Monthly Archives: August 2011

Public Awareness |wk.7|

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We’re online people! No sooner had I finished writing my blog from last week when Bob Swingle uploaded to both YouTube and ODFW’s website my first video: a brief assessment of Redfish Rocks MR/MPA. This was actually the video I made for my advisor Mike for his presentation. I wanted to use it as kind of a ‘test run’. I’m ‘planning’ to complete a more rounded highlight video of Redfish. I’m amazed at how time-consuming it is to sift through video and get it together. Here it is:

My second video took a bit more work. Since I am concentrating in fish biology for my biology major, I’m a bit partial to them, which is why I began with a fish species video from Redfish Rocks. Most of the 15 species in this video are rockfish. Keep in mind that while I managed to find footage for these 15 species, they definitely don’t occur in equal frequencies. I see blue and black rockfish the most with kelp greenling following in third. The yelloweye rockfish clip was especially hard to find. I also plan on making an invertebrate species video and a habitat video by the end of this week. Here’s the fish video:

So what’s on the agenda for this week? Next week is our final symposium for Sea Grant where we will be presenting our projects. I’d like to present a somewhat partial representation of our GoogleMap interface at that time so I’m going to try to get that put together. I’m not sure I’ll complete the Cape Perpetua hypoxia series video by then but I am going to try my best! I am going to be very busy until next weekend. I might be going out on an ROV cruise later this week. I’m a little apprehensive about it because I’m not sure how I’ll fare with the waves, and, I have so much work to do! It sounds exciting though! As a ending note: many thanks to Bob Swingle for his help, input, and time.

I was actually pretty scared of the claws here

This weekend Lauren and I took advantage of two of Oregon’s delicious resources: crabs and blueberries. Friday night Lauren and I headed down to Waldport for a midnight high tide. We set up camp with several other groups of crabbers on the docks. After Lauren gave me a good introduction on how to bait, set up, and throw the traps we were in business. For the first hour or so our traps were getting plenty of crabs – but they usually either too small or female. As time wore on, however, we began to get fewer crabs and larger males. Let me tell you – the anticipation of pulling up a big crab and flipping it over to reveal whether or not it is male or female is intense. Everytime we flipped a legal male I freaked out! Point blank, what a GREAT experience! At the end of the night, tired and damp as we were, we had very happily caught four male dungeness crabs. The next day (after hitting up Newport’s Saturday market – where I purchased some amazingly good salsa and tomatoes) we cooked ’em up!

Saturday evening I accompanied Lauren to a small work party which was super fun because I got to get to talk to some people who I had only previously been introduced. Sunday we went blueberry picking in Corvallis. We had wanted to get rasberries as well but that place was closed. I’m pretty sure I got enough blueberries to make up for it though!

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!!