Author Archives: Harrison Baker

About Harrison Baker

Harrison Baker works as an aquarist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center. His academic background is in animal husbandry, journalism and editing. He is currently pursuing an MS in Free-Choice Learning Science Education. His board game, Deme, is currently under development as a component of his MS project on games and adult learning.

What do you do?

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I’ve tried to describe my job and workplace to strangers a few times. Most often, these attempts have been met with looks of concern for an obviously unwell man. Is this a common experience for other folks working in UX, museums, zoos and aquariums?

A friend of mine in Orlando reported via Facebook yesterday that she spent part of her shift scrubbing a horseshoe crab with a toothbrush. How do you work that into a conversation? When the eye-tracking systems arrive early next year, I myself may stop and wonder if I’m actually just standing at a bus stop somewhere, making people very nervous. However, I am genuinely interested in how we respond to the question “What do you do?” Please comment.

Here’s an update on Ursula and our new octopus from Jordan, our senior aquarist. It seems Ursula’s situation and its attendant considerations have changed since I last discussed it here:

“As many of you know Ursula has begun expelling eggs and has been very inactive the past few weeks; even taking the unexpected step of barricading herself in her corner with the curtain. She continued by pulling rocks and PVC pipe around her to make a cave. Ursula has also been receiving live Dungeness crabs the last two weeks as well, instead of her normal fish and squid. This is to better acclimate her to a wild setting should she be released.  If anyone can donate more live Dungeness it would be greatly appreciated.

In the West Wing our new octopus has been eating voraciously and has quite the feisty personality. During her Sunday morning feeding she was shooting water at us with her siphon, which as you can imagine was very surprising. She greedily her mackerel in under 3 minutes. Once quarantined, she should be a wonderful addition to the Visitor Center.

The past few weeks have been filled with heavy cleaning, de-leeching, and of course finals. Coming out of this last term, I think that I speak for the entire husbandry team when I say that we are looking forward to winter break. With more free time available, you can expect us to be around even more over the next month. Our goal is to have the Visitor Center looking immaculate entering the New Year.

Happy Holidays from the HMSC Husbandry Team”

Quarantine Cam

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Have you seen the quarantine Octocam?

Here’s an explanation from the Octocam main page:

“Since the main tank Octocam has been out of commission for replacement with a more sophisticated model,  we’ve taken the opportunity to aim a small Webcam at the quarantine tank… The new octopus is active and curious, and there’s a good chance you’ll see her and watch her interact with our animal husbandry staff if you check in when she’s awake[.]”

WebOS going open-source (from Businessweek)

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I found this while browsing the technology headlines today. I wonder if interest in the platform will pick up after it goes open-source. What do you think?

“Hewlett-Packard Co. will turn its WebOS software into an open-source project, aiming to get other hardware makers to embrace the struggling operating system as an alternative to software from Apple Inc. and Google Inc.”

Retreat!

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Our Sea Grant educators’ retreat took place Tuesday. Thanks largely to Shawn and Laura’s planning and facilitation, we made some real progress in setting individual and collective trajectories for the education program.

Among our many agenda items were the construction of a staffing plan draft and—this was interesting—a small-group assignment to define “free-choice learning.” We found that our groups’ definitions generally agreed, even where they became fuzzy around the intricacies of motivation.

The staffing plan was a major outcome for the day. Currently, each of the folks on the floor of the Visitor Center or in the classrooms follows one of several chains of command. Even so, we’ve managed and communicated very well. This was evidenced by the fact that just about everyone at the retreat was already on a first-name, comfortable-talking-about-anything basis with everyone else.

Once the proposed plan is ironed out, we should have a more streamlined organizational structure and better coverage in some areas. Drafting the plan took surprisingly little time, as the needs of each team member and department were fairly well understood and complementary.

On a different topic, some of you are undoubtedly aware that Ursula began expelling eggs recently. These are infertile, and she seems to know it. She has not been laying them in ropes or grooming them as an expectant mother would, but rather attaching them in small clusters to the tank walls.

The husbandry team is currently making plans for Ursula’s release and the acquisition of another octopus. At this point, it’s uncertain exactly how much time Ursula has—a factor in when, where and how she can safely be released. In the meantime, Bill has been offering her live, local food to get her back in the habit of hunting.

We’ll all miss Ursula when she leaves, but we know that’s part of a human—or at least vertebrate—narrative. As always, we have to acknowledge her needs and to recognize that her perceptions and emotions do not mirror our own. With the onset of reproductive maturity, we must accept that her current needs can only be met by the sea that bore her.

Science student retention (from NY Times)

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Regarding this story from the Times:

How do we emphasize the importance of rigorous, often tedious work while acknowledging the potential for great achievement? Are we setting our children up to fail with unrealistic expectations, or loading down our college freshmen with theory divorced from its natural context?

“Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.”