Blog Week 10

As we are all putting the final finishing touches on our projects and polishing up those presentations, I hope that we can all take a minute and reflect on this past term. Writing this blog has forced Nathan and I to travel back, (only ten weeks ago!) to when we first started this grand adventure. Here’s a few of our favorite moments from the past term:

1) Mudfights at Sally’s Bend. I’m not sure if it was a “fight” or a general free-for-all-get-everybody-as-muddy-as-you-can-fiasco. That was ten weeks ago and I don’t remember but either way, it was fun as hell.
2) Midnight paper ball fights in the library. Yeah… Unprovoked massacres of the “Quiet Side” by the “Collaborative Side”. And sometimes all out, balls-to-the-wall library wars. And on that note, library climbing, library Olympics, general library adventures, etc. were awesome. Don’t worry Sally, we didn’t break anything… too badly.
3) The 4th Invertebrates Presentation and Dessert Extravaganza. I remember Reed doing a ridiculous crab dance, some other hooligans performing another dance to Maddona, and an educational video about a new drug craze: The Green Tide. (I’ve tried it myself, and now I see why this thing could sweep the nation.)
4) Monday night dance parties. Reason? Because we can’t party on Thursday because we have finals on Friday.
5) Water balloon massacres on the Bunk House (and other miscellaneous pranks on the bunk house).
6) Annette eating, drinking, and partying with us after the algae section.
7) Donut Wednesdays. Nuff said.
8) Pirate day on the Elakah
9) Hotel party.
10) No Final for Karen’s section.
11) TAs playing sand vol with us.

And as the term ends and we part ways heading off to summer jobs, summer school, or *gasp* the real world. We all leave with a tear in our eye and look forward to the Hatfield Reunion in 2010.

Oh my god it's projects week!

The plot thickens....
Monday morning came to greet us for the first time without a class day, but we still had a full week ahead of us in a different way....RESEARCH PROJECTS!!
And so it began...the chaos bubble came rolling in quickly, in fact some of us spent the weekend filling buckets with ice to try to keep a so called "cold room" cold, turned out that we were using the wrong thermostat to try to control the temperature the whole time, ah the perils of being new to research (and knowing what a thermostat looks like :).
Others of us scrambled to collect enough specimens to get the ball rolling. Learning how to collect and document data in a way that makes sense has been quite interesting as well.
There has been bartering to acquire and keep hold of supplies, as we are all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Still we are oddly enough maintaining some sort of schedule and learning to be quite resourceful in the mean time.

From harassing fisherman at the docks to acquire crabs, numerous store visits for random supplies to rigging hand made filtration systems to tanks, we have persevered and should have some interesting presentations next week to show for it given that no one decides to have a melt down in the mean time, hee hee hee :).
We are almost done and getting sad about the thought of leaving, though we will definately enjoy the much need rest after this.

Despite some sleepless nights, we are getting to do science which is the coolest part of all. We have learned so much so far. Finally we get to use the knowledge we aquired through this course, our wonderful instructors, and T.A.'s, to produce something all our own. Exciting!
Till then bloggers, the project mayhem continues and we are still head strong and going full steam ahead!

The Adventures of the BI 450 class: week 8

This week the BI 450 class continued to work with renowned ecologist Bruce Menge and his teaching assistant Alison Iles. No more field work for us. Nope, it's time to crunch the numbers! The class was divided five ways, each studying a different set of data including tide pool diversity, transect quadrats, belt transects, algae and invertebrate biodiversity, and Whelk and Pisater predator/prey studies. The projects proved to be a lot of graph making but we ended up with some interesting results.


After Bruce's test on Thursday, the BI 450 students worked furiously to write and turn in their project proposals. Though projects don't officially start until week nine, some students have already been collecting data. For example: Students Mackenzia Sullivan, Tyler Van Demelen, and Chelsea Stover were able to set up 20 pit-fall crab traps on Tuesday in the notoriously muddy Sally's bend in Yaquina Bay, Oregon. Also Kailtyn Mac Leod and Kaley Lischke have recently been seining in South Beach for bay Pipefish as part of their project. You may be wondering what students are studying. Well you'll have to wait and see!!!


In other silly news, in celebration of the return of beloved invertebrate professor Sally Hacker, the BI 45o class collaborated to surprise Sally with their own 80's day, dressing in the finest fashions of the 80's. Needless to say Sally got a good laugh and the class immensely enjoyed themselves!


Well that's all the news for this week. Stay tuned for next weeks adventures of the BI 450 class!!!

Ecology and Biodiversity Galore!

Hello all! This week brought Dr. Bruce Menge, world-renowned ecologist, out to Hatfield to show us the ins and outs of Community Ecology on the Oregon Coast. This was a week that could make or break any aspiring marine ecologist. With Bruce came very early tides, forcing us out of bed in the early morning hours for field outings to collect as much data as humanly possible. Most days included morning field trips followed by data entry and a lecture. In addition to learning data collection techniques in the intertidal zone, the week was a culmination of everything we have been working on up to this point.

Monday began at 5 am when we crawled out of bed for our first field trip of this section for some community sampling and transect surveys. We loaded up and by six we were headed out to a familiar spot: Boiler Bay. There we received a crash course in field sampling methods for the intertidal zone and every group was able to play a part in collecting data. This allowed us all the opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience which some of us might even use this summer for internships.

On Tuesday we were allowed to sleep in a tad longer before we took off to another well-known spot: Strawberry Hill. There we had a day much like Monday where each group was assigned a different task for collecting data. Luckily by Tuesday we were all somewhat well-versed in data collection and the day went more smoothly for everyone.

Wednesday and Thursday we spent time at Boiler Bay and Strawberry hill again, respectively. But on these two days we all individually focused on Biodiversity Surveys. This meant that we all had a data sheet and we separated ourselves into three zones (low, mid, and high) and spent half an hour in each zone marking off all of the either algae or invertebrate species which we could find. These were both more relaxed fun days for us. And Thursday even brought us surprises in the form of adorable seal pups at Strawberry Hill and a couple members of our class enjoying the cool, refreshing tide pool water…

Outside of class on Thursday, during a rousing game of sand volleyball, we learned that there was a washed up baby whale in Depoe Bay! So those of us present took off North up the 101 and scoured the beaches for a dead whale. Unfortunately we learned that the whale was in a small cove inaccessible from land and we were only able to see it from a distance.

The end of the week brought us a very short day with only one lecture in the morning. This allowed us time to work on our biodiversity projects in groups, and to play some sand volleyball in the afternoon. After an intense week this was a much needed break.

Overall the field section of Marine Community Ecology was a fast-paced, fun-filled, whirlwind of a learning experience which was valuable to all.

A conservative week for conservation

After three fastball weeks of memorizing species and working hard in the field, the Bio 450 class threw us a change up last week with regular days and only one in the field. Three out of the five days had very similar schedules. Lectures were regular and discussions in the afternoons were a great trade from the late hours of drawing in our notebooks and identifying species till early hours in the morning. Karen McLeod gave a variety of lectures on marine conservations issues. She started by giving us a good overview of the state of the oceans and what policies were in place as well as what that meant in the science world. Karen then moved on to talk about marine reserves, fisheries, and other economical roles of the ocean. After each morning lecture informing us of these issues, she would always follow with an afternoon lecture on how to best approach them. The highlights this week included a field trip up ten mile creek: Hiking through a beautiful forest in the rain, learning about fish habitat restoration projects, and learning about endangered birds in the area. At the end of the week we had a full day of student presentations where we could dive deeper into the issues that we wanted to become learned about, and then present them to the class.

Student presentations were much more formal than the presentations about inverts or the in-lab presentations of algae. Dressed in our best we delivered presentations on current issues. Throughout the day we learned about hypoxia, coastal development, Humboldt squid, ocean acidification, jelly fish blooms, shark fining, wave energy, harmful algal blooms, and even seafood origination labeling. This was a very mixed array of knowledge but never the less enthralling. We also got to eat cookies shaped like squid and some that were not.

Tuesday Morning we got a special talk delivered by Karen describing her work with COMPASS. She explained to us how the organization compiles credible research data and facilitates the scientific community. By developing a concerted front, the labor of many professionals can be channeled into an effective political tool. The focus is kept away from public education and outreach, in order to reinforce the goal of commitment towards policy amendment.
On Wednesday we got the chance to hike at Ten-Mile Creek, the site including the largest stand of old-growth remaining in the nation! It was pouring rain almost continuously, so we kept morale high by calling in the owls (unsuccessfully). The focus of the trip was to give us a tour of the stream restoration project, and to show us the methods used for sampling fry and smelt. We got to see Salmon, river Sculpin, and even a Lamprey! The fish were chemically sedated so we could take a closer look. We had a brief talk regarding the restoration of the stream, including the removal of old roads, and the input of timber utilizing helicopters. We also had the chance to learn about a unique species that nests in the Pacific North-West. The Marbled Murrelet uses moss platforms high in the branches of old-growth evergreens. It will fly in from the ocean, travelling many miles inland to find protected home sites. Flying back and forth to the ocean to gather food for the young is not uncommon. This site at ten-mile creek is one of the last remaining habitats suitable for the species. Corvids, mainly crows, have begun to compete in most areas because the chicks are left unattended.
The most notable topic from our field-trip was the discussion about fry-boxes for hatchery steelhead and salmon. We learned that attempts to include the public in raising stocks have perhaps been counter-productive. Usually the hatchery stocks lose much of their natural instinct, as well as the ability to sense a home range. They also compete strongly enough with native fish to have become a serious threat. In the end it doesn’t matter whether we retain all that we heard. We have all been struggling to cope overstressed. And as it turns out, school doesn’t get much better than this!