My project is working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife analyzing the socioeconomic impacts of marine reserves on local and visitor communities. Throughout these past two weeks, we have been continuing data collection by surveying people. From there, we then have been putting these responses into a database. I have been able to check out many beautiful spots along the coast, I have been making awesome connections, and have been gaining many skills throughout these couple of weeks. While one individual is entering data or conducting visitor surveys, the other two individuals are out interacting with the public and conducting visitor surveys. In order to stay motivated, I stay in touch with family and friends, and enjoy the scenery. In addition to work, I have been able to explore outside of of Newport. I, along with my intern-friend, Jessica, went to Drift Creek Falls. There was an interesting suspension bridge that went over the creek and waterfall. It was a bit muddy and slippery closer to the bridge; nonetheless, it was a great time. I look forward to the next couple of weeks.
P.S. I named this blog Gravity Falls because it reminds me of how GF is based in Oregon and because of the waterfall in my photo.
So far working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has been a great experience. The first few weeks of the job were spent creating codebooks for surveys, hashing out logistics regarding the sampling schedule, and getting out in the field to begin collecting the 800+ visitor intercepts needed for the final project statistics. I also conducted business surveys in Lincoln City and this upcoming week I will be conducting them in Yachats, OR.
Lisette Perez and I @ Cascade Head conducting visitor surveys.
Usually, my work day begins with much needed coffee and stuffing various things into my backpack to successfully complete a day of visitor surveys. At around 8-9 AM, I began traveling to certain sites along the Oregon Coast’s marine reserves to initiate participation in ODFW’s anonymous business and visitor surveys. At around 3:30-4:00, site surveying is typically complete and the teams meet back up in the office for data entry and other logistics regarding ID numbers for surveys or scheduling. Much of the data collection of this project comes directly from the public. Therefore, a majority of my time has been spent at Oregon’s marine reserves. I check in with supervisors once a week and team meetings happen during these check ins as well.
I would say that my motivation has come directly from the team members that I work with and support from friends or family. I would also go as far to say that being able to call the Oregon Coastline my office for several hours of the day helps me realize that much of my worries or doubts are unnecessary-I’m in a beautiful place! I am now fully vaccinated and glad that I could contribute to the numbers that lifted the mask mandate. Perhaps my favorite part of the job so far is that while conducting visitor surveys I meet so many dogs or young kiddos ready to play on the beach!
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.
One of the infographics I made for an EOS video!
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!
A picture my mentor Jamie took while I was in Coos Bay visiting her extension office
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!
Week four is almost over and my time in Cannon Beach is really ramping up! My project is centered around reviewing the current virtual field trip program at Haystack Rock Awareness Program (HRAP) and then conducting a literature review to make recommendations for how the program can be improved going forward. I personally really love this project because I think that it’s a great way to involve kids that might not have a way to be able to come to the beach or get to see tide pools.
I have spent the last couple of weeks doing lots of research about both environmental education and field trips. More specifically, virtual field trips. This has been really interesting because it’s a very new field so there isn’t tons of research that has been done and there are still lots of gaps in the field. However, it’s really interesting to see how many different perspectives there are for something as seemingly simple as field trips and how many different considerations there are in where schools go and how they impact student learning.
Because so much of my work is research and recommendation based, it means that I spend most of my time on a laptop looking up research or writing out my report. This week I’ve also been reaching out to some teachers to see what obstacles they face in engaging with online learning resources and how I might be able to overcome them.
Since so much of work is done on a computer, I have a really hard time focusing for the entire day and my favorite way to take a break is to get outside! I personally love going down to the beach and getting to talk to everyone that’s visiting. It always pushes me to learn more about all the plants and animals we have down at the beach and I love getting to answer questions and explain things that they might not have known before. It’s a great way to get outside, especially when the weather’s nice and it’s always a welcome break from staring at a screen. I am definitely lucky that I get to be fully in-person for the summer and I really try to take advantage of that by getting involved in as many things as possible and really getting to know the area. For example, today I started my day by spending a couple hours down at the beach where I saw a molting barnacle which was definitely a fun sight and then attended a board meeting for a partner organization of HRAP where I gave a brief introduction of what I’m working on for the summer and how it will benefit the conservation efforts at Haystack Rock. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to continue to do my research as well as get to talk to some teachers about what they would like to see from a virtual format.
A Goosebeck Barnacle molting it’s cirri (mouth parts)
I can’t believe we are almost halfway through the Summer Scholars program! As an intern at OCOIN (Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network) my days often begin with a zoom meeting. The type of meeting changes daily, depending whether it is the technical, outreach, or executive team checking in. We discuss progress on projects like updating research in our Coastal Research Explorer tool, creating newsletters for the OCOIN network, and drafting budget proposals. Often after meetings, I meet with my summer scholar colleague, Joshua, over zoom and work together on our daily tasks. Bouncing ideas off each other over zoom is my favorite part of the job so far!
OCOIN is based in Oregon, yet steering committee members are scattered around the world; our zoom meetings bridge the distance between cities throughout Oregon to as far away as Bermuda, New York, and California. While the time zone differences can sometimes make scheduling difficult, I really enjoy how working remotely can still connect the OCOIN team.
Throughout the last two weeks, my project has begun to take on a more definitive shape. I am learning that through trial and error, more ideas have come and more ideas have been pivoted, but ultimately these pivots have provided me with a more streamlined point of focus. During my first week, I had a very broad idea of what I would be doing, and over the past weeks I have been actively working with The Friends of Haystack Rock, a graduate student from OSU, and with my primary host, The Haystack Rock Awareness Program. While they all have different pieces of the puzzle that is my project, ultimately, they all have the general basis of strengthening science communication efforts to maximize engagement and interest in marine life and health.
My routine at first was pretty monotonous during the first weeks because I was reading paper after paper about science communication and marine conservation. As we wrap up week 4, my days and weeks have been looking differently. Some days I’m on the beach talking to the visitors of Haystack Rock, or I’m helping out with an event like the Puffin Watch that was broadcasted on Facebook Live. Some days I spend the entirety of the day inside the office reading and writing about my project. As far as meetings go, I have a weekly check-in on Wednesday with my supervisor and working meetings throughout the week with the graduate student and Friends of Haystack Rock. This week I will be sharing my progress at a board meeting and doing some collaboration with the communications coordinator at HRAP for some ideas I’ve come up with. What I’ve been really enjoying about this internship is the flexibility and immense opportunity in engaging in activities outside of my project. I saw the opportunity to assist on a field trip for Spanish speakers and decided to take it on! While it might not entirely align with my project, I believe this will provide me with an incredible opportunity. One of my favorite on-the-job activities currently is when I’m out by the tidepools and seeing what’s different for the day. Sometimes I look for the biggest Giant Green Anemone and sometimes I try to see how many puffins I can see flying over me. Somehow inventory of these things makes me feel more tied to my project and gives me perspective on what the overarching goal is. This is really important when you are balancing multiple small projects at the same time.
lemon nudibranch
The supervisor at HRAP, Kelli Enis, has been incredibly supportive and has provided me with multiple opportunities to connect with others in fields that I am interested in. This past week we drove down to Newport and met up with a few people from the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Service. This meeting gave me incredible insight as to what I should be doing and what I should look for moving forward with my career.
To stay motivated and energized after the afternoon slump I like to walk down to one of the local coffee shops and try a different drink. Different in my own definition just means choosing an iced americano with oat milk as opposed to a cold brew with oat milk. Still a fun activity nonetheless! Another fun activity is watching the puffins and the dogs at the beach. As of this morning, I have a newfound appreciation for watching puffins flying off cliffs. They look like they’re jumping off into the sea, but just as you think they won’t swim, they catch the wind and start flying. Overall, my day in life as a summer scholar at Haystack Rock Awareness looks really fun! Even when I’m reading or writing for most of the day.
It has been a great few weeks interning with the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network (OCOIN). OCOIN is run by volunteers, so I have had the opportunity to meet professionals from many organizations throughout Oregon. My first week was spent meeting the members of the Steering Committee to learn a little about them and their role within OCOIN. I have since begun to dig into some of the projects that I am working on this summer. The project that I am most excited about today is helping write OCOIN’s newsletter. I get to interview a researcher that I have wanted to meet, and we get to talk about their research.
My Home Office
OCOIN, being run by volunteers, was primarily operated remotely before the pandemic. While it would be nice to meet people in person, I feel as though I flourish in the flexibility of this environment. Another Summer Scholar, Charlotte, and I Zoom with while working to make our workday seem a little more personal. It is sort of like sharing an office with someone; I feel lucky to have such a wonderful “office-mate”. We also get to have weekly meetings with each committee within the organization, whether it be the whole committee or just a one-on-one meeting. My workstation can take place in a variety of locations. Typically, I am in the comfort of my home. However, this coming Monday, I will be wrapping up an inspirational trip to the coast. With the flexibility of my work location, I will be able to work with a view of the ocean, which is central to the work that I am doing.
I have been encouraged to provide an outside perspective to help shape OCOIN. It feels inspiring to share ideas that I have to make a difference within the organization. I have been offered many professional development opportunities: sitting in on meetings, informational interviews with organizations I see myself working for in the future, and training to help develop the technical skills that I am looking for. Not even halfway through my internship, many of my goals already seem to be taking shape. I am so grateful for the opportunities provided thus far as a Summer Scholar.
Hello all! Yalin again, I am working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) this summer researching the effects of ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH) on our coastal species with a focus on creating a hypoxia infographic.
So far I have read over 100 scientific papers on how hypoxia is affecting our coastal species, and I still have tons more readings to do in the coming week or so. As I am a virtual intern due to COVID, my daily routine has been pretty simple. I get up bright and early to get a nice cup of coffee and a warm breakfast before I settling into my desk for the rest of the day. Typically, my day split up between reading papers, attending seminars, meetings, and starting to figure out how Adobe Illustrator works. I have weekly check-in meetings with my mentor Liz Perotti and Caren Braby, who is one of the co-chairs of the OAH Council. Other meetings I partake in with my mentor Liz include the Pacific Coast Collaborative bi-weekly meetings, the Shellfish Program meetings, and much more.
Clams found at the North Jetty Beach in Florance
As it can get pretty quiet just working alone from home, I try to play music or listen to podcasts to liven up my room a bit. My current favorite podcast is called “Two Hot Takes” which I highly recommend you check out. To give my brain a break between reading papers, I will treat myself to 5 or so minutes of scrolling through TikTok or just people watch outside my window to give my eyes a break from looking at a screen. After the workday is over, I usually take a walk around my neighborhood and say hi to the neighborhood cats if it’s not too hot outside. On the weekends, I try to give myself as much outdoor time and social interaction as I can handle to make up for the hours of being indoors for work. This last weekend, I was cat-sitting for a past professor of mine in Eugene and got to visit a few friends while I was there. We even made a trip to Florance where we found a few clams and saw tons of crabs.
Friendly neighborhood cats
One of my favorite on-the-job activities so far has been interacting with other interns and getting to talk with other professionals from ODFW and beyond. Last week I got to meet Jack Barth, who is the other co-chair of the OAH Council, and Emily Marrow who is an MSI intern working on an ocean acidification awareness project. We had a great time sharing outreach ideas but also just talking amongst ourself about our interest, thoughts about a certain ocean documentary, and so on. We are hoping to meet up in person sometime this summer in Newport, so fingers crossed that we can make that happen!
In the last couple of weeks, we have really started to get into the groove of surveying visitors to Oregon’s marine reserves. We are nearly done with surveying businesses in nearby towns and will start focusing more time on data entry and analysis. Our day to day schedule varies quite a bit. We usually start with a bit of driving followed by four hours of surveying visitors at different access points to Oregon’s marine reserves. We work in pairs, so whoever is not doing visitor surveys is either surveying businesses or in the office inputting the survey data into an excel spreadsheet.
The one exception from this routine was our trip to Cape Falcon near Tillamook. That particular location is too far to travel to in one day, so Phoenix and I drove up and stayed two nights in Garibaldi. Our one survey location was Oswald West State Park, one of the most popular parks on the Oregon Coast. We were able to complete almost as many surveys in three days as the previous week and a half combined!
We interact with the public quite a bit. Most people are very friendly and happy to take the survey, especially if we mention that we are interns. People really love the coast and beautiful scenery and many are passionate about preserving it. We have gotten a little off track at times chit-chatting with visitors about marine reserves and the goals of the survey.
COVID-19 hasn’t impacted us too much especially in the last couple weeks. We spend most of our time outdoors and since we are on the coast it is usually windy. Many businesses have dropped mask requirements for fully vaccinated people and so we have been able to about surveying like its 2019 for the most part.
We didn’t get much of a chance to explore while we were at Cape Falcon but hope to on our next trip in a couple weeks. Lisette and I did make it to Drift Creek Falls near Lincoln City on one of our days off, we even made it down to where the waterfall goes into the creek. We brought my dog Thistle along and found out that waterfalls are not her favorite and neither are suspension bridges.
It has been a great few weeks and I am looking forward to the rest of the Summer!
Hey y’all! It’s me, Grace, your resident shrimp scientist! I’m working with the USDA and OSU Fisheries and Wildlife to determine cryptoniscan lifespan and settlement and ground truthing the age/size relationship between Orthione and Upogebia.
I’ve been up to my elbows in shrimp the last two weeks! A lot of my time gets spent in the lab. I usually analyze the shrimp and input their data while my lab partner, Joshua, does the cryptoniscan experiments. Since June 25, I’ve analyzed over 200 mud shrimp! Only about 124 more shrimp from the May sample to go. We plan to go back out in late July to get another big sample. But hopefully not as big as the May sample…We usually work for a couple hours in the morning, have lunch together outside (weather permitting), and work for another couple hours in the afternoon. We have pretty similar tastes in music so we usually put on a fun playlist and sing to each other while we work or listen to cool ecology podcasts.
A large female mud shrimp in my palm for size reference
On Wednesday night, we biked out to the fishing pier with Sarah Henkel and her grad and REU students to do plankton tows. We didn’t get back to the lab until about 1:15am! Thankfully we waited to comb through the samples for cryptoniscans until the next day. We’re planning to go out onto the mudflat behind HMSC on Friday morning around 5am with Brett Dumbauld and his crew to see how they do their annual sampling for USDA. We are also gearing up to go out with them next week to a couple different sites in Washington to look for remaining Upogebia populations. It’s going to be a great but hard working week next week!
Joshua and I doing plankton tows on the fishing pier next to Rogue (July 7, 2021)
We usually send our data to our supervisors/research team at the end of each work day and have meetings at least once a week. COVID-19 hasn’t affected us much. In the beginning we wore our masks in the lab, but with the most up-to-date info from OSU we are back to just about normal operating conditions. My favorite activity so far is field work! It feels good to be able to put in some physical activity while doing science. Being in the lab is fun too, mostly because of my great working relationship with Joshua, but it can drive you a little crazy looking at shrimp all day, every day. But it’s all definitely worth it to try and protect our ecosystems and estuaries.
