Working as an Oregon Sea Grant Summer Scholar these past ten weeks has been a blast! I learned so many lessons that will be applicable throughout the entirety of my career in science. My favorite parts of my internship were all the times I was able to interact with other people interested in the Oregon seafood industry. I loved Fridays when I could join my mentor, Angee, at the Newport docks. I also enjoyed the interviews I had with industry leaders up and down the Oregon coast. Overall, I felt the most connected to the coast when I could interact with people who had deep connections with it. 

This feeling is something I hope to carry into my next step as a scientist. I am currently living in Guam working towards getting my masters degree in coral restoration genetics. While working here I plan to establish a relationship with community members and other scientists. By learning from people who have lived with and studied this area far longer than I have, I should be able to deepen my respect for corals and integrate a diverse range of disciplines into my work. In addition to expanding my community here, I plan to continue making science education videos and posts. Instead of posting about Eat Oregon Seafood, I will shift to posting about coral restoration research. I also hope to make some videos that may help demystify graduate school for students who don’t initially see themselves belonging there.

I will spend three years here in Guam completing my masters (and I can already tell they are going to be three of the best years of my life). Afterwards, I plan to pursue a PhD in coral science (and maybe even dive a little into policy as a Knauss fellow – who knows!). I am positive that I will continue to appreciate Oregon seafood management from afar and use everything I learned this summer to look at my current work from different perspectives. Big thank you to Oregon Sea Grant, my summer mentors, and everyone else who made this summer possible!

This summer has flown by! I can’t believe it is already week eight of the summer scholars internship. In the past two weeks I have been able to attend Eat Oregon Seafood’s “Shop at the Dock” events. Shop at the Dock is a tour of the local fishing docks that goes over Oregon fishing management regulations and helps consumers navigate purchasing seafood directly from fishermen. In addition to contributing information to the tours, I have also learned a lot from participating in them. One fun fact is that all Oregon fishing gear is required to have safety systems in place that release gear after a short period of time to prevent ghost fishing!

This Friday will mark my last Shop at the Dock and my last interview for my Oregon Seafood Journey project. I am so excited to be posting the interviews from this project to our Instagram account (@eatORseafood) next week! I have learned a lot about the Oregon seafood industry while connecting with people up and down the coast and hope these interviews make other Oregonians just as passionate about purchasing local seafood. In addition to learning more about the industry, I have also gotten a lot better with my interview skills. It is fun comparing the flow of my first interview to my most recent one and realizing how much more relaxed they sound now. Hopefully I’ll be able to use my new found interview skills during my graduate degree!

The most surprising part of the summer for me was how similar the values of everyone I interviewed was. It didn’t matter if they were a processor or fisher or restaurant owner or retailer. Every person wanted the public to know how well managed and beneficial (for the environment and the economy) the Oregon seafood industry is! This message also shined through at our Shop at the Dock tours. In post tour interviews, consumers were even raving about the high standards of the Oregon seafood industry!

If I could start the summer over, knowing what I know now, there is one thing that I would definitely change. I would connect more with the other Oregon seafood commissions and try to set up a better network for re-sharing our information. I would also write a couple of press releases to try and spread the word more as well! Nevertheless, I am glad our posts are reaching as many people as they are currently. Hopefully the information will continue to spread to other Oregonians!!

I am now wrapping up week six with Eat Oregon Seafood. Over the past two weeks, I met with various commission groups from the Oregon groundfish commission to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Through these meetings, I was able to paint a clearer picture of how to use social media to engage communities. I also learned more about topics within the seafood industry that are more likely to create controversy on social media platforms. All of this information helped me further my social media campaigns! 

Social media platforms are a great way to share science in a digestible format, however, sharing to such a large audience does come with some challenges. Because social media audiences can be so expansive, you have to be more intentional about posts. Instead of catering to one population, as I have done in the past when working with academia, you have to cater to all the populations your posts could possibly reach. Speaking of social media… I was able to post my first videos to the new Eat Oregon Seafood youtube channel this week! Check them out here to learn all about seafood in Oregon.

In addition to learning more about public outreach to broader audiences, my views about policy work have changed as well. I have learned that a large part of policy work is networking. In order to make science education work, you need to reach a broad audience. AND in order to reach a broad audience, you need connections. Before this summer, I never realized how much other platforms sharing and spreading your information matters. In retrospect it makes total sense – you need to put effort into both creating science education material and spreading that material. If you do one without the other your message will be lost. 

I am really enjoying seeing a different side of science this summer. My previous experiences have been mostly fieldwork and lab work-related. During grad school, I plan on sticking to field and lab work during my “job job”. However, in my free time, I plan on continuing to promote science education to a broader audience by posting science and culture education videos on a personal vlog. If you’re interested in learning about Guam, what it means to be in graduate school or coral genetics then you can check out that vlog here!

One last update: I started interviews for the “Oregon Seafood Journey” social media campaign. It is great being able to meet industry leaders across the coast and hear the stories of the coastal community. Here is a photo of oyster tanks from my first interview at Pacifica Seafoods in Corvallis!

Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to sharing weeks seven and eight with you during my next post!

Hi again everyone! This is Mikay, the summer scholar working for the Eat Oregon Seafood (EOS) initiative. My role this summer is to expand the media platforms of Eat Oregon Seafood in an effort to promote local seafood consumption. Since my last post, quite a bit has happened! I hashed out drafts for a video project and social media campaign for EOS. I also did site visits and met both of my mentors, Jamie and Angee, in person!

My work schedule varies quite a bit day-to-day depending on if I am working virtually or visiting a site. So far I have been more virtual than in-person, but as the summer goes on I will be visiting different businesses across Oregon for interviews for my “Oregon Seafood Journey” media campaign. When I am visiting a coastal site, I usually work from 9 to 5 (cue Dolly Parton) from my desk at home. Much of my day is computer work involving anything from making infographics to editing videos to doing research online. I have been perfecting the platforms “Canva” and “DaVinci 17” for my infographic and video making. I would highly recommend using Canva to anyone who wants to spice up their research posters, presentations, or really any other form of science communication. It is very user-friendly and can make very professional media. DaVinci has a much larger learning curve, but once you figure it out it is great to use for short or long video projects.

In addition to computer work, I am able to interact with people daily for my job. I have team meetings with my mentors once a week but often end up emailing them daily to send media drafts and get advice on various aspects of the projects I am working on. Angee and Jamie are full of great advice and are always happy to help! I have also been connecting with a range of businesses across the coast and setting up interviews. My first interview will be with “South Bay Wild”, a restaurant that sells locally caught seafood out of Astoria, Oregon. I plan to meet with them tomorrow and hear all about their business! I was also able to visit both Newport and Coos Bay to meet Angee and Jamie. We toured the docks at both locations, visited with some of the other fishery-related extension workers, and discussed the challenges that each fishing community is facing. In Coos Bay, I was able to try out some fancy camera equipment in order to shoot some film for introductory seafood videos I am working on for the EOS website. I have been working on the videos, but they are still not quite where I want them to be. Hopefully, I can get some fun shots in Astoria this weekend!

COVID has made this work much more virtual than most years, but one thing I am most looking forward to is “Shop at the Docks”. Starting July 23rd Newport will be hosting tours of the docks to try and help people buy fresh seafood directly from fishermen. I am super excited to interact with both local consumers and fishermen in order to try and build up these relationships and increase local buy-in into seafood.

One of the non-work-related items I have been working on daily is getting my knee back to normal. I tore my ACL earlier this year while playing ultimate frisbee. I ended up not having enough time to get surgery and recover before leaving for my master’s program, so I have been going all out with physical therapy to try and get my knee working normally again. I usually start or end (when I don’t get out of bed early enough to make it home before 9) my workday with one or two hours at the gym. The exercise also helps me focus and re-energize which I find keeps me more productive during work.

These first four weeks have been fun, but I am even more excited for the weeks to come!