Have you ever seen the TV show Scrubs? If not, then you are missing out on some of the greatest television in the history of television. If so, then you can sort of understand what this week has been like for me. Scrubs follows three young doctors (JD, Turk, and Elliot) as they begin their careers at Sacred Heart Hospital. It’s hilarious. My sister and I can recite entire episodes, having both watched every season at least 3 times (shoutout to Netflix). But that’s not the point. The point is, when JD, Turk, and Elliot first arrive as interns, they know next to nothing. Everything they do is a learning experience, and every time they accomplish even the most menial task it’s a huge victory. That’s basically my life right now. This week I began my post as a Sea Grant Scholar working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in their Marine Reserves Program. With me are two other Sea Grant Scholars, Sarah and Neal (the Elliot and Turk to my JD (I get to be JD because I’m writing this)). Together, we’re taking on the world, one marine reserve at a time.

My inspirations. From the left, Turk aka Neal, JD aka me, and Elliot aka Sarah.

Instead of Scrubs we get survival suits

As the three of us leave the office every day, we all walk with a little bit of a strut, just like the Scrubs characters after a day in the hospital. You can’t help but feel a little proud after a day working hard for a cause that you really care about. Sometimes that involves scrambling over mussels in the rocky intertidal zone searching for sea stars. Sometimes it involves jumping into 50-degree water where you can’t see three feet in front of your face to try and catch juvenile fish. And sometimes it involves laminating papers. Just five days in, this has already been by far the most diverse work experience I’ve had, and I love it. I’ll be spending the summer undertaking ecological monitoring of Oregon’s marine reserves. Each of the five reserves is unique and monitoring all five is quite a task. Volunteer fishermen catch fish, take measurements, and release them. Longlines are also used to similar effect. Scuba divers and landers equipped with GoPros assess subtidal diversity. We also have two awesome submersible ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) that conduct underwater surveys. But the monitoring project I’ll be working most closely on certainly has the cutest name.

I’ll be spending much of the summer working with Standard Monitoring Units for the Recruitment of Fishes, also known as SMURFs. These adorable contraptions are basically a tangle of folded plastic suspended a few meters below the surface of the ocean. They serve as a great substrate for juvenile fish to take shelter in. Several have been set up inside and outside of the reserves to monitor fish recruitment. Collecting the fish involves snorkeling down with a Bincke net (pronounced binky) and grabbing the entire SMURF. Once you’ve got your SMURF in your binky (adorable right?) you take it up on the boat, collect the fish, take them back to shore and measure them. I haven’t gone SMURFing yet, but I’m really looking forward to getting out on the ocean.

Though I haven’t SMURFed, I have spent a significant amount of time in the field already. I spent Thursday and Friday morning surveying sea stars at Otter Rock and Cascade Head. Sea-star wasting disease is a gruesome viral infection which essentially causes stars to pull themselves apart and dissolve into the rock. Not a pretty sight. There have been outbreaks in the past, but in 2014 it returned to Oregon with devastating effects. Recently the prevalence of disease has seemed to subside. However, it’s unclear whether that is because the populations are recovering or because only the largest stars are highly susceptible and they have been mostly wiped out. That’s why we monitor. We crawl on our hands and knees, comb through algae, and splash through tide pools on the hunt for the “lions of the intertidal.” It’s basically a safari. Plus I’ve gotten to see the sun rising over some beautiful beaches. Anyone who knows me will tell you how much I love Ohio and Pennsylvania (where I’m from and where I went to school, respectively), but the natural beauty of Oregon blows the Midwest out of the water.

Hard at work surveying in the intertidal

A beautiful family of healthy sea stars

It’s been a spectacular start to the summer so far. I’m working for an awesome cause undertaking an awesome project in an awesome place and meeting some awesome people. It’s awesome. What has stood out to me so far is how quickly I’ve been able to get involved with meaningful work. We spent one day doing hiring paperwork, and the very next day I was in the water trying to capture black rockfish in a net. Pardon my awful closing pun, but in the world of marine biology they toss you in the deep end and it’s up to you to either sink or swim. Sorry.