Welcome to week 5! It's been quite a week. Last Friday Nicole and Erin (another PhD student) took some of us tide pooling which was nothing short of amazing. It's so fun exploring this coast, and I hope that we can all go tide pooling again sometime. While tide pooling Annika and I ran into a little trouble with a seagull. As we tried to make our way around a rocky area we noticed a group of seagulls that seemed to be hanging around. Now, seagulls and I aren't compatible, we have an unspoken pact that we stay away from each other whenever possible. This particular day I broke that pact by getting quite close to them and the seagulls did not appreciate that and were squaking loudly to voice their displeasure. Annika and I thought nothing of it until we had one particular seagull swooping down right above our heads and we were terrified of being attacked, safe to say we turned back to avoid that fate. I'm sure it was quite a sight to see, but I'm very hopeful that no one saw our struggle. It’s important to note that these seagulls are known to nest in that area, making us intruders. They were simply protecting their young, and they did a great job at that. After our run in with the seagull, the rest of the weekend went by really quick and soon it was time for us to give our project presentations. I was quite nervous, but once I finished I was really happy. I felt that I was able to get my ideas across in a somewhat clear manner. It was also cool to learn about the projects that the other interns are working on. Because we work in different labs this was a great opportunity to get up to date on what everyone is doing. The rest of my week was spent hand counting and placing 50 individual sand dollar larvae into each of 12 beakers - that took quite some time. Along with counting I've been teaching myself how to use Photoshop and ImageJ (an image analysis program) to look at pigment cells inside larvae. I made a breakthrough on Thursday with Photoshop, I was finally able to isolate the pigment cells and allow ImageJ to see them accurately. That was an amazing feeling once I finally was able to get an image that I could work with. I still have a lot of work left to do, and this is only the beginning but I'm very proud of myself in this process so far.
I'll be back to update you all next week!
1 Comment
Nisani
7/26/2022 04:31:25 pm
Why did you break the pact with seagulls? The work you doing looks very interesting. Keep up the good work.
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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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