DaVinci Days and Power Surges…

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What a whirlwind time I’ve had this past week with not only project days, getting ready for DaVinci days, but also just having a 4 day weekend with some work.  My week started off with Aurora still not being as social as Squirt was when he was in the tank, but she still was good during feedings and would come out every so often.  I’m also doing more aquarist work; I got to de-leech more rockfish and check out some awesome animals brought into the Visitor’s Center like huge sand shrimp that are really pale and much larger than anything the aquarists have seen before.    This week, I was also able to work on my wave tank more by putting out new Beach Erosion Challenge signs.  These new signs seem to help a lot and have definitely cut down on the bad behavior while increasing the good behavior and knowledge.  I also helped Nick with his tsunami structures for a bit which was definitely something different, but cool to learn about!

The main thing I loved about my work week was going to DaVinci Days in Corvallis, Oregon.  First, there was the mid-summer check-in where I got to see where everyone else are in their projects.  It was awesome, because everyone is doing something different and everyone’s excited about their projects/ what they’re doing.  I especially like hearing about the differences the people who are doing policy work and others who are in the field all day.  Then came the most awesome part of the week/ weekend…..dun dun dunnnnnnnnn…..DAVINCI DAYS!!!! Oh My Gosh, it was spectacular.  On  Saturday, I volunteered from 1-6pm at the Oregon Sea Grant booth where I talked to various people.  Yet, before that I explored the DaVinci Days park area and watch the parade with all the human powered kinetic structures.  During the morning/ afternoon hours of Saturday I made various clay objects, my own print by etching in plexi-glass my own design and placing ink on it, gel beads, UV bead bracelets, star charts and more.  I also got free Odwalla products such as shakes and energy bars.  I got pretty much every free thing available there as well as did as many free things as I could including clay making and printmaking.

This week is going to be long since i’m working 10 days in a row, but I’m excited for new challenges in the wave energy exhibit and things like POWER SURGES 20 min before closing.  Thus, we have to restart all of the monitors and computer devices in the whole visitor’s center for the 5 people that were left.  It was an interesting task since some of the computer CPU’s are underneath tables, cabinets and hidden away so visitor’s won’t play around with them.I’m definitely becoming even more technologically skilled through this job and I’m excited for more challenges to present themselves.  Bring it on world, let’s test my skills!

Ups and Downs

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One of the things that I am enjoying most about giving the intercept surveys is being able to meet some very fascinating people while I am out in the field. One of the park rangers that I talk to frequently is a retired professor of veterinary medicine who grew up in South Africa. I enjoy hearing about his experiences with marine wildlife in South Africa, because I am hoping to travel there after I graduate. He also has a lot to say about marine reserves and I appreciate his opinions not only because he is very intelligent, but also because he has spent so much time in the area and he can see all the different dimensions to the situation. Another highlight this week was meeting a retired couple who were in the middle of a bicycle trip from Vancouver BC to Mexico, and they had some interesting experiences to share.

I have noticed a trend that an overwhelming number of visitors from out of town support turning Cape Perpetua into a marine reserve. On the other hand, locals tend to have more opinions on how the marine reserves might affect commercial fishing and recreation boating and are weary about how this in turn might affect their local economy. I had my first negative experience with the survey this week when one person, who was clearly against marine reserves, became very angry with me in the middle of the survey. This person misunderstood my role in the process and thought that the areas were going to be set aside so that students like me could do research on them. He began questioning my credentials, asking what I was studying and personally blaming me for the program. I just did as Melissa had trained me to do and explained that had no opinion on the matter and I am an just an intern who is trying to gather opinions. It also helps if I mention that I work for Sea Grant, because Sea Grant is not actually responsible for the implementation of the reserves like ODFW is. This method seemed to work and my interviewee started to feel bad and explained to me his back story about why he felt so strongly about the situation. I was pretty angry for having been slightly personally attacked after that survey, but when I stopped to think about it, I realized that as my sample size increases I am bound to get the occasional rude person so I am glad that I was able to practice dealing with it.

Next week will be my last week at Cape Perpetua and on Tuesday I am heading to Cascade Head with my mentor to stake out the best spots to do pressure counts, which I will start in August!

 

Gaining Momentum

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As I predicted, progress towards a finalized list of attendees removed a huge barrier from getting all the other logistics figured out, but I found out that the ‘barrier’ was actually more of a dam. This week, I’ve been swinging from conference call to conference call, and from one email deluge to another.  I even set up my own ‘logistics’ conference call, which included sending out the meeting poll, deciding on a time, and writing up a meeting agenda- All on my own! (commence back-patting). This doesn’t sound like much, but for me at least, speaking up on a conference call can be almost as intimidating as any other public speech. This was especially evident after I could barely squeak out my name during the introductions round at a 60+ participant regional tsunami marine debris update call last week.  So I’ve made quick progress, from name-squeaking, to leading a call with the NOAA coordinators in DC, representatives from USFWS, among others. This call also turned out to be crucial for getting the next few weeks tasks in order as we decided what to do with “no-response” invitees, listservs, travel reimbursement protocols, and tracking information among the different agencies involved.

The workshop is shaping up to be pretty interesting, initially it was designed to be a small event, with around 20 participants, and on my last count we have 69 confirmed attendees. Because of the size, the workshop structure is becoming increasingly complex, including 6 breakout sessions where different combinations of scientists, communicators, and people representing levels of response and management can discuss and contribute to workshop items. Another one of my tasks is to make sure we have people to lead (facilitate) these sessions, but also different people to take notes on the discussions and conclusions made in each session. Since we are only just deciding on exactly how many breakout groups there will be, combined with the fact that facilitators and note-takers need to be relatively neutral, and generally non-participants, I’m caught in a bit of a scramble to recruit people to these roles. It was even suggested on my call yesterday that I myself might facilitate one of the sessions (just when I thought conference calls were scary…)

Misadventures in Tillamook

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Yes, it’s Wednesday – not the usual time for a new post from all us scholars. But today was such a strange day that I felt that it needed it’s own post.

As I mentioned Monday, I’m up in Tillamook Bay doing subtidal clam surveys. Today was a good lesson in what to do when things go wrong.

Some questions that were answered today:

What do you do when the divers’ communicators stop working?
What do you do when the dredge doesn’t sink to the bottom due to a high current?
What do you do when your anchors don’t set because the current is strong?
What do you do when the dive boat suddenly won’t turn on?

and finally,

What do you do when your boat starts taking on water?

Let’s tackle that last one first. Fortunately no one was hurt or got wet, but it was quite a scene. I was on the dredge boat, handing bags to the divers so they could begin our next sample when suddenly we got a call on the radio.

“Hey guys… I mean, Sax to Tresus” (Chase boat)
“Hi ladies, what’s up?” (Stacy, the assistant project leader for SEACOR)
“An anchor pulled out our boat plug and we are taking on water. We are going to the marina.” (Chase boat)

… Panic. Everyone on the dredge boat turned around and we saw our chase boat (the one that sets anchors and point buoys all day), the Saxidomus, speeding away toward the marina.  We then learned that even with their bilge on, one person was still rapidly bailing out water.
While on the radio, Stacy ran through a list of options out loud for them. 1) Could they get the boat trailer in time to get the boat out of the water? – no, they were taking on too much too fast 2) Run the boat aground into the boat launch ramp – the bottom will get scraped up, but as long as the motor and prop is lifted the hull should be okay 3) run onto a mudflat – but it’s hightide and there aren’t many easily available. 4) the divers offered to fix the boat plug, something we hadn’t even considered, but by then the Sax was too far away to be helped by us.
Luckily, the ladies on the Sax had the same idea and went straight to the launch ramp. They had considered the other options as well, but were not positive it was a missing boat plug that was causing the flood of water and wanted to get to shallow ground ASAP.
About 5 minutes later we heard back that everything was okay. Whew. It was a missing boat plug afterall and Natalie was able to reach over the back of the boat and stick one in after getting to the safety of shallow ground.

Comparatively, the rest of our problems today were minor, though they seemed important at the time. The divers ended up pulling on a rope line to signal us; we got the dive boat working and didn’t turn the engine off until we were completely done for the day; we added extra hose and line to the dredge, which added enough weight and length for it to sink down to the bottom; and we had to be extremely conscious of how our anchors were set in the current so as to ensure our boat would not drift while the divers were below us.

All in all, an interesting day. Happy Wednesday, and look out for part 2 of my adventures in Tillamook this coming Monday.

Dialing it in

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Among the myriad duties we have at the Visitor Center, the one giving us the most trouble has definitely been Ocean Quest.  Ocean Quest is our 30 minute presentation about underwater volcanoes off the Oregon Coast given to the public every day at 1:30.  Our mentor Bill gave us a “first draft” of the presentation the first week we were working but we werent expected to present until a few weeks ago when we were more comfortable with the material.  At this point we are all pretty comfortable with the material but the challenge has been relating it to an audience of kids, adults, and grandparents.  Our latest move was to cut about 10 slides out of the show that contained material a little too abstract for everyone to understand.  The newer version still goes around 30 minutes and we are able to spend a little more time explaining tricky slides.  Last week I did quite a few of the Ocean Quest presentations and I feel as if I dialed it down a bit more and found ways to make it a little more interesting and relatable.

Adventures in Tillamook, Part 1

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Greetings from Tillamook!

This past week has been quite an experience, to say the least. Remember a few weeks back when I spent 2 days doing subtidal dredge surveys in Yaquina bay around the NOAA dock? Well, I did the same thing in Tillamook Bay this week and I will be continuing for all of this week as well.

While the basic dredge idea is the same as before, we have different divers this time and A LOT more clams. It is a tad ridiculous how many clams we have, actually. Unfortunately we have been too busy on the boats to take many pictures, but I will try to get some this week.

We are doing this subtidal dredge survey to try and get an estimate of clam populations in Tillamook Bay. The SEACOR team has done intertidal population studies for the last 2 summers, and this is the first time they are doing a subtidal study. The recreational clam population was studied back in the 1970s, 1980s, and a general study was done in 1996. This provides us with the unique opportunity of tracking changes in the populations across decades. Its unfortunate I wont be around when the data is analyzed! But I am having a blast getting to see the wide variety of clams in the bay.

Luckily this time around I don’t have to pull up all our point markers and anchors by hand – we bought a pot puller to do most of the hard work for us. This is making a huge difference in my energy level, which is good because we have been averaging 10 hours out on the boat per day. Add on another hour or two measuring all the clams we got and that makes for a very long day, and week!

I spent my one full day off this weekend at the Oregon Country Fair. A huge group from Hatfield went and we had a blast! I really loved seeing all the people dressed up and all the craft booths.

Right after I got back from the fair I went straight back to Tillamook and I will be here until Thursday, so stay tuned next week for part 2!

Week 4: Phytoplankton Limitation Experiment 2

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Ahhh another week, another experiment! The joys of science! This past week we again collected water from our same four sites throughout the estuary. Having mastered, or at least improved, our procedures and techniques for the experiment we were looking to clarify some of the results from our first run through. As you may or may not recall, our first week suggested that the OSU had a significant response to the “+N” and “N+P” treatments, suggesting nitrogen limitation. While the sites further upstream tended to show “P” limitation, with Elk City showing some variability. These are all results we were looking to clarify. Would OSU still be nitrogen limited? Or had we sampled during a period of weak upwelling? Would Elk City and the sites up river have a clearer response?

As we progressed through the week, and hadn’t had many answers to these questions, we began to grow a little nervous. 3-4 days of results from the mesocosms weren’t providing many answers. This seems to be how these nutrient limitation experiments go, as often times there are fews signs that point to limitation, and then all of a sudden a huge response. This is difficult to account for as the week comes to a close, and the difficult decision of whether working on a weekend will produce results needs to made, as it could be that no response is the actual result. This week we decided to go for it and see if Saturday would give us the breakthrough we were hoping for.

It turned out that Saturday was largely a success. We determined that there was in fact a significant “P” and “N+P” at Elk City. Cannon Quarry showed similar results, but with more variability in the “N+P” treatments. Toledo also showed significant responses for these two treatments. As for OSU? Less clarity than had been hoped for. The week’s data trends point to “P” limitation as opposed to the “N” limitation that initially occurred, perhaps indicating stronger summer upwelling. However, there is fairly large variability in the “P” and “N+P” treatments, meaning the statistics are throwing a wrench in our quest for results! There may be bright spot though, as  our chlorophyll extractions could provide clearer, more accurate results. This is a big maybe though. We seemed to have some problems with severe degradation in our samples during the first run through, so hopefully those problems magically disappeared! We were quite puzzled as to how it could have happened. And so with that sense of bewilderment fresh in your mind, I will again leave you in suspense! Tune in next week for the results of the chlorophyll extractions! Will the mysterious source of degradation strike again? Or will the chlorophyll respond to my careful, sweet nurturing? Until then! Good night and good luck!

 

 

Writing and Resumes

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The highlight of this week was meeting with Robert Allan, the director of student development at CEOAS. (Some of you may remember him as the man who met with us briefly at Bombs Away during our orientation.) Robert is amazing. I first met with him the previous week for a brief professional development consultation. I had no idea what a professional development consultation was at the time, but I ended up learning quite a bit—hence, the second meeting.

During the meetings we discussed post-college options such as graduate school and employment. Robert had a lot of insight about where to find resources and information that I most likely otherwise would never have known. We also reviewed my resume and made some changes to the structure and vocabulary that I think will give it more of a “wow” factor and better represent the skills I have to offer. If you want to know about the science of resume writing, Robert is the man. While working with him, I quickly found that not only is he good at what he does—but he loves his job. Robert’s communication skills are terrific, which makes him easy to talk to, and his enthusiasm is contagious. I recommend that anyone who can make the time meet with him.

Flying By!

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As the July 31st date for the workshop looms ahead, Stephen and I spent the last week trying to balance getting everything done that can be done, without getting ahead of ourselves.  I realized this week  that event planning like this can be verrry circular. This is because there’s a laundry list of things that need to be done (reservations, finalizing the agenda, sending out information on listservs, catering orders, etc), but at some point they are become interdependent and, this week everything was mostly dependent on the list of attendees. We set a registration deadline for July 13th (last Friday) but as I scan my email inbox, I can already tell responses to our invites are still filtering in, slowly but surely. It will take a certain amount of faith for sure, to start dividing those confirmed into breakout groups, and make decisions about seating, coffee, materials, etc when just over 50% of invited people sent responses back. An interesting obstacle to this planning process is the dissemination of information;  it appears that sometimes that because of the number of agencies involved and communications about AIS(Aquatic Invasive Species)/marine debris, I can easily be left out of the loop about who actually will be attending. Often, confirmation of attendance has come to me from someone else, or in an email chain forwarded to me.

Now as the registration process comes to a close, we finally can do all of the things that depended on it. I have a feeling that first on my list will be to go through the list of those requesting travel support, and open up a discussion with the steering committee and Oregon Sea Grant’s fiscal officer, Melissa Metz, about the status of funds and who we can afford to send to the workshop. It might be a little but of a scramble getting there, but I’m excited for the workshop and to see my efforts come to fruition!

The Ground is Thirsty!

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It is currently raining/misting here in Newport. It is strange to me that just a few hours ago I was in nearly cloudless, sunny weather in the valley. We drove from near Eugene to Newport from the Oregon Country Fair and from Corvallis we could see the clouds layered over the hills as we drove toward them. Such are the drastic weather differences on the coast vs. the valley. Yesterday I also experienced my first heat of the summer at the Fair (mid-80s) and got to see thousands of very interesting people. This fair is known for its eccentricity. There was also great music, food, dancing, and lectures. I heard part of a talk by the author of a book called Biology of Belief whose talk went from discussing Native Americans to religion to the House of Representatives to the Higgs Boson to support his ultimate point…but I had to leave before I could hear it. I may look into the book sometime.

My work has also been going well this week. It has been very busy with the overnight trip to Bandon to do our experiments in the Coquille estuary. The logistics were complicated as I had expected. We had tons of water to keep cool and samples to keep frozen and equipment to wash outside of the comforts and convenience of our home laboratory. But we were flexible and it all worked out in the end.

One problem we are having is the water in some of our chambers is draining before the hour can be completed. To get a realistic representation of the rate of nutrient flux in these marsh habitats we need the water to stay around, but the ground drinks it up too fast. We had this problem at Coquille where the sediment was very sandy and we are having the problem in our projects at the Aquarium Marsh where the marsh is high and rarely gets wet by the tide, so it less saturated with water already. It is frustrating as a lot of work goes into preparing to go into the field, getting to the sites, setting up the experiments, cleaning up from the experiments, and analyzing the data, and sometimes we get nothing for all our efforts. For instance, on Monday 5 of 6 chambers drained early. Our final sample ends up getting taken with only a centimeter left of water and we take up part of the sediment, which is probably leading to the strange results I discussed last week.

Knowing that hard work is not always leading to results is difficult, but such is the nature of research and often life in general. Our lab group is still pushing forward, though. We plan to try a different instrument next week to analyze nitrogen amounts and we may try staying lower in the high marsh to where the soil may be more saturated. Next week we carry out more experiments and I think we are going to the Nestucca estuary. Friday is also the mid-summer check-in with the Oregon Sea Grant. It’s amazing how fast the time has gone by!