The Halfway Point!

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ODFW Adventures: V

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

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

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

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

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

Saving Oysters in Oregon – week 5

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Minivan Diaries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come see us at DaVinci Days!

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Setting up for DaVinci Days

Setting up for DaVinci Days

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

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

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

Keeping it brief

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

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

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

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

Clipping |wk.4|

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I’m busy…I’m taking an online physics II course this summer and the homework keeps a-comin’. So before I tackle that, I am writing this blog, listening to some tunes, and smelling some padthai cooking (courtesy of Lauren)!

Last week I met with about 12 other people from ODFW’s Marine Resource Program (MRP) to discuss what mapping interface would best suite our purposes. Specifically, we wanted to know which of the following three: Google Maps, Google Earth, or Oregon Marine Map. For those of you who don’t know about Oregon Marine Map and already have the Google Earth Plugin or are willing to download it, check it out: www.oregon.marinemap.org. Marine Map is an excellent resource and I am amazed at the amount of information that’s been crammed into it. However, cons follow pros. The main one being that the last time I spoke to the developers they said they had some work to do on their end with embedding videos. So, Marine Map will have to wait.

Everyone seemed really in tune with Google Maps. I was happy about this because I’m much more familiar with Maps than Earth. I’m going to compile the videos and hopefully get the framework set up so that it can be used for all of MRP’s video resources (video lander, sled, etc).

In addition to the meeting I’ve been reviewing video and clipping highlights for my Redfish Rocks MR/MRP project. I’m getting pretty familiar with the common species out there – especially the ones that are easy to identify, such as the giant plumose anemone, sea stars (basket, vermilion, etc.), blue and black rockfish, kelp greenling, pink hydrocoral, orange ball sponges, purple sea urchins, etc! I love it!

I’m surprised at how long it’s taking me to go through video. The perfectionist part of me wants that perfect clip, but in reality, what’s perfect?? There is SO much diversity out there. Every video I look at is unique.

This weekend I went SAND BOARDING with the gang! I honestly shy away from ‘extreme’ sports (yes, I consider that extreme) so I was super surprised that it was SO FUN! I recommend the smaller boards where the bindings are a little closer together – you’ll get more speed and have better maneuverability!

Sand boarding 

 

Logistics Really Are The Key

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I can’t believe another week’s gone by! Today has been a busy day and I nearly forgot about my blog post because I’ve been trying to organize a million different things! But don’t fear— my weekly update is here to inform you about what’s been up!

Last week was a pretty relaxed week, with the promise that the project was about to kick into high gear. While I have one adviser at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, the other is stationed in Tillamook and Portland.  Thus, we must communicate through e-mail and on the phone and it has been difficult to get in touch with him, as he is busy with several projects.  Since he is my link to all my interview contacts, I was starting to get worried after not hearing from him.  However, I got one contact last week.  The owner of Tillamook Bay Boathouse agreed to meet with me on Wednesday morning at his main facility in Garibaldi, OR.  I got to take a rental car (a sleek, black Mazda 3!) up the coast for a beautiful two-hour drive, but as soon as I got to the boathouse I felt a little intimidated.  It was my first interview outside of Newport and with someone I didn’t know very much about.  While I felt a little inadequate, I began speaking to him with confidence about the topic of shipping seafood to the growing Asian market and he became receptive.  I think that as soon as he noticed my interest in the topic, as well as my knowledge about

the methods and barriers of shipping crabs his confidence in my participation in this project grew.

There are many barriers to shipping seafood to China, but the greatest one I’ve seen so far is government regulation of health inspection on these exports.  As the Boathouse’s owner pointed out, having a more efficient inspection system that stations inspectors in locations that have a large number of live seafood exports would not only make it easier for producers, but also create jobs.  In a still recovering economy it is difficult to understand why seafood harvesters can’t fully take advantage of the huge demand for live seafood in Asian countries, but much of it has to do with NOAA’s inspection system.  It requires producers to pay fees that aren’t uniform because of travel expenses that must be factored into the cost of the certificates.  While I spoke with someone from Oregon Department of Agriculture about their attempts to work out a system with NOAA for providing certificates through ODA that are NOAA approved, it will likely be a long time before that will actually be organized.

I was able to tour the Boathouse, see their Dungeness crab holding containers, network to get a few more contacts for my project, and got a complimentary can of Tillamook Bay Boathouse’s Albacore tuna (perks of the job!).  Surprisingly, there aren’t many producers who do what Tillamook Bay Boathouse and Oregon Oyster Farms do in terms of shipping internationally so it’s important to get in touch with any who are.  Also, towards the end of the week I began receiving a slew of contacts from my adviser and had to begin getting in touch with them to plan site visits to the Port of Portland and Port of Seattle, as well as a couple of other locations along the coast.  I’m really starting to see this project take shape and I’m excited to get going on a big interview trip.

This weekend was relaxing and fun.  I made two attempts at crabbing — both unsuccessful!  While it’s mostly a waiting game, I think when I finally get enough for a meal I will feel undoubtedly satisfied.  Also, a few of us took

Taking important phone calls in the office!

a trip down to Florence, OR and went sand boarding at Honeyman National Park—definitely my favorite day trip of the summer.  There was even a lake that was warm enough to jump in.

Anyways, this week should be mostly organizational work.  Getting the logistics together for a multi-city trip (including Portland, Astoria, Seattle, and maybe even Vancouver B.C.) is a little nerve-wracking, especially when you’re going alone, but I’m excited to hear back from my contacts and get the remainder of my interviews squared away.  The end of the week will include a trip to Corvallis for a mid-summer check-in to see what the rest of the crew has been doing this summer, see you there!!

Sand Dunes…Guided

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Hey there,

This week was loong and exciting! I had to work 6 days in a row, all of which had something new to show me. Here are the highlights:

My 4th of July was full of fun and work. I worked in the VC, where I did the estuary tour, took care of my jelly tank, and met new wonderful people! Later on that day, friends of the commune and I steamed some mussels (which I didn’t like much, but at least I tried it)!

There were two estuary tours that were memorable this past week. The first one was for a group of 35 people. It was challenging to keep them all together, but they were loving the tour because when the time came to slurp up some shrimp, I was on FIRE! Did I mention there were 10 kids on the group?! They all wanted to slurp up some shrimp, including the kid that was as tall as the slurp gun! It was very funny and cute (he had a despicable me t-shirt)! The other estuary tour i will never forget was the most recent one I did (this past Saturday). It was for a group of 25 people that came from 17 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES! They were so into it, taking pictures everywhere and of everything, asking questions, and laughing at every lame joke I made. They made my day!

The other thing that made my week awesome was my interaction with one of the visitors. My mentor had me set up an exhibit that was based on plate tectonics, and the findings of the deep sea research. One of the exhibits was a specific gravity experiment, where one can measure the specific gravity of several rocks using a triple-beam balance and a beaker full of water. There was this kid who saw me measuring clay balls (for my Steller Sea Lion curriculum (:s)), and asked me what I was doing. I told him about the exhibit (and not my clay model curriculum), and then we spent 15 minutes doing the experiment together. When we finished, I explained to him how that related to plate tectonics, submersion zones, etc. He said he got it, and I thought it went straight over his head! Well then he walked to where his grandmother was sitting and explained everything I had taught him word for word! I felt so good about what I was doing. That was definitely one of the coolest moments in the VC for me so far.

Although the specific gravity moment was very awesome, what happened Saturday has not been topped yet (and I am not talking about the estuary tour with the international group). We fed Ursula (our resident octopus) her fish and squid in a preserves jar. Apparently we tightened it up way too much, and after an hour of trying, she released it and gave up. two sunflower sea stars (Pycnopodia) started fighting for the dang jar, with little luck opening it. This was the slowest fight I have ever seen, but it was definitely intense, and I felt like I had to do something about it. I wanted to give Ursula the food she deserved, so with the authorization of Dr. Tim (our veterinarian), I put on my orange shoulder length gloves, broke the fight apart, and fed Ursula! I could tell she was happy she ate, and I was proud of myself for saving the day!

Apart from working at the VC, I went crabbing (no luck), and sandboarding with my sea grant friends! Videos to come!

This week, I will finish designing my exhibit for the Steller Sea Lion Life History Transmitter, and prepare for the second half of my internship!

See y’all soon!

The days of Desk Work.

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ODFW Adventures: Week IV

After an adventurous but tiring weekend sandboarding with some other daring sea grant interns, I did not manage to make my next extravagant dish, but I plan on creating another food-wonder this coming week. In the mean time, I want to say a few words about one of my favorite food subjects: potatoes. You might think they originated in Ireland, or that yukon, red, yellow, white, and russet are the only varieties that exist. But there are actually over four hundred types of potatoes, and these handfuls of colorful potatoes are rooted in the Andean region of Peru. If there’s anything I miss more with my luch, it is a delicious and tasty baked peruvian potato–far more tasteful than any potatoes found in my local Fred Meyer. So if you ever get the chance to try a crAzy purple potato, my advice is do it!

This week, work at ODFW was a little bit more frustrating than I was anticipating. Now that I’m no longer bending over a back-breaking microscope, I miss the times when I counted hundreds of individual herring eggs throughout the day. Instead I have begun my days of desk work, sitting in my comfy chair with strained eyes. I spent the majority of the week working on citations, finishing a bibliography for the updated Strategy Species Table and beginning the largest bibliography of my time–an annotated bibliography for all of the climate change literature we have collected thus far. Having never done an annotated bibliography before, I am quickly learning how to summarize a fact-packed nine page scientific article into six sentences or less. I am also learning a lot about oceanographic climate change in the process, such as the negative affect of ocean acidification on the ability of shell-forming species to use CaCO3. I’ve also been doing google and library searches to find more local articles that will add to our expanding climate change library. 

Along with bibliographies, I attended many many meetings this week! Always a great break in the day, I listened to other people’s projects (Great job so far Nicole Matthias!) and learned more about the status of the updates for the Nearshore Strategy. My team is doing great, and moving at a quick pace to get these updates done before the deadline in December 2012. We have a good start on 3 of our 6 tasks, and the other three are beginning to be thrown on the table as well. It looks like I have more busy-work ahead of me; bibliographies never cease to be necessary.

All in all, things are rolling along swimmingly, and after a meeting with the gentleman that spent many years working with the herring data, I will be able to begin working with the GIS data this week! As well as finishing my bibliographies, of course! Until next week!

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

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On Wednesday last week, I came to work after four days off for the long holiday weekend.  It felt great to relax for a bit, but since everyone came back on Tuesday and were already in the swing of things, there was no time for me to

Our first bladder test - as you can tell, the bladder is flimsy in the container which makes it difficult for the water for flow in and out.

take it slow.  The day before Jody went out to test the bladders again to see if he could come up with a way that worked.  He decided to pin each bladder down under a piece of mesh.  This eliminated the bulky storage container that wanted to float away with the tide.  So my job on Wednesday was to go out into the field to collect the bladders from the test to make sure that everything ran smoothly.  When we got back to the lab we

Our next test - the bladders are much more stable when pinned down with mesh fabric.

checked the bladders to make sure that there wasn’t a leak and we analyzed our pressure data to confirm that the artificial sea water went into and out of the chambers as it should.  After evaluating our data we discovered that we were successful and that this was the method that we would be using for our main experiment.  It was great knowing that we would be able to move forward with our project on time.

As I’ve stated in earlier posts, there are so many aspects of this project that must come together perfectly.  Just as with the problems with the bladders curve balls are a many and we discovered last week that we may not be receiving our additional bladders in time to run the experiment.  Thankfully they arrived today just in time.  The rest of the short week was spent preparing for the experiment for this week.  We made new nutrient solutions for our artificial sea water, we continued working out logistics and checking to make sure we had all of our supplies, and we trained our new summer help, Stephanie, to help us with our hectic schedule over the next few weeks.

Today is the commencement of twelve grueling days of field work/ prep work/ data collection.  There will be no weekend for me – when the tides are good we go out, weekend or not!  On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I will be working with Stephanie to make artificial sea water, fill bladders, and collect supplies.  I will also be going out with Jody and Caitlin to set up bases for our experiment and make sure that all of the lab equipment is working for when we get back.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday the real work begins when we will be running the experiment that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks.  Friday will be filled with running samples and preparing for the next experiment which will take place on Saturday and Sunday.  There will be even more intense field work the next week including several nights of nighttime sampling.  I will keep you updated as to what I am doing as much as possible, but I know that I have many 10-12+ hour work days ahead of me. Eek!  But I have to say, I am loving every minute of it.  The days go by fast because I am always on the go. I am still absorbing as much new information as I can and I can definitely say that I love being out in the field.  I will let you know if that changes after these next two weeks, but I sure hope not!

Check out my personal blog to see how I spent my holiday weekend: Sara Duncan

Building the Site

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Hi all!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! This last week was my most productive week yet! Beginning over the weekend and continuing into Monday and Tuesday, I practiced some of the things I learned in Drupal Bootcamp using my Drupal training site. Although I knew I would have to transfer everything to the marine sciences site after I got my web space, I think this was still a valuable use of time because it allowed me to apply some of the things I learned so I didn’t “lose it before I used it.”

After meeting with Jenna, I learned that my marine sciences development site was finally up and running! It was time to start shifting my focus to the real site! I scheduled a meeting with Pat Kight (Sea Grant web communications), and she helped me out with a few of the Drupal stumbling blocks I was having, and finished off by giving me the URL of the new site.

I spent the rest of the week building the site (getting all menu items and tabs in place, searching for feature stories, and picking out pictures). My pride and joy so far is the feature story rotating banner that I was able to import into the site! Unfortunately this feature is not built into the system and requires importing specific HTML code. I was very excited to have achieved obtaining this module with little difficulty! I also managed to figure out how to incorporate a “Marine Science and the Coast” RSS feed as well as a highlights section into the website.

I also had the opportunity of meeting my other mentor, Dr. Brandt, this last week. He has been out of the office for much of the summer, and so I was glad to have the opportunity to update him on my progress. One thing my mentors really emphasized this week is the need for a calendar. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of experience using calendars in Drupal, so this week I plan to work with the OSU communications team to get a calendar installed and running. I also have another meeting with Pat Kight so that I can learn a bit more about how to dress up my website so that it looks more aesthetically pleasing.

This week, aside from my meeting with Pat, I plan to focus on adding content to the website (and there is definitely a lot of content to be added). I will also be attending a meeting with the Marine Council this week and will need to present to them what I have so far. So I will be also doing a little work in preparation for that meeting.

Overall, I am very excited about the direction this website is going and it has been extremely satisfying to finally see some of my work up on the web! I also had an amazing weekend which really put the cherry on top of my week! There are three groups of REU interns living on my hall, and I had the opportunity to do an overnight at the coast with one of the groups! We managed to find a place to stay at HMSC in Newport, and we got to see several different beaches as well as some seals and tide pools. As excited as I am about my project, it was really nice to get away from the computer for a short time – very fun weekend!

Until next time,

Shealyn