2-28-13 3rd Email

Dear Family and Friends,

Hope everyone had a good Valentine's day, I spent it studying for a huge Invertebrate Zoology midterm haha- (I had about 180 detailed flashcards I had to memorize *phew*). (UPDATE: I got an 84% - probably will be curved up to an A!) Other than that I have been busy working, volunteering, going to school, and trying to get a job or internship for the summer. 

As part of volunteering at the Seymour Center, I have been taking their Docent (tour guide) Training Class where we get to have talks from famous scientists and get tours of labs located on the Long Marine Lab campus. One of those organizations - a subset of NOAA called the National Marine Fisheries Service - gave me an interview to become the primary assistant to the manager of all of the aquaria in the building and be the secondary caretaker of the Coho Salmon broodstock. I went to the interview and basically determined that if I am chosen for the position it could make or break my career, meaning getting me into any grad school, giving me an amazing resume, opening up research opportunities in all departments there (including going out on a research vessel for weeks at a time over the summer), and just generally being a really awesome job. I'll find out soon if it is a position that will for sure be opening up or not, so keep your fingers crossed & I'll keep you updated!!

The 1st two weeks of February I was vegan as part of the Whole Food's vegan challenge for the month of February. A lot of people from my work were doing it, so I committed to one week but managed to make it through two. I would never be vegan or vegetarian permanently, but it is a good thought/real life experiment just to see how much meat and animal products you really do consume. (I didn't go the whole month because I got the flu -again- and just needed some chicken noodle soup).

Last week one of my homework assignments is to save all the plastic I use in a week and then document it. The bag of plastic is moderately terrifying & will definitely motivate me in the future to try to cut down on the amount of plastic I use. My entire class should be posting their results on this website, made by this interesting woman who has nearly eradicated plastic from her life. I would go on a rant here about how detrimental single-use plastic is for the earth & ocean, but I won't because I'm sure you already know that we all need to reduce the plastic in our lives & ask foranti-plastic legislature. 

Some cool stuff:

-I recently took the Meyers-Briggs Personality Test coming up as INTP/INFP. Reading what they have to say about your own certain personality type can really help you understand how you deal with people and how you envision the world. It's almost like a miniature counseling session all by yourself. Seeing what your significant other/family/friend's personality type is can also help to resolve intermittent problems and reduce drama. Its pretty interesting! You can take the test here.

-So I've recently learned the physics behind the age-old debate about which way the water in the toilet bowl flushes here vs. the southern hemisphere. This process called the Coriolis effect turns out to be a complex process, but you can get a grasp on it through this video. Basically when you masses of air moving independently of the earth, it creates a wind pattern that moves to the right in the Northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern. As it turns out, many professors originally tried to explain this process by using an analogous toilet bowl example. However, the forces of the Coriolis effect on as small of a scale as a toilet bowl are negligible, and so it the water just spins in whatever way the new water in the bowl is pushed out, thus the toilet bowl water is a myth! 

However for those of us living on the coast, it is still very important to our everyday lives. To sum up the mass physics involved: wind blows southward along the West Coast from Alaska - wind drags water with it - Coriolis effect causes ocean water to drift slightly rightward of wind - ocean water moves westward away from California coast - cold arctic/nutrient rich water is suctioned up from the deep - this nutrient rich water kickstarts the food chain in the ocean and allows us to have these beautiful kelp forests which then allows the Eastern Pacific Ocean to have one of the best commercial fishing economies in the world. 

-This video: Shows a space-eye view of travelling Southeast over Atlantic Ocean, Spain, & Northern Africa/The Sahara. - Pretty spectacular & mesmerizing. Also if you click on the links below the video it should lead to you to more awesome videos made by the International Space Station. 

-Ever wonder how an insect gets enough oxygen to power their fast wings? Even if you havent, the answer is still pretty cool: insects circulatory system (blood) and respiratory system (oxygen) have been decoupled. Insect blood does not contain oxygenating blood cells and instead only contains sugars. Insects get oxygen by having tiny pores in their exoskeleton that branch out into smaller and smaller tubes and cells gain oxygen directly from the air. Sounds pretty crazy right? This has lead them to be the most wildly successful group of organisms ever - the biomass (aka weight not number of organisms) outweighs every other living thing on earth combined. 

Anyways, I hope you find these interesting. If there's anything you ever want to know about climate change, the ocean, animal physiology, conservatoin, or science in general let me know! I want everyone to know this stuff (just because I think its wildly cool) & I love looking stuff up!

Also important dates as to when I'll be done with school & all that: 

-I'll be in Atascadero for Spring Break March 27-30th

-My last day of school for the summer is June 14th, but I do plan to be living in Santa Cruz for the majority of the summer.

Much love to everyone,

Emily Stolllmeyer

12-29-12 2nd Email

Family & Friends,

So I just finished up my 7th quarter here at UCSC and it was truly the most difficult one to date. Between my 24 hr/week job, 17 units, and volunteering at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center I just about didn't get time to breathe. I'm relieved to say that I passed all my classes and have finished my first two upper division classes. Next quarter I'll be starting up Invertebrate Zoology, Marine Environment, and Docent training at the Seymour center for a grand total of 14 units. I am also going to be continuing to work at our Dining hall as a Supervisor (18 hr/week) and volunteer at the Seymour center (5 hr/week). I'm really excited to finally have a quarter where all my classes will be within my major!

Besides that October 2012 was the month that both my car and my computer crapped out, coming out to a very expensive month for these near-necessities in college. While I waited for replacements I became very familiar with the City Bus (conveniently was too full to pick me up many times, including 20 minutes before a midterm) and the Campus Library Computers (They are some nice Macs, when you manage to grab one for yourself). Having these resources available was a lifesaver - which brings me to thank everyone who voted for Prop 30. I cannot tell you how relieved the entire campus was. It felt like New Years. Finally after constant tuition hikes and budget cuts, the prospect of a lowered tuition seemed unbelievable. It is nice to finally see government care about their education system. 

I hope everyone's holiday season was enjoyable and not stressful, and good luck for the new year!

Okay, so now for some interesting stuff from my classes/life:

-Ever thought your dog was watching television? Turns out they can't even see what's on the screen. All dogs will be able to see is a white bright screen. Television/computer screens are made for humans to see. Very simply put, if you look closely enough at your monitor, you will see tiny red green and blue lights. This is because humans are Tri-chromatic. Our eyes can only detect red, green, and blue, all other visible colors arecomposed out of varying degrees of these colors. Dogs are very different . They are Mono-chromatic, meaning they are only capable of detecting one color of light, effectively making their vision gray scale. 

-More cool eye stuff related to your visual field here. 

-Related to the brain: this is a story told by a brain scientist of her experience having a stroke. Its one of the more popular videos on Ted.com (a site of free talks lead by professor-level amazing individuals.), but if you haven't watched it I highly recommend you watch it. 

-Some people have been asking me what my opinions on the PG&E seismic testing were. (For those of you who haven't heard it did get denied a permit). 

I do think its a horrible idea. The reasoning: The testing would include "PG&E had requested a Coastal Commission permit to begin the high-energy surveys of 130 square miles of ocean. A 235-foot vessel was to tow a 1/4-mile-wide array of submerged, 250-decibel air cannons that would discharge every 15 seconds, night and day, for 17 days." Unfortunately this means many animals in the ocean, including elephant seals, sea lions, and more would be exposed to deafening levels of sound for an extended period of time. This is bad for echo-locating animals as they use their aural senses primarily for hunting, navigation, and other vital functions. What this all boils down to is that emitting that loud of a sound for that long kills a large percentage of the animals it comes into contact with. This has huge repercussions throughout the fragile and valuable kelp forests that reside off of our coasts. The largest example of harm starts when you remove seals and sea lions from the ecosystem. This means that every seal that otherwise would've been the meal of a shark or orca will need be replaced 5x over by sea otters. Sea Otters are what you can call a 'keystone species', meaning they are absolutely vital for the kelp forest to remain prosperous (see my last email for a better explanation). Sea Otters also do not have a large amount of blubber, meaning that a shark or orca will need to eat ~5 sea otters for every seal they would've eaten in the past. The Sea Otter has been struggling to come back from the verge of extinction, so this would be largely detrimental meaning possible extinction of the Sea Otter and thus the Kelp Forests along with it. The seismic testing would also kill off large portions of fish (What happens when you tap the glass of an aquarium?) meaning that fishing industry and the animals that eat them would suffer. All in all: just a terrible idea and an environmental catastrophe. 

-To end on something positive: Les Miserables is amazing on screen and its truly an emotionally moving movie - so I recommend you go see it!

All my love,

Emily Stollmeyer

10-22-12 1st Email

Dear Family,

As I dive continually further into my major, I am finding that I am getting less and less of an opportunity to go home. This is both happy and sad, as I start my career within the Marine Sciences and have to sacrifice time with family and friends at home. 

I am also learning new and interesting things that I have a very strong belief that everyone should know. I would like to start sending updates and interesting factoids out to family & friends so you can get a little taste of what I am doing.

For those of you who don't know, I am now in my Junior Year at UC Santa Cruz, working towards my BS in Marine Biology; (Hopefully later a Master's Degree).  I have also just started to Volunteer at The Seymour Marine Discovery Center at UCSC's Long Marine Lab. As part of my introduction to being an Exhibit Guide I attended about 24 hours of lecture on the Ocean and Conservation; including information about how to handle live sharks and saltwater invertebrates. Part of the job is learning how to answer any questions a visitor might have about the ocean and inspiring them to take interest, if not action, in protecting our oceans. I do not feel as if I can do this job accurately without first articulating these ideas to those I am closest to. 

So, some really cool things that I have learned that have me riled up enough to write an email about them: 

• The West Coast of North America (Alaska to Baja CA) has some of the richest waters in the entire world. The Kelp Forests that you see along the rocky coast can be considered the Rain Forests of the Ocean. More animals live underwater here than anywhere else in the world. (On par or more than the Great Barrier Reef). <<This is really cool>>. 

• Sea Otters hold this entire Kelp Forest together. (Eg. Otters eat Sea Urchins, Sea Urchins eat Kelp, nothing else eats Sea Urchins). Plus they hold hands when they sleep. :)

• Plastic is not recyclable. Read again. Plastic is not recyclable. When we send plastic to a recycling center they have the option to downcycle it (into a less useful item which is not recyclable) or send it to another country for storage. This means every piece of plastic you or I has ever used will outlive you by thousands if not millions of years. This includes "biodegradable corn plastic". I cannot even begin to rant about how easy it is to generally reduce the amount of plastic you consume. The easiest way to do this is by bringing your own reusable bags, cups, and silverware with you where ever you go. The amount of plastic you stop using has rippling effects that do everything from protecting the sea turtles toalerting local business that plastic use is something they should care about as well. 

• This is a chart showing the relative depths of oceans and lakes compared to submarine depth & sperm whale dive depth among other things. 

• This is the view I have when I go for runs around my neighborhood & This is where I go to school. Come visit. :) 

Feel free to ask me any questions or anything! I miss all of you and see you soon at Sarah's Wedding, Thanksgiving, and Kiser Christmas!.