The Big Moment!

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ODFW Adventures: VII

This weekend, instead of just cooking my food, I went out into the wild and caught it myself! Nicole, a fellow intern, and I went out crabbing on Friday night. Luck struck us as we pulled up our nets and to find four worthy male crabs, who we named Nacho, Maximus, Philip, and Fatty. We got slightly attached to our new pets, but hunger took over as we boiled them thick with seasoning the following afternoon. Cracking away for nearly two hours, we each ate one crab and cracked another to make crab cakes in the future! Not only was it a delicious meal, but one we both worked hard for!

In the office, I had a very exciting week. Why, might you ask, was this week so much more exciting than all the other typing and fish-egg counting weeks? Well, I would like to inform you all that I have OFFICIALLY determined the herring fishery quota in the Yaquina Bay, Newport!!! After starting the maps last week by downloading the points to GIS I made polygons of the areas in which spawn was found and then recorded their area and converted them to shape files. With the newly determined area and estimated percent coverage and rock size recorded on the sample tags for each area location, Ali and I calculated the density (eggs/ft squared) and “corrected area” including the other factors such as rocks (area x percentage x rock are conversion factor) for every area. Using the calculation for the corrected area, we multiplied it by the density to get the spawn (total eggs in the area), which we then divided by 144 (the approximate number of eggs each adult lays–but remember that only females lay eggs, meaning they lay around 288 eggs for both them and the male) to get the herring biomass, which we converted to tons. Then we calculated 20% of the biomass for the quota, meaning that with 10 minutes of hard work after all of the data was organized, we had our quota! I would categorize this as being in the top 10 moments of my life. I mean really, how many people get to determine the quota of a fishery, even if it is a small one?! So there you go, the main task of my internship has been accomplished, and it’s smooth sailing from here on out! (Actually not really…but it’s a motivating thought!) With the shapefiles, I created a density map of the spawn in the Yaquina bay, making two different maps, one of February and one of March, due to the overlap in area of the spawning events. Although it took me an entire day to make the maps just right, it was one of the best days I’ve had in the office so far, and my final product certainly is beautiful!

Since I was so busy with the herring project, I once again did not do a lot for the Nearshore Strategy Update. I worked a little bit more on the annotated bibliography, but I still have a long ways to go on that project. Let’s find out how many more journal articles I can read in the remaining three weeks!

With the time I have left I will also be writing up protocols for nearly every task of the herring project, as it has become a project that is passed around the office in the past few years, and a protocol would make it a much smoother process for the next herring person. I will be writing up how to make the maps, determine the quota, and likely revising the egg counting protocol as well. So hopefully whoever gets to do this next year will have an easier time of it!

What a great week!!

Saving Oysters in Oregon – week 7 (?!)

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bug bites & muscles.

The two things I have accumulated this week.  They can be credited to a great, oyster-saving feat full of brute strength, artistic genius, and self-sacrifice.

Nah.. I’m exaggerating a little.. but it was pretty epic, in my humble opinion.  Basically, we have successfully deployed our Oly-Rocs!  The brute strength comes from lugging >60 lb concrete formations down rocky hillsides to intertidal areas that are known to have good oyster larval recruitment, the artistic genius is just from the fact that they’re pretty pleasing to the eye, and the self-sacrifice comes from the many many bug bites I had to endure during this undertaking.

I’ll take you along this week’s experience with a step-by-step guide on how to deploy your own Oly-ROCS!

 

Step 1.

Place your newly formed Oly-ROCS into a vehicle for transportation to its future site. (A truck bed will do fine).  If you want to compare different Oly-ROC styles, you can copy this arrangement and deploy 2 with horizontally-placed shells, 2 with vertically-placed shells, and 2 with live juvenile oysters on shell or rocks.  Don’t lay them on top of each other; you don’t want to crush the shells!

 

Step 2.

Find a nice location at low-tide for the final resting place of your Oly-ROCS.  You should look for a muddy area near other juvenile oysters.  The point is to enhance the habitat for the oysters, so you don’t want to cover up other rocks or hard substrate that they would naturally select, but at the same time, you want to find someplace where you know oyster larvae will be.

 

 

Step 3.

Carefully carry the Oly-ROCS down steep rocky slopes or long muddy paths to the general area of where you want to eventually place them.  Do this with a friend!  These Oly-ROCS are made for partner work, and >60 lbs is a lot for one person to carry.  Tip: You can even put together a make-shift sling-carrier for more ease of movement (picture on the right)

 

 

Step 4.

Put each individual Oly-ROC into its desired location.  Drive stakes into both sides of the burlap to hold them in place.  We have used 3 on each side, but 2 may suffice.  Flag each Oly-ROC for more visibility so you can find them again (especially useful when the tide isn’t low enough), and use different colors if you want to be able to distinguish the different Oly-ROC styles. (Make sure to clear away any live oysters that may be on small rocks or loose in the mud before putting your creations down!)

 

Step 5.

Place them in a straight row so you can compare different Oly-ROC styles.  They should all be at the same water level, but do the best you can.   In our site, we were trying to avoid the protected native eelgrass, so it wasn’t perfect.

 

 

And… TA-DA!!  You are finished!  Well done.

You  may be fatigued from all that heavy lifting, and you may have suffered some blood loss from mosquito bites, BUT, you have done a great favor to all of native oyster-kind, and they will tell stories of your bravery and goodness of heart for years to come.

 

 

 

 

Make sure to tune-in next week for some tips on how to study water flow and turbulence related to oyster formations!

(I may or may not have read one too many “guide” articles on msn.com this week)

Taking out the trash

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Today is a bit out of character in comparison to the other days of my work week. I am frantically running about to finish some last minute items that were thrown at me at the end of yesterday and trying to get ready to leave town in 2 hours. AH! Needless to say, this is going to be a bit of a whirlwind post. I’ve got caffeine roaring through my veins and I’m ready to conquer my to-do list.

I’m not going to spend much time in this week’s post commenting about what I did this week. The major items put on my plate were more impact statements and doing some metric reporting. Metrics are categories that you use to compare or measure the success of an institution. In my case, I was gathering data about how OSU marine sciences measures up against other ocean-focused universities. Once again, another tedious and slightly boring project, but it serves a necessary purpose. Since I am still in waiting for people above me to make some decisions about the workshop I was suppose to plan, I have realized that my internship has really evolved (or…maybe devolved) into supporting administrative tasks at OSG. As I described it to a friend at lunch the other day, I’m kind of the equivalent of a garbage person right now. I get punted tasks that no one really likes to do, but in the end need to get done. While its a bit boring and frustrating at times, I am involved in work that is a fact of life for any institution. Seeing as I eventually want to be a Director of a research institution or non-profit, it’s good that I’m getting experience with this stuff now.

Other news from Planet AnnaRose: I interviewed for a job to be a sea turtle ecology research assistant in Shark Bay, Australia last week. I have been notified that I am in the top 5 candidates for the position and I’ll be notified in the coming weeks if I get it. My work would be drastically different than what I do for Oregon Sea Grant. In the early morning, we would get up and use a ski boat to chase sea turtles into the shallows. Then, one of us will dive off the front of the boat and grab the turtle with our bare hands to bring it back to the boat. We’d then take measurements on the turtle and epoxy a camera to its shell that will pop off 8 hrs later when the epoxy dissolves. I’d then be responsible for helping out with the data management of the video. Way cool. Cross your fingers I’ll be an Aussie this coming Oct – Dec.

I’ll be off on vacation for the next week and then heading directly to the GREs (dun, dun, dun…..). I may be posting next week, but if not, I’ll write you a novel when I’m back.

Betty’s Big Adventure: Road Trip to Portland and Seattle

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Sorry I forgot to blog yesterday! I was caught up with getting my rental car and hotel squared away, confirming interviews, and driving up to Portland to start my trip.  Last week was spent revising my interview questions for producers and finalizing interview questions for other industry players.  I felt it was important to formulate two different sets of questions because of the diverse roles that the people I have been interviewing– this way I could encompass more of the marketing and shipping side of the industry.  At the same time, I’ve found it’s helpful to mix and match questions meant for producers and those meant for NOAA, ODA, freight forwarders, etc.

Another big part of the last week was looking around for more contacts in Seattle, which I’m happy to report came through.  I was able to get in touch with someone at Express Northwest, which is a freight forwarder that works a lot in international shipping.  I was excited especially because I was told that it wouldn’t necessarily be easy to get freight forwarders in Seattle to speak with me because it’s a busy shipping season.  I was also advised that FedEx would be good to get in touch with because they are the middle man for a lot of producers.  Unfortunately I haven’t gotten a solid response from anyone there yet, but hope that I can at least have a phone interview with someone by the end of the week.

On Friday I drove up to Tillamook to meet with the manager of the only shellfish hatchery in Oregon.  I was surprised to see the process of breeding oyster larvae involved the production of algae.  This was definitely an interview that contained a lot more biology than I’m used to talking about, but it was really interesting to learn the process.  Overall, our conversation was really productive in that we touched on all of the main issues facing the seafood industry.  I also appreciated his perspective as someone who is not directly involved in internationally shipping, but is undoubtedly affected by the industry.  After the formal interview we got a chance to talk about our experiences in China and I was able to talk jobs with him.  I was excited to find out that one of my contacts for this week is someone pretty crucial in the whole industry and that speaking with her could lead to other opportunities.  After the interview I went up to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for a little tour before heading back to Newport.

Most of the weekend was spent relaxing, but also trying to plan the schedule for this week.  I felt a little nervous about going on a business trip, so I wanted to make sure I had everything together.  On Sunday some of us headed up to Alsea to go swimming at Clemens Park (at a VERY cold spot on the Alsea River).  While I’m already done with my first day of interviews, I think that I’ll save recapping the whole week for my next post.  I can’t believe the end of the program is almost here, but I’m excited to put all of my work together and present it soon!

The writing process

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Hello – I totally forgot to blog yesterday! Oh no!

So here goes.

I spent the majority of last week writing both feature stories and student research highlights for the website. I also spent some time adding graphics and making minor changes to the existing content. I also did a lot of emailing to set up meetings with people who will be able to help me out with some things that I do not yet know how to do, but that need to be done.

Last week Jenna and I set up an agenda for the remainder of my internship. This week we will focus on a few things – getting the calendar set up and gathering information on student researchers. Also, some of the preexisting feature stories have some formatting problems which will need some work. So far this week, I have finished adding captions to all of the feature story pictures and I have inserted several videos. I have also checked out links in the feature stories to make sure none of them are broken, and I have worked on crediting all of the media files embedded within these stories.

Today I had a meeting with Sher Fenn of Central Web Services, and she helped me get the Marine Science and the Coast news feed, the Breaking Waves blog, and the calendar and events feed pulled into the website and looking pretty. Tomorrow I have another meeting with Jenna to review what’s been done, and then I plan to spend the rest of the week getting some emails out to people so I can start gathering information on student researchers to highlight. I am also hoping to begin working on an “opportunities” tab where I can list some of the internship opportunities within the marine sciences at OSU (such as this program!).

Unfortunately the kind of work I am doing does not allow for much in the way of pictures, but I can give you the link to the website if you are interested in seeing it (note that it is still under development). Feel free to email me if you are interested and I can send you the link – would rather not post the URL publicly until it’s ready to be published!

Have a good week all!

Shealyn

 

Mud

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Tired and covered in mud, I was ready for the weekend on Friday afternoon.  Last week, since we didn’t have any work to do for our chamber project, I was recruited to help with a sea grass experiment out at Winant Marsh which is a few miles up the Yaquina Estuary.  The purpose of this experiment was to quantify the amount of nutrients that a particular sea grass takes up from marsh water.  As I have explained in previous posts, marshes work wonders in cleaning water particularly by removing excess nutrients.

Collecting instruments from marsh

My role in conducting this experiment was to take a water sample approximately every ten minutes during two low tides at a certain location along the marsh.  There were two other people taking samples as well at two other locations.  After our samples are analyzed, we will be able to compare nutrient uptake of a sea grass bed versus a bare stretch of the main channel.

This experiment involved extensive preparation which meant we were out in the field Monday and Tuesday deploying instruments and taking measurements.  Luckily, I did not have to partake in a night shift, but I did have to get up extremely early on Wednesday and Thursday to begin sampling.  We were there both days from about 6am to 1pm.  Thankfully the work wasn’t that strenuous, so I was able to read scientific journal articles and study for the GRE in between sampling.  Weirdly, I can say that I enjoy getting up early.  It was a cool feeling to look at my watch at 9:00am and realize that I have already been away for four hours.   Waking up at 4:45am for this experiment was a little extreme, but I like being up with the sun.  I feel like I waste time sleeping, so I am now motivated to get out of bed early and accomplish more!

My field buddies and I

Anyway, on Friday morning we headed out to collect instruments and clean up from our experiment.  This week will be spent completing data entry as well as collecting a few more crucial pieces of data.  I never thought I would say this, but I’m enjoying sitting at my desk all day.  It’s a way deserved break from all of the field work that I have been a part of these past few weeks.  I’m sure by the end of the week, I’ll be sick of it and ready for next week’s crazy field schedule!

Check out my personal blog: Sara Duncan

Work |wk.6|

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Reflections

Week six was a bit stressful for me. I had numerous physics assignments due, and even though I was physics-ed-out from the exam weekend before, I had to push on. I’ve decided it’s tough working all day and then doing homework at night. For me, being at a computer ALL DAY is not cool. Summer is my favorite season because it’s warm and sunny and I get to wander comfortably outside without the impedement of snow or mushy, wet, thawed ground. (I go to Michigan Tech so it snows from November to April, with most of the snow gone by May.) Point being, I’m sad I’m missin’ out on the out of doors. However, it does make me grateful for my weekends, which are always awesome!

Last Week

No videos up on YouTube yet – sorry! I’m waiting for a job ticket to get processed which allows me access to a video folder so Bob (our web designer) can retrieve the videos and upload them. It seems as if transferring a video to someone for the purpose of uploading would be simple…but it’s not. ODFW has strict IT policies and access is required for a number of things. The waiting is a bit frusterating for me because my purpose here is to get these videos out! I wish I could make a one-stop shop and boom – access granted. Not so.

Screenshot of me editing a still in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4

Last week was a lot of video clipping. This week I’m focusing on compilation and design. I want to dedicate extra time this week to the project since last week I felt I was distracted by physics.

Last Weekend

Last weekend I dog-sat Selkie for Erin. Selkie and I beach-hopped Saturday from Seal Rock to Tillamook. The weather was beautiful and it was great.

Selkie on Moolach Beach

Sunday I spent the day with the girls in Alsea (Lauren’s hometown). After visiting a couple falls we went to Clemen’s Park and swam in the Alsea River, before laying out and enjoying the heat and sun of off-coast Oregon. We then visited Lauren’s house and her parents made us an unexpected and delicious dinner! It was a much-needed relaxing day. My only complaint are all the winding roads from the coast to central Oregon! They deceive you with the beautiful scenery but it’s fairly easy to get car-sick. :O

Oh, and while my phone doesn’t take the best pictures, it works!

I believe this is Anderson's Lookout point

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

Obscure journal articles to fill in the puzzle…of Oregon’s Nearshore.

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ODFW Adventures: Part VI

This week I decided to try an old family recipie that has been passed down–but not from my family. My boyfriend Marc constantly talks about eating a dish called “Machaca,” which the internet says is a dish of finely shaved beef, but the Aros family creates with chorizo (mexican sausage) con huevos (with eggs). Although I didn’t have the exact recipie, I used my best judgement in making the dish by also using bell peppers, jalepenos, garlic, onion, cayenne powder, cilantro, tomatoes, avocadoes, and tortillas. My creation was, in my mind at least, a success! I have always loved the multiple uses eggs can serve in cooking and baking (including several fried egg sandwichs I made this week), and creating a new taste treat with them is always a pleasure.

At ODFW I had a fairly slow work week as I finished up couning the herring egg samples, for real this time! Ali and I began using GIS to map all of the GPS points, but we will delve into the full proccess this week. This will include mapping local distributions into polygons including all egg counts that had similar numbers into one polygon, creating layers to the map. We will the use those polygons to estimate the total number of eggs that were laid in the bay, therefore giving us a viable number to base next year’s quota off of. I am excited to be in the final working stages of this project, and when I am done I will have learned so many techincal details about the computer software I’ve been working with and about how fisheries in Oregon are run and determined.

The Nearshore Strategy part of things was also a bit slow this week, as I only worked on the extensive annotated bibliography that I began a few weeks ago. In this process, I have learned that there are likely billions of scientific journal articles that exist in the world, in many many many extremely research-specific journals, that explain even the smallest niches of our ecosystems. Which is acutally a pleasant surprise, because I have also learned how many species there are that are important to the ecosystem they live in that people don’t generally know about, which therefore leaves them unprotected to any vulnerability. This week the bibliography will begin to be useful as my team members begin to draft out sections of the climate change task for this revision, and I will continue to read articles relating to Oregon’s oceanographic and nearshore climate change to expand the bibliography during this coming week. I hope to be able to report solid progress on that for my next blog!

Sea_Gil’s Blog Pt.6

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Another week of data mining and researching gone by. I finished up with the Reproduction and Development of Marine Invertebrates of the Northern Pacific Coast book. I also did some preliminary research on my question about the future pH differential between surface and deeper waters of the ocean. It’s looking like the differential won’t be too great by the year 2100, but I would like to find some definitive numbers. Hopefully I’ll get enough information this week so I can provide a more specific answer.

On Friday, I had a meeting with my mentor and we discussed the spreadsheet I had been working on. It can be concluded from the information captured that many of the bivalve species do spawn at some point during the summer which could make their offspring more vulnerable to the corrosive water from upwelling. We also discussed some other resources I could use to get more data on species that weren’t mentioned in the book I had been working on. I was given two new books: Oregon Estuarine Invertebrates and Intertidal Invertebrates of California. I imagine this week will be spent gleaning these books for new information. I will be receiving some PDFs on bivalve spawning , so I’ll look those over too. My mentor also mentioned that I should start preparing an outline for my presentation at the end of the summer symposium. It struck me how quickly this date was actually approaching. I will probably work on that this week as well and confer with him on how I should organize things.

This weekend was very enjoyable. Saturday, my roommate Betty and I attempted to go the beach because it was nice and sunny out. Little did we know that the beach would be super windy and after trying to lie out in the sun with sand being blown all around, we abandoned that plan. We ended up exploring the shops at Nye Beach and I found a really awesome octopus bag! For lunch, we ate at Paninis and I got a delicious portabella sandwich.

Some Sea Grant friends and I went to Alsea Falls yesterday. The falls were beautiful and I actually brought my camera with me this time so I was able to snap a few pictures. Lauren knew some spots where we could go swimming (I was determined to go swimming in some sort of body of water since I haven’t been able to do so yet). We scoped out some places and decided to settle down on a sport on the river at Clemens Park. The water was freezing but I still dunked my head under! After that, we headed over to Lauren’s house where we got a nice tour of her parents’ garden. The garden was absolutely wonderful and I got to taste some mint, raspberries and broccoli. Lauren’s parents invited us to stay for dinner which was very nice of them. There was some yummy food served and then we headed on our way back to Newport. All in all, I’d have to say it was a pretty great day.

Alsea Falls!