We started our third week with a nice trip to University of Oregon’s main campus in Eugene. Upon arrival, we were greeted by another group of undergraduate researchers from UO that gave us a tour of the campus. We were able to see the labs that a few of the other researchers were working in. After our tour, we spent a couple hours checking out the Saturday Market in Eugene which is a few blocks of town filled with booths selling handmade souvenirs and locally made food. After enjoying the market, we went to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History and were able to enjoy the exhibits they had. After, we travelled to downtown Eugene for dinner and got carried away playing pool for a few hours. On Sunday, several of us went on a plant walk in Cape Arago state park where one of the rangers led us down a beautiful trail identifying and telling fun facts about many of the interesting plants we came across. After the tour, Daniel, the park ranger, set us free to explore the trails on our own. After a few minutes, I found a rope that leads down a steep hill to a secluded beach and so obviously I pressured all of my friends to join me in scaling the mountain. Not surprisingly, it was completely worth the treacherous hike. After exploring we went back to campus for lunch and everyone that didn’t go that morning got jealous. So, we went again that night with everyone else and watched the sunset from the rocky cliffs. After the fun weekend, it was time to get back to work. Kaylee, my lab partner, and I spent the beginning of the week preparing for running our first real experiment. We were going to subject our deep-sea urchin (S. fragilis) and purple urchin (S. purpuratus) larvae to 10 different temperatures between 5 and 19 degrees to see if the larvae can survive. We had been tinkering with the temperature gradient device for a week now and we finally got it working to run the experiment Tuesday night. After dinner Tuesday night, we removed exactly 400 larvae of each species and placed them in vials of 20 larvae each. We then placed two vials of each species in their assigned temperatures and left them for 24 hours. On Wednesday night, we started to remove the larvae from each vial and really struggled. Since neither of us had done anything like this before, we were making very slow progress. We finally decided that we would only measure one vial from each temperature because we would have been there for another 24 hours just counting. It took us over 5 hours to count half of the larvae and this left us having another late night. Luckily, the next day we had off for the 4th of July, so we could sleep in and relax. Everyone from OIMB went to Sunset bay for the annual picnic where we ate great food, had an egg toss, and played an intense game of ultimate frisbee. After having a nice day off, I finished the week by joining the Deep-sea Biology class in a dredging mission on R/V Pluteus since the last attempt went poorly. We ended up having beautiful weather and collected some really interesting species. Some sea lions swam right up next to the boat and nothing managed to break this time. It was a pretty good trip, if I had to say so myself.
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AuthorMy name is Matthew Mullins and I am from Birmingham, AL. I am currently a rising junior studying marine biology at the University of the Virgin Islands. I am working in Dr. Young’s lab and I’m looking forward to exploring the Oregon coast and getting some interesting research experience! Archives
August 2019
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