Week Nine: Time for Goodbyes

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Micaela Edelson

This week was my final full week as an Oregon Sea Grant Scholar. In addition to preparing for the symposium, at work I finalized tables for the aragonite saturation and pH thresholds for echinoderms, amphipods, and polychaetes. I will finish up with fish and bivalves this coming week. Also, this week at work, we discovered that Bernie Sanders posted a picture of Rosalyn, Ron, Weiwu, and I on his campaign Facebook. I was honored to be one of the 21 pictures he posted.

With regards to the final symposium, I thought it went really well. I felt really confident presenting on CBRAT and really knowledgeable when I could answer and explain my poster to questioners. I thought the symposium was well executed and a good last event/goodbye as most of the scholars left Hatfield for the summer and, I will not see all but Ron for a long time.

We did make the most of our time together this past week knowing that we had limited time. The Sea Grant scholars and the REU interns went out to Local Oceans for dinner on Wednesday as sort of a ‘last supper’ kind of deal. Afterwards, we went to Beir One and met up with more interns and enjoyed each other’s’ company while playing games.

On Thursday, my family came to take me to dinner after they spent a few days camping on the coast. We went to the Noodle Cafe and I had amazing pho!

Also on Thursday, the interns all had one final bonfire and listened to farewell songs.

Finally, on Friday I said goodbye to Austin at Hatfield, and I said goodbye to Abby and Rosalyn after they dropped my off at my house in Salem (on their way to Portland).

While it was sad to say goodbye, I still had an enjoyable weekend. I saw my dog, I saw Wicked in Portland on Saturday, and I was able to spend time with my family.

All in all, this week has been a good start to a great end.

Nearing the end of a great experience!

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Haley

The OSG summer scholars were able to present their research in a PowerPoint presentation and poster session this past Friday at Hatfield. Scholars, OSG staff, mentors, REU students and other Hatfield staff came to learn about our work and ask questions. It was a rewarding experience to be able to share what I’ve been working so hard on all summer to my coworkers and peers. Creating a poster and presentation was also great practice in presenting scientific work to the community.

As we wrap up these last couple weeks I have been spending a lot of time doing research at Oswald West State Park. We are trying to get in the last of our surveys and observations. There have been some rainy days, but also some beautiful, sunny ones as well! I have been taking some pictures (mainly on the nice days) while we eat lunch, so here they are!

View of the future Cape Falcon Marine Reserve.

Teenager skim boarding at Short Sand Beach in Oswald West State Park (adjacent to where the future Cape Falcon Marine Reserve will be in January 2016!)

Doing visitor observation counts at Short Sand Beach.

A giant jellyfish I found! Not sure what is exactly is going on with this jelly, like if it’s a bunch of jellies connected or what, but it was huge and squishy!

A Race to the Finish!

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Laura Gray

Since last posting on this blog, I’ve conducted another 13 interviews! I’ve been transcribing these conversations as fast as possible and sorting commentary into a list of subheadings so that I can identify themes based on recurring opinions and experiences. This is helping me to recognize elements that make for successful engaged research projects and form recommendations based on areas that could use improvement. I only have two weeks left to finish collecting all of this information and write my final report for the Sea Grant Leadership Team, but it’s coming along well and I’m increasingly excited as I see the final results come together!

Today, I submitted a large format poster that I’ll be presenting at the Summer Scholars Final Symposium this Friday at Hatfield. It contains only my preliminary findings since I’m still making my way through the transcripts, but I’m looking forward to sharing my work and learning about my peers’ projects. (If you click on the image below, you should be able to zoom in and take a closer look on the linked Flickr page.) Look forward to a final blog post next week, in which I’ll talk about my findings and final reflections on engaged research! It’s been a fantastic summer.

Fishing Observations

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Haley

This summer I have been working on quite a few projects with my grad student accomplice, Theo. They’ve all been based around Cape Falcon Marine Reserve, which will be implemented January 1st, 2016. It is the fifth, and last, and furthest north, marine reserve to go in along the Oregon coast. Most of the reserve is adjacent to Oswald West State Park, so that is where we do the majority of our research. Local community members and stakeholders were involved in deciding where they wanted the marine reserves to be placed. As the reserves mean no extractive purposes (i.e. fishing, shellfishing, etc.) or ocean development, fishermen wanted the marine reserves to be in places that would not significantly, negatively effect their fishing livelihoods. The Cape Falcon Marine Reserve is located in a portion of the ocean that is not heavily fished currently, however, there is still some fishing occurring within the future reserve (which is still completely legal as it does not become prohibited until January 1, 2016). To gather information on exactly how much fishing is occurring in this area, Theo and I have been conducting fishing pressure observation counts. We go to different locations along the coast to acquire the best views of the reserve in its entirety. At each viewpoint we count the number of buoys and boats we can see using binoculars, including any identification tips for the boats and buoys, such as name and color. Additionally, we record conditions of the environment such as sea conditions and weather conditions, as those will effect our abilities to accurately see all boats and buoys in the water. It’s amazing how you can see next to nothing without binoculars, and then you start using them and suddenly you can see dozens of buoys and a handful of boats! This project has been great practice for me at using binoculars and identifying boat types.

Week Eight: Boyfriend, BBQ, and BERNIE!!!

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Micaela Edelson

Last week I only worked three out of the five days. My boyfriend came up from California and I showed him around the coast on Wednesday and Thursday. We went to Agate Beach, Devil’s Punchbowl, the Historic Bayfront, and up to Lincoln City! It was very great seeing him!

On Monday, Tuesday, and Friday I did go to work and finished up collecting aragonite saturation and pH values for potential thresholds for the various taxa I needed to complete.

The weekend primarily consisted of two events: the tuna cook-off and the Bernie Sanders rally. On Saturday from 11-3 at the Newport docks, amateur and professional teams competed in the Great Albacore Tuna BBQ Challenge! Student tickets were only $10 and you can leave and renter throughout the day. Rosalyn, Ron, and Weiwu, an REU intern, stuffed our stomachs with fresh tuna for three hours. I was so full from the event I didn’t eat dinner even though the challenge ended at 3! The food was delicious and even though our favorites didn’t end up winning, it was still a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday, Abby, Rosalyn, Ron, Weiwu, and I all headed up to Portland to see Bernie Sanders speak at the Moda Center. We got to Portland around lunchtime and went to eat with my sister who met us there. We walked around Portland for a little bit and then my sister dropped us off at the rally at 4:30—an hour and a half before doors opened. We were able to go onto the floor in front of his podium and had a great view of the Senator. 28,000 people ended up showing up the rally—the largest rally in the election thus far. In a stadium with maximum capacity at 19,000, 9,000 people listened to his speech from outside the Moda Center. We listened to him speak about economic, racial, and social inequality, climate change, affordable college, and other serious political issues. I also ran into an old friend from high-school at the rally and saw pictures on my Facebook newsfeed of Facebook friends who also attended. It was extraordinary and invigorating.

Afterward, we went to Salt and Straw for ice-cream (I had the honey lavender flavor) and ended up getting back to Hatfield at 2 in the morning!

Week Seven: Boats and Coasts, Piercings and Potlucks

Posted on August 4, 2015 by Micaela Edelson

This past week I have been working on finding aragonite saturation and pH values for potential thresholds for fish, echinoderms, amphipods, and polychaetes. Sarah H. briefly visited me at work on Wednesday to see what I’ve been doing. On Thursday, our project was audited, so people from Corvallis came to interrogate my mentor about the quality assurance procedures for CBRAT. Also, on Friday, my mentor, Anthony, and I went on a boat ride in the estuary. We were going to go out of the boat and sieve through the mud and collect some samples just for fun; however, at our first stop Anthony got stuck in the mud and lost a boot! The boat ride was still fun and I was able to catch jellies and crab molts by reaching my hand out of the boat.

This week was also fun outside of work! On Wednesday, I went with a bunch of REU interns and got my nose pierced! Afterwards, to celebrate, we had a mini-wine and cheese night.

Thursday, Hatfield summer residents hosted another potluck, and the food was delicious! On Friday, Austin’s mentor, Dan, hosted Austin, Rosalyn, Abby, and I for another mini-potluck where we ate, played card games, and video games! It was really enjoyable! Then on Saturday, Abby, Rosalyn, Ron, Weiwu (REU intern), and I hiked Cascade Head! The view was great!

Afterwards, we went to Pelican Brewing Company for dinner and walked the beach at Pacific City!

Entering August….

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Doug Rossi

Typical day at the dorms

Abby had to go to a wedding in Eugene, so Ron, Micaela and I hitched a ride to explore Eugene!

We thoroughly enjoyed the Eugene Saturday Market and I got a cool rainbow trout hat!

Here’s us posing next to a sleepy Ron on the bus en route to see Inside Out in theaters. (By the way, super good movie! Go see it if you haven’t!!)

accidentally waking Ron up due to us taking pictures of him

This week on Monday, I went out with Abby and helped out ODF&W with their SMURFing surveys. I was super nervous and excited going into the day and came out with an incredibly miserable experience on the water. Abby and I went in for the first SMURF station/buoy, and I quickly had a mini panic attack and had to stop after the first station. Once I got back on the deck of the boat, I got violently sea sick and threw up throughout each subsequent station. It was super cool being able to go out in open ocean, but it’s definitely not for me hahaha. BUT, it was really cool to see Abby in such a comfortable setting. For context, Abby is on her way to getting her dive masters, and is already really used to these kinds of scenarios and settings and seeing her in the water was such a treat. She seemed so calm and in her element.

Afterwards, we came back to Newport to process the fish we caught via the SMURFs!

check out those colors!!!

Processing the fish in the lab afterwards was definitely more of my jam.

Further evidence that I’m destined for lab work.

Other work happenings….

Micaela at Wednesday donuts with my new wide-angle lens!

Labeling for dayssssss

I’ve mostly been on Excel/data work for most of the week:

note: Annie’s graham cracker snacks have been maintaining and guiding my desk side munchies towards a more manageable level

Bothering Micaela in her office

Grinding up green macro-algae samples for stable isotope studies (N15 specifically)

Some of the OSG scholars got together to watch the Grudge in the dining hall one night, so this is Abby and I imitating the Grudge girl a day later.

before

after

Bulls-eye at Bier One!!

One of the cool things about being this far along in the summer– you have enough data to actually analyze what you’ve been doing! So, after plotting the data we have accumulated from the estuary CTD/chlorophyll cruises, we found one of the extreme outliers was Alsea River.

So far, through our data analysis, we see a very clear trend across the board in all estuaries—as you increase salinity in these systems, you also see a correlated increase in phosphates. This can imply that there are oceanic drivers of nutrients and phosphates. However, Alsea showed high levels of chlorophyll and nutrients at a mid level of salinity, instead of this increasing trend we see with other Oregonian estuaries. We assumed the Alsea water samples already entered had been collected during an algal bloom, so we decided to do another sampling at Alsea a couple days ago to see if the data we had before was indeed, abnormal of typical Alsea conditions.

I analyze the samples we obtained on Thursday this upcoming week, so I’ll keep you posted as to what we find!

I got off work on Friday at 1:00pm, and brainstormed what I could do with all my free time. I visited the Hatfield visitor center and thoroughly went through all the exhibits, reading everything and watching every video. I was surprised I hadn’t done so yet, considering how long we’ve been at Hatfield already!

Also, unrelated, but this is a Potato Au Gratin dish I made for a get-together/potluck and I’m very proud of it.

Over the weekend, a few interns and I headed to Cascade Head and hiked to the top~

Remember when I said Salmon River was my favorite field site? I’m so glad I got to come back to Salmon again, this time with all mah new frands.

hanging out on the dock

Then after our hike, we visited Pacific City to go to Pelican Brewery and to hang out on the beach.

After a very jam-packed day, we chilled at the dorms and talked until the morning. This is Ron wanting to go to bed.

Also, since I’m not used to my GoPro yet, I have yet to make it a habit to upload all my pictures! Prepare for a photo-dump of photos taken from before.
From our weekend going up to Washington for the Gorge Amphitheater:

Field work:

Camping at the mid-summer check in!

Also this past week, for two days in a row, Abby and I decided to take advantage of living so close to the water, and just jump in after work!

“See you next week!”

Exploregon

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Haley

Even though I am a born and raised Oregonian, I still have plenty to explore in this beautiful state! I’ve been taking advantage of days off by adventuring around and I thought I’d share a few places I’ve been in this blog post in case anyone else is feeling up to a little weekend adventure.

Pictured here is Little Crater Lake. This is a hidden gem that my mentor at ODFW, Tommy, stumbled upon and told me about. This is located up by Mt. Hood. the water is super clear as you can see in the photo. Check out that tree you can see so clearly in the lake! Water temperatures here are about 34 degrees, so not ideal for long swims, but beautiful to look at!

Here’s the view of the Sisters Mountains from a chair lift at Mt. Bachelor. Bachelor is awesome for snow sports in the winter, but it’s still absolutely stunning and tons of fun in the summer. There’s plenty of mountain biking trails on the mountain. When I went up we did a summer dogsled ride that was tons of fun! Also, the restaurant is still open in the summer (which you take a chair lift up to); be sure to make nighttime reservations as it’s unbelievably beautiful at night!

This is Steelhead Falls, which is part of the Deschutes River. There are plenty of places to do some cliff jumping into the water around here. When we went there were kayakers practicing going down the waterfall and then rolling back over when they flipped. Super beautiful spot, not too crowded and also pretty dang cold water, though not as cold as Little Crater Lake.

This is Smith Rock during sunrise. Smith Rock is a popular destination in Central Oregon. I would certainly recommend a visit to hike here, just make sure to bring lots of water as there is little to no shade and temperatures rise quickly in the summer! This is also a good place for rock climbing if anyone is interested in that!

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few spots I’ve been around Oregon lately in case anyone else wants to go exploring, though it’s difficult to leave Newport on the weekends because it’s such a beautiful beach!

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Doug Rossi

It’s been a bit of time since we’ve last spoken, blog. A lot has happened– both the good and the bad (the bad mostly being me throwing up on one of our field days).

All of the boats at the EPA are named after birds. I threw up on the Osprey for our field day on the Umpqua.
Other than getting the most sea sick I’ve gotten in a longgggg time, the Umpqua is definitely one of my favorite systems. Super pretty!

We stopped at the Grateful Bread for some marionberry scones before hitting the estuary.

Then after work, Abby and Sara and I hit up Nye Beach!
We saw a really cool history of boarding (including skateboarding, surfing, etc) shown through artwork.

In other news, I got a bulls-eye for the first time too!!!!! It’s common for Hatfield grad students, interns, and the younger crowd to hit up Bier One on Wednesdays to play games and hang out. It’s cool to see familiar Hatfield faces fill up a room.

Also, this is Ron killing a spider for Abby and I. Ron’s our resident bug killer.

Fieldwork at Salmon River is my all time favorite so far.

I think it’s obvious why.

When we take water samples, we take measurements of pH, temperature, in situ fluorescence, DO, DO% saturation, and salinity of the “Bottom” depth, “Mid”, and “Surface”. However, we only take the “Mid” water samples to filter out for chlorophyll and nutrients. BUT! if the salinity between the bottom depth and surface is more than two units apart, we take samples from both the bottom and surface (doubling our work). At Salmon, every station we stopped at, we would have to take two samples. This was very strange, seeing as it was one of our smallest systems, and the river was only 2-5 meters deep in some areas. That much change in salinity/other parameters in such shallow waters made me wonder what was up. Also, at one of our stations, a group of cows were just chilling on the bank. Needless to say, the chlorophyll levels were a lot higher, and nutrient levels were probably super high by the cows.

On the weekend, we headed to the Gorge Amphitheater to see Zac Brown Band perform!

We stopped at Multnomah Falls on the way up to Washington~

THE GORGE!

The gorge isn’t always evergreen-y though, some parts looked like the Grapevine in California.

on our way back

After camping that night after the show, we were on our way back to Newport. But… we took a wrong turn and ended up in Seattle…Don’t ask us how that even happened…

Back in the lab… more sonication for processing the chlorophyll samples
I was also able to do some fieldwork besides the chlorophyll/nutrient sampling we’ve been doing. I got to go out on the mudflats to help a grad student with a seagrass experiment part of the ZEN project (UC Davis represent!) I take pride in saying Jay Stachowicz, who started the ZEN project, was my general ecology professor, and now am helping with the ZEN, 400+ miles away.

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Speaking of varying fieldwork experiences… I got to help out with sea star surveys with ODF&W !

4 am selfies with the roomie :)

Henricia leviuscula

We got to go inside Devil’s Punchbowl for a ROV-ing survey.

During our Sea Grant Mid Summer check-in, we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium!

ROCKFISH!

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Later that weekend, we headed to Eugene! Here are some rapids on the Williamette some of us jumped in. Eugene was awesome. It feels like a mini-Portland, but one that doesn’t try very hard to be too hip.

There’s a U-Pick blueberry farm in a town nearby!

YUMMM! blueberry picking! YAY!

After work one day, we decided to go to Yaquina Head to check out the lighthouse.

In reference to the SMART goals we made the first week…

– feeling comfortable in a room full of professionals in my field has been improving, thanks to free donut Wednesdays at Hatfield. Here, we’re able to chat and get to know everyone at Hatfield in a casual setting

– Twitter, unfortunately, has not been improving. I think I’m having a hard time getting into Twitter because I didn’t have one before this summer.

– As for learning local species, I have been adding plenty more, thanks to the recent trips to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and helping ODF&W out!

That’s all folks! Peace out~ see you next week

Oh my Cod…Not Another Fish Pun

Posted on July 26, 2015 by sea_abb

Field days are the best. They take up a good portion of the work day, they involve going out on the water, and they are more fun than sitting in front of a computer and drinking your weight in coffee. Yet, as I’ve learned, while there are weeks with numerous field days, there are also long days that consist of sitting at the office and looking at a computer.

This is what my week six consisted of. Although while sometimes I watched the minutes tick by, there were times where I really enjoyed working with the data that we had collected, while in the office. This week I was able to take data collected from long lining, (one of the surveying methods used in the Marine Reserves), and use ARCgis to map where fish were taken up and what species they were. This was a tedious process, but very satisfying once I was able to put the map together. Another reason I enjoyed this was the fact that this was one of my goals I wrote at the beginning of the summer. I now feel like I have a better grasp on using ARCgis and really enjoy using it as well. While the week consisted of a lot of sitting, I learned a lot and am chipping away at some of my goals for this program.

While work takes up a good chunk of the day, some of the shenanigans we get into after we get back to Hatfield can turn the most boring days into fun. Thursday night we decided it was time to test our vocals and hit up Hoovers Bar and Grill for some Karaoke. It took Rosalyn and I some time, but we decided on ABC by the Jackson 5. We quickly learned that we both did not possess the skill to reach the pitch of that of a ten year old Michael Jackson. It didn’t matter though. We killed it anyways.

As well, this weekend was relaxing and a ton of fun. On Friday we explored the Yaquina Head State Park and wandered around the lighthouse. Saturday, I was able to go to one of my good friend’s wedding in Eugene and today I went diving in Florence! It was an action packed weekend and I am very much looking forward to my next week of adventures!

Sara scoring some epic fish videos

Top of Yaquina Head State Park overlooking Agate Beach

Sea Grant Scholars

Learning through experience, for the future of our oceans