Category Archives: Former scholars

Week Five

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This weekend was an exciting one, with a trip to Corvallis for my fellow Sea Grant Scholars and I.  Corvallis was playing host to a science and arts festival called da Vinci Days .  What makes this festival stand out from the other science and art festivals is that it is meant to remind people, especially artist and scientists, that the two pursuits are intertwined.  One of the demonstrations that the festival featured to do this was by having community built kinetic sculptures.  Kinetic sculptures are sculptures, pieces of art, which using the power of science are designed to be moved by human motion and in the case of da Vinci Days to race over obstacles. 

Oregon Sea Grant also had a booth at the festival which my fellow scholars and I had the privilege to work.  For me it was a great opportunity to reach out and discuss rockfish conservation issues with the festival goers.  Before arriving in Corvallis I was asked to make a poster describing the work I do and my experience as a summer scholar.  The poster was to be hung while I tended the booth on Sunday morning, with the hopes of catching attention and creating an opportunity to engage people in my work.  To my delight I found quite a few people attracted to my poster and with whom I was able to engage.

The real highlight of the event though was going with the other Sea Grant scholars to listen to Dr. Jane Lubchenco speak as key not speaker for the festival.  As the former director of NOAA, she spoke about how Washington D.C and politics interact with environmental issue and how important it is for scientists to communicate their science in a manner that is easy to understand.  She also spoke to and demonstrated how the art of narrative story telling can easy the barriers to communicating science. She did this by relaying her experiences as the director of NOAA in a series of short story, which she collectively titled Dr. Jane goes to Washington. 

I am very lucky and appresiative of Oregon Sea Grant to have had the opportunity to attend the 2013 da Vinci Days festival and left more inspired and determined than ever.

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These past couple weeks have been incredibly busy.  The week leading up to Da Vinci Days, Corvallis’s art and science festival, was spent preparing a poster for display at the Sea Grant booth and organizing and prepping equipment for this week’s intensive field work events.

Working the Sea Grant booth at Da Vinci Days was an insightful experience. I helped to inform the general public about the economic and environmental impacts of some of North America’s most pervasive invasive species. I also answered and explained any inquiries people had about my poster regarding my work with ODFW. The most meaningful experience, however, were the many children who marveled at the invasive animal displays and whom also expressed eager interest in my interpretations of those displays. I could sense their strong interest in science and their unyielding desire to learn. These passionate displays of curiosity capture the very essence of science; it is not enough to solely study science, but rather inspire future generations of scientists through education and outreach.  A simple scientific display is often times enough to capture a child’s interest and to inspire a world of endless learning opportunity. This opportunity is what I hoped instill in the many children who visited the Sea Grant booth.

Aside from Da Vinci Days, I prepped gear for the upcoming hook and line surveys. These surveys involve contracting charters with local fishermen to catch a wide variety of rockfish species. The rationale behind these surveys was explained in more detail on my previous blog post. We will fish for roughly 8 hours in a Marine Reserve and 8 hours, the following day, in its associated comparison area. The first trip will be out of Newport to Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve and its comparison area referred to as the Postage Stamp. Later in the week, we will be traveling to Red Fish Rock Marine Reserve which is near Brookings, Oregon. I am preparing for an exhausting, but exciting eek out at sea!

Living the Dream!

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Life sure is good here on the West Coast, especially in Oregon. Week 5 marks the halfway point of my time here in the Beaver State, and things are still in full swing at the EPA. The past week has been full of fieldwork and the coming weeks look to be the same; and I couldn’t be more excited!

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In the first few weeks of my internship we were studying sediment oxidation in the estuary under natural conditions. This means that we went out into the tide flats and observed the sediment as is. The next phase of our project is to try and add some control to things. This coming week we will be going out into the estuary and setting up different plots with varying amounts of algae covering the sediment surface. More clear, plastic food storage containers will be placed into the sediment like before, except this time, on either side of them, there will be one meter quadrants with netting, holding down a specified amount of algae. This will allow us to see how different amounts of algae can impact sediment oxidation in a more coordinated way.

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Additionally, we are hoping to learn about how estuary organism can impact sediment oxidation, especially burrowing shrimp. To study this, we will be putting some plots in areas where there is a high amount of shrimp burrowing, which creates features that look like mini volcanoes from the surface. Two of our plots will be put in ghost shrimp areas, two in mud shrimp areas, and two more will be placed where the sediment is mostly free of burrowing shrimp.  We are hoping that these experiments will give us a really good picture of what is happening beneath the surface of the estuary here in Newport.

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This past weekend was Oregon State University’s annual science and art festival called da Vinci Days.  Myself along with the other Sea Grant interns created posters about our research and presented our work to the people who attended the event. Before presenting, we learned a lot about how to effectively communicate science to the public in a way that makes sense and allows them to understand a topic which can often times be quite challenging to grasp. I though it was great practice, and I know that the things I learned will help me throughout my career as a scientist.

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Da Vinci Days was opened by a talk from Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a professor at Oregon State University and the former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  She served as NOAA’s director for 4 years and during her talk she shared many stories about her time in Washington D. C.  As someone who has always been interested in politics and policy in addition to marine science, I found it to be a very eye-opening experience.  I never through about combining my passions for the oceans and policy into one, but after hearing her stories and about her time with NOAA, I realized that it could be a very real prospect.  After her talk I was able to personally speak with Dr. Lubchenco and she offered me some advice for preparing for a career in marine science.  I was told to “keep getting my feet wet” and to get as much experience as I can; it looks like I am on the right track! It truly was a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget!

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I was also able to squeeze in a little volunteer work this week. I was able to help with a project being run by Cheryl Horton who is a graduate student studying murre colonies along the Oregon Coast. A murre is a seabird and Cheryl is studying the colonies and how they respond to disturbances from bald eagles and other predatory birds.  I was able to help by observing bald eagles on the colony and how they interrupted the birds.  I learned a lot about seabirds and it was a great experience to be a part of. Plus, Cheryl took another student volunteer and myself down to the tide pools for a break, which proved to be quite the experience. We were able to see all kinds of marine life and it sure made waking up at 5:15am worthwhile!

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Week after week Oregon continues to impress me with everything it has to offer. Although it has been 5 weeks, I have learned so much about marine science in a way I could never have done otherwise. I cannot wait to see what adventures the second half of my internship holds… stay tuned!

Week 5: Time Flies When You’re Having Fun!

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Where has the time gone? Week five is completed, which means I’m halfway through my internship. This week was especially exceptional. Scott and I have continued our red rock crab surveys with much more success in capturing red rocks than in the past few weeks. I’ve also started on writing up a memo for the cockle experimental methods we’ve been developing and it’s awesome to finally put my scientific writing abilities to the test.

On Wednesday Dean Headlee invited me to come along with him to Hallmark, a fish processing plant. We intercepted two boats—the Apache and the Nel Ron Dic—as they brought in their trawl catches. It was our job to sample these fish (30-50 fish per sample by species). I was excited to handle so many species of fish such as green stripes, ling cod, Dover sole, English sole, big skates, long-nosed skates, yellowtail rockfish, and albacore tuna. We took the lengths (fork or total length, depending on the fish species), weight, sex and stage of sexual maturity, and we also pulled otoliths. After watching Dean pull several otoliths from the fish he let me give it a try and I was actually quite good at it!

Pulling otoliths from the trawl catch

Pulling otoliths, in my opinion, is an art form. If you don’t cut into the right place or know the right place to look you may never find them. However, Dean’s technical lesson of otolith pulling had me removing them like a pro in no time. The majority of the fish that we pulled otoliths from were flatfish. In order to pull an otolith from a flatfish you must first cut along the operculum (gill flap). This is where the art comes into play; you just have to know exactly where on the operculum to cut by doing it yourself and seeing what works, verbal instructions will only get you so far. Eventually, with practice, you just know where to cut into.

Once you’ve cut into the head you must find and remove the otoliths. Typically they sit on the right side of the cut (if you do it correctly). They are very small and in a fluid-filled pouch but once I had practiced on a few fish I could pull them blindly without even needing to see them. We put all the otoliths into individual slots in trays and assigned a number to them so we could age the fish later on.

Rockfish Otoliths (ear bones)

As it being week five, it was time for all the Sea Grant Summer Scholars to attend our mid-summer check-in. Catherine, a fellow scholar, and I drove up to Corvallis on Thursday evening. It was awesome to ride with her as the scholars are pretty spread out through Oregon and we don’t get to interact much with each other.

Friday was the mid-summer check-in. We started off the morning with a presentation about outreach, which was definitely an eye-opener. Our speaker, Shawn, spoke with us on the public’s perceptions of scientists and how the public uses those perceptions to draw conclusions and form ideas and opinions. We also did an activity that helped us to understand how to guide others to conclusions about scientific material so that the information is absorbed.

It was great to finally spend time with my fellow summer scholars. Sunday, before we all parted ways, a few of us grabbed tubes and floated the Willamette. I had never floated a river before and it was such a relaxing experience (though the water was a little chilly!). The backdrop of the mountains as we floated down the Willamette was simply gorgeous; I couldn’t have dreamed up more beautiful scenery myself!

Presenting my work in Coos Bay to the public during OSU’s DaVinci Days.

Picture Perfect!

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Spending time with my fellow scholars!

I was gone for a four day weekend and what do I come back to find on my desk waiting for me? Dead fish to be identified, a bag of shells, and a crab molt. Most people come back to desks piled with paperwork; I come back to dead animals. Life of a biologist, everyone! I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

This week I will be heading to Astoria with Steven Rumrill to do razor clam surveys and I am beyond thrilled! Until next time!

Week 5: Some Important Lessons

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This week was marked mostly by preparations for the trip I am currently on in Willapa Bay, Washington, just north of Astoria. We made and triple-checked lists of supplies, wrote out exactly what we were going to do each day at what times (which matters a lot because of the tides!), researching methods for a study we are going to do about predation on juvenile Dungeness, and finished making the mounts for the GoPro cameras we are putting out in different habitats.

While doing these preparations (I wrote out the protocol myself), I was asked at multiple stages to send my work to various people so they could look over it. Originally I thought that I would be the only one looking at some of it, so I had little notes to myself inserted in various places, and sentences that made perfect sense to me, but wouldn’t to anyone else. I also left out crucial details like exactly how to turn on the cameras and how to know whether they are recording or not. Not only would it be difficult for my coworkers to follow it, but if anyone wanted to copy the methods in the future, it would be very difficult for them to replicate. I learned quickly that you need to always keep your work extremely organized and readable by anyone who may want to see it, even if you don’t think anyone else will see it. At the very least, if you ever want to look back at your past work, details will help you remember much better.

Another lesson I’ve learned through this amazing opportunity is how to talk to people who are much older and more experienced than I am. Previously I have had difficulty with this, as I thought they would not be interested in what I have to say. However, as I talk to more people about a wider variety of subjects, I am quickly learning that is far from true. I am treated as an equal, and asked with real interest about my research. I have also been able to receive tons of good advice about biology research, graduate school, career options, and life in general. I have so many questions about it all, and everyone I’ve talked to has been so friendly and helpful! I am really grateful for the opportunity to be around so many people who are tackling important biological research.

I’m going to save talking about the trip until the end of this week, but I’m having a blast!

Week Four: Busy As A Bee, Happy As A Clam!

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I’m never sure as to what each week will bring here in Coos Bay. Every week has always managed to top the previous and this week was no exception. Tuesday, Scott, Jim, and I boated down to Indian Point to start the ODFW’s annual cockle survey. Using ArcGIS I generated 60 random points and uploaded the locations of these 60 points onto a GPS. These 60 points would serve as our sampling sites. We would lay down one square meter quadrats at the waypoints found on the GPS and rake a four tine rake over the quadrat once and record and collect the cockles found. Then we would turn 90 degrees and rake one more time and record the number of cockles found and collect them as well. This was repeated for each quadrat.

Raking for Pacific Heart Cockles at Indian Point

On Thursday we did this same process, only this time at Valino Island. Valino Island is a protected area and Indian Point is an area known for heavy commercial harvest of cockles. We chose these two sites in order to compare how harvest (or lack thereof) affects cockle size and recruitment over time. While Indian Point was very sandy Valino Island was quite the opposite. Valino Island is essentially a mud flat and it is easy to get stuck and sink. Scott and Jim had to pull me out of the mud several times, but not before musing—i.e., laughing—over how funny they thought my predicament was.

 

Stuck in the mud at Valino Island

When we returned back to the ODFW I placed the cockles into tanks of circulating water in order to take accurate wet weights. When clams are left out of water they tend to spit water out of their siphons which can give you inaccurate weight data; this is why we placed the clams back into water before recording weight. I also recorded shell length, height, and fatness which will be used in our analysis. Using R we ran some preliminary statistical tests that suggest that Valino Island, the reserve area, has much larger cockles but Indian Point has higher amounts of recruitment.

We also have been continuing our red rock crab surveys and we were lucky enough to have the pleasure of working alongside Sylvia Yamada, a professor and research scientist from OSU. Sylvia has been doing work throughout the years on the invasive green crab and was a delight to work with. Her plethora of knowledge and fascinating anecdotes made for a great week of crab processing. She brought Fukui traps, a Japanese trap that allows all sizes of crabs to walk through. We had been using box traps which bias samples by not letting the larger crabs in. However we did run into some trouble with the Fukui traps: the seals ate all our bait!

Scott, Larry, Sylvia, and I processing red rock crabs

The notorious bait thief!

Thursday was considerably out of the ordinary. Dean, a fish biologist for the ODFW, invited me along to process yellow-eyed rockfish with him. It was truly a treat as yellow-eyed rockfish have a harvest limit of two tons per year—a very small allowance—and are not often encountered. We recorded lengths and weights of the rockfish and also recorded their sex and stage of maturity. Dean also pulled otoliths from the rockfish. Otoliths are ear bones and are used to determine the age of a fish. We even had encountered a few fish that had been eaten by hagfish, which enter through the gills and eat the fish from the inside out. The fish remains whole but the body is completely flaccid as all its musculature and organs have been consumed. It was very surreal to see. And on top of the fun of handling some cool fish, a buyer stopped by to purchase halibut from the boat we were working with and gave us all brownies. Brownies for breakfast: how could I say no to that?

Yellow-eyed rockfish

Later in the week, Jim Carlton, an expert on the subject of Japanese tsunami marine debris (JTMD) and invasive species, came to visit OIMB to give a lecture on the incoming debris and teach a class on the topic of biological invasions. In a previous blog post I mentioned how Scott and I had discovered a Japanese pallet that had washed ashore. We had sent the samples and pictures we had taken to Jim and during his visit he informed us that the pallet had come from the Morinaga-dairy business, a famous dairy business in Yamato which is located in the metropolis of Tokyo. It was determined that the pallet contained various hydroids, Mediterranean mussels (M. galloprovincialis), pelagic barnacles known as Lepas, as well as jingle shells (Anomia cytaeum). Jingles are not commonly found on JTMD which made it an interesting find.

There is no such thing as a dull weekend at OIMB. Friday night the director, Jan, announced that a dying dolphin had washed up on Bullard’s Beach in Bandon and was hoping to have help in retrieving it. And so, Saturday morning I had the opportunity to drive to Bandon with a group of friends to help Jan retrieve the dolphin so that it could be dissected in the Birds and Mammals course. After about fifteen minutes of combing Bullard’s Beach we found the dolphin, loaded it onto a stretcher and carried it up and over the dunes to the truck to be hauled back to OIMB. The dolphin weighed over 200 lbs. but with one person on each corner of the stretcher it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be to carry. Though, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little sore!

Recovering a striped dolphin for dissection

As you can see, the birds had gotten to the specimen before we did

This coming week I’ll be heading to Corvallis to talk to the public about my summer work and Oregon Sea Grant. Each week always unfolds a new and exciting surprise and I’m ready to see what that will be this week! Until next time!

Week 4: Self-Directed Accomplishment

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This week I was supposed to be on a trip with my lab in Willapa Bay, Washington, doing field work. My foot is not healed enough that I was comfortable to go, so I had to sit this one out. I was able to go to the doctor and get an x-ray and my pinky toe is definitely fractured. This means another month of healing, which is basically my whole summer. The silver lining of the situation is that my injury lined up nicely with my move to a new house, allowing me to take it easy while still getting things done, like unpacking and getting settled. My injury means that I had to miss out on the fun and the other people in the lab have to do a lot more work to do, but we’re trying to make the best of it. I should be able to go on the next one though, which leaves this upcoming Friday!

Although I can’t go in the field, I have still been useful doing computer and lab work, which I had a lot of this week. My mentor wanted to give me something hands-on to do, so instead of processing some samples in the field like they normally would do, they brought them back in Ziploc bags so I could process them in the lab. These samples were from the mud and eelgrass areas near some bags of oyster shells that were put out a couple months ago, when Dungeness crabs were recruiting (metamorphosing from larvae into juveniles). The oyster shells create three-dimensional habitat at low tide, attracting crabs seeking shelter and providing suitable habitat for . We periodically sample the bags and some of the sediment underneath, as well as areas nearby with no bags, to look at the number and size of any crabs we find, which are mainly Dungeness (Metacarcinus magister) and shore crabs (Hemigrapsus spp.). This data helps my mentor look at the recruitment and growth of juvenile Dungeness, as well as their preferred habitats. In the lab, I sorted bags of eelgrass, measuring crabs I found and weighing the eelgrass both wet and after drying in an oven.

Because everyone was gone this week, I was responsible for my own success in getting things done, but I think I did a very good job. It helps that I am so used to being in school, where you set your own schedule. I’ve learned a lot of time management, and it’s good to know that this helps in the real world too!

I’m not sure what this next week has in store for me, but I’m definitely looking forward to going to Washington on Friday!

New Job Update!

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Hello! My name is Hilary Polis, and I was a Sea Grant Summer Scholar last year. I ran into Sarah Kolesar the other day and she asked me to write a blog update, because my summer scholar internship turned into a job opportunity! Last summer I worked for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Reserves Program as a socioeconomic analyst assistant. I was essentially collecting data on how people use the ocean at marine reserve sites, so that we can monitor this use over time. My work involved doing a lot of field work at the beach so that I could count and interview visitors the the reserve areas.

I continued my internship with ODFW in the fall, this time for class credit. My data collection in the fall consisted mostly of interviewing recreational fishermen to collect information for the state about how the behavior of these fishermen may  change over time as new regulations are put in place. I was lucky enough to receive a job offer to work for the ODFW marine reserves program full time as a socioeconomic analyst, after my mentor from last summer left ODFW for a different job and they needed someone to temporarily to cover her position until they can hire a new project leader. I feel very blessed to be given this opportunity and I feel like I may be in a bit over my head at times, it has created a tremendous opportunity for me to learn so much in a very short period of time.

My primary duty now consists of writing up all the research that has been done on the “human dimensions” or social side of marine reserve research since the program began for two sites: Otter Rock and Redfish Rocks. This write-up is now a 120+page report that will be published for the state when it is complete. I am finding that I am enjoying putting all the pieces of this work together. My favorite part of my job is reading studies that ODFW has contracted with researchers at OSU to complete. I am finding that many of user knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of marine reserves from the OSU studies is matching up with the data I gathered while doing surveys on the coast last summer.

I have also been asked to do a regional economic impact analysis on the impact of research to Port Orford, Oregon (Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve).  This consisted of setting up interviews with anyone that has ever done research at Port Orford and asking them questions about their spending in the region, then summarizing the data so that an economist can plug it into a model. It was fascinating to learn about all the research that is going on in the area, but also how well this community involves all of their different ocean stakeholder groups to create this collaborative form of management. It has also given me a better perpective about the number of people and spending that occurs to support research beyond just researchers themselves.

So while I don’t get to go out into the field as much and I don’t have as many stories about crazy encounters with the public, I was ready for a bigger challenge. This is such an amazing opportunity and I couldn’t have done it without my experience as a summer scholar last year!

 

week 3!

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This past week was a shortened work week due to the Fourth of July holiday. The shortened work week, however, meant that I had even less time to practice my newly acquired and refined analytical skills. I dove into theoretical papers about proper BACI designs (Before-After- Control- Impact) and discussed its application to the goals and objectives of the Oregon Marine Reserves. I also learned how to perform a power analysis, which essentially is a prospective method for determining an appropriate sample size required to detect a significant result within a given degree of confidence. This power analysis is a critical component of any experimental design, especially those that require the lethal extraction of animals.

One of the fundamental questions surrounding Marine Reserves is determining whether or not fish species tend to be older inside reserves than outside. To answer this question, some fish need to be lethally removed for otolith extractions, which can give a relatively accurate estimation of age and sexul maturity. But how many fish need to be lethally removed? If too little are removed then it may be an insufficient sample size to render a significant result. However, if too many are removed then more fish were euthanized than necessary, the idea being to minimize fish mortality. Thus, power analysis proves critical in this way by indicating the smallest sample size needed to detect a significant change in size.

On last week’s post I discussed my experience with the PIT tagging project. There was a question regarding the relevance of PIT tagging to my work here at HMSC. Although PIT tagging was an enjoyable learning experience, it did not relate directly to my work.  I mainly took the opportunity to practice proper fish handing, weighing, and measuring techniques, which I will be performing a lot of in the next upcoming weeks. ODFW will be chartering out fishing boats where volunteer anglers will attempt to catch a wide variety of rockfish species. When a fish is caught, it will be brought on deck to be quickly identified, measured, and weighed. Most will then be released, but a small percentage will be kept for otolith extraction. Fishing will take place in marine reserves and their respective comparison areas to gather baseline data on species composition and their associated physical attributes. This baseline data is critical for proper BACI designs and will be an important component for future analysis. Next week’s blog I will discuss some preliminary results of a few analyses that I have helped in. But until then, science awaits!

Week Three

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Happy belated fourth of July!  I hope you all enjoyed the holiday.
The other Hatfield residents and I spent a nice afternoon at Olalla Lake then barbequed back at the dorms.  In the evening we all watched fireworks over the bay.
I have exciting news to report from the office.  My first angler survey will be mailed out tomorrow!  The survey is being mail to boat owners, who in the past reported that they didn’t use a recompression device when releasing a yelloweyed or canary rockfish, the target species of my project.  I designed the survey to find out if any of the sport boat captains have begun using recompression devices since they were asked initially.  If they have begun using the device, I designed the survey to ask them what motivated them to begin using recompression devices and how they found out about them .  From this information I am hoping to glean information about what might motivate others to use the devices and also how news and information travels through the angling community.
I am excited to review the results, which should be in by the second week of August.  This information will help me select the right information and medium for each audience as well as how best to distribute my information.