This past weekend was kicked off with helping Colleen in her personal study. I was not the only volunteer, however, as we were joined by an enthusiastic High Schooler who helps out the CMLC named Gavin. Colleen's study is pretty intensive, placing many traps out - some of which require her to wade out pretty deep in muddy waters. Going out with her allowed me to gain even more respect for her dedication to her study, and the fact that on most days she does it alone. The weather was beautiful, and it was a great time out in the field. This may or may not have been capped off with asking her to stop at a KFC for a spicy chicken sandwich on our way back. We also may or may not have been the first ones in line the minute that it opened at 10:30 am. The rest of the weekend was pretty run-of-the-mill for me, with a lot of math homework, and some time to recharge. In exciting news, the field study portion of my study has both begun and concluded in the past week. Shon joined me to help set up 18 traps, 6 each filled with either tuna, a white LED light, or cat food, in a randomized order at both Coos History Museum (CHM) and Isthmus Slough (IS). The findings were interesting. At CHM, there was a STAGGERING total of green crabs in the tuna traps at 118. This was followed by a substantially less amount in the cat food traps at 19, and again substantially less in the LED traps at 2. Wow. Even before doing any statistical analysis, I could have told you this would be a statistically significant difference. Curious to see if we would see similar results elsewhere, we also set up traps at IS. Here, I hypothesized we would find a greater amount of crabs in the LED traps, though perhaps still not on the level of what was found in the tuna traps. This is because CHM has a large amount of rubble dispersed around where we placed the traps, preventing the light from being able to see from a distance. We did observe this in the field, as well. There was a comparatively high 46 crabs in the tuna traps, as opposed to 16 in the cat food trap, and 14 in the LED trap. Using statistical analysis, we can consider the cat food and LED baits as having similar catch rates at this site, with tuna being better than both of them. It is pretty safe to say that South Slough, unfortunately, cannot switch to either cat food or LED lights. The rest of the week was spent summarizing data, making graphs, and starting my poster. We are getting into the home stretch of our experience out here, with poster drafts and critiques taking place this upcoming week in preparation for our last hurrah in the final week. In other news, Oregon is still gorgeous, as seen in the video taken from the forest behind campus. Next week's blog will be action-packed. Stay tuned!
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AuthorHey! I'm Sebastian Velazquez, a Biology (Ecology) student from Spring City, Pennsylvania. I am spending the summer studying invasive European Green Crabs under the guidance of Shon Schooler. Archives
August 2022
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