Well readers, the journey has come to an end. My experience at OIMB was very enjoyable. Being at the Coastal Trophic Lab (CTEL) was great. I still like doing field work but video analysis isn’t bad either. I thank Dr. Galloway for accepting me in his lab and for teaching me about echinoderms like sea urchins and sea stars. I’m glad I got to learn from him and others at OIMB.
This week was mainly focused on the poster session Friday. On Monday, I had a final session with Dr. Galloway in which we made the final changes on the poster. On Tuesday, we had a our final lunch with Maya and Nicole. We also had to submit our final draft of the poster and have a program debrief in the afternoon. In the debrief session we discussed what things that we liked and disliked about the program among other things. On Wednesday, we had lunch with Shon Schooler from south slough. He told us about the different places he worked and what caused him to come to Oregon. After having lunch with Shon Schooler, some of us took a trip to Hall Lake. Hall Lake was really beautiful, it’s basically a lake in the middle of dunes and forest. Sebastian, Gina, Colleen and I climbed to the top of the dunes, it was a journey but it was all worth it because we got to see everything from the top. From Hall Lake we went to Domino’s because we didn’t make it back in time for dinner. On Thursday, Sherlyn and I took a trip to a cave off of Bastendorff Beach. It was pretty cool cave and it led to a semi-secret beach which is only accessible through the cave. I’m not sure what the true backstory is on the cave but I heard it was made for a train to deliver construction material when the docks were being built. On Friday, we had our poster session which was great. A lot of people asked interesting questions and showed interest in my project. Initially, I was a bit nervous but after the first few minutes those nerves were gone.
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Hello again readers!! We’re almost to the end of the program. It has be an adventurous journey for me and I’m glad I got to experience it. Since I finished the sea star count and the density count, I’ve just been working on my poster in the lab. Besides working on my poster, this week has been a bit quiet. On Tuesday we had our weekly lunch with Maya and Nicole which is always delightful. In the afternoon we had a professional development session that was catered towards leadership training. It held via zoom and was conducted by the Holden Centre on UO main campus. The session was informative although I thought more leadership skills would’ve been discussed.
On Wednesday we met with Ed Hughes who gave use pointers on things we should try to do as young scientist to capitalize on our experiences. On Wednesday we also had a zoom seminar with Melva Treviño Peña from the University of Rhode Island. It was titled, “Engaging with diverse communities: From “listening” to bring them into the research”. Unfortunately, I was unable to hear much due to technical difficulties on my end. After the seminar, we had our poster critique in the dining hall classroom. We got feedback from Richard, Maya, Nicole as well as our peers. I think we all got really good feedback and used the feedback to make the necessary changes to our posters for the final draft submission to Richard and Maya on Friday. We had a part two to the seminar on Thursday with Melva Treviño Peña. This seminar was titled “This is the way?: Carving our own paths in academia”. As the name suggest the seminar was focused on how we carve our way in academia. It was very interesting seminar and I gained a lot from it. On Friday, I sub mitted my final draft of the poster and by Saturday morning I got back my feedback and started working on making the changes. Saturday afternoon we visited the South Slough interns and had a crab boil at their house. It was great, Ytxzae handled the crab cooking and he did a great job. We used the European green crabs that were caught by the sought slough interns. Though they didn’t have as much crab meat as other crabs, they tasted good. Welcome back readers! It’s week 7 already, time truly flies. This week I’ve been doing the same thing for the whole week. I’ve been using ImageJ (a Java-based image processing program) to calculate the area of the still images. The density of the sea stars would be calculated after all the areas are calculated. Besides calculating the area of the still images some other activities happened this week. On Tuesday we had our weekly lunch with Maya and Nichole which is always delightful. In the afternoon we had a professional development session that was focused on how to get into grad school. We had faculty like Svetlana Maslakova and Craig Young speak about what they look for when choosing a grad student. We also had former REUs give their experiences and advice on how they applied to grad school and the challenges they faced. In my opinion, it was the best professional development session we had to date.
On Wednesday we had lunch with Ali Helms from South Slough. She told us about some of the conservational work she does, and she also spoke t us about what made her decide to join the south slough team. We also had a seminar in the boathouse with Dr. Ana Spalding from Oregon State University. She gave a talk entitled “Governing the ocean: (Human dimension of) MPAs as a tool for conservation” It was an interesting talk, and I learned a lot more about MPAs (Marine Protected Areas). Thursday and Friday were mainly focused on doing more work on calculating the area of the still images so I could use it to find the density of the sea stars so I could put that information in my poster draft. However, it was also focused on coming up with an activity to engage the public at the CMLC on Saturday. Since Catalina and I were working on calculating the density of organisms in in kelp forest we decided to collaborate on the CMLC activity. We showed the people that came up to us our initial activity, which was the urchin count. We explained to them about the urchins, and they also tried to count how many urchins were in some of the images. We then each branched off and told people about what we were working on currently and some of the results we gained. People were really interested in our projects and asked some really interesting questions. Wow, its week six already. This week was lab focused, I tried calculating the density of the seas stars from the Haida Gwaii benthic still images but it was a struggle. First, it was hard to see some of the lasers in the stills then I ran into some trouble with my data. I realized that I counted some of the images wrong so I did a complete recount on Monday. It was a very tedious task but well worth it. I stayed in the lab till 9 p.m. to ensure that recount wouldn’t hinder the progress of my work in days to come. After finishing the recount, I’ve just been using image J to calculate the area of each still image. This would then allow me to calculate the density of bat and leather star populations. It is a long process though, I have to find the area of 600 images. Some days fell very monotonous because I’m doing the same thing over and over. But I realized that having a podcast or music playing helps the process go faster.
Besides the recount, there were two other important activity this week. On Tuesday we had a professional development session with Trish Mace who is the director of The Charleston Marine Life Centre (CMLC). She gave us tips on how to engage our audience when we’re presenting and explaining our research project. Though this scientific research, that doesn’t mean we’ll only be speaking to scientist about our project. Our audience may vary and we have to find ways to engage everyone. The session was very helpful and I gained a lot of information from it. On Wednesday we had lunch with Craig Young, who is the director of OIMB. He shared with us some of experiences, including one when there was a malfunction in a submarine he was in which led to them sinking. Eventually they got to fill the hull with enough air which caused the submarine to float to the surface. Both directors were interesting in their own way and shared valuable information. |
AuthorGreetings, blog readers! My name is J'mie Lawrence and I'm from the Caribbean island of Grenada. I've spent the last year at SWOCC (Southwestern Oregon Community College). My current objective is to earn a transfer degree so that I can enroll in a four-year university to study marine biology. Being able to do marine research with Dr. Aaron Galloway at OIMB is incredibly exciting for me because I've always had a passion for marine biology. Archives
August 2022
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