Its that time of year again!

Marine Biology 450 is about to gear up for action again.

The first week of class is just around the corner, after Spring Break.

We look forward to a fun term, and especially to the first section of the course - Inverts!

Updates from the field shortly,

Sally and Margot

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.