Photos from our final day of fieldwork, assisting Jenni in sediment accumulation monitoring across the salt marshes - Photos from our last REU group excursion! Hall Lake: It's the end and it's bittersweet. I can’t wait to head back home but know that once I'm back I’ll be wishing I had more opportunities for fieldwork and research.
We’ve just finished presenting our posters, Every time I look at my poster I feel pride. It's a reminder of the hard work I've put into my research. All of the troubleshooting on ArcMaps, time spent learning to read tide charts and scheduling around the incoming tides, problem-solving safety procedures on the fly, trekking through a lot of mud, falling in love with a species that is also detrimental to our local ecosystems, and finally working through and analyzing all of the data collected, synthesizing it into this one final poster. This summer would not have been such a guiding influence on my future studies and work goals if it weren’t for Shon Schooler, Richard Emlet, Nicole Nakata, Maya Watts, and all of the scientists at South Slough that have invited me out into the field to help with their projects. I will be forever grateful - Thank you. I’m going to pack up, say goodbye to all the other REUS, drive back to my home, partner and cats and relish in all the work I’ve gotten to do this summer.
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Molly Keogh, a postdoc at UO that leads an earth science course visited. She was looking for evidence of the last big subduction quake from 1726 in our marshes. Shon’s property backs right up to the estuary so he invited her to take some core samples from the edge of his yard. Sebastian, Ytxzae, and I tagged along to assist, using the peat borer to collect sediment a meter down in the marsh. We found evidence of the quake at around 85cm deep on our core sample - Molly also pointed out a layer of organic matter that was likely linked to the old timber industry in town. Back in the day, foresters would toss the felled trees into the estuary’s waters and let them drift down into the bay where they’d be brought to a mill or port for shipping. She suspected the layer of organic matter was from all the debris that fell off the logs in the process. This week marked our final set of summer monitoring for the European green crab. Monthly monitoring has been such a big part of my field experience here and it was bitter-sweet that it came to an end. Sebastian and I started setting aside the larger green crabs from our traps, keeping them in the seawater tables and freezing the rest. By the end of the week, we had 5+ gallons worth of hearty green crabs that we took up to Spruce Ranch for an end-of-summer crab boil. I learned how to gut and clean crabs while Ytxzae, with the occasional surprise assistance of Jay, cooked up a big delicious meal on a tiny burner for all of the REU and South Slough interns. Finally, my research project has come to an end with Shon and Sebastian helping me set and collect my final site on Wednesday and Thursday. This project started with the hope of finding distribution trends in sexually mature females and young-of-the-year green crabs for enhanced monitoring and management efforts. My results found some trends of higher catch rates of sexually mature females at the zero-tide line in the lower and mid estuary. I also found that, overall, there is significantly higher catch rates of sexually mature male and females at the zero-tide line of the mid estuary, identifying it as a hot spot for further monitoring and mitigation efforts. Young-of-the-year crab trapping was unsuccessful during the summer but more testing throughout the fall could be done for better results. All in all, my findings showed strong variability, even within traps at the same site and water depth. This variability seems to be common with green crab monitoring and is one of the reasons why distribution modeling continues to be difficult. There was so much more that happened this week, I’ll just add photos to show some of the highlights. What a week! The stress of working in the field and analyzing data for my research poster is real and I don’t see it letting up soon. After squeezing in two weekend days of fieldwork at the tail end of good tides, I started the work week off with an absolute banger. We trekked out to Upper Hidden Creek on Monday to set traps and it was almost comically tough. Upper Hidden Creek requires about ~20 to 30 minutes of carrying heavy equipment across soft mudflats. The key to walking mudflats is being able to disperse your weight, thus preventing you from sinking. Being tall and having large feet (like I am/have) are ideal for this. In fact, I’ve even heard of grad students using boogie boards to slide across deeper mudflats for essentially the same reason. Nicole and Sherlyn, the two amazing humans that helped me set up traps at Upper Hidden Creek, are both more petite than I am and the increased difficulty that came with their size was pretty dramatic. All in all, there were more than a few moments of either losing boots and sinking knee deep for all of us. Even so, Nicole and Sherlyn were both smiling and laughing the entire time. Again, let it be known that they are real troopers and I wouldn't have been able to set up that site without them. By the end of Tuesday, I finished 8 of my study’s 9 surveying sites. Since then, I’ve been at the computer integrating all the data I’ve collected into charts and graphs for my research poster. My statistical skills are rusty so interpreting the data has been a struggle. Shon, Sebastian, Victoria, and Flynn have all given me helping hands, resources, and brainstorming time to me and I’m grateful for all it. Hopefully by next week's blog I’ll have both results to share on here! Despite it being a heavy work week we've all taken time for some special celebrations. Chloe’s 21st birthday was on Tuesday and we took her out to a local waterfront bar for her first drink and some tasty desserts. Friday marked the Invertebrate Costume Ball AKA the ~~Spinless Soiree~~ . I went as my favorite tide pooling invertebrate, the California sea cucumber (Parastichopus californicus). The UO students on campus went all out, bringing some top notch craftsmanship and creativity to the costume runway. After the ball the REUs piled into cars and drove to town to listen to some live music at a bar and take a break from the building pressure of our research posters.
Last weekend was one of the best yet. Elliott drove down from Portland for a visit and I proudly toured him all around campus and showed off everything I’ve been working on. We spent the rest of the weekend camping - a couple of days of cooking meals on the grill, drinking campfire coffee, hanging out down on the beach. I even snuck in some tide pooling. It was bliss. The fieldwork for my personal research project began on Tuesday and oof... it was a learning curve. I did my best to plan everything out ahead of time but when I got into the field - I just hit hiccup after hiccup. Some hiccup examples include figuring out how to harness myself to the shore as a safety measure while I waded out across the mudflats until I was belly-deep in the estuary's water, or how to ensure the crab traps for my high-intertidal zone weren't in the way of pedestrians and vehicles on the shore but still at the right height. I worked so slowly that I ended up racing the incoming tide. Even so, I’m proud that I kept focus and took the time to find reliable solutions. I’m also excited to say that I expect to have some preliminary results by the end of the weekend. On Friday Sebastian and Gavin, a volunteer from the Charleston Marine Life Center, came out to help with trapping. We harvested a good number of green crabs and even caught a few gunnel and sculpin for the aquarium in South Slough’s visitors center. It felt pretty damn good to share what I’ve been working on with them… it was also really nice to have some help carrying the heavier equipment from site to site. Some other highlights from the week included Adam, South Slough’s Monitoring Technician, taking Jay and me out on a nutrient run. Nutrient runs are part of a long-term monitoring project at South Slough that tracks nutrient levels in the estuary’s waters, creating a base reference of data to compare to as we see ecological shifts from climate change. We took the boat out to collect our water samples, starting down at the mouth of the bay and collecting periodically all the way up to the top of the Slough. Jay and I both assisted with the water sampling, learning how to collect clean samples from just above the sediment floor. Being out on the open water and participating in fieldwork that didn't include trekking through mud while carrying nets full of crabs was a much-appreciated break and helped get me re-energized for the next day of trapping. My last highlight was the beachside potluck that South Slough held for their summer interns. The Slough’s interns are diverse in their areas of focus and are spread out in different locations across town so the potluck gave us all a chance to all meet and connect while eating some delicious homecooked food. At one point in the evening, each mentor stood up and spoke a little bit about their interns, giving each of us a nickname that reflected on our time here and a certificate to make the name official. It was really sweet to see how much both the interns and mentors appreciate one another.
It's been a busy week with another busy one to follow. Signing off, Colleen “WOW, What’s that!” Walker |
AuthorHello! My name is Colleen Walker. I'm a New Yorker now living in Oregon where I am pursuing an AS in Biology at Clackamas Community College. This summer I'll be studying the European green crab alongside Dr. Shon Schooler at the South Slough National Estuary Research Reserve. Archives
August 2022
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