Category Archives: Former scholars

Reflections to Date

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Hello everyone!

Sorry that this is late! I am lucky if I am able to sit in front of a computer for any length of time, so I have been working on it every chance I get.  Since my time here is more than halfway over, I will fill you in on some of my reflections on my internship to date, but first a summary of the previous week.  Monday and Tuesday of last week was spent preparing for our field work.  This was the project that I was in charge of, so I had to make sure that everything ran smoothly.  As you know, this project is to test whether or not there is some sort of microbial processes going on during the night that I are not going on during the day.  We received some interesting results with “dark” (white PVC) chambers versus “light” (clear acrylic) chambers in previous tests, so we incorporated both into our experiment.  The way the experiment was set up, was that we went to two locations where we deployed six chambers at each (three dark and three light) in sets of two at three different sites.  We hypothesized that there would be a clear difference between the dark chambers and light chambers during the day since we have seen this in preliminary experiments in the past (we expect there to be no photosynthesis occurring in the dark chambers to drawdown nutrients, while there would be in the light). As for the night experiment, since we have seen some drawdown at night in the past with light chambers even though there is no photosynthesis occurring at night, we hypothesized that there may be some microbial activity occurring at night that isn’t occurring during the day.

As far as actually deploying the chambers and running the experiment, I would grade myself a B average which is pretty good for my first time.  Everyone was still getting used to deploying the bladders and some miscommunication between Caitlin and I led us to bring one of the wrong chambers which we had to go back to the lab and exchange.  Overall, running the experiment was a success.  We finished our deployment right as the tide came in.  The next day when we deployed our chambers at the other site, it went much better and faster and we beat the tide even though we were running late.

The most exciting part about doing these experiments is running our samples through the ISUS to get some preliminary results on nitrate values.  The daytime results came out as expected with little to no drawdown in the dark chambers while there was significant drawdown in the light chambers.  The night time results were much more peculiar.  We would expect to see no difference between the dark chambers and light chambers at night as no photosynthesis is occurring due to lack of light, but we still had a significant drawdown in the light (clear) chambers while there was no drawdown in the dark chambers.  How could this be?  Our worry was that something was going on with the clear acrylic chambers themselves that was causing nutrient (particularly nitrate) uptake or something was causing the nitrate values to read lower than they should have.  Since the next day we were preparing to go out and run more experiments during the weekend, I wanted to get to the bottom of this before we pushed ahead just in case something was seriously wrong.  So on Friday, Caitlin and I, ran a mini experiment by adding our artificial sea water to a dark chamber and a light chamber and sealed it at both ends to see if there was a change.  After letting the water sit inside the chambers for a few hours, we took samples and waited anxiously in the lab to run them to see if there was a difference.  If there was a difference, then we knew that there was something wrong with the acrylic chambers all along.  We ran the sample from the dark chamber and the results came out normal as we had expected.  Then we crossed our fingers that the sample from the light chamber would be the same.  But, when we ran that sample we discovered that the nitrate concentration was 8-10µm less (which is a lot less) than the dark chamber.  This is not good news because it potentially means that all of the work and all of the data collected up to this point is virtually useless!  Since we got these results, we decided that it would be unwise to move ahead with our field work for the weekend, so one positive was that I got the weekend off.  Because of these results, it looks like I could have came to the midsummer check-in since all of Friday was just spent preparing for more field work, but of course we didn’t find out about this major issue until about 5:00pm- bummer.  On Sunday afternoon, Caitlin and Jody, ran another little experiment by filling an acrylic chamber with ultra pure water to see if the results reflected a nutrient concentration as they should.  Fortunately, after an hour or two of letting the water incubate in the chamber we got a negative concentration.  Given the circumstances, this is good news because it means that the acrylic chamber is not in fact drawing down our nutrients, but is only causing the ISUS to read a lower nutrient concentration than it should.  This is rather unfortunate though because it means that we cannot use the ISUS to get instant results, so we have to wait a month or two for all of the results to come back from the wet lab at UC Santa Barbara – unless of course those results are compromised too.  Eek!

Unluckily, there is little time to think about what to do next because this week I have been plummeted into helping with another project.  For this project, we will be measuring the nutrient uptake of a sea grass flume at Winant marsh.  In order to do this, we must measure the flow of the water in the channel at one location and take water samples at three locations during four consecutive low tides.  As you probably know, there are two low tides during a period of 24 hours so one sampling period will be during the day and one will be at night.  Each of these sampling periods will be about eight hours long.  Thankfully I was assigned two day shifts instead of any night shifts, so I won’t be sampling during the wee hours of the night, but I do have to be at work at 5:30am tomorrow and Wednesday.  I’ll let you know how it goes in my next blog!

Since I was not able to attend the midsummer check-in, I will inform you of my reflections to date:

  1. First, since I am a rather small person, lugging 20L bladders full of water in and out of the marsh is very difficult for me.  I enjoy being outside doing field work, but some of it is pretty intense.  For my graduate studies, I need to make sure that I find a research project that I enjoy but does not involve something so physically demanding.
  2. I do not like marshes.  They are muddy and full of hidden holes and channels.  Working in them is rather difficult.  I think I’d rather study in the woods, on a mountain, at a lake, or at a stream.
  3. Nature is full of unforeseen and uncontrollable variables.  For the experiment that I have been doing so far, there are so many curve balls that nature has thrown at us, that I think a project like this would drive me crazy if I had to do this long term.  I do enjoy the environment, but I think that I need to find something that I can have a little more control over all the unknowns.  This internship has shown me that I am more interested in focusing on the human interactions with the environment versus dealing with nature itself.

I certainly can in no way say that I am not enjoying my internship.  I love getting up and going to work every day and I think that this experience is pointing me in the right direction and is helping me figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life even if it is not exactly this.

Check out my personal blog: Sara Duncan

Touch Tanks… Guided

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Yes, indeed… Last week was the awesomest so far. Between sandboarding, octopus feeding, kid teaching, estuary touring for people from 17 countries, it was the busiest, funnest week at Hatfield. This week that just past was very relax (much needed). I worked a lot on my projects (curriculum and exhibit), took care of my jellies, and worked in the touch tank for the first time, where I tell kids not to poke sea anemones in the mouth/poop hole, and other things.

I was off on Monday, which was perfect since I was nursing my sandboarding hangover. My body ached from top to bottom… and back to top. So I stayed home and worked on my exhibit’s text content, cooked some Louisiana style red beans and rice, and recycled.

On Tuesday, I worked on my curriculum, with good results. The rest of the day, I worked with my jellytank until 3:30pm, and then, the other interns and I went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium! There, we saw pretty cool critters, like the Atlantic sea nettle (pictured here), sea otters, sharks, and sweet birds.

Wednesday was the day I had my touch tank experience. I discovered the true levels of patience I can have, which was definitely more than I expected. Kids would come and try to pick up animals, poke them, scratch them; and the best part was that the adults were doing the same! But as a good broker of information, I would gently correct them and tell them something cool about the creature they were attempting to break in two.

Thursday, our fellow Sea Granter, Joanne Choi, came from Coos Bay area to stay at Hatfield for the night, so she came on my estuary tour, I showed her around a bit, and then worked on my exhibit. I then had to help our SPOD with the octopus feeding. It seems that Ursula, our resident octopus, likes to try to exit the tank where she lives in. In front of about 80 men, women, and children, Ursula had 4 of her arms out of the tank (most of them wrapped around the SPOD (presenter), and her two eyes (a big no-no). SEA GRANT SCHOLAR TO THE RESCUE! I jumped over most of the children, and unwrapped those suckers by tickling the back of the octopus’ arms. Success…claps…tears… no, but really, everybody started clapping, and I just tipped my Sea Grant hat, as I would if I had hit an excellent golf shot.

Friday, the scholars had their mid-summer check in! Which meant a few things, we had to make a presentation to update our fellow scholars what we were doing in our jobs, we had to eat pizza until there was not a crumb left, and we had to help set-up for DaVinci Days festival, where arts, science and technology are exhibited (and food). It was quite challenging to set up the Sea Grant poster exhibit, but with the help of Eric Dickey… we did it. couldn’t have done it without him (see?? poets ARE very handy.) Later on that night, we checked into the coolest dorm I’ve ever been in, and went out on the town with some friends…

Saturday was DaVinci day for me. We woke up and went eat breakfast for $1.99, then worked at the Sea Grant tent for a couple of hours. We tried some delicious food, took a long nap, and went to see Bobby McFerrin jibble jabble with his band. Unfortunately, I was tired of it before he got to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, so I happily decided to leave the premises and head back to Newport.

Sunday was a regular day of work at the VC, where I did an estuary tour (almost fell on the mudflats). I also dug up an oyster on demand from one of the estuary tour participants. I was proud of my skills. The rest of that day, I worked on my exhibit, which is almost done!

This week, I plan to finish my exhibit, show it to a focus group, get some questions from them, alter the poster, and have something pretty professional by the end of the week.

See y’all later!

 

Sea_Gil’s Blog Pt.5

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This past week was spent doing lots of data mining again. I’m learning more and more about reproduction and larval development for bivalves. It’s nice to gain more knowledge in this area since I only had a brief brush with concepts such as an animal being dioecious or monoecious in Biology 101 freshmen year. 

The one thing that was significantly different about this week was that I was actually able to input data into the PICES database! Certainly a very exciting step for me. The database now says “Data last updated by Margaret” which makes me feel pretty important (even if it only entails me changing certain things in the life history section of certain species I am reading about).

On Friday, we had the mid-summer check in and it was nice seeing some Sea Grant faces I hadn’t seen since I first came to Oregon. It was interesting hearing about everyone’s various projects and the progress they were making. We had some yummy pizza from American Dream Pizza for lunch and then set out to set up the Oregon Sea Grant booth at da Vinci days. Set up proved to be a bit more difficult than expected but then Eric came to the rescue and helped to complete the large display for all the Sea Grant information (check out the Oregon Sea Grant Flickr gallery for some photos).

Saturday was spent volunteering and checking out the various booths at da Vinci days. I have to confess that the food stands were my favorite part (I had some salmon ceasar salad, delicious curly fries, and an elephant ear). Unfortunately, I missed the kinetic sculpture races and I imagine that would have been another favorite of mine. 

Kinetic Sculpture?

I was interested in a question that struck me when I was giving my presentation which was “Why is the deeper water that comes up during upwelling considered more corrosive?”. I asked my mentor and he explained that decomposing material that falls to the deeper waters release CO2 and that there is no new oxygen production happening down there, only respiration. These two factors are the main reason why the water is more acidic down there.

But then something else struck me: Will there continue to be a significant differential between the pH of surface water and deeper water as surface water begins to take in the accumulating atmospheric CO2? If the pHs get closer to one another as time goes by, upwelling might not even be an issue in the future because ocean water will just be generally more acidic no matter where it comes from.

My mentor thought this was a good question so now I am going to be doing some literature research to see if I can gather information on the expected pH changes to ocean water in the future so that I can compare it to the pH of deeper ocean water right now. I’m interested to see what I will find from this search.

Videos |wk.5|

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Reflection:

Last week marks the midpoint of this summer and I am blown away at how fast it is going. I am also curious at how this project is turning out. In my mind, I had originally intended a scheduled progression of video creations throughout the summer. In reality, my progress is much more exponential than linear. Once familiarity with Adobe, ODFW, and ODFW’s network and file storage system was achieved, great things have been happening and will continue to happen.

Great happenings of last week:

I made two highlight videos! It was actually unexpected. My advisor, Mike, had a presentation to give at OIMB Wednesday and asked me Tuesday to edit and add new material to a previously compiled Cape Perpetua hypoxia series highlight video. Erin Cooper, who was actually a Sea Grant Postdoctoral Fellow at ODFW, and is now a PISCO Postdoctoral Fellow at ODFW (until she leaves for her new career in August), helped me pick out the new footage. Erin is kind of like my second advisor. She has been giving me good, solid advice on certain aspects of my project. She’s also a well-seasoned postdoc and provides GREAT advice and recommendations on applying to grad school. (Thank you Erin!) So, getting back to the hypoxia video, with Erin’s help I added new hypoxia footage from 2008 and 2010, edited it, and sent it over to Mike for his presentation. ‘Twas a good feeling.

But that’s not all! Wednesday morning Mike popped another surprise on me. At around 9:00am he called asking for a three-minute Redfish Rocks MR/MPA highlight video he could show in addition to the hypoxia video. He wanted it by 11am. Initially, I was worried…yes, I had been clipping a bunch of good Redfish Rock MR/MPA raw footage, but my clippings didn’t span the entire 64 hours of footage – they only included about 18 hours of it. I wanted a good representation. So I worked with what I had and scanned the other footage for what a somewhat variable representation. Although I didn’t achieve quite the variation I was looking for, the highlight video was completed at around 11am on the dot. My thoughts on it? I think it’s a great start. As I continue my raw clippage I hope to, ultimately, get a more well-rounded representation of Redfish Rocks. In addition to the ultimate representation I will be creating other unique, ‘side’ videos. I’ve already created a video of metridium from Dive 331. The visibility in this dive is pretty low but I wanted to (once again) give an well-rounded representation.

We’re in the process of putting both the Cape Perpetua Hypoxia Series video and the Redfish Rocks Pilot MR/MPA on YouTube. I’ve been running into some kinks with access to ODFW folders so that’s been delaying me. I will be sure to keep everyone informed once they are up. I’ll try to get the metridium video up once I have a good visibility metridium video put together so they can be displayed side by side for comparison.

Our Mid-Summer check-in with Sea Grant was Friday so we gathered in Corvallis to give short presentations on our projects, eat pizza, and help out with da Vinci Days at OSU. It was nice to see everyone and talk in a little more detail about our projects. Unfortuantely, while some of the other interns stayed to explore and help out at the Sea Grant booth for da Vinci Days, I had to head back to Newport to complete my 12 page physics exam. On a good note, I feel like I did pretty well!

This week I will continue my raw footage clipping and highlight video creating. I want to knock out Redfish so I can start Cape Perpetua. Also, no picture in my blog this time…the sand from the dunes of Florence claimed my camera lens. Ergh.

 

 

Betty, the contact hunter

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In the words of the Carpenters, rainy days and Mondays always get me down.  It’s been gloomy for the past couple of days and I’m starting to miss the heat of Louisiana more than ever.  My office overlooks the Yaquina Bay Bridge and on sunny days it’s lovely, but today it just looks bleh.  But the work must go on!

This past week has been plenty of networking (as usual) and getting started on the outline for my final document.  Initially I felt a little overwhelmed by the thought of composing a document to be published for use by anybody, but with a little guidance I feel I’ll be able to get on the right track to finish by August.  I was finally able to schedule all of my Portland and Tillamook contacts for the last week of July, meaning that I’ll be going on a bit of a road trip soon!  Finding contacts at the Port of Seattle has posed the biggest challenge so far, but I hope that I can get that squared away this week so I can hit Washington on my trip as well.  I had a great phone interview with someone at the Port of Portland who spoke to me about how they secure flights with carriers and the challenges Portland has faced in creating and keeping demand for those flights.  It explains why Seattle and Canada tend to do the largest portion of shipping, especially of live commodities, for Oregon seafood producers.  While I’ve never liked talking on the phone, I have become a lot more accustomed to calling people (especially people I don’t know) and being able to have a productive conversation.  I feel like that’s something that will benefit me throughout my career.

On Friday we had our midsummer check-in, which was great.  We got to learn about what all the other interns are doing and had a conversation about jobs and grad school.  I feel confident that I’ll be able to find something to do once I’m done here this summer, especially with all of the great contacts I’ve made so far.  We volunteered at DaVinci Days on Saturday, which was nice because I got to interact with the public and describe the mission of Sea Grant as well as my own project.  I felt encouraged by the interest the booth produced, as well as the people who came by and listened to us talk about all these different aspects of the organization.  On one or two occasions people even told us that we definitely had great careers ahead of us, which of course made me feel even more confident about landing a job!

This week is all about tying up loose ends and figuring out my Seattle contacts.  I’ll be going to Tillamook on Friday to meet with the owner of a large oyster hatchery, as well as my other adviser.  I hope that by then I’ll have a definitely time schedule for the coming week, making my trip a little less nerve wracking.  And here’s hoping the weather gets a little better!!

It’s already been five weeks?!?

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Hello!

I cannot believe that I have already been here for five weeks! Time sure does fly. Last week was a fairly productive week interspersed with some pretty exciting things! For the most part I continued building the website I’m working on – creating custom pictures and adding feature stories to the archive. On Thursday I was able to sit in on the Marine Council meeting! Such a cool experience! While I am a biology major, I haven’t had a lot of experience in the political world – so sitting around a table with a lot of important people discussing policy was a totally new and exciting experience for me! Then, as you all know, we were able to have a midsummer reunion and pizza picnic on Friday. It was great to be able to hear a bit about what everyone is doing – unfortunately I find it hard to keep up with all of the blog posts!

My plan for this week is to begin creating some custom feature stories to be added to the website’s rotating banner. I also hope to create some student feature highlights, and add some static text where necessary. I don’t know whether getting the calendar set up will be a priority this week – I might save that for next week. But depending on what Jenna and I discuss when we meet in the next couple of days, we could be getting that up and running very soon here.

Hope everyone has a great week!

 

The Halfway Point!

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ODFW Adventures: V

At 5 weeks, I can hardly believe that half of my internship has already flown by! It seems like I just got here!! But I still have 5 weeks left to make my name in a small government branch. And don’t worry, I’ll do my best.

This week I made two food extravaganzas to make up for last week: pad thai and an Indian soup (the name of which I have forgotten). They were both eventually a success, although the soup ended up taking nearly two hours to make. The pad thai, with rice noodles, shrimp, vegetables, and a delicious sauce, was quick and tasty. Next time I think I will add some fresh lemon juice and extra ginger to give it a distinctive zing. The soup was a pureed blend of carrots, coconut, banana, and other ingredients along with pieces of chicken. Despite the time and hardwork it took to create that soup, it is delicious. All in all, I consider it a successful cooking week!

As for ODFW, remember back when I mentioned I was done counting samples, and I was destined to finish out the remaining weeks at my desk? Well, missing samples have been FOUND, and I have begun counting the final 9 samples. This will certainly keep me busy for the coming week, and I am saving my counted samples so that when I write a new protocol that will attempt to confront and fix the issues of high variance I have discovered in my previous samples, I can test my methods. I also downloaded the GPS points where the spawn was collected onto my computer and have successfully used GIS to represent the points on a map of the Yaquina Bay. All things considered, the whole herring project is moving along well and I can’t wait to look back on all I’ve done when I leave Newport!

I also helped work on the Nearshore Strategy by creating a table of all the spelling errors in the original document that will be part of our “Roadmap” task, which will show all the revisions that will have been made during this 5-year review. I also commented on a document that definied several technical terms and acronymns in order to make it easier for the general public to understand.

It seems that I have a busy week coming up, with samples to count, GIS to play with, and working on the annotated bibliography, so I’d better get started!

Saving Oysters in Oregon – week 5

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Minivan Diaries.

Good times with my good ol’ green minivan!  Drove up and down the central Oregon coast, getting some spectacular views, hitting up nice beaches, and went to a festival in Corvallis before driving back to Charleston.

Well, I was actually doing work, and it was a state car, but all of that happened!

At the beginning of the week, I collected a series of water samples from different docks and beaches in the Coos Bay area, so I could measure their pH.  There are several reasons for this work: 1. ocean acidification, which is caused by increasing carbon dioxide in the air from combustion being absorbed by the ocean, affects oyster shells, 2. increasing alkalinity in the bay may be a precursor of eutrophication, and 3. we wanted to check the accuracy of our field pH meters with a new, expensive lab pH meter.  I’ve probably collected 5-6 samples from 9 different sites, along with getting measurements at the sites with a handheld field meter.  We saw that the field and lab meters are slightly off, but pretty much at a constant rate, so there is a pretty good correlation between the two.  This took up a good three whole days, driving to different sites, lugging around a heavy “handheld” meter, and then coming back to the lab to measure the pH levels.  I hope the data and results I got will be useful!

Thursday morning (4:30am), my advisor, a grad student and I went to Florence (~1 hour north of Coos Bay) to monitor eelgrass beds that my advisor had planted a few years ago.  A bridge was to be built, but in the process, a protected species of eelgrass was going to be ripped out.  So they transplanted all the plants that would be affected downstream, and they have to be monitored quarterly to ensure their survival.  I am happy to say they are doing well!

Then I continued on to Newport, where I met up with my fellow Sea Grant Scholars.  We all had to convene in Corvallis Friday morning for a mid-summer check-in, where we would tell each other about our projects, talk about what is expected of us at the end, and possible next steps after this internship.  I had a great time hearing about what everyone else is up to.  We are all doing such different things, some working in the field to do experiments and collect data, others reading through literature to create databases of information, and yet others creating online websites and editing videos to spread information about marine issues!  I also found out that I saw a video edited by one of my fellow Sea Grant Scholars at a seminar in Coos Bay!  It’s nice to know that our work is being put out there and reaching people.

From there, I helped out at da Vinci Days!  A festival for arts and science (I think..).  I helped man the Oregon Sea Grant booth, and I will admit that I think I learned more than the people visiting our booth!  Not only did I have to learn quickly enough to explain what Sea Grant was about and answer questions about all the marine issues Sea Grant tackles, but I also spent a lot of time with our interactive learning activities (games for kids) because they looked so fun!  I had an awesome time and I have to make sure to go to more of those in the future!

I finally drove back down to Charleston Saturday afternoon (about a 4 hour drive). As much as I liked my quality time with the green minivan, I am spending the rest of my weekend walking around!

I have no idea what I will be doing this next week… probably one of the many exciting and interesting projects I’ve been working on, but not sure which one!  So I’ll let ya know =]

Come see us at DaVinci Days!

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Setting up for DaVinci Days

Setting up for DaVinci Days

The Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholars are on campus this weekend for their mid-summer check-in, a tour of OSU’s Hinsdale Wave Research Center, and to help staff the Sea Grant booth at DaVinci Days, Corvallis’ annual festival of the arts and sciences.

If you’re in Corvallis this weekend, you can find us in the “Discover OSU” area on the lower campus just off 14th Street. Drop by for information, activities, games – and giveaways!

See more photos of today’s activities on the Oregon Sea Grant Flickr gallery.

Keeping it brief

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I am not feeling very well today, so I will be keeping my post on this week pretty short and to the point.

I just got done with the  mid-summer check in with my fellow internship peers of the Sea Grant Summer Scholars. The main purpose of the day was to get everyone together to talk about what we’ve been up to with our projects. Everyone gave a short two minute presentation and I found it interesting to see what people have been working on. The other projects seem to have more of the “sexy science” and “cool factor” going for them than mine, but that’s ok, I realize what I’m doing has a purpose even though the tasks may be mundane sometimes.

This week not a lot of progress was made with my project in event planning. I’ve been waiting for people higher up the hierarchy of decision making to come to a conclusion about the goals, outcomes, and audience for the event. I attended a meeting for the OSU Marine Council, where they discussed the event, but it seems that more indecision came out of it than conclusions. Good thing I am already used to this after my experience last summer in policy, or I’d probably be frustrated at this point. Alas, I anticipated that I’d probably be on standby for a while, so instead I’ve been handed the role of writing impact statements for the Oregon Sea Grant Annual Report. It’s not a glamorous task; I write very short (less than 250 words) summaries of how OSG funding has impacted communities. It’s always a good exercise in writing concisely.

That is all I am going to report on for this week. Next week I may be off and running with more event planning, but that remains to be seen.