PREFACE: If you are a prospective future applicant or accepted intern reading this and have any questions at all about the program from a past intern’s point of view, please feel free to reach out! My email is [email protected]. If I don’t respond after a few days, just send a follow up. So, this is it. The end of the program is here. There are so many ways I can describe my feelings about this program, but if I had to boil it down to one phrase, it would be “I’m glad I did it”. This summer allowed me to learn so many things - about estuaries, fieldwork, experimental design, the pathways in the sciences, and above all else, about myself. These past 9 weeks (10 if you count my extra week) felt both like a blink of an eye, and like an eternity at the same time. The week started off a little different than the rest. Over the weekend, all of the interns and I went over to the South Slough intern’s house for a crab boil. Since week 8 was an intensive trapping week, Colleen and I put all of the large crabs we caught to the side for eating. We had a team of us euthanizing, cleaning, and preparing crabs. We then tossed a bunch of the crabs (we had too many to eat them all), along with shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes in a pot for boiling. The food was fantastic (except the potatoes which unfortunately did not fully cook), and to say the night was interesting would be a vast understatement. Many laughs were had, and the view from the house was awe-inspiring. Being the final week, there wasn't much work to be done outside of Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, Colleen and I went out with Jenni, the Watershed Monitoring Coordinator at South Slough, and a High School intern Alissa for a day of field work. We went out and did some water and sediment level monitoring around the Slough. It was hard work, but Jenni is a machine at pushing through the field in any terrain. Work on Tuesday consisted solely of finishing my poster, as they were due at 3:00 pm for printing. After the finishing touches had been put on, it felt like a weight had been lifted. The program has been completed. From Tuesday to Friday, the rest of my time here was filled with packing, math studying, a trip to the dunes at Hall Lake, and a lot of reading before out poster session. I went into the session a little overly confident, and realized I had to change my approach for explaining everything that I had done. After the first or second time explaining my summer’s work, I got into a nice groove. I am proud of myself, and all of the other interns with all of the hard work that we put in. I’ll miss Oregon, my fellow interns, and all of the wonderful staff at OIMB. Until next time!
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This past week has possibly been my favorite of the summer thus far. The invertebrate ball, this year named the Spineless Soirée, had finally arrived. For the uninitiated, this is a fashion show on OIMB’s campus with everyone dressing up as their favorite invertebrates. Seeing everyone show off how creative (or uncreative) they are was fascinating, with costumes ranging from using shower curtains and feathers to create a sea anemone, to a simple box with the word “jellyfish” written on it worn as a hat. I admittedly fell in the uncreative category, just wearing a pair of lobster-covered socks with my sandals. From the ball, the interns and I went over to Seven Devils Brewery to see Adam, the Environmental Monitoring Specialist at South Slough, play with his band and to celebrate Colleen’s upcoming birthday. It was a lighthearted night after a long and tiring week. On Sunday, all of us interns set up our own tables at the Charleston Marine Life Center to tell the public about the work we’ve done over the summer. Colleen and I set up our table together to inform the public about the invasive European Green Crabs - what damages they’re causing, how to identify them, and what our individual research about them entails. It was a hit! Crabs, and anything to do with Dungeness crabs in particular hits home with the public in the Charleston, Oregon area. Initially nervous, I came to thoroughly enjoy talking to the public about the issues. People really responded, and we were even THANKED for the research we do. That was a validating feeling. The rest of the week was intensive in both the field and office settings. This was one of our monthly week-long trapping escapades for European Green Crab monitoring. This was a pretty run-of-the-mill experience as far as trapping goes, but we actually found a kelp crab at one of our sites, while we helped Colleen with her study. This was the first time they had gotten kelp crab in a trap, according to Shon. On top of that, Colleen and I went out with Shon and Taylor (the PhD student who previously helped me out with biotoxin testing) to join as she collected samples to measure for harmful algal blooms in the estuary. Any chance to get out and Kayak is one that I’ll never turn down. Rounding out the field work was an opportunity to go out and use a Russian peat borer in the swamps by Shon’s property with Dr. Molly Keogh to find banding (color shifting in the mud) in the sediment to demonstrate an earthquake from 1726. Since we are getting down to the wire, this week has been spent finalizing our posters for our final presentation next week. We had our poster critique session, where each of the interns displayed their poster drafts to get critiques and comments from the rest of the interns, Richard, and Maya. Initially dreading this, I thought it was a lot of fun to see the synthesis of everyone's work and to talk about ways to improve. When it's finished, I’ll upload my poster for you all to see.
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! Hey everyone, glad to have you back on my blog for this week. Over this past weekend, a couple of interns and I ventured out to the West Coast Game Park Safari over in Bandon. I was skeptical of going at first, as after doing some research on their website they seemed to be a more for-profit organization than one that is directly tied to conservation and rehabilitation. I went despite this in hopes that it would seem better in person, but was greeted with some visibly distressed animals (chimpanzees, large cats, bears, etc.) in cages that seemed awfully small, although I am not a professional. In hopes of keeping this blog light, I will try and touch on the more positive aspects of the trip. I saw capybaras in person for the first time, and getting to interact with goats, sheep, alpaca, donkeys, and deer up close as they approach you in the petting zoo area was a cool experience. This week was more work focused than anything for me. I continued the trials of my behavioral study, changing its direction in favor of time. I am no longer going to be doing light color comparisons, as we didn’t have overwhelming evidence of the light being attractive to the crabs from the initial trials. Now, I tested each of the three different bait types - LED Lights, Tuna, and Cat Food - in the lab setting using the same experimental design I previously described in order to compare their rate of entry by the crabs. Bait or light was put in one trap, nothing in the other, and the crabs are put in the decision making apparatus for 30 minutes undisturbed, to check which, if any, trap they went into after the time period. From this testing, the crabs went into the tuna trap the most, the LED light trap the second most, and the cat food trap the least. I will be starting the field study on Monday, August 1st (the day this blog post is released)! It will be interesting to see if these lab results carry over, depending on which bait type catches the most crabs in the field. Outside of work a lot of my free time is dedicated to doing Calculus 2 work in order to make sure I can finish the course in a timely and efficient manner, to graduate on time. On Wednesday, however, we had a South Slough Intern potluck. This was a much needed time away from campus, where we had some great food, and I got to interact with the other South Slough interns I don’t always get to see, and the general South Slough staff. There are so many great people working here, and I’m grateful to have gotten to work beside them. These 6 weeks (7 if you include Colleen's and my extra week) so far have allowed me to learn a lot about myself. One of those things that I’ve learned this week is that burnout is very real, and that it sucks. Thankfully I am able to work outdoors this upcoming week. That’s always fun. Talk to you all next week!
This past weekend consisted of roughly 12 hours being spent in the library on Saturday working on Calculus 2. Riveting, I know. Sunday was a more interesting day, however, starting off with Colleen and I attending one of Sylvia Yamada’s talks on European Green Crabs. This was a treat, as Sylvia is an expert on the organisms. She was here at OIMB to give a talk to the marine bioinvasions course taught by Jim Carlton, another superstar in the marine invasives world. She took the class out to show them the trapping process, and allowed me and Colleen to take back the crabs to measure for the regular South Slough monitory data collection. I learned a lot from her in such a short time. The rest of the day consisted of more math work. Volleyball with a lot of the OIMB students and some of the other interns has been another very welcomed way to pass time. Out of every sport to play recreationally, volleyball has got to be my third favorite (wrestling and racquetball are one and two, respectively). Over the week, the trials of my study have begun! The results have not necessarily been what I was hoping to see, but that is not what science is about. I did ten trials, and found that the crab went into the LED lit trap three times, went into the dark trap twice, and simply stayed inside of the tub five times. I was hoping to find overwhelming evidence of attraction to light, but no such luck. I will continue some more testing to see if the crabs are behaving as expected within the experimental setup, however, to validate the results of this testing. I will use the same setup, but this time will be using bait in one trap, and nothing in the other, akin to the light setup I previously described. We can safely assume that a crab will go towards the bait versus no bait when given an option, so if we see this, then we know the design apparatus is not an issue and that the crabs simply seem to not be attracted to the light! Thursday went nothing like I had imagined it would. Colleen and I had to walk up the street to Chuck’s Seafood, where we typically grab the tuna offcuts that we use as bait for the green crab trapping. Usually, the workers put the offcuts to the side for us over the hours they work throughout the day. Today, however, Colleen and I were left to our own devices, and were dug through a container of dead tuna, removing the guts and skin of the fish with our hands. Gnarly. On the bright side, Richard taught us about some gelatinous blobs that we found growing on some green crabs. What we initially thought were some weird growths, turned out to be a genus of bryozoan called Alcyonidium! It’s fascinating how much people, like Richard, know about biodiversity to be able to identify something so small, so fast. An eventful week has passed since my last blog post. On the morning of Saturday, July 9th, myself and the other interns found ourselves on the R/V Pluteus, the research boat here at OIMB. The boat ride started a little chaotic, with a near crash in the marina, but it was (relatively) smooth sailing from there on out. The goal of our ride was to dredge the ocean floor to catch invertebrates for our examination, and to bring them back to campus. As excited as I was for this, my body had other plans. I felt a little under the weather on the boat ride out to the sight for dredging but as soon as we had stopped moving, the up and down motion of the boat set in, and my stomach contents wanted out. I had to lay down, even falling asleep at one point, but catastrophe was averted. The overall experience was very cool despite the sickness - seeing the coast of Oregon from the water, helping out on the boat, and holding starfish. I had another, much quicker boat experience this week, as well. I helped Adam, one of the environmental monitoring specialists here with a sonde run, replacing a probe that's used to collect information about the water, such as temperature, salinity, turbidity, pH, and more. No sickness this time, plus I got to learn more about how boats work up close. All around great time. Outside of my experiences with OIMB, I also have started taking Calculus II online, hence the “notes” section of the title. It has admittedly been rough, but hey, I’m here to learn. This week was one of our field work intensive weeks over here for the green crab monitoring program with South Slough (The “coats” part of the title comes in here, as I wear a black rain coat every time we sample - It’s a bit of a stretch, but cut me some slack, three rhymes is cooler than two).We set and collected our traps throughout Coos Bay and South Slough every morning, releasing native species, and taking the green crabs back. It’s cool to see how much quicker Colleen and I have gotten with the process. I’ve grown quite fond of the crabs we catch, as well. This time when we catch the crabs, however, we are no longer immediately euthanizing them by freezing. They’re now being used for my study! In short, the crabs are being put in a tub where they will be subjected to two choices - a trap that has an LED light, and a trap that has no light- to see if they’re attracted to the lights. If they are attracted, studies will be done to figure out which color of LED they are attracted to the most by allowing them to choose between two colors. The experimental apparatus looks quite goofy. Colleen pointed out that it looks like a minion, and I have not been able to unsee it since. I’ll update y’all with some results next week! The crabs will still be euthanized, by the way. Just after the testing. Invasive species, and all. The weekend of the fourth has passed. It was a much needed time to recharge after a stressful and eventful week. On Saturday Catalina, Flynn, Sherlyn, Ytxzae and I used the taxi service for the first time to go out to Coos Bay. We hit the grocery store where I reupped on some much needed toiletries, stood in the drive through of a Dutch Bros (there is no inside, living the true West Coast experience), and hit up 7 Devils Brewery Co. for a late lunch. I don't remember much of Sunday, though I think I spent that day finishing up Ozark and kicking it back. Monday, the day of the fourth, the wonderful dining hall staff cooked us up a much appreciated picnic with fried chicken, and hot dogs. Some of us went over to OIMB beach and soaked up the (rare) UV index 9 sun. Despite the warmth, the ocean was still cold enough to make my feet numb just about instantly. In other news, the inevitable has happened - I had to change my project. I am disappointed I had to move away from the biotoxin testing, but it allowed a new project to be developed. I really enjoyed the process of using ELISA kits and the patience, focus, and precision that they require of you. Maybe one day I'll get another try with them. My new project is taking me in quite a different direction. While digging through some literature related to crab traps, I found a study that used LED lights in addition to, or in place of bait when trapping snow crabs. They found that when only an LED light with no bait is used, the catch rates were similar to a trap using bait! These findings inspired my new study. My new study is going to consist of two parts. First, a behavioral study where we will determine what color of LED lights the crabs are attracted to. I will have more information on this in the following weeks, as I build the setup, and flesh out the methods! The findings of the behavioral study will then be used in a field study. I will be doing a similar setup to our normal trapping routine, but at each site will be using traps with our normal tuna baits, traps with only LED lights and no bait, and traps with dog food as bait. This will help us to compare their catch rates and determine what works most effectively for the convenience each type of "bait" offers. My new study is going to consist of two parts. First, a behavioral study where we will determine what color of LED lights the crabs are attracted to. I will have more information on this in the following weeks, as I build the setup, and flesh out the methods! The findings of the behavioral study will then be used in a field study. I will be doing a similar setup to our normal trapping routine, but at each site will be using traps with our normal tuna baits, traps with only LED lights and no bait, and traps with dog food as bait. This will help us to compare their catch rates and determine what works most effectively for the convenience each type of "bait" offers.
The goal of this study is to help streamline the baiting methods used. While the tuna scraps used at the moment are effective, they are smelly, require freezing and thawing, and could drive away potential volunteers who (very understandably) don't want to take scissors to tuna intestines from helping. The ability to use either cat food (much more pleasant), or LED lights (reusable, cheaper in the long run than cat food), could help make a difference in green crab trapping for management or research purposes. I am very excited about the LED idea, if you could not tell. The past weekend we went camping at Sunset Bay State Park. We got there on Friday, the 24th of June, and stayed through Sunday. We spent some great time outdoors surrounding the bonfire, listening to good music, and getting to know each other a bit better. A beach day was in store for us on Saturday after a beautiful hike through the park. It was a landscape unlike I've seen before coming from Pennsylvania. Dazzling cliffs overlooking the ocean, seals and sealions littered on rocks, and massive trees growing all around. That Saturday was the warmest day I have seen in my time on the Oregon coast so far, up to 75 degrees! This beach trip was spent playing spikeball, and getting sunburnt. I slept in a hammock both nights after refusing shelter in a tent through the cold night - for the experience. Following the beach trip was a return to our normal work schedule. One of the things I was looking forward to all weekend was the field work we had planned for Monday. We were to continue the decomposition rate study, but this time, we would be accessing the sites by kayak. We were out on the small boats for about two and a half hours, battling the wind to make it up the estuary. The views out here are absolutely awe-inspiring. While I was initially skeptical of the cold that I am still not entirely used to, the sun came out and welcomed blue skies. Another great time in the field was teaching some volunteers how to set out traps to catch green crabs. They managed to catch the biggest green crab that I've seen yet, 100 mm wide and about 263 grams! This week was a whole lot of getting the methodology for measuring the biotoxins of green crab meat down. The process has been slightly grueling. There's been a lot of messages back and forth with Taylor, a PhD candidate from Portland State University who uses a similar process to characterize Harmful Algal Blooms, to figure it out. I will not go down without a fight, however, and am giving it all that I can to figure it out. I have been getting some wonky results, and have been trying to get to the bottom of it. One of the difficulties with this is balancing the time-sensitive hours-long process with other commitments I have with OIMB programs. A slight project change may come in the future, but I am proud to say that I did all I could with the knowledge I've gathered so far. This process of using ELISA kits and working to develop skills in the methods has been an eye opening experience for me, in a good way. Research and science is not always a straightforward path. There will be many detours, taking us through routes we wouldn't have otherwise pictured, for a chance at success. The OIMB professional development sessions and talks with Shon have been invaluable to me for a similar reason. I am starting to understand the endless opportunities there are in ecology and environmental sciences, and the many paths to them.
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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