Well, as they say, it’s all over but the crying… I have officially come to the end of my time as an Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar.  Not gonna lie, I’m pretty bummed. It’s been a spectacular summer, and it ended in pretty spectacular fashion. You may or may not be aware that this Monday, our whole sun was totally blocked by the moon. Or, if you are in the “flat earth” camp, some other pseudo-celestial event occurred. Regardless, the result is that for a few minutes in a small band that spanned the USA, it went TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DARK. And, as luck would have it, that small band included the very part of Oregon in which I’ve been living this summer. Even before the program I was told about the total eclipse hitting Newport. On orientation day, we were given free eclipse glasses by Sea Grant. Throughout the summer I was continuously texted by friends from other parts of the country asking if I knew that this eclipse was going to happen (I did). And for the few weeks leading up to it, we were constantly warned of the dangers of the “apoceclipse” coming to Oregon’s coast. Traffic would be chaos, gas stations would run dry, super markets would be empty, it was even predicted that cell service would fail due to an overload of Snapchatters and hashtaggers. Essentially, rational civilization was predicted to utterly implode as millions of people descended on Oregon’s coast with the sole intention of staring directly at the sun.

That didn’t happen. All in all, it was actually a fairly tame weekend in Newport. The only significant traffic was the backup at the county fair’s mud-runner rally when some guy named Alan got his Jeep stuck on the course (it was hilarious). On a whim, some interns and I decided to trek inland to Corvallis for the eclipse just in case the coast was too foggy. What is normally an hour drive took 50 minutes. No traffic to speak of. On the morning of, we hiked up to the top of Bald Hill a few hours early to get prime seats for the event. As prepared as I thought I was, I still absolutely cannot get over how COOL it was. In the few minutes before totality, the lighting became very eerie and muted. And when darkness hit, everyone around us couldn’t help but shout out in amazement. To be brief, it was so darn cool.

Pro-tip, you can tell this is staged because we’re standing in sunshine and the eclipse blocked out the sun. It’s all in the details.

Afterward though, it was back to reality as it became clear again that the program was ending. After eating lunch, we had to say a goodbye to Dustin and Catie, two of the South Coast Sea Grants who were driving back to Coos Bay. Then, later that evening Megan (another Sea Grant) departed from Newport for good. They were the first official goodbyes and it stunk. They’re three really awesome people who I’m really glad I got the opportunity to get to know some this summer.

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of my last week in the field. On Monday I went out into the intertidal zone to help plan permanent plots with some ODFW Marine Reserves folks, an Oregon State post-doc, her lab tech, and her 4-month old son! Seriously, Sara (the post-doc) scrambled around the intertidal with her baby strapped to her for about 3 hours and I was thoroughly thoroughly impressed. What an awesome early exposure to field work!! Anyway, the plots we planned will eventually supplement our Sea-Star Wasting data to give a clearer picture of what’s happening in the intertidal of Otter Rock and Cascade Head Marine Reserves. Sadly I won’t be around to perform the surveys myself, but it was great to see how the project and collaboration with OSU is evolving.

The next day I headed out early for my very last day of SMURFing… (insert image of me shedding a single tear here). It was a great day full of lots of oceanic animals, but very few juvenile fish recruits. We saw sea lions, seals, and a FAMILY OF GREY WHALES RIGHT NEXT TO OUR BOAT. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t get a picture of the whales because I was in a wetsuit covered in amphipods at the time but I swear it happened ask anyone else who was out there.

Pretty proud of this picture too. I won’t lie.

Speaking of who else was out there, it’s been an absolute pleasure working with my fellow SMURFers this summer. Madeline (REU) and I got to share a couple long road trips down to Port Orford together and also commiserated in our failure to come even close to Will’s success at catching fish. Will (Ph.D. student at OSU), for his part, has been an awesome guy to work with. He’s a great source of fish knowledge, as well as a great person to grab a burrito with. Doesn’t get much better than that.

What a great gang of SMURFers

In the office, I’ve just been tying up some loose ends. I’ve written my final SMURF blog entry, input some old data, worked on these blog posts, and tried to organize my work from this summer a little bit. Additionally, I got to attend the REU’s summer symposium and learn more about the work they’re doing this summer. There are twelve REU’s at Hatfield studying everything from shrimp to humpback whales. They’re pretty brilliant students and it’s been great living in such a tight-knit community with them. We said goodbye to the first one yesterday and another one this morning along with another Sea Grant, and it was all darn sad. Goodbyes stink. But I’m excited to see where all my fellow Sea Grants and REUs end up, and what awesome things we accomplish.

Talking to a friend from back home the other day, he mentioned that my pictures and posts almost make it seem as if this has been an extended vacation rather than an internship. Honestly, he had a point. I feel as though I’ve really made the most out of my brief time in Oregon. Nearly every weekend has included some sort of adventure that has taken me all across the state and even into California. And not only have I taken advantage of my time not working, the work itself has been pretty awesome as well. I’ve learned a ton, grown a ton, met some awesome people, and gotten to do some pretty cool fieldwork. In addition, I’ve built some friendships that will definitely extend beyond this program while living in a great community of students (that includes you, South Coast Sea Grants, even though we didn’t live together).

To bring this full circle back to my first blog post, the final scene of Season 8 of Scrubs (which was meant to be the series finale before they regrettably made a mediocre 9^th season) shows JD walking down a hospital hallway as he leaves Sacred Heart Hospital for the final time. In his imagination, the halls are lined with the people he’s met – friends, co-workers, patients, love interests, The Janitor, etc. He walks outside to watch a projector screen flashing images of his future while Peter Gabriel’s The Book of Love plays in the background. It gets me every time, seriously.

Basically me right now.

I don’t imagine my exit will be anything like that. Except, I will be sad to say goodbye to this experience, and I am excited to see where it’ll take me. So long Sea Grant, and thanks for all the fish.

I’m out *mic drop* *big splash* *shriek as freezing water permeates wetsuit*