aaaand I'm back!

In Florida now, spent a brief 72 hours in Minnesota before flying here. Everything wrapped up well in Maine, and there will be more info about that later. For now I'm painting my room, settling into my house, figuring out my classes, and trying to cool down in this 100 degree weather.

love,

whitney

Time's Flying!

Wow! I can't believe that I'm almost done with my 10 weeks here in Maine. This last week is going to be a little bit crazy, but manageable. I just got done printing my super official looking awesome scientific poster and hung it up in the entry way for everyone to see! Our final presentation will be on Thursday from 1-4pm... so until then it's just time for practicing, cleaning, packing, and doing any last minute science-related things we'd like. I plan on making some more videos of the barnacles in the flume to take home as souvenirs! Last night we went salsa dancing in Boothbay Harbor, ME which just goes to show that even in the most remote northern towns people will still want to get their groove on.

I can't wait to be home! More updates later.

Barnacle Feeding

They're just so darn cute!

DataDataData

It has been collecting time for the past couple weeks here in the Fields lab. I did a couple runs of filming and analyzing groups of barnacles feeding to find their beat frequency. Here's a graph showing 9 barnacles and their responses to the change in temperature. I'll hopefully be able to upload a little video clip to show what I've been looking at, but right now the file size is waaaay too large.

The grazing experiments are well underway. I did a preliminary experiment with just a couple rocks filled with barnacles to see if 4 hours is enough time for them to eat enough to make a difference. And it is! They ate about 30% of what I gave them, which was Thallasiosira weissfloggi (TW for short, a type of algae). Today I started a culture of TW which will hopefully grow like crazy and be ready for barnacle grazing on Sunday/Monday.
Now the only thing left to tackle is the boundary layer/reynolds number calculations...

pictures (look down...)

picture 1: view from the floating dock at Bigelow, looking up towards the main building. Photo taken during low tide, water rises an additional 9 ft during high tide here!

picture 2: view from the stationary dock at Bigelow, still looking twards the main building.

picture 3: view from where pic2 was taken. Looking out at the harbor, the location where I'm staying is to the right across the harbor.

picture 4: view from behind the main building. One of the "labs" that can be driven across the country, and put on a ship!

picture 5: view from outside the main building, to the left and down is where the docks are.

picture 6: view of the back of the main building, my lab is in the grey building, the white one story is the conference/break room.

picture 7: view from inside Fields lab, where I spend most of my time. Towards the back left is the flume, with the large black cylinder going into it (velocimeter). To the right is the video station, and the computer as well.

Pictures! (with comments to come)

Diving In

The barnacle adventures are well underway. Yesterday we threw a bunch of barnacles in a jar of water collected from the dock. We gave them 24 hours to eat as much as they wanted, and then today tested the water again using the FlowCAM to see what they ate. A problem we ran into was that the water we had collected had gobs and gobs (a unit of measure only know to Fields lab) of stuff ranging in size from 10-200 microns. So the issue was that we suspect a lot of the larger stuff in the water was eating the smaller stuff which was seen in our control. (So it's inconclusive whether the barnacles ate the small stuff, or if the bigger stuff ate the small stuff) Anyway. I've been processing through a lot of the film I took this week. I filmed the barnacles at temperatures ranging from 75F - 50F and I've been counting how many times they fan their feeding arm to get a feeding rate. It's so remarkable to see their feeding habits change, they love the cold water! crazy! So this weekend will be a lot more processing through the film, and planning the details of the next set of grazing experiments. Wahoo!

Excuse me, flow?

This is a picture of the flume set-up in the lab. I will re-post a more clear picture when I remember to bring my camera to the lab. The tall black tube sticking up is a velocimeter, which measures the velocity of water flow without interfering with the particles moving through the flow, by triangulating some sort of beam that sends back to the computer. The flume has salt water on the inside chamber, with a turbine to make the water flow. The outside is filled with fresh water that regulates the temperature of the inside part. We hooked up the camera today to film our little barnacles! David, Quincy, Brandon and I all stared mesmerized at the screen watching these little barnacles hold out their appendages to catch some plankton. So cool. Our proposals are due this Friday, so I'm going to get writing!
The next photo is a view from where the camera is mounted, looking onto where the barnacles are.

Take my breath away

WOW! That is cold water. Seriously. 50 degrees I think. A group of us went to use some kayaks/canoes, and about four strokes away from the dock, our canoe tipped. And we all swam to shore but I literally could not breath. I am just so thankful that we were so close to land!
Tomorrow we all get to present our ideas at our first "Roundtable on Research" discussion. A good way for us to all, informally, find out about what we're researching. This week will be pretty busy with our proposal paper due on Friday! Time to get to work!

Lobsters, Crabs, and Seals

Today we got up early and drove to the Darling Marine Center, where we boarded the R/V Ira C boat. We cruised through towards the open ocean (but not quite there) and made three stops for oceanographic stations, where we did some typical measurements and sampling. One of the things we did that I haven't done before was a bottom trawl, where (I don't know if I approve of this) we dragged a net on the bottom of the sea for about 10 minutes and brought it up to count everything in it. Among the hardy lobsters and crabs there were also some bottom dwelling fish that probably died. I kept taking some and throwing them back when no one was looking, so if you're reading this and you were the one taking a tally of what we caught.... maybe add on 10 urchins and 5 soft shelled lobsters and at least 10 fish. On the cruise we also saw several little seals just swimming around enjoying the 14degree C water.

Here's a picture from Guatemala. from Manute's camera.

I blog, You blog.

Day two at the lab!

We did a lot of brainstorming today, as well as learning some of the general tasks the Fields lab does. We walked through how to autoclave filtered sea water so it can be clean enough to use with cultures. We then went through and learned the careful techniques of transferring the culture stocks to keep them fresh. Along the way we did another tow, and sorted the Acartia from the Tamora (sp?). We also concluded that our first batch died because of the bleach in the water... learning from mistakes!

Tomorrow we're going out on a boat for the day, using a vessel from the Darling lab (sp?) about an hour away. It should be a nice day, and a nice break from land. My new rain boots will come in handy!

That's it for now!

MaineMaineMaineMaine

Hello Ocean!

Well, here I am! Back on the coast. This time though, it's bit north of my science comfort zone. All 11 (12?) of us arrived here in harborfields yesterday, and claimed rooms in either the "1780 House" (5 guys, 4 girls) or the little cottage (3 girls). I'm sharing a room in the 1780 house with two other ladies, and I have yet to find out if the house is actually from the 1780s but judging by the slope and slant and noise of everything, I'd believe it. We hail from all over: Maine, Minnesota (me!), Washington, Texas, Puerto Rico, Colorado, etc. We're still in the slightly awkward/uncomfortable jumping into friendships stage, but I'm hopeful for the future.

This morning we all walked over to the lab, which consists of a main office-type building, a "double-wide" filled with labs, a "triple-wide" filled with labs, a couple docks, a conference room, and a shared library. All of which sits on the harbor that we live across. I'm convinced that it would take me less energy to row boat across each morning instead of walking 15-20 minutes, so we'll see how that goes. We got a formal introduction of all the research scientists (about 10?) who do their thang there at Bigelow, and then after some tours and logistics talk we met with our mentors. My mentor is Dr. David Fields, and I think I'm going to have a great summer with him. His lab is super awesome, even though I have no idea how to find anything in it yet. He has a bunch of really unique equipment, hopefully some of which I'll be using. One of the cool things he does is he videotapes the behavior of things (like plankton, or krill, or anything) in reaction to stimulants. He's even thinking about seeing how they react to oil... which could be really important... like rrrrreally important.

The location is a lot like an up north Minnesota area, except all the water is salty. I thought I saw a leech off the dock today but it was really a little eel. The closest Grand Marais-type town is about a 15 minute drive, and the closest town with a Target/Walgreens is about an hour. A guy working in our lab though is going to let me borrow his bike for the summer. Sweet!

Goodnight for now!

GuatGuatGuatGuat

Summer is here! And I will be leaving for Guatemala on Sunday morning at 5:20am. You might think that means I'm arriving at the airport at 5:2oam, but you are wrong. The plane takes off from the runway at 5:20am. All 24 of us will be getting to the airport at 3:45am to wait for the check-in desk to open.
Elliot's graduation from Purdue was last weekend. I went a couple days early to hang out with my cousin Allie and that was super fun. Beyond that, I've been doing things around the house, mosaic-ing a little fountain, and getting prepped for the trip. I've taken my typhoid fever tablets, and I start on my malaria tablets tomorrow!
The sad news about this trip back home is that Picosa has closed. No more fun salsa dancing in minneapolis. Hopefully Boothbay Harbor has a salsa joint.

Ice cream truck!

It's finally spring, and it's so beautiful outside! I've been to the beach several times in the past couple weeks, and it's been so enjoyable. Classes are getting to the end.. just a few more big things before finals. I signed a lease on a house with Michelle and Cody and we should be moving in within the month! The whole house thing has been a huge growing up moment; finding a house, talking to a realtor, negotiating things, paying by money order, figuring out insurance, figuring out electric/cable/water/trash/lawn maintenance. Crazy!
I have firmed up my summer plans, which will involve being home a total of 3-4 weeks, going to Guatemala (!!!!!!), and spending the majority in Maine.

I bought a sewing machine

Well, well, well. It has been a cold winter. The part when I was in Florida, the part when I went back home, and the part when I'm back in Florida. All cold. Which is what I'm blaming my lack-of-blogging on. Coldness. Because any sort of excuse is a silly one.
While it has been cold, I've been doing a lot of hibernating in my bed, a lot of TV watching, a lot of organizing, a lot of list-making, a lot of cooking, a lot of eating, a lot of thinking about doing things, and not a whole lot of actually getting things done. In the midst of diving into this spring semester I've taken on several boringly difficult classes. Differential Equations is taught by a man who wore all gray today (including his hair), and responds to questions with "It is so simple, you will understand." Meteorology is actually quite a rigorous course which is using a lot of the info we've learned from oceanography, environmental science, and calculus. It is however, extremely difficult and graded quite unfairly. "Intro to C++" should be under the foreign language section of registration, and should give you more than 50% on a project if you have one line mixed up. Geological Oceanography has been a sequence of maybe 5-6 conference calls, with too much confusion on what the correct phone number was, and a total of one emailed homework assignment. Our teacher is "working in italy" but I've seen him on campus at least 3 times....? Physics is just dandy, doing all the electricity and magnetism junk that is so fun.
I haven't been working in the lab as much as I should this semester. This past weekend I went with Jen to collect green mussels in Sebastien, but when we left our buckets were empty :( No mussels to be found. It's probably because of the cold water temperatures for so long this winter.
I present at FAS on March 19th, so I've been putting together a presentation for that even though I haven't finished processing all the data.. uh oh!
And... B-I-G-N-E-W-S-! I got accepted into the Bigelow Lab REU for the summer! Wahoo! I have to decide by March 15th whether I'm going or not.

plankton!

Has anyone seen my bike?

This weekend I decided to paint my chairs blue, and since I still had paint left I painted the outside of my mirror as well. I may even paint my lamp.

On Friday we watched Slumdog Millionaire for Film Society, which was pretty good. About 30 people attended which was our best turn-out this semester. Hopefully next semester when I am officially crowned president we will have better attendance.

Yesterday after working in the lab for a few hours I went to the beach with Joshua and his friend Chris. They wanted to surf and I hung out on the beach, but it was SUPER windy. I don't think they even caught a couple waves it was so choppy.

And to whoever stole my bike, please give it back.

keeping cold, while keeping warm

Today is the second time our refrigerator has refused to stay cold. Maintenance just walked in and announced we will be getting a new one on Tuesday! Hurray! Besides that, we're finally starting to cool off weather-wise in Florida. I wore pants today!
I will be posting some pictures from the big Walton Smith trip which happened a couple weeks ago, but in the meantime I'll post a picture of a plankter that I looked at last week. I've been counting and sorting samples from the trip and I finally got to take a couple pics ... sorry about the quality, I haven't quite perfected the microscope-camera dealio.

Inspiration for my mom

My mom's taking surfing lessons on Friday so I told her I'd post these