Duke Conservation Scholar cohort. It was great to reconnect with this group of wonderful people. The last time we were all together was in 2018 at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia.

I want to thank Oregon Sea Grant, Jim Kaldy, Cheryl Brown and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for making this trip possible and being so flexible.

Part of what I do as an Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar intern at the Environmental Protection Agency is river sampling. So far, we have sampled the Salmon, Nestucca, and Tillamook rivers. We test for things like bacteria, dissolved organic carbon, and total nitrogen. We sample both upriver and downriver sites along each river. We do this to try to quantify the gradient of pollutants as you go downriver from high agriculture land use areas.

When we are sampling, we always wear gloves since we don’t know what is potentially in the river until after we sample. This has been a very eye-opening activity for me. Before this, I was definitely one to jump into any river that looked decently clear. It felt very weird to be wearing gloves in a river I would normally go swimming or wading in. 

It has been very interesting to see the bacteria results from some of the sites along these rivers. I have learned that clear water does not necessarily mean that the water is low in bacteria. Also, I learned that it is important to look at the land surrounding the river as well. If there are bunch of cows visible from the river, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be higher bacteria counts.

While a little bit of bacteria won’t kill you, I will definitely have a different perspective on river swimming in the future.

While the rest of Hatfield was still quiet and unstirring in the early morning hours, Ariana de Souza and I were making our way into the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development. We walked down the unusually empty hallway to get suited up. We quickly pulled on our waders and headed out onto the Yaquina bay mudflats with our supervisor, Jim Kaldy. The sun was just starting to say hello, yet the lights around the bay still twinkled against the cloudy sky.

Our goal that morning was to collect over two hundred Zostera marina plants before the tide covered them again. I had the best time crawling around in the mud, despite the early wake up time. There was something serene in the air that morning and the water was surprisingly warm.  

It has been a few weeks since we collected the Zostera marina plants.They are now settled into their new homes in the lab. These plants are a part of an ongoing mesocosm experiment. As the weeks go by, we are monitoring the salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, chlorophyll a and temperature of the water inside the various tanks. 

Say tuned to hear about how the mesocosm experiment progresses!