Category Archives: Former scholars

The Final Shabang!

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Hello everyone,

It really is hard to believe that it is our last week with Oregon Sea Grant. I have had a really awesome time here, and I have definitely enjoyed my project! I will be sad to go home!

Just to give an update on last weeks events: I spent the majority of last week preparing for the presentation and completing the portfolio (I turned it in early! Oops!). I also managed to complete the “Academics” tab, and add a few more student researcher profiles. And then of course, as you all know, we had the final symposium on Thursday which I felt went really well! Everyone had really awesome presentations, and it was great to get a more detailed feel for what all of you are working on! I was really nervous about giving my presentation (I can get pretty sweaty in front of a big crowd), but the longer I talked the more comfortable I became. It was definitely good practice for someone like me who is wanting to teach science at the high school level!

As far as this week goes, I plan to write up some protocols on how to make changes and upload new information/media files to the website. Jenna Borberg, my mentor, will be taking a Drupal Boot Camp course, and will hopefully be able to utilize these written protocols when I leave (at which point site management will fall into her hands). I will also be sending out some emails to find out if any departments have anything to add or change within the “Academics” tab. Aside from that, I will just be tying up some loose ends (uploading additional pictures, adding a few institute descriptions, digging for relevant social media, and adding additional student features).

Now that I’ve given my work spiel, I would just like to say again that this has been a really awesome opportunity to live independently, acquire a new skill, work with an awesome mentor, and learn more about what I eventually want to do with my life. Thank you Oregon Sea Grant for this opportunity – it has been truly been a great experience!

It was great to get to know you all! Lets definitely find each other on facebook and stay in touch. I would love to know in what direction everyone decides to go over the next couple years!

Farewell,

Shealyn

Sea_Gil’s Flying Home

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Well here we are folks. It’s my last week in Oregon. It’s so weird to think I will be on a flight back home to NY in a couple of days.

Last week was busy between some more data mining and preparing for the Summer Scholars Symposium (nice alliteration). I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous when giving my presentation. It’s funny how I’ve given a bunch of presentations throughout college but I still get a little scared. I’m pretty happy with the way mine went though and on a few of the evaluations people mentioned that I had good public speaking skills so that was nice! Everyone’s presentations were very informative and I think we all did a good job! It seems like everyone did a lot of interesting work this summer and I think all the scholars count their time here as a good experience. I know I do!

On Friday, I (along with Sara) gave my presentation at the EPA Summer Intern “gathering”. This one stressed me out too, even though I had just given the same presentation the day before. I think I was a bit scared because I had been working with these people all summer and I wanted to impress them with the project I’ve been working on. Though I do work at the EPA, I am mostly in my little office all the time and I don’t think people know exactly what I’ve been up to this summer. The EPA presentation went well and because I had given the presentation so many times at that point (especially with my practice run throughs), I felt more confident when speaking about my research. After the talks were done, Sara’s mentor came over to her and me and said that while we did a good job at the Symposium, he thought we improved over all on our presentations at the EPA. I would like to thank all the evaluations for that compliment. I read them over on Friday morning and tried to incorporate many of the suggestions that were written down by the audience from the previous day.

Friday was also Betty’s birthday! It was a lot of fun. We ended the night singing karaoke at Moby Dick’s of course! For the rest of the weekend, Betty, Diego, and I went on a little camping trip in the Willamette National Forest. Saturday evening was spent collecting wood and Diego was able to start up a nice fire which we used to roast some tofurkey hot dogs and marshmallows. On Sunday morning we explored the Terwilliger Hot Springs. The springs were pretty awesome but after sitting in them for some time I started feeling a bit woozy. I know you are not supposed to stay in a hot tub for too long so I imagine that it would be the same for the springs. After the hot springs, we decided to swim in a (much cooler) reservoir. It was a refreshing experience and there was even a waterfall nearby!

Terwilliger Hot Springs!

Right now I am starting to work on my portfolio because this week is kind of busy for me since I am going surfing from Tuesday-Thursday. I just don’t want to get eaten by a shark when I’m out there AHHHHHHHH! I got freaked out after Katie told me that they were in fact sharks around here. I just have to think that the chances of that happening are pretty slim. Other than that I need to work on some metadata stuff aka data about the data. I also need to compile all the spreadsheets/articles/documents that go along with the project that I have been doing so I can give it all to Katie for the future.

I’d like to end by thanking Sarah and Eric for making my summer in Oregon such a good experience! I had a great time out here and learned a lot on a subject I barely had any in depth knowledge about before. One thing definitive thing I’ve discovered is that bivalves are more complicated than they appear. For anyone reading this who is thinking about applying for the Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar Fellowship, I would highly recommend it.

While I am happy to be going home soon, I am going to miss the friends I’ve made out here but I’m sure we’ll stay in touch! Adios Oregon, it’s been great!

SWAMPED!

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SNEAK PREVIEW OF MY PRESENTATION!

I just wrote a whole post and it somehow got erased, so here I go again.  I have to keep this short because I’m so busy trying to get everything done that needs to get done before the program ends.  Currently I’m working on my symposium presentation (sneak preview on your left), which is taking longer than expected.  I decided to use an alternative presentation format, but I think that when it’s done it will definitely have been worth it.  My hope is to finish by this afternoon so that the rest of my time here can be spent working on my final document.

Last week was mostly spent transcribing the interviews that I did in Portland and Seattle, but by the end of the week I started on my final presentation.  My mentor, Dr. Tim, also gave me a copy of a white paper on aquaculture that was published in 2009.  I found this really helpful, as it gave me an idea of what my final document should include and how it should be organized.  While I have experience with technical writing, my biggest difficulty is being concise.  Since it is an informative white paper, it is meant to have many bullet points and brief factual statements.  Achieving that and communicating the importance and research that I’ve done will be a great accomplishment.  I think the best way to start that process is by finishing my presentation, as it relays my information as to-the-point as possible.

On Wednesday I got to perform with Diego, Becca (Volunteer Coordinator at the VC) and her fiancee Chris.  It was a great experience, especially since I have a really hard time getting on stage.  I’m proud of the different things I’ve allowed myself to experience this summer and I hope to take that with me when I leave.

Again, this week and next week are gearing up to be my busiest, but I’m so ready to see my work pulled together in a well-organized document.  While I won’t get to see the full white paper for a few months (it’s being edited and combined with a previous interns work), I think that just seeing my portion on a printed page will give me a lot of satisfaction.  ALSO, this Friday is my 22nd birthday! I’m sad I can’t spend it with my family and friends at home, but the friends I’ve made this summer will definitely help make it a memorable one.

Student Profiles

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Hello!

Wow! I can’t believe we only have two weeks left here! The summer really flew by – we are already giving our final presentations!

I spent that majority of last week working on student profiles. As I explained in my last blog post, this required A LOT of emailing. I probably have 200+ emails floating around out there…which is probably a good thing since I only get responses to about 15% of those. It is summer – you can’t always count on people being attached to the hip with their email.

Anyway, after emailing lots and lots of faculty members from various colleges, departments, centers, and institutes, I collected a lot of undergraduate and graduate student names. I then emailed all of these students (using a standard template email I created) and asked them to fill in their information in the fields provided if they felt comfortable being featured. I used an example feature on graduate student Sarah Allan to give them a feel for what I was looking for.

Undergraduate students were a bit harder to track down than graduate students. Eric Dickey was kind enough to meet with me to help brainstorm other potential people to contact. Eventually, I had enough contacts to fill about two pages worth of undergraduate profiles and five pages worth of graduate profiles.

Between emails, I also worked on the “Research & Funding Opportunities” tab we created. I decided to use this tab as a sort of portal for link outs to the variety of opportunities offered at Oregon State (for example, I included the Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholars Program in there). Jenna has made some edits to this page, so I will be tweaking things a little bit this week.

As far as this week goes, I have spent the majority of today (Monday), working on my final presentation and portfolio! I can’t believe the time has gone so fast – I have had such a good experience with this project! I have never had the opportunity to combine my artistic endeavors with my scientific interests, so this truly has been awesome.

After I get my presentation and portfolio wrapped up, I plan on spending the rest of the week working on the “Academics” tab, where I plan to highlight academic programs offered at the university to both graduates and undergraduates interested in the marine sciences. I will spend the last week I have here (after our presentation at HMSC) wrapping up some loose ends and writing up protocols for Jenna so that she can maintain the website with little trouble!

I’m excited to see everyone again this week! Good luck with preparation!

-Shealyn

 

The Sea Cow |wk.8|

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Hello Everyone,

This week is our final symposium for Sea Grant meaning next week is our last week! As such, I’ve been doing a lot of contemplating about what I’ve learned from this internship. These are equally important and even more so together than alone. First, a new respect for time. Time flies, people. While I’m happy with what I have turned out so far, and will turn out, I feel like I would be happier with another two weeks. Second, it’s important to get to know people and ask questions. There are so many benefits to this. In short, it saves you work time and you’ll get a better experience out of it having made new friends. These suggestions may seem obvious to you, as they were to me, but I have developed a new appreciation for them.

I have also learned that I am not too excited about working in front of a computer all day. This is dramatized by the fact that I’m taking an online physics II course (which I’m DONE with Wednesday, by the way!!!!). If I could find a job with a nice balance of field and desk work I would be quite content.

Last week I worked on editing transect clips for the mapping interface. I’m waiting to get some location data before I can get them posted to the map. Unfortunately, I highly doubt I’ll have it put together enough to display at Thursday’s symposium. I really only have Monday and Tuesday of this week to work on my presentation and anything else because Wednesday I’m going out on Oregon State’s boat, the Elakha, to help with an ROV cruise!

I also completed my invertebrate video and Bob Swingle has uploaded it to YouTube, so please go ahead and take a look!

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This video highlights 19 reoccurring invertebrate species found in, but not limited to, the Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve/Marine Protected Area. These clips were taken by remote operated vehicle (ROV) in September of 2010. The depth ranges from 24 to 52 meters, with the average being around 37 meters. 10 centimeter laser spacing. There are 19 identified invertebrates – how many more can you spot?

Identified species: Vermilion sea stars, orange puff ball sponge, California hydrocoral, California sea cucumber, purple sea urchin, rainbow star, orange cup coral, giant plumose anemone, basket stars, gorgonian, giant acorn barnacle, orange encrusting sponge, pink stars, sunflower stars, fish-eating anemone, painted anemone, sand-rose anemone, octopus, dungeness crab.

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The umbilical is also lifted onto the boat

ROV is lifted by crane to the boat

Friday I had the opportunity to help out the loading process of the ROV. Basically, I carried a bunch of equipment onto the Elahka, helped adhere the umbilical (the cord that carries data/power/etc. from the boat to ROV) to the boat, and set up the hydrophone.

bh

ODFW's ROV, The Sea Cow

Most of this weekend consisted of doing physics homework. I had two exams to do and numerous other assignments to finish. I though it would be pretty stressful to get everything done but since I had been working on it for the last couple weeks it wasn’t really that bad…I got my exams done and was able to go crabbing with Lauren, Sara, and Sara’s visiting boyfriend, Tim. I’ve got a few more assignments to finish and then the last day of class if Wednesday!!!

A Week of Reading.

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ODFW Adventures: IIX

Sometimes, you’ve gotta spend some quality time with the things that aren’t wildly exciting. So this week, now that I’ve accomplished my big task of the determining the herring quota and making the spawning maps, I spent all 5 days, 8 hours each, working on one thing: the annotated bibliography. If you remember, I started on this task several weeks ago. The bibliography consists of citations and annotations of many articles, mostly peer-reviewed journal articles, that will help the Nearshore Team accomplish the task of writing the supplementary document about climate change for the Oregon Nearshore Strategy. That being said, I have now read over 50 articles about climate change related to things as large as all the oceans on our watery planet, to as small as a single species in Newport’s own Yaquina Bay. My knowledge of upwelling, salinity changes, temperature changes, freshwater inputs, and other ocean-related factors has increased ten-fold since I came to Newport and began this specific task. But I will admit, I am now even more confused about wave height changes due to climate change now that I have read several very confusing, mathematical, and technical journal articles about the subject that I didn’t understand. But with all the time I spent on the bibliography this week, I have read the majority of the articles we have gathered (probably about 80 articles total) and I hope to finish reading and documenting the last few articles before I leave, as I have several tasks left to do in the next two weeks as I finish up my internship. For Sea Grant, I will be preparing a presentation and writing a final report about my internship to submit, while for ODFW I will be writing up protocols for all of the processes in the determination of the herring quota, such as how to count the eggs and make the maps. So I will be very busy in my last days here, and I will hopefully leave the office on the 19th with everything checked off on my to-do list!

This week I simply made a lot of omelets because I bought a rather large amount of salmon at Fred Meyer that I ended up eating all week. With all of my delicious salmon and egg combos, I realized that I always make omelets when I have a lot of random stuff in my refrigerator that I need to use, usually including produce and plain yogurt (a great fat-free creamy addition to your omelets!).We also went crabbing two more times this weekend in Waldport, but sadly we only caught one! But I still have hope of catching more delicious dungeness crabs before I head home! Below is a picture of me holding Guapito, our only crab of the weekend.

Rounding the Bend

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Last week we executed an experiment to begin to answer our new question: what is the relationship between nutrient concentration and uptake rate?  As I explained in my last blog, we filled bladders with four different nutrient concentrations and deployed them at mid-estuary and lower-estuary marshes.  My main task for the week was to be in charge of lab prep.  Artificial sea water needed to be made, bladders needed to be filled, field supplies needed to be organized, nutrient samples needed to be taken, and so on.  Besides being rather mundane and times, I enjoy being in the lab.  As I have expressed before, field work tends to stress me out because there are so many variables.  In the lab I have much more control over things.  I also have lots of time to think and brainstorm about my life outside of EPA including grad school and other post undergrad opportunities.  Often times I have to pause what I’m doing to write things down so I don’t forget! 

One of the main difficulties of working on this project is that it involves a lot of man power as well as several different people taking charge of various aspects of the experiment.  This can lead to problems because every part of the project needs to come together perfectly which sometimes does not happen due to lack of communication.  Unfortunately, this was a rather large problem with our deployment last week.  The tides were rather high, so we decided to deploy our chambers on low marsh benches.   We do know at what tide elevation that a particular marsh floods, but we do not know elevations of all of the low marsh benches in the marsh itself.  So, we decided to estimate, and our estimate happened to be rather off.  On Monday, the chambers were deployed at Winant Marsh in mid-estuary.  Using our calculations, we decided to add 10L of water to the bladders which will flood the chambers about two-thirds of the way.  Upon Caitlin’s, return from deploying the chambers, she realized that she forgot to leave out the high tide sample bottle, so she and Stephanie went out to the marsh during high tide to collect a sample.  When they got there, they were shocked to see that the tide was almost over topping the chambers – way higher than we thought it would go.  This can cause problems because it can result in a pressure difference inside and outside the chambers which may lead to leakage.  Leakage, especially from natural sea water infiltrating with our artificial sea water, can render our results useless. 

Where did the marsh go? The tide almost completely flooded our chambers.

That day, there was discussion and disagreement over how much water to add to the bladders for the subsequent day’s deployment.  This is where several people thinking different things about the same project can lead to issues.  Caitlin and I knew (or thought) that the low marsh bench at Hatfield flooded higher than it did at Winant.  So we thought that our bladders for that deployment deserved little or no extra water.  Ted on the other hand wanted to add 5L just to be safe.  The problem with adding too much water is that it can greatly dilute the water that enters the chambers making it difficult to extrapolate out what the exact uptake rate actually is.  I’m getting carried away… haha.  Anyway in the end, we only added an extra 2L to each bladder because we realized that we didn’t have enough artificial sea water to add 5L and Jody found extra low sites to deploy the

I did get to go out in the field for a bit on Wednesday. I was enjoying being out in the sun!

chambers at (lower than our calculations were for).  Again the tide came up really high and we didn’t have enough water as was needed leading to possible infiltration.  The next day we made sure to add extra water and we found higher elevation sites, so we ended up having too much water!  Ugh!  It’s so difficult to get it just perfect. 

After taking our salinity measurements and finding the final volumes, we compared our results to our initial measurements to see if they matched up (they should be the same if no water was gained or lost during the deployment).  We found that a couple bladders may have had external leakage, but it is not as bad as it could have been.  Hopefully we will have some usable data from UC Santa Barbara in a few weeks.   

This week will be spent preparing for my presentations on Thursday and Friday as well as analyzing data.  I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that this internship is almost over.  I just hope that I can find a place to live before I move back to Hawaii!

Please feel free to read and enjoy my personal blog to learn about my summer outside of the EPA here: sarasoregonadventure.blogspot.com

Sea_Gil’s Blog Pt.8

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While the past week was spent adding a number of new species to the spawning period spreadsheet, a good chunk of my time was dedicated to working on my powerpoint for the symposium. My mentor is not going to be in this week, so I wanted to get a rough draft prepared for him to look over. I ended up giving a practice presentation for him and two other EPA colleagues on Thursday. After I went through the whole presentation, we then went back over each individual slide and discussed any changes to be made. There were quite a few suggestions, but I am glad for the constructive criticism because I would like for this presentation to be good.

On Wednesday, I headed up to Corvallis with Betty and Diego to see them (along with Becca and Chris) play at Bombs Away! Hats off to them for a good show!

Friday was the day  I finally got to go out into the field! On a HOVERCRAFT! It was totally awesome! I’d seen a hovercraft going around when I was in Turks & Caicos and it looked pretty cool. I never thought I would actually get to ride in one. I went out with another intern and an EPA worker to help them with collecting some cores in mud flats. Needless to say, I got a bit muddy. Also, I had my first experience with these contraptions called Mudders. They’re these types of “shoes” that are designed to keep you from sinking into the mud. It was weird walking around in them, but I was glad for them because the intern, Rachel, told me she had gotten stuck in the mud a few times on earlier trips when she didn’t have them on. She said she had to be dug out because she couldn’t lift her legs from the mud!

So that was my work week. My weekend was very fun. Betty, Diego, and I went to Zumba on Friday. A bunch of Hatfield interns then invited us to watch a movie called The Abyss. I confused it with some other movie about people getting stuck in a cave. This one was about divers getting stuck deep in the sea and meeting some interesting, new friends while down there

Betty and I went to the Yaquina Head Lighthouse on Saturday. I always see it in the distance when walking along the jetty, so I wanted to check it out. Also, I wanted to take some pictures for my grandma because she really likes lighthouses (just emailed her some photos!). We parked outside of the actual park and took a nice walk up there. We didn’t get to go inside because there was a long wait, but it was still nice to just see it.

lighthouse

Yaquina Head Lighthouse

For dinner, we got to go to BBQ in Siletz at the HMSC director’s house. There was a lot of great food, since it was a potluck. At this point, I’m mostly used to microwaved veggie burgers and tomato soup, so it was nice change. That night, we went out to Nana’s where there was a band playing. After Nana’s, we headed over to Moby Dick’s for some karaoke which is always fun!

This week will be filled with more slideshow preparation since the Symposium is on Thursday. Hopefully my presentation goes well!

Oh and I’d like to give an early birthday shout-out to Betty! Wooohooooo!

This Time For Real… Guided

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So now I’m following Eric Dickey on Twitter… my life is not the same. And after a failed attempt at a picture blog last week, This week, I will retain to my phone, and take daily pictures.

Monday, I worked at the VC (still waiting on this dang poster to be put up!). Fixed up one of the deep sea vents exhibits!

I fixed this display with my hands

Later that day, I went practice for my gig at Bombs Away with my VC friends Chris and Becca (Betty joined later on), where we played some music in their awesome basement with their awesome kitten called Cricket.

this is Cricket... the kitten

 

Tuesday, chasing around the graphic designer, but the poor woman is busier than most humans on this planet! So I did some work with my curriculum experiment, followed by more rehearsal! That night I cooked some spaghetti for the band.

Cajunrican Spaghetti

Wednesday, off at the VC… I woke up a bit late, ate some good breakfast, then played soccer with some Hatfield folk, then went to Toledo to rehearse… then… SHOWTIME! The New Toledo Family Band, composed by Chris, Becca, Ms. Mujica, and myself, rocked out the Bombs Away local until there were no more wet burritos around! Definitely one of the funnest shows I’ve ever played in my life. After the show, we stayed at one of our friends’ house in Corvallis.

Thursday, off at the VC once more, but not really! We woke up really early in Corvallis, and got to Newport at 8:45AM. I then started applying for D.O. school (Doctor of Osteopathy)! It is a long process but I’m definitely excited about it. I can’t believe they asked me for my SAT/ACT scores… I don’t know where to get those. I did go to the VC that afternoon because my POSTERS WERE DONE! Big thanks to Allison Walkingshaw, the graphic designer, for being awesome at this! Ehem… my poster has the FIRST QR code of any exhibit in the VC! Check it, try it with your smartphone!

QR Code to www.sealtag.org

This is only one of the two posters...

Friday, I worked. My main goal that day was to set up my prototype. It was harder than I thought. I had to move one exhibit in order to set mine up. This is a phenomenon called magical chairs. The exhibit I had to move was a hypoxia exhibit, which had a tank full of water and vegetable oil. Needless to say, I figured out a way to spill it on the floor. My own little oil spill. I had to mop about 5 times before the floor didn’t feel like a Wendy’s behind the counter.

So 6 hours later, I’m still there setting up the exhibit that doesn’t even belong to me! This is what it ended looking like:

 

Now it was time to set up my posters… With the help of Margaret and Betty, I present to you, my final prototype!

My final posters, all set up.

Saturday, I worked again. I did some assessments of the visitors that are lurking around the poster. In an assessment, you time visitors that look at your exhibit, and when one reads for more than 90 seconds, you interview them (if they want to). I had a few people talk to me, all very impressed with the panels, as well as by the fact that there are sea lions that are endangered (most people didn’t know that)! This is my exhibit from the side:

From the side... I am going to put two LHX tags and a sea lion skull and shoulderblade as attractants!

That afternoon was the HMSC volunteer/staff/intern BBQ at the HMSC director’s house!

A beautiful mansion in the middle of nowhere!

Note that this was a “potluck” event, to which we brought some beer (typical college students… o dang, I’m now a grad). But when we got there, we were shocked to see that there was a Harry Potter-style banquet because all of these older people (who are mostly retired or with jobs), had brought delicious food… Ahh, soo good…

Later on that night, we went to Moby Dick’s to sing karaoke. Here is one of my picks for the night.

by Al Greene

I gave it a shot. I couldn’t quite moan like Al Greene did. But I did damage control afterward with a great performance of Juanes’ “A Dios Le Pido”. You wouldn’t know this song unless you were Latino (which there were a few of us at the bar that night… a dedication to them).

Today, I’m still working. Gave an Estuary tour to a small group of people, which was nice because I didn’t have to scream. And now I’m working on my blog/presentation. Looking forward to doing more visitor assessments and getting a final product of my exhibit in November!