July at OEM

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Geoff Ostrove

July was a busy month here at OEM. Beginning on January1, 2014, the Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program (SRGP) will be housed within the Oregon Business Development Department (OBDD), also known as Business Oregon.

Click here to read SB 813, which is the legislation that moved the SRGP from OEM to Busines Oregon: http://www.leg.state.or.us/13reg/measpdf/sb0800.dir/sb0813.en.pdf

On July 16, OEM hosted the bi-monthly Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) meeting. At the meeting, Dr. Chris Goldfinger from OSU gave a fascinating presentation that focused on the connection between the San Andreas and Cascadia faults. His presentation, titled “Reliability Analysis for Cascadia Earthquakes & Relationship between the Cascadia Earthquake and the San Andreas Earthquake,” provided OSSPAC with more issues to think about in terms of preparing for the imminent Cascadia earthquake event.

Here is an article from Dr. Goldfinger that focuses on this topic: http://ecosystems.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climatechange03/elnino/Holocene%20Seismicity.pdf

On July 29, I had the opportunity to help fasciliate a meeting for the Coastal Community Resilience Network Pilot Project. Held at the Seaside Convention Center, the goal of this pilot project is to help create a network between the coastal communties in Clackamas County in order to increase how resilient these communities will be in the case of a natural disaster, such as an earhquake or tsunami. The project is supported by NOAA’s Coastal Community Resilience Program and is being led by the Oregon Partnership for Diasaster Resileince (OPDR), the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD), and Oregon Sea Grant (OSG). The Principal Investigators for this project are Josh Bruce (OPDR), Jeff Weber (DLCD), and Pat Corcoran (OSG).

Click here for more information on this project: https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=64849

In August, I will be attending a meeting about the new Oregon Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan, participating in a number of public engagement events, and involved with a ton of other important and exciting meetings, projects, and events. Stay tuned…

Another Muddy Week!

Posted on July 31, 2013 by James Kralj

Yet another week has come and gone on the Oregon Coast; and it was a fantastic one at that! Things started out at the EPA where I began transitioning from field studies to a laboratory experiment. In the field, we were observing the estuary sediment as it is naturally found and then with some added controls that we implemented last week.

We are now further expanding our control in the lab by setting up 9 estuary like environments in clear tubes to provide more insight into sediment oxidation under varying conditions. Three of the tubes have sandy sediment, with no algae cover in one tube, low algae cover in the other tube, and high algae cover in the final tube. The remaining 6 tubes are filled with muddy sediment. Three of the mud tubes are set up exactly like the sand tubes, and the remaining three are the same except they have mud shrimp added into them.

The tubes are tall, clear, glass cylinders that provide us with a large viewing area to see any sediment oxidation that may occur. The tubes are all connected to flowing seawater in order to replicate conditions in the estuary. The algae is held in place using netting, and the whole tube is covered in aluminum foil to prevent light from penetrating the sediment.

Collecting the sediment was quite the treat! It involved a fellow intern and myself trudging across the mudflats with carts and sleds to move 6 very heavy buckets of fresh Yaquina Bay mud and sand. I can only imagine the joy onlookers might have had upon seeing myself slowly sink into the mud, while pulling a sled full of it behind me. Aside from the humorous struggle of the day I was presented with an opportunity for science outreach. After I came up from the mudflats, I spoke with two people about my project. I was able to share with them my knowledge about wetland sediments and told them about my research. It is always exciting to share science with others, and after da Vinci Days, I learned how to talk to people about science in an effective manner.

Last weekend I began volunteering at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in the fish husbandry program. I helped to clean tanks, and even got to play with the giant pacific octopus at the end. If you’ve never had an octopus wrap its tentacles around your fingers, I highly recommend it. After volunteering, some fellow interns and myself made our way to Portland for the weekend. We spent our time exploring the city and all it has to offer. We went to Powell’s Books, Voodoo Donuts, and I even was able to play a piano in Pioneer Square.

I also started taking a class about the computer program, R. R is a statistics program that allows scientists to view and work with their data in an efficient way. However, R requires some knowledge about the “language” it uses, and the class will be covering how to understand and use the program. Luckily for me it is similar to Matlab, which I have used this past year at school to make ecological models of Lake Michigan. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to understand!

Next week looks to be filled with more laboratory experiments and going out into the field to check on our plots. We are anxious to see what they look like and are hoping for good results!

Week 6: Windy Work in Willapa

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Sarah Heidmann

I’m a bit behind on my blogging, but I intend to catch up in this post, as well as make up for the lack of pictures in my last two posts!
This week I was lucky enough to take a trip up to Willapa Bay in Long Beach, Washington, to finally do some serious fieldwork. I went with the Daniel Sund, the Masters student I’ve been working with, and Lee McCoy, our lab’s tech and general awesome go-to guy. We were out in the field for about 12 hours each day for a week, which was hard, but the work wasn’t too involved, and tons of fun!

Me on our little but sturdy boat

While we were up there, we deployed our cameras using the mounts we made, leaving them out for four hours at a time in four different habitats: oyster, Zostera marina (the native seagrass), Zostera japonica (the invasive seagrass), and clam. My lab has done this before, but they used to leave them out for three days at a time, while our GoPros are limited by their four-hour battery life, despite the battery pac accessory we bought for them. The video is meant to record the fish and crabs that wander through the field of view. It had to be video, rather than time lapse, because often fish spend only a second or two in the frame, and you usually need to look at their behavior to determine the species. We are going to look at the number, species, size, and time that each organism appears in the video.

The mount with a GoPro on the end when we went to pick it up- there was often a lot of seagrass caught on them

We put them out around high tide, which meant we had to go by boat. Since our trips were four hours apart, there was a lot of waiting around in which we often tried various restaurants, as well as a lot of time on the boat, since some of them were pretty far apart. Because of this, even when I was walking on dry land I still felt like I was swaying on the waves. It was pretty disorienting sometimes, but went away in a couple days. Deploying the cameras was pretty difficult sometimes, because of the wind and the waves. It was harder than we expected to slide our camera mount over the poles we placed in the mud, slide a bolt through holes we drilled in the poles, and screw on a wingnut, all from a boat that is moving up and down and drifting away.

In addition to putting out cameras, we also put out traps to catch fish, which we could use to compare the number and species of what we found in the traps to what we found in the video. We did this at low tide when we put out the poles the mounts would go on. We also wanted to look at juvenile Dungeness crab predation, so we (bear with me here) superglued small fishing hooks tied with fishing line attached to their carapaces. We tied them to a stake out in the same four habitats as the cameras, and left them out for a day. The hooks are supposed to catch whatever fish may try to eat the small crabs, and the fishing line keeps the crabs in one place so we can find them again the next day.

One of our juvenile Dungeness, all ready to go!

I thought we were tying up the crabs and leaving them to their deaths, but most of them survived the whole day! The hooks also came off pretty easily at the end, and we let the crabs go. We never caught any fish, and always found the crabs burrowed in the sediment, well hidden.

By the end, we had a little army of attack crabs on leashes

We had to go collect the crabs ourselves, so we went and sampled bags of oyster shells (which I have mentioned in previous posts), to try to find some for our tethering experiment. Most of them were across the bay, in deep mud, so because of my toe still being sensitive, I often supervised from the boat while the other two did all the work. However, I did try my first raw oyster while we were out there. Lee shucked it for me with a screwdriver, and it was probably still alive when I ate it (gross!), but I am proud to say I kept it down. Now that I have tried it, I never have to again.

Some cool colonial tunicates we found on the boat when we pulled it out of the water at the end of the week

One day during our free time in the afternoon, we went up to the lighthouse at the top of the point on the Washington side of the mouth of the Columbia. It was a great view, and I never realized how large the mouth is! It was a beautiful view. Also, at the end of the trip we stopped in Astoria for lunch, and got to drive across the bridge and see a bit of the city.

Overall, it was a week of trying new things and spending a lot of time outside. In addition to the oyster, I also tried thimbleberries, pickleweed, raw cockle, elk, and probably several other things I can’t remember. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to go on the trip, and am looking forward to see what kind of fish show up in our video!

Week 6: My Personal Oregon Trail

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Sam Thiede

Yet again, another fantastic week in Oregon! I say Oregon, instead of just Charleston, because this week was full of traveling! As per usual, we are still continuing our work with the annual red rock crab mark-recapture project. This, and working on our pink shrimp fishery project, took up the majority of our Monday. Tuesday through Thursday, however, was a totally unique experience!

Steve Rumrill, the managing shellfish biologist of Newport and former professor at the University of Oregon, had earlier in the month invited me to join him in Astoria to help the Astoria shellfish biologist, Matt Hunter, with his razor clam stock assessment. And so, Tuesday morning I set out on Highway 101 to Astoria. Driving up the 101 was like driving through a postcard: ocean view from the top of cliff faces and lush forests. It was a long drive (eight and a half hours because traffic was terrible!) but it didn’t feel that way one bit because of the beautiful scenery!

Driving Highway 101 is simply a dream.

Wednesday and Thursday mornings were dedicated entirely to razor clam surveying. On Wednesday we headed out early—5:30am—to the transect site in Warrenton. The reasoning behind the early times is to ensure we are working as the tide is going out, in order to sample a larger portion of the beach and the razor clam stock.

Surveying razor clams is quite different from surveying cockles. We took an approximately meter sized basket and placed it along different elevations on the beach. We started at elevation zero—which is determined as the elevation in which no razor clams are found—so that we could ensure that we were not missing any clams higher up on the beach. We then moved down the beach, towards the water, in 50 meter increments.

At each elevation the basket is placed and a hydraulic pump is used to liquefy the sand. Razor clams are neutral buoyant and if they are within our sampling area (the basket), once the area liquefies, razor clams will float to the top. We pump water into the area for three minutes per basket, six times per elevation. The baskets, depending on the elevation, are moved either north or south to ensure we are sampling as much of the stock as possible.

An excellent razor clam specimen we retrieved during our stock assessment.
(Note: Clam measures to approximately 110mm.)

The hydraulic aspect of the sampling is quite interesting. A pump is placed in a “crab hole”—an area of pooling water on the beach—and a gasoline powered generator is used to power the pump. A hose sucks up the water from the crab hole and then pushes the water into a separate, longer hose which is attached to a wand at the end. The wand is made of PVC pipe with two openings: one to connect to the hose and one to project the water. This wand is used to liquefy the sand in the basket. The water comes out of the wand at nearly 8 gallons a minute and handling the wand can be tricky to maneuver, not to mention heavy. As with many things involving field work, there is a definite learning curve for good technique.

Blasting away at the sand, looking for razor clams.

The same process of razor clam surveying was repeated on Thursday at a gracious 6:00a.m. After finishing up with the stock assessment—and a yummy breakfast at Bagels by the Sea—I headed back to Charleston. Luckily, traffic was substantially better this time around and I made it home in just a little over 5 hours. After being up so early and having such a long drive you can bet I was ready for a good night’s sleep!

Friday, Scott and I headed out in the morning to Valino Island to recover cockles that had been marked and placed there in February. We wanted to retrieve as many as possible in order to meaningfully assess the cockles’ growth over time. Fortunately, we managed to find 33; approximately 100 were placed but only 30 are needed for meaningful statistical analysis. The cockles that we found had some cool annuli (growth rings) and crunching the data is going to yield some fascinating results that I will be sure to update you all on!

A cockle we recovered with some fascinating annuli!

Friday was also the day that Scott decided it’d be a good time to teach me how to back up a boat trailer. If you’ve ever watched somebody experienced in this matter back up a boat trailer you may have been deceived into thinking that it is a simple and easy task. You would be very wrong, as was I. Backing up a boat trailer requires an immense amount of directional multitasking. In order to successfully back up a boat trailer you must keep in mind that the truck and the boat are always going to be pushing and pulling in opposite directions and keeping track of what does what can be very dizzying. The boat docks are always filled with tons of seasoned boaters; no pressure when you have 50 professionals watching you, right? I didn’t do terribly and it’s all about practicing. I wouldn’t call me for all your trailering needs just yet.

It was nice to have some time to relax and catch up on rest this weekend after such a long, busy week. Of course, my idea of relaxation always seems to involve being active. This week my newest experience was slack lining. The concept of a slack line is quite simple: Tie said slack line in between two trees and try to keep your balance. The actuality of slack lining is quite difficult and there is a lot of falling off involved. Let’s just say you will learn how to fall with grace and not on your face. When walking on a slack line it is important to look straight ahead and not at your feet. Doing this, keeping a good center of gravity and a lot of practice and you’ll be a pro in no time; or you at least won’t be falling off as much!

The face of utter concentration.

Sunday was also particularly eventful. A few good friends of mine from OIMB—Theresa and Payton— and I spent the day laying out at Sunset Bay and playing some beach volleyball. In the evening the three of us asked one of the COSEE interns staying at OIMB, Zac, for some skim boarding lessons and he was happy to oblige. Though I had skim boarded before I was by no means an expert on the subject; as you can imagine there isn’t an abundance of surf in Indiana. However, we all picked up on it pretty quickly and had a ton of fun. Definitely a hobby I wish I could take back to Indiana with me, but all the more reason to revisit the coasts!

Skim boarding at Sunset Bay!

After such an exciting week, I’m interested to see where these final following weeks take me. Stay tuned, until next time!

Previously on Bandon by the Sea…

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Catherine Courtier

Greetings readers! I must admit that I have fallen a bit behind in my blog posts, but never fear because I have many new stories to tell, as well as some new adventures in my future! A couple weeks ago I was fortunate enough to sit in on a call between my two mentors and some of the people who work in NOAA’s fisheries management department; the hot topic of discussion, Coho Salmon restoration on the South coast of Oregon. More specifically the call was a discussion of how to go about creating a “universal salmon calculator” that would detail the benefits of restoration as well as identifying the permanent economic benefits such as number of jobs created. While most of the conversation went over my head, I managed to understand the key points as well as the bottom line. In order to get people to donate money to the cause, there has to be a way to determine the salmon’s value when populations return that is universal across all areas. Currently there are many different ways to calculate this, each more confusing than the other. One proposed idea was to look at the return in terms of its landscape value; i.e. how many total acres of salmon habitat have been restored or how many miles of stream have opened up.

In addition to the calculator conundrum is the lack of money to fund post-restoration monitoring. This is very unfortunate since examining any kind of project after the fact is the most important step in conservation and restoration! Without any kind of follow up there is no way to know if what you have done is sustainable, if it actually did what it was supposed to do, and if it is worth continuing. Furthermore, this post restoration analysis makes it possible to create a metric of success that will interest funders. Since money seems to be the issue, I think it would be a great idea to train community member volunteers to gather this post-restoration data. Not only would this be relatively free of charge (besides the time it would take to train people), but I believe it would also be a great chance to educate local residents on a conservation issue that’s right in their backyard and create pride and enthusiasm for protecting their environment. When dealing with any kind of conservation/restoration issue, the two main questions that I feel are most important are: 1. What are the benefits associated with restoration and 2. What are the values lost when harm comes to the environment?

As has been the case with other aspects of my internship, this phone call really exemplified the point that there needs to be better communication between the scientific and non-scientific community. Issues and topics need to be presented in a way that makes them seem approachable and like something that the general public could take part in.

In other news, I have finished my research for Travel Oregon! For the past four weeks I have been doing an online footprint analysis of each city’s webpages as well as collecting information on lodging, shops, food, places to go, things to do, and events and festivals. Eventually this will all be fed into Travel Oregon’s orb so it can populate the site and beef up the information on the South Coast (since it is currently lacking basically all areas of information). My next step will be to meet with people involved in the communities who are on our “Rural Tourism Steering Committee” to run all the information by them, and just get a general feel for each town as well as the possible pros and cons of increasing tourism in the area. My hope is that the end product of this project will be two-fold: 1. A community calendar will be uploaded to the Travel Oregon site so that local events can be better publicized and visitors can plan trips around them. 2. That an interactive map will be available for each town’s asset such that when you search for something, a map with its location as well as the locations of things to do around it pops up.

My internship has reached the halfway mark! This was celebrated at the Da Vinci Days festival in Corvallis where I got a chance to catch up with all the other interns and hear updates on their projects, work Sea Grant’s both at the festival, and explore Corvallis further. Although the morning started off slowly, by the time noon came around (and the awesome all bike parade!) the festival was bustling and the Sea Grant booth had more visitors than we could handle. While the occasional passerby was interested in our summer projects, the majority were fixated with the green turtle shell display and Bubbles our live and invasive red-eared slider. As much as I would have loved to talk about my project (and believe me I could go on for hours…) I was more excited that there were so many people who were curious about marine biology and were actually asking questions. Yay for the future generations of marine biologists! Another highlight of this wonderful weekend was getting the chance to hear the awe-inspiring Jane Lubchenco speak. To be in the presence of such a strong woman who has not only been an integral part in bridging the gap between the scientific and public communities, but is the first woman to serve as a NOAA administrator, gave me such hope for the future (not to mention many goose bumps)! I was however saddened to see that with the exception of my fellow scholars, there was basically no one else around our age in attendance. Just more proof that strengthening communication and involvement in science in paramount!

One trip down, one to go! This next week I will be leaving Bandon and venturing down to coast to the towns of Port Orford, Gold Beach, and Brookings! I’m so excited to get to visit the places that up till now have only researched on the Internet. Curry County here I come!

Week Five

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Chelsi Burger

This weekend was an exciting one, with a trip to Corvallis for my fellow Sea Grant Scholars and I. Corvallis was playing host to a science and arts festival called da Vinci Days . What makes this festival stand out from the other science and art festivals is that it is meant to remind people, especially artist and scientists, that the two pursuits are intertwined. One of the demonstrations that the festival featured to do this was by having community built kinetic sculptures. Kinetic sculptures are sculptures, pieces of art, which using the power of science are designed to be moved by human motion and in the case of da Vinci Days to race over obstacles.

Oregon Sea Grant also had a booth at the festival which my fellow scholars and I had the privilege to work. For me it was a great opportunity to reach out and discuss rockfish conservation issues with the festival goers. Before arriving in Corvallis I was asked to make a poster describing the work I do and my experience as a summer scholar. The poster was to be hung while I tended the booth on Sunday morning, with the hopes of catching attention and creating an opportunity to engage people in my work. To my delight I found quite a few people attracted to my poster and with whom I was able to engage.

The real highlight of the event though was going with the other Sea Grant scholars to listen to Dr. Jane Lubchenco speak as key not speaker for the festival. As the former director of NOAA, she spoke about how Washington D.C and politics interact with environmental issue and how important it is for scientists to communicate their science in a manner that is easy to understand. She also spoke to and demonstrated how the art of narrative story telling can easy the barriers to communicating science. She did this by relaying her experiences as the director of NOAA in a series of short story, which she collectively titled Dr. Jane goes to Washington.

I am very lucky and appresiative of Oregon Sea Grant to have had the opportunity to attend the 2013 da Vinci Days festival and left more inspired and determined than ever.

Posted on July 24, 2013 by cousinep

These past couple weeks have been incredibly busy. The week leading up to Da Vinci Days, Corvallis’s art and science festival, was spent preparing a poster for display at the Sea Grant booth and organizing and prepping equipment for this week’s intensive field work events.

Working the Sea Grant booth at Da Vinci Days was an insightful experience. I helped to inform the general public about the economic and environmental impacts of some of North America’s most pervasive invasive species. I also answered and explained any inquiries people had about my poster regarding my work with ODFW. The most meaningful experience, however, were the many children who marveled at the invasive animal displays and whom also expressed eager interest in my interpretations of those displays. I could sense their strong interest in science and their unyielding desire to learn. These passionate displays of curiosity capture the very essence of science; it is not enough to solely study science, but rather inspire future generations of scientists through education and outreach. A simple scientific display is often times enough to capture a child’s interest and to inspire a world of endless learning opportunity. This opportunity is what I hoped instill in the many children who visited the Sea Grant booth.

Aside from Da Vinci Days, I prepped gear for the upcoming hook and line surveys. These surveys involve contracting charters with local fishermen to catch a wide variety of rockfish species. The rationale behind these surveys was explained in more detail on my previous blog post. We will fish for roughly 8 hours in a Marine Reserve and 8 hours, the following day, in its associated comparison area. The first trip will be out of Newport to Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve and its comparison area referred to as the Postage Stamp. Later in the week, we will be traveling to Red Fish Rock Marine Reserve which is near Brookings, Oregon. I am preparing for an exhausting, but exciting eek out at sea!

Living the Dream!

Posted on July 22, 2013 by James Kralj

Life sure is good here on the West Coast, especially in Oregon. Week 5 marks the halfway point of my time here in the Beaver State, and things are still in full swing at the EPA. The past week has been full of fieldwork and the coming weeks look to be the same; and I couldn’t be more excited!

In the first few weeks of my internship we were studying sediment oxidation in the estuary under natural conditions. This means that we went out into the tide flats and observed the sediment as is. The next phase of our project is to try and add some control to things. This coming week we will be going out into the estuary and setting up different plots with varying amounts of algae covering the sediment surface. More clear, plastic food storage containers will be placed into the sediment like before, except this time, on either side of them, there will be one meter quadrants with netting, holding down a specified amount of algae. This will allow us to see how different amounts of algae can impact sediment oxidation in a more coordinated way.

Additionally, we are hoping to learn about how estuary organism can impact sediment oxidation, especially burrowing shrimp. To study this, we will be putting some plots in areas where there is a high amount of shrimp burrowing, which creates features that look like mini volcanoes from the surface. Two of our plots will be put in ghost shrimp areas, two in mud shrimp areas, and two more will be placed where the sediment is mostly free of burrowing shrimp. We are hoping that these experiments will give us a really good picture of what is happening beneath the surface of the estuary here in Newport.

This past weekend was Oregon State University’s annual science and art festival called da Vinci Days. Myself along with the other Sea Grant interns created posters about our research and presented our work to the people who attended the event. Before presenting, we learned a lot about how to effectively communicate science to the public in a way that makes sense and allows them to understand a topic which can often times be quite challenging to grasp. I though it was great practice, and I know that the things I learned will help me throughout my career as a scientist.

Da Vinci Days was opened by a talk from Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a professor at Oregon State University and the former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She served as NOAA’s director for 4 years and during her talk she shared many stories about her time in Washington D. C. As someone who has always been interested in politics and policy in addition to marine science, I found it to be a very eye-opening experience. I never through about combining my passions for the oceans and policy into one, but after hearing her stories and about her time with NOAA, I realized that it could be a very real prospect. After her talk I was able to personally speak with Dr. Lubchenco and she offered me some advice for preparing for a career in marine science. I was told to “keep getting my feet wet” and to get as much experience as I can; it looks like I am on the right track! It truly was a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget!

I was also able to squeeze in a little volunteer work this week. I was able to help with a project being run by Cheryl Horton who is a graduate student studying murre colonies along the Oregon Coast. A murre is a seabird and Cheryl is studying the colonies and how they respond to disturbances from bald eagles and other predatory birds. I was able to help by observing bald eagles on the colony and how they interrupted the birds. I learned a lot about seabirds and it was a great experience to be a part of. Plus, Cheryl took another student volunteer and myself down to the tide pools for a break, which proved to be quite the experience. We were able to see all kinds of marine life and it sure made waking up at 5:15am worthwhile!

Week after week Oregon continues to impress me with everything it has to offer. Although it has been 5 weeks, I have learned so much about marine science in a way I could never have done otherwise. I cannot wait to see what adventures the second half of my internship holds… stay tuned!

Week 5: Time Flies When You’re Having Fun!

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Sam Thiede

Where has the time gone? Week five is completed, which means I’m halfway through my internship. This week was especially exceptional. Scott and I have continued our red rock crab surveys with much more success in capturing red rocks than in the past few weeks. I’ve also started on writing up a memo for the cockle experimental methods we’ve been developing and it’s awesome to finally put my scientific writing abilities to the test.

On Wednesday Dean Headlee invited me to come along with him to Hallmark, a fish processing plant. We intercepted two boats—the Apache and the Nel Ron Dic—as they brought in their trawl catches. It was our job to sample these fish (30-50 fish per sample by species). I was excited to handle so many species of fish such as green stripes, ling cod, Dover sole, English sole, big skates, long-nosed skates, yellowtail rockfish, and albacore tuna. We took the lengths (fork or total length, depending on the fish species), weight, sex and stage of sexual maturity, and we also pulled otoliths. After watching Dean pull several otoliths from the fish he let me give it a try and I was actually quite good at it!

Pulling otoliths from the trawl catch

Pulling otoliths, in my opinion, is an art form. If you don’t cut into the right place or know the right place to look you may never find them. However, Dean’s technical lesson of otolith pulling had me removing them like a pro in no time. The majority of the fish that we pulled otoliths from were flatfish. In order to pull an otolith from a flatfish you must first cut along the operculum (gill flap). This is where the art comes into play; you just have to know exactly where on the operculum to cut by doing it yourself and seeing what works, verbal instructions will only get you so far. Eventually, with practice, you just know where to cut into.

Once you’ve cut into the head you must find and remove the otoliths. Typically they sit on the right side of the cut (if you do it correctly). They are very small and in a fluid-filled pouch but once I had practiced on a few fish I could pull them blindly without even needing to see them. We put all the otoliths into individual slots in trays and assigned a number to them so we could age the fish later on.

Rockfish Otoliths (ear bones)

As it being week five, it was time for all the Sea Grant Summer Scholars to attend our mid-summer check-in. Catherine, a fellow scholar, and I drove up to Corvallis on Thursday evening. It was awesome to ride with her as the scholars are pretty spread out through Oregon and we don’t get to interact much with each other.

Friday was the mid-summer check-in. We started off the morning with a presentation about outreach, which was definitely an eye-opener. Our speaker, Shawn, spoke with us on the public’s perceptions of scientists and how the public uses those perceptions to draw conclusions and form ideas and opinions. We also did an activity that helped us to understand how to guide others to conclusions about scientific material so that the information is absorbed.

It was great to finally spend time with my fellow summer scholars. Sunday, before we all parted ways, a few of us grabbed tubes and floated the Willamette. I had never floated a river before and it was such a relaxing experience (though the water was a little chilly!). The backdrop of the mountains as we floated down the Willamette was simply gorgeous; I couldn’t have dreamed up more beautiful scenery myself!

Presenting my work in Coos Bay to the public during OSU’s DaVinci Days.

Picture Perfect!

Spending time with my fellow scholars!

I was gone for a four day weekend and what do I come back to find on my desk waiting for me? Dead fish to be identified, a bag of shells, and a crab molt. Most people come back to desks piled with paperwork; I come back to dead animals. Life of a biologist, everyone! I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

This week I will be heading to Astoria with Steven Rumrill to do razor clam surveys and I am beyond thrilled! Until next time!

Week 5: Some Important Lessons

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Sarah Heidmann

This week was marked mostly by preparations for the trip I am currently on in Willapa Bay, Washington, just north of Astoria. We made and triple-checked lists of supplies, wrote out exactly what we were going to do each day at what times (which matters a lot because of the tides!), researching methods for a study we are going to do about predation on juvenile Dungeness, and finished making the mounts for the GoPro cameras we are putting out in different habitats.

While doing these preparations (I wrote out the protocol myself), I was asked at multiple stages to send my work to various people so they could look over it. Originally I thought that I would be the only one looking at some of it, so I had little notes to myself inserted in various places, and sentences that made perfect sense to me, but wouldn’t to anyone else. I also left out crucial details like exactly how to turn on the cameras and how to know whether they are recording or not. Not only would it be difficult for my coworkers to follow it, but if anyone wanted to copy the methods in the future, it would be very difficult for them to replicate. I learned quickly that you need to always keep your work extremely organized and readable by anyone who may want to see it, even if you don’t think anyone else will see it. At the very least, if you ever want to look back at your past work, details will help you remember much better.

Another lesson I’ve learned through this amazing opportunity is how to talk to people who are much older and more experienced than I am. Previously I have had difficulty with this, as I thought they would not be interested in what I have to say. However, as I talk to more people about a wider variety of subjects, I am quickly learning that is far from true. I am treated as an equal, and asked with real interest about my research. I have also been able to receive tons of good advice about biology research, graduate school, career options, and life in general. I have so many questions about it all, and everyone I’ve talked to has been so friendly and helpful! I am really grateful for the opportunity to be around so many people who are tackling important biological research.

I’m going to save talking about the trip until the end of this week, but I’m having a blast!