We all had to turn in our project proposals this week. I was really nervous about it as I never had to write a proposal before, but with some help from Nicole (a brilliant PhD student in Dr. Richard Emlet’s lab) and peer revision from Annika, I think I ended with a finished product that I can be proud of for my first attempt. This week I have been busy assembling some necessary items for my project, a bubbler for beakers where my sand dollar larvae will live, a plexiglass sheet with circles cut into it to hold the beakers, and black spray painted beakers to keep light out. The bubbler is what gave me the most trouble, I could not get some of the air taps into the PVC pipe no matter how hard I tried, in the end I was able to get almost all of them threaded into the pipe (except for three, which my mentor helped thread in). The weekend boat trip was a blast! Except for the sea sickness…but despite that I had a wonderful time being out on the sea. As Chloe, Catalina and I were looking out to the horizon to manage our sea sickness we saw a small pod of dolphins! I wish I had captured a picture to share, but it was amazing to witness that nonetheless. Once we reached our destination out on the ocean (150-170 ft of water depth below us) we dragged a dredge along the bottom and pulled up an abundance of marine invertebrates, sea stars, nudibranchs, scallops, shrimp, decorator crabs, etc. We took some of them back with us in coolers that were set up in a sea table at the lab here, that way we have a chance to look at everything later. A couple of us (Annika, Chloe, Sherlyn and I) have started a movie night on the weekends. Either on Friday or Saturday night we all get together and choose an old movie we all used to love growing up to watch together. This past weekend we decided to watch She’s All That, and I am definitely looking forward to this weekend’s movie night (the movie we are watching has yet to be decided).
On Wednesday afternoon we attended a seminar presented by Dr. James Carlton and it was wildly informative. Dr. Carlton spoke about how Japan’s 2011 Tohoku earthquake led to animal invasions in different parts of the US (Oregon being one of them). It was not something that I ever imagined could make such a large impact on local ecosystems. Even more surprising was the fact that these invasions started to become apparent one year after the earthquake, and coastal species from Japan survived the long voyage (unexpectedly) to the pacific coast. This seminar was by far one of my favorites out of all the one’s we have attended here at OIMB. We are all almost halfway through this summer internship and I can’t be more grateful. In 4 short weeks I have learned how to; care for growing larvae, set up a sea table, and even drive a boat (special thanks to my mentor Richard for that experience). There is still more time for learning and fun I am going to take advantage of every moment I can.
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AuthorMy name is Victoria I am from Palmdale, CA but over my life I have moved around a lot and lived different places. I love to travel and explore, especially along the coast. I am a Zoology major studying at Cal Poly Humboldt and like to spend time reading about animal behavior. Archives
August 2022
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