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Workshop Happenings

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This last week planning for the upcoming workshop really took off. I soon found out how easy it is to miss an important message or reply in a string of 20 emails, and how complicated collaborating and communicating with people across the U.S. can be.

I spent the first part of the week catching up on the last week’s email communication and keeping my eye on any emerging tsunami marine debris/invasive information, mostly because the entire steering committee still wanted to wait on any word from D.C. about the proposal. As confirmation about its acceptance filtered through, plans to get the formal invites out began.

The second half of my week I worked remotely with a Knauss Sea Grant fellow on amending the invite list, and then with others to draft an invite letter and modify it according to the steering committee’s wishes. After a conference call to nail down some important details, I began work personalizing each of the invites (some 90!). The hope here was to reduce transmission of invite letter around to other non-invitees, simply because while interest in this topic is high, a productive workshop cannot be held with hundreds of people trying to contribute.

The invites are due to go out early this week, and then work keeping track of RSVPs will begin, as well as figuring out the best ways to compensate participants for travel, and also allocate funds for facilities, refreshments, AV equipment, and more!

Week 2: Tsunami Marine Debris

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In last week’s post I expressed the possibility that I might work on tsunami marine debris issues, and as it would have it, in the last week the perfect opportunity arose. Earlier this week, I continued working on several tasks  concerning the Heceta Head Coastal Conference and other things related to Oregon State’s Marine sciences webpage. However, early on I was made aware of a proposal intended for submission to the National Sea Grant office to request for funds for a West Coast wide workshop to help West Coast scientists, managers and communicators to form a coherent framework for response, risk assessments, management, outreach, policy, and research relative to the introduction of nonnative species by marine debris. This workshop is tentatively scheduled for the end of July and therefore requires an extensive amount of work in planning and coordination in a short amount of time.

Enter, Melissa. I have been designated (if all goes according to plan, that is) as the person to “to spearhead and keep track of all workshop arrangements/details/logistics.” Immediately, I’m a little intimidated. This simple description requires me to have a  working know-how of everything that’s going on in the seemingly countless number of Federal and State agencies, NGOs, nonprofits and spin-off task forces containing any number of combination of representatives from these groups. Not to mention keeping up to date and making sure everyone who should be included, is, among other pertinent specifics.  While such details and responsibilities are still emerging, I find myself already intrigued by this process. The number of technical workshops I’ve attended in the past is largely limited to non-pressing/impending issues such as marine reserves or spatial planning, so to have a similar process be applied regionally to an issue that is will be of high importance on current and future scales, is very interesting. I am curious to see how necessary protocols will develop.

Heading into next week my agenda includes getting steering committee members and invitees signed up to newly created listservs as well as preparing for a conference call to initiate planning for a resultant pre-workshop working group which will prepare a document regarding risk communication and coordination. Specifically this group will work to “draft a evaluative-based framework for  risk communications , outreach and engagement plan  associated with an overall risk analysis to  more effectively and consistently communicate the threat and engage managers, researchers, policy makers, educators and stakeholders in appropriate planning, reporting  and responses to: a) biofouling organisms associated with the Japanese tsunami marine debris,  b) minimize risks to people, c)  minimize risks from further human-mediated spread, d) integrate risk communications and coordination with risk assessment and  risk.management.”

Many of the aspects covered by the conference for collaboration and communication are very new to me, but have exceedingly important implications for my interests in how scientific and economic principles are integrated and communicated within multidimensional processes, such as responding to an impending threat like invasive species which has the potential to adversely affect everything from our west-coast ecosystems to our economies. I therefore enter the next week excited about gaining new insights about inter-agency workings, but also the implications these have for my broader interests.

It’s Friday already?

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To be honest, this week has breezed by so quickly that I am having trouble recollecting everything I have been up to. The only thing that sticks out in my mind about this week is some very important news I got about the Australia job…

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!! I AM GOING TO SHARK BAY AUSTRALIA!

Whew, now that the cat is out of the bag I can breathe easy. I officially found out the news on Tuesday evening via email. I’m extremely excited to be a part of the research team, and even more excited to finally have an answer to what I’m doing this fall. Much of my post-OSG plans had been hinging on whether or not I was going to get this job. As a result of getting the position, I will not be applying to graduate school this year and instead will prolong the process to next fall. After I get back from Australia in the end of December, my plan is to move to Portland to get my Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Systems through PSU.

If you are interested in learning more about the project that I will be a part of, watch the video at http://www2.fiu.edu/~heithaus/SBERP/index.html

Alright, now back to the land of working at Oregon Sea Grant. As you know from my previous post, I am finally able to move forward on my event planning project and I have made progress with that this week. My biggest accomplishment was writing up some “proposals” on what the breakout sessions for the event would look like. So far in planning the event, our planning group has given a lot of lip service to having breakout sessions, but have not made our ideas concrete. I decided that it was time to move forward on figuring out what these sessions could look like. After meeting with some people and doing a lot of reading, I was able to develop a solid outline for us to work with.

An interesting side project I was thrown into this week was working in the areas of fisheries economics. Some of the staff at OSG decided that one of the impact statements I worked on needed better numbers to quantify the economic impact that was being claimed in the document. I spent a large portion of this week digging through economic reports on the fishing industry in Oregon and stock assessments of certain target species for the industry. Needless to say, it was a grueling process and made my head hurt. However, in light of the project making my brain want to explode, I found it interesting. I’m a very analytical thinker and I really like working with numbers. A lot of working on this project required me to problem and solve and think about how I could take X value and turn it into Y value.

On a not-so-serios note, I think my office is a inter-species breeding ground for insects. First, I’ve been getting returning visits from the hornets of doom. It’s always a pleasant surprise to have one swarm around my head when I’m in the middle of a phone call. Second, I have had a new species of insect cropping up in my office. It looks like a dragonfly mated with a carpenter ant. I don’t know where they are coming from, but they have taken an affinity to me and my office. My co-workers are now used to my daily yelps from the office and running out to grab paper towels to squash the flying visitors. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that Ballard sits on top of a nuclear waste site; it would explain all the genetic freaks of nature that keep cropping up.

To end this post I’d like to wish good luck to all the other scholars who are heading back to their colleges/jobs/internships in other areas of the US. As for me, I’ll still be lurking about Sea Grant for another two weeks. Stay tuned for more stories from “The Adventures of AnnaRose and the 3rd floor of Ballard.”

Knauss Fellows meet with Dr. Lubchenco

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Our Summer Scholars are our most prolific bloggers, but other Sea Grant scholars are having busy summers, too. The Knauss Fellows Class of 2011 recently took part in a “NOAA 101” briefing and had a chance to meet Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator (and a former Oregon State University marine zoologist):

Knauss Fellow Brett Hartl with Dr. Jane Lubchenco

(Oregon Sea Grant Knauss Fellow Brett Hartl with Dr. Lubchenco. Brett is spending his fellowship providing marine policy analysis and support for Democratic members of the House Natural Resources Committee in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Read more about the Knauss Fellowship program

Things to do!

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Ladies and Gentlemen, after weeks of harping on how I didn’t have enough to do, I am happy to announce that I am now overflowing with tasks to complete. Hooray! Many things have happened in the past couple weeks and I’m under a bit of a time crunch today so I’ll have to skip writing you a novel today. This weeks post will be in the form of Q&A.

What’s changed between last post and now?

The main thing that has changed that has given me lots of tasks to take care of is that consensus was finally reached among all the various luminaries that influence my project. As I’ve mentioned before, my project was stalled because it has been difficult to A) get schedules of head-honchos to overlap and B) get them all on the same page of agreement when they do get together. Throughout the last week, some crucial decisions that affect my project were made and now I finally have a green light to move ahead. All of the work I had prepared to move forward with 7 weeks ago can finally be put into action! I have 3 weeks left with Oregon Sea Grant so the rest of my time will definitely be a race to see how much we can move forward on before I leave.

What are you doing now?

Well, my tasks that I’m up to are not as glamorous as wrangling sea turtles, but they are important. Right now I’ve been working on developing an event agenda, finalizing catering, reserving the venue, figuring out the logistics of registration, and other event planning tasks. In addition to event planning, some of my impact statements I’ve worked on need more refinement, so I’ll be hard pressed to finish that task before next week.

Didn’t you go do some sort of presentation?

Yes, this week was the final symposium for the Summer Scholars. For all the other interns, they will be done by the end of next week with their projects. Because I took some time off to go on vacation, I have extended my time to where I will be around until Sept 2nd. Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked, back to the presentation. Yesterday, I went out to Newport to the Hatfield Marine Science Center to spend all day listening to my fellow interns present about their projects. I kicked off the event (thankfully the last name of Adams always gives me the privilege of going first, which I love.). Overall, I feel good about my presentation. I had wanted to invest more time in it, but I had been filled with lots of other tasks to take care of this week and had a 10 hour day at work the day before the event. However, my feedback forms that I got back from my presentation indicated that everyone liked it for the most part.

Giving my presentation on policy to an audience composed of mainly scientists brought up a couple frustrations I continually run into when I give policy related presentations to a scientific audience. First, I always get a comment that someone wishes they would have seen more “results” from my work. For science, this is easy to do. You do your science, carry out your methodology, crunch your numbers, and then you’ll have some graphs and statistics to slap on a powerpoint to show your audience what you have done. Policy, particularly in regards to the projects I have been given, is not that concrete. Last summer, I helped produced a government recommendation. This summer, I’m assisting developing a workshop. There isn’t a way of representing those things in a graph. Instead, I explain what those items are about and their implications, but that never seems to satisfy a scientific audience.

A second thing I get comments on is having more pictures of my own. Unfortunately, policy does not have the glamor of running around with cute baby animals or standing in a lab with sophisticated equipment. If I took pictures of me in my “natural working habitat” I would bore my audience to tears with pictures of me sitting in front of the computer, or on the phone. Heaven forbid I try to take pictures of the meetings I go to. I would get some seriously weird looks saying “Who is the creep taking pictures?” It’s just something you don’t do. As a result, I have to rely on trying to spice up the text of my powerpoint slides with stock photos or pictures I scavenge from Google.

It would be interesting to give my speech to a room full of individuals who are in policy on a regular basis and get their feedback. I’m sure their response of what I should work on would be different.

Did you get the turtle job?

Stay tuned next week. I’ll know if I have the job by then.

Where did you go last week? I almost cried because I didn’t have a weekly blog post from you?

Do not fret dedicated blog reader, I was unable to blog because I was off in Idaho and did not have internet access. I spent a week at a family reunion wakeboarding and riding my road bike :) A welcomed break from sitting in front of a computer!

Make sure to catch the Perseid Meteor Shower tonight and tomorrow!

Over and out,

AR

Ladies and Gentlemen, after weeks of harping on how I didn’t have enough to do, I am happy to announce that I am now overflowing with tasks to complete. Hooray! Many things have happened in the past couple weeks and I’m under a bit of a time crunch today so I’ll have to skip writing you a novel today. This weeks post will be in the form of Q&A.

What’s changed between last post and now?

The main thing that has changed that has given me lots of tasks to take care of is that consensus was finally reached among all the various luminaries that influence my project. As I’ve mentioned before, my project was stalled because it has been difficult to A) get schedules of head-honchos to overlap and B) get them all on the same page of agreement when they do get together. Throughout the last week, some crucial decisions that affect my project were made and now I finally have a green light to move ahead. All of the work I had prepared to move forward with 7 weeks ago can finally be put into action! I have 3 weeks left with Oregon Sea Grant so the rest of my time will definitely be a race to see how much we can move forward on before I leave.

What are you doing now?

Well, my tasks that I’m up to are not as glamorous as wrangling sea turtles, but they are important. Right now I’ve been working on developing an event agenda, finalizing catering, reserving the venue, figuring out the logistics of registration, and other event planning tasks. In addition to event planning, some of my impact statements I’ve worked on need more refinement, so I’ll be hard pressed to finish that task before next week.

Didn’t you go do some sort of presentation?

Yes, this week was the final symposium for the Summer Scholars. For all the other interns, they will be done by the end of next week with their projects. Because I took some time off to go on vacation, I have extended my time to where I will be around until Sept 2nd. Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked, back to the presentation. Yesterday, I went out to Newport to the Hatfield Marine Science Center to spend all day listening to my fellow interns present about their projects. I kicked off the event (thankfully the last name of Adams always gives me the privilege of going first, which I love.). Overall, I feel good about my presentation. I had wanted to invest more time in it, but I had been filled with lots of other tasks to take care of this week and had a 10 hour day at work the day before the event. However, my feedback forms that I got back from my presentation indicated that everyone liked it for the most part.

Giving my presentation on policy to an audience composed of mainly scientists brought up a couple frustrations I continually run into when I give policy related presentations to a scientific audience. First, I always get a comment that someone wishes they would have seen more “results” from my work. For science, this is easy to do. You do your science, carry out your methodology, crunch your numbers, and then you’ll have some graphs and statistics to slap on a powerpoint to show your audience what you have done. Policy, particularly in regards to the projects I have been given, is not that concrete. Last summer, I helped produced a government recommendation. This summer, I’m assisting developing a workshop. There isn’t a way of representing those things in a graph. Instead, I explain what those items are about and their implications, but that never seems to satisfy a scientific audience.

A second thing I get comments on is having more pictures of my own. Unfortunately, policy does not have the glamor of running around with cute baby animals or standing in a lab with sophisticated equipment. If I took pictures of me in my “natural working habitat” I would bore my audience to tears with pictures of me sitting in front of the computer, or on the phone. Heaven forbid I try to take pictures of the meetings I go to. I would get some seriously weird looks saying “Who is the creep taking pictures?” It’s just something you don’t do. As a result, I have to rely on trying to spice up the text of my powerpoint slides with stock photos or pictures I scavenge from Google.

It would be interesting to give my speech to a room full of individuals who are in policy on a regular basis and get their feedback. I’m sure their response of what I should work on would be different.

Did you get the turtle job?

Stay tuned next week. I’ll know if I have the job by then.

So much to blog about

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Ladies and Gentlemen, after weeks of harping on how I didn’t have enough to do, I am happy to announce that I am now overflowing with tasks to complete. Hooray! Many things have happened in the past couple weeks and I’m under a bit of a time crunch today so I’ll have to skip writing you a novel today. This weeks post will be in the form of Q&A.

What’s changed between last post and now?

The main thing that has changed that has given me lots of tasks to take care of is that consensus was finally reached among all the various luminaries that influence my project. As I’ve mentioned before, my project was stalled because it has been difficult to A) get schedules of head-honchos to overlap and B) get them all on the same page of agreement when they do get together. Throughout the last week, some crucial decisions that affect my project were made and now I finally have a green light to move ahead. All of the work I had prepared to move forward with 7 weeks ago can finally be put into action! I have 3 weeks left with Oregon Sea Grant so the rest of my time will definitely be a race to see how much we can move forward on before I leave.

What are you doing now?

Well, my tasks that I’m up to are not as glamorous as wrangling sea turtles, but they are important. Right now I’ve been working on developing an event agenda, finalizing catering, reserving the venue, figuring out the logistics of registration, and other event planning tasks. In addition to event planning, some of my impact statements I’ve worked on need more refinement, so I’ll be hard pressed to finish that task before next week.

Didn’t you go do some sort of presentation?

Yes, this week was the final symposium for the Summer Scholars. For all the other interns, they will be done by the end of next week with their projects. Because I took some time off to go on vacation, I have extended my time to where I will be around until Sept 2nd. Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked, back to the presentation. Yesterday, I went out to Newport to the Hatfield Marine Science Center to spend all day listening to my fellow interns present about their projects. I kicked off the event (thankfully the last name of Adams always gives me the privilege of going first, which I love.). Overall, I feel good about my presentation. I had wanted to invest more time in it, but I had been filled with lots of other tasks to take care of this week and had a 10 hour day at work the day before the event. However, my feedback forms that I got back from my presentation indicated that everyone liked it for the most part.

Giving my presentation on policy to an audience composed of mainly scientists brought up a couple frustrations I continually run into when I give policy related presentations to a scientific audience. First, I always get a comment that someone wishes they would have seen more “results” from my work. For science, this is easy to do. You do your science, carry out your methodology, crunch your numbers, and then you’ll have some graphs and statistics to slap on a powerpoint to show your audience what you have done. Policy, particularly in regards to the projects I have been given, is not that concrete. Last summer, I helped produced a government recommendation. This summer, I’m assisting developing a workshop. There isn’t a way of representing those things in a graph. Instead, I explain what those items are about and their implications, but that never seems to satisfy a scientific audience.

A second thing I get comments on is having more pictures of my own. Unfortunately, policy does not have the glamor of running around with cute baby animals or standing in a lab with sophisticated equipment. If I took pictures of me in my “natural working habitat” I would bore my audience to tears with pictures of me sitting in front of the computer, or on the phone. Heaven forbid I try to take pictures of the meetings I go to. I would get some seriously weird looks saying “Who is the creep taking pictures?” It’s just something you don’t do. As a result, I have to rely on trying to spice up the text of my powerpoint slides with stock photos or pictures I scavenge from Google.

It would be interesting to give my speech to a room full of individuals who are in policy on a regular basis and get their feedback. I’m sure their response of what I should work on would be different.

Did you get the turtle job?

Stay tuned next week. I’ll know if I have the job by then.

Sea_Gil’s Blog Pt.7

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So, we Sea Granters have only have 2 and a half weeks left of the Summer Scholar Program. It’s crazy, I can’t believe we’re almost done here.

Well, this past week I got some new books to look through. One is called Distribution and Abundance of Fishes and Invertebrates in West Coast Estuaries and the other is titled Marine & Freshwater Products Handbook. I’ve already gone through the other books and I’m about to start on the products one. Hopefully, I can find some useful information from it, if not I’ll just have to return it to the library (I’ve been getting some good use out of my temporary library card at Guin Library).

After I finish that up, I’m going to start looking through articles that my colleague, Katie, has been gathering for me. I have a feeling that I will just find data about species that I have already listed in my spreadsheet, but maybe they will have some useful information that the books didn’t have.

I’ve also started working on my powerpoint. My mentor will not be around after next week because he’ll be going on vacation to Yellowstone (lucky!). I’d like to get him a rough draft before he leaves so we can discuss how I can best present what I’ve been doing this summer. So far, it’s about 7 complete slides and about 5 more that are still in an outline stage. There’s a lot of information I have to get across in a 10-12 minute presentation so it’s important that I manage my time effectively so I can relay as much of my story as I can. I think it is important to keep in mind that, though important, my work is only a small piece in a larger project studying how climate change will affect different environments across the globe.

But enough about work, I’ll get to the fun stuff now. On Friday, Betty, Deigo, and I went clamming. We got a pretty good amount and used shovels instead of the “clam guns” (I don’t really know what they’re actually called). I think the shovel approach works better for me because I found a lot more than I usually do with the guns. Betty made some clam pasta with our findings. I tried some and it was very good! 

On Saturday, Betty and I went blueberry picking at a place right outside of Corvallis. I thought I was going to turn into a blueberry like Violet from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory because I ate so many blueberries that day. They were so good! I ended up picking about 4 ¼ pounds and paid $5.50 for them, which I think was a pretty good deal. We then hung out in Corvallis for a little bit. I got two books from this cool store that sold them for about a half of the normal price. Betty brought some lavender from a store called Cat’s Meow and used some for a blueberry crisp. Yum yum!

Blueberries!

Yesterday, I just relaxed and went for a walk on the jetty out towards the beach. The beach ended up being a bit too chilly for what I was wearing so I didn’t get to walk on the beach for as long as I had originally wanted to. Oh well. At least it was nice and sunny out!

Oh, and I’m going to try out a Zumba class at the Newport Rec Center later. Hopefully that’ll be a fun workout!

So many adventures!

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Hello all!

So I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve been afraid to start working on this post because I’ve been neglecting this blog for so long. Seriously, Amy and I have been having so many adventures I just haven’t had enough time to write about them, so I put it off, only making this potential post much, much longer. So, since I haven’t posted three week’s worth of adventures, I’ll just give a bunch of mini descriptions.

Also, Amy and I are all about taking pictures now, so please enjoy.

What IS trash, the philosophical debate continues...

One man’s Trash…

Just before da Vinci Days we went on a field trip to the dump just outside of Corvallis. I was interested in the trip to see how leach-ates (the product of landfills when rain water runs through the waste) are collected and treated. This is relevant to my pharmaceutical research because the government asks civilians to put all unused drugs together in a zip lock bag,  add water to dissolve the medicine, than throw it away. I found out that while our landfill collects leach-ate extremely effectively, it is treated at the Corvallis waste water treatment facility, which cannot detect or extract pharmaceuticals (just like most municipal water treatment facilities)

 

From Left: Amy, Me, Jen, and Sam

Sam, our adviser, with Yellow Flag Iris, an invasive water plant

Yummm...to-be compost...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

da Vinci Days

This girl is amazed by Watersheds

Amy and I were put in charge of designing the booth for daVinci Days and finding all of the volunteers to help staff the

booth. It ended up that I worked the entire weekend, along with set up and take down, but that’s how I like to work events such as this. Because that weekend ended up being quite saturated, there seemed to be less attendance than in years past. But working with the kids as well as having great conversations with stakeholders was extremely rewarding for me, because I felt like I was contributing to Sea Grant’s image. I also had some fun meeting the Summer scholars, talking to Joe Cone, getting to know Kathryn Hawes from Hatfield and watching AnnaRose flirt with boys, all in all, I had fun.

Amy in front of "The monster" display

Bubble made an appearance...than tried to eat some rocks

Talking about tunicates: an Aquatic Invasive Species

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beach Trip!

I'm king of the Jetty!

Just this last friday, Jen, Amy and I went to Charleston bay to learn more about some invasive Tunicates that Oregon has. A representative of Alaska was there to get some advice and further her understanding about the species because they have a population in their waters. After trading information, we went to the docks and pulled up some substrates to see what was attached. We saw very little Didemnum vexillum, which is a good thing. Afterwards we took a trip to the “Umpqua triangle” in Winchester Bay, where the tunicate has been spotted. Amy and I climbed on some rocks and got some cool pictures. An extremely informational and adventurous field trip.

Biggest Sea Star ever? We caught him in the middle of lunch


 

At Oregon Institue of Marine Biology's wet-lab

Can you spot the Tunicate?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were many, many smaller stories embedded in each of these larger topics, and I’ll probably talk about some of the more funny  stories on Friday. Until then, have a great week!

-Josh

Octopuses…Guided

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Lesson #1: The plural of octopus is octopuses. NOT octopi. It is a Greek word, hence the weird ending. I will have to correct my freshman biology teacher.

Hi. Hello.

Sad, but true. I am writing this blog entry on a Sunday… at work, while most of my co-seagranters are going hiking somewhere in the Oregon mountains. Oh, the price you pay to play with octopuses.

This week was very productive. I had Monday off, which is a pretty cool thing because everybody in Hatfield is working, which allows me to really relax, or do work. I did both that day. And almost finished my interpretative panel (fancy word for poster) design. The entire days of Tuesday and Wednesday, I worked on my panel content. I tried to be all Mr. Graphic Designer, by using my Word program to design a panel, for which I ended up spending way too much time on, just to have the actual graphic designer tell me all I needed was text content. Here is what the first draft looks like:

1st Draft of my Interpretative Panel

 

Some of the titles will change, as well as the text content. The cool thing about this, that won’t be noticed until the end product is done in November, is that the skeleton on the top right corner will be an actual Steller sea lion rib-cage!

Thursday was a big day. We had a focus group moderator host a focus group for my panel. Seven people sat down and tore it apart, giving me a lot of good feedback and a direction in which to take the panel design. I am very grateful of this event. I almost forgot to mention that the visitor counter in the entrance marked over 2400, which is the largest group of people I have witnessed in the VC so far. I didn’t even get a chance to eat lunch until 3 pm on that day! Later on, we went to Cafe Mundo for open mic, where Betty Mujica, a fellow Sea Grant Scholar, got on stage to play her ukulele for the crowds for the first time ever. Did I mention she rocked it?

Betty and I on stage!

Friday, I had off, and Betty and I drove to a hatchery in Netarts Bay. I spent the morning hanging out in a bar in Netarts bay called Schooners, which I recommend to anybody. Later on that day, we went to the TIllamook cheese factory, a thrift store, where I paid 5 dollars for a pair of really nice rubber boots, and in Depoe bay to look at the beautiful Pacific Ocean.

Saturday… work! I gave an estuary tour to a couple of folks who kept me a bit longer, but they were so interested that I didn’t mind (what an information broker I am growing up to be!). The day went by a bit slow, because I spent the whole day working on my panel content again, which was starting to get redundant, since I felt I had finished on Wednesday, but now I had a lot of notes on how to fix the panel. I am currently about a third done with that!

Today… work! I will try to finish the text content, work on my curriculum design for the kids, and enjoy a Louisiana style fish fry later on tonight!

 

Weeks 3 and 4, in which there were many adventures!

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What a crazy two weeks! I almost don’t even remember what happened in week three, so it’s really jogging my memory to revisit those events.

I guess my favorite thing that happened in week three was our visit to Oregon’s capital city, Salem. Josh and I sat in on a meeting at the Oregon State Marine Board, where the topic of boat inspections was discussed by members of the Oregon Invasive Species Council. Basically, a new Oregon law requires mandatory inspection of boats crossing the border into Oregon in order to prevent the spread of invasive species like quagga mussels. Previously, boat inspection was only voluntary, but of course very few people were stopping to have their boat inspected. The next step is to navigate the legislation regarding a police officer’s right to pull over a boat that looks suspiciously infested. In our meeting, no one was really sure whether or not that was legal. In any case, Oregon Invasive Species Council will be working with the Lewis and Clark Environmental Law Clinic to investigate further.

Afterwards, Sam Chan took Jen, Josh and I for a quick visit to the Capital Building, which I had never seen before. It was absolutely gorgeous! Gigantic paintings scaled the walls of the main room and a huge golden state seal glittered on the floor. The Senate met on one side of the building and the House of Representatives met on the other side, with the governor’s office somewhere in-between. The building had a magnificent dome that was topped on the outside by a golden pioneer, representing Oregon’s adventurous spirit. Salem is a beautiful, historically rich city and I would love the chance to spend more time there sometime soon.

Week four was dominated by da Vinci Days planning. Oh, and a four course meal! As part of our PROMISE internship, we have weekly luncheons on Tuesdays, and this one happened to be a four hour session on etiquette and proper behavior in networking situations. The food was absolutely delicious – red pepper bisque, salad, chicken and potatoes with a mushroom and bacon gravy, and cheesecake with fresh berries for dessert. Although we were instructed that it wasn’t about the food, my college student mind was capitalizing on the opportunity to have a fancy meal. Of course, I still learned quite a few etiquette tips. Spoon your soup away from you, butter each bite of bread individually, don’t completely clean your plate, and never set a utensil back on the table when you have used it.

Decked out in our landfill gear

The other event besides da Vinci Days was a really fun field trip to… well… the dump! Believe it or not, it was really interesting. The Coffin Butte Landfill off of Highway 99, north of Corvallis, was used for garbage disposal at least since World War II. Interestingly,the spot is not ideal for a landfill, since it is partially on a hill and it is easier to build landfills in valleys. Too bad they didn’t know that 70 years ago. The landfill is split into a series of cells, each of which holds vast amounts of compacted garbage. To prevent the leaching of chemicals, a thick plastic barrier sits underneath the landfill. So much work goes into preventing pollution and mitigating smell and runoff – it’s incredible to think about how much trash our society produces.

But, on the flip side, we also visiting the composting plant, which was inspiring. They produce mountains of compost that oftentimes end up in garden fertilizers. The process is lengthy, but worthwhile.

While we were there, we collected some invasive plants! They were yellow flag irises, a particularly plentiful aquatic invasive plant that has floating seeds and beautiful yellow flowers. Sam taught us about them and suggested we take them to the da Vinci Days booth, which we did. In this very same trip, we journeyed to Albany, where we searched for access to a lake that harbored some native turtle species. Unfortunately, we didn’t find a way to get to the lake, but we met a very nice lady and her cat.

An invasive species bouquet!

Also, sometime during the week, Tania Siemens, who proved herself to be an invasive plant encyclopedia, enlightened us by taking us on a tour of OSU campus, invasive species style! Our mission was to plan an outdoor activity for high school students for a session called Saturday Academy, which is happening this week. We didn’t expect to find many invasive plants on campus, but to our surprise, there were many of them! Tania guided us around the MU quad, pointing out English ivy, Old Man’s Beard, Tree of Heaven, Queen Anne’s Lace, and many more. My job this week was to make a checklist for an invasive plants scavenger hunt. The goal will be to find the invasive species on campus.

 

After that, it was time for Josh and I to get back to our da Vinci Days planning. We finished our tsunami poster, and we though it looked great… which it did, until it met the elements at da Vinci Days and was sorely defeated by the moist climate. However, most of da Vinci Days was a total success! We talked to lots of people, shared information on invasive species, gave out tons of free things (including awesome color changing pencils), and overall had a great time, despite the rainy Oregon weather. Kathryn Hawes from Hatfield Marine Science Visitor’s Center brought an awesome whale vertebrae and a laptop so that visitors could watch Ursula the octopus on the Octocam. Also, our tunicate in a water bottle and quagga mussel-encrusted shoe were quite popular. It’s been a busy couple of weeks and I’m looking forward to the remaining six weeks of the internship!

 

Josh sharing his vast wealth of watershed knowledge with the kids at da Vinci Days