Hi! My name is Sebastian Velazquez, and I have traveled a long way to be here at OIMB for the summer. I come from Spring City, Pennsylvania, a small town from "just outside of philly" - a phrase that people from PA know all too well. I'm a biology student at Penn State University. I've been drawn to this field and the marine sciences as I am fascinated by biodiversity and just how truly complex life is. I want to do what I can to learn about and protect this biodiversity from the effects of climate change. Outside of academics, I am a huge college football and wrestling fan (go lions), and in my free time I enjoy listening to music, photography, playing video games with my friends and the occasional digital painting. While I'm here, I'll be working with my labmate Colleen under Shon, the Lead Scientist at South Slough. The focus of our studies are the invasive European Green Crabs, more specifically their hotspots in the local estuaries (Colleen's study) and on their accumulation of biotoxins (my study) - I'll touch on this later. Now, despite the partially misleading title, this is actually my second week out here. Colleen and I had come out a week prior to the rest of the REU interns to start catching green crabs for our study, due to the favorable low tides in the mornings. This was a new process for me. We start with cutting up the intestines of tuna with a pair of scissors (yes, it is as brutal as it sounds and yes, the smell is gnarly) to load up our bait canisters that we use in our fukui traps to catch the crabs. We then drive all around Coos Bay and South Slough setting up traps to collect the following day, just to set up new traps in different locations. When we check the traps, we often find and release an assortment of native dungeness, shore, and red rock crabs in addition to the invasive green crabs that we're after. We bring the green crabs back to measure and collect data such as color, noting missing limbs or whether the crabs are gravid or not. The second week has been focused on getting our methodology for measuring biotoxins in the muscles of the green crab down. Our goal with this study is to compare the levels of biotoxins in the green crabs with other shellfish. We are doing this to work towards recommending for people to recreationally catch the crabs and eat them to lower their populations - only if it is safe. We've also helped Shon with setting up a study to measure decomposition rates - results coming this September! Outside of work, I love to sit on the beach and watch the sunset, usually with Tiffany. I've also met some very cool people during the time where I'm not in the lab or doing field work. Some popular activities include sitting and talking in the "club" (the lobby of our dorm building), exploring the local wilderness, and playing some basketball. I'm looking forward to our upcoming camping trip with them this weekend!
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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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