It is week 8, blog readers! As promised, I have attached some pictures taken at the invertebrate ball this past weekend. The ball was very fun, and as I expected, my favorite part about the event was seeing everyone’s fascinating costumes. Some people put quite a bit of effort and thought into their costumes, and being able to see their invertebrate on full display while they strutted down the “catwalk” was vastly entertaining. Unfortunately, I did not realize that every person who dressed up was required to walk down the catwalk in front of everyone. When it was my turn to parade my jelly costume, I felt a little nervous, but luckily, Sherlyn was there to walk with me since we dressed as the same organism. After costume prizes were given out, all of us left the invert ball early to go hang out at 7 Devils and listen to some live music, which was a great way to end an already amazing night. We also had the CMLC presentation session this past weekend. The ability to communicate information effectively to broad audiences, such as the public, is an essential skill, especially in any scientific field, and this presentation at the CMLC allowed us to further refine our abilities. For my table setup, I made a mock eelgrass meadow out of green streamers and some brown pipe cleaners, and I decorated the meadow with some stickers of various marine organisms. Since I had a plethora of stickers left over, I decided to place them on my table for people to take as they pleased, and seeing younger kids (as well as some adults) get excited about the stickers definitely put a smile on my face. Overall, I really enjoyed sharing my research with the CMLC visitors and as well as hearing and answering their interesting questions.
Regrettably, I have no movie night update for you this week. Victoria went away this weekend to visit some family back in California, so we decided to sit this movie night out. Nevertheless, since this upcoming weekend will be the last weekend of the REU program, we are hoping to have a big movie night planned. This fieldwork week has featured some very early mornings (like out in the field before 5 am early) and, hence, has led to my first ever use of a headlamp. Completing eelgrass monitoring and sampling in the pitch darkness is certainly difficult, but at the same time, there is something eerily beautiful about conducting fieldwork at these sites so early. First of all, I have glimpsed a myriad of organisms active this week that I normally do not see during fieldwork, and we got to experience the sunrise almost every day this week, which was absolutely breathtaking every time. Speaking of organisms observed during fieldwork, I had a startling encounter with a Dungeness crab at Fossil Point on Tuesday. I was almost finished collecting my data from the transect and was reaching the point of exhaustion when suddenly I spotted something massive moving in my peripheral vision. A fairly large Dungeness crab emerged from the tangled mess of eelgrass and algae near me and strolled right beside my leg, suspiciously eyeing me the whole time. I definitely felt more awake after that! In addition, I also spotted an opalescent nudibranch (sea slug), and I even held a jelly (with gloves on of course)! Earlier this week, all of the REUs were required to show the rough draft of their poster and receive constructive feedback on potential things to change. I was somewhat skeptical about showing everyone my poster, as I have been diligently working on it and afraid of receiving negative criticism, but the poster critique went relatively well. The ideas that everyone had for my poster certainly improved the poster as a whole and allowed me to organize the poster in a more interpretable manner. As the poster presentation looms ever closer, I feel more and more excited (as well as anxious and slightly stressed) to share the findings of my summer research.
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AuthorHi everyone! My name is Chloe Cummins, and I am from Loretto, Tennessee. I am a rising senior at the University of Tennessee Southern where I am pursuing a B.S. degree in Biology (with a concentration in Wildlife Biology and Ecology) and a minor in Sustainability. I’m super excited to be researching the reproductive ecology of eelgrass with my mentor Ali Helms at the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve during my time here at OIMB! Archives
August 2022
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