It's been a few months since I made my last blog post; thus this one is largely overdue.
Since September I have started and completed my Fall Quarter of my Senior year here at UCSC.
I'm completely done with my General Ed and very close to finishing my Major.
Last quarter I got to take Intro to Philosophy (Textual analysis GE), Intro to Latin American and Latino Studies (Ethnicity/Race GE), and Ichthyology (Fish Bio). I got all A's!
My Ich class was particularly interesting and important as I'm planning on becoming a fisheries biologist. Throughout the quarter I had to reconstruct a fish skull which, as it turns out, is a very difficult and tedious task.
During this process I:
1. Collected a fish - I went down to the Santa Cruz Harbor around the time when all the F/V's come back and are fileting. I got a pretty blue Lingcod.
 |
| Step 1: Acquire fish. Step 2. Start feeling like an evil scientist. |
 |
| Step 3. Attack fish like you want to tear the flesh off it's face, because... ya know, you do. |
 |
| My friend Anne removing parasites that we are now calling sea demons, because nothing could be alive that long out of the ocean and be a good thing. |
 |
| I felt this was necessary after removing the jaws. |
4. Take bones off and apart all while filming so I could later remember where all the bones went. - This part took roughly 2 hours and included many curses into the camera as I realized that a bone I thought was made up of 1 bone was actually several (in some cases was actually 10 bones) and panicked as I saw no visible connections for some bones. It's entertaining to say the least.
5. Let bones dry overnight. - I picked off as much as the flesh as possible then sorted bones by lateral sides/ jaws/ cranium
6. Painstakingly soak bones in diluted hydrogen peroxide and pick off remaining flesh - This took an entire day. Basically I got up on a sunday morning had coffee and cereal and started cleaning the bones, I didn't take a break until dinner time and then I was right back to it until around 10pm. So probably a solid 12 hours dedicated to cleaning and whitening bones.
7. Let the bones dry and allow oil to seep out for 3 weeks - I put them on trays on top of my cabinets, essentially my apartment will probably never stop smelling like fish.
8. Take bones down, wipe off, puzzle piece and sort with video.
9. Super glue bones or attach via wire - these two steps probably took 6 hours. Lots of burned fingers and frustration went into this...
10. Acquire picture frame and base, then carved out and glued together pieces for the base.
11. Hang fish, add info card with glued otoliths.
12. Turned in - found out that I was probably one of the few students in my class who did it alone, and it was probably one of the best ones turned in! I was pretty proud and glad I had a friend who worked in the campus osteology lab. It definitely makes you appreciate the complexity and inner workings of a fish - evolution has been good to us by synthesizing most of our bones into a non-complex structure.
 |
| Much, much, much later - my finished skull! |
 |
| My lingcod skull - Ophiodon elongatus |
Some other cool stuff from my Ichthyology class included:
- This is a video that explains a few problems with overfishing. It was made for the EU a few years ago, but it's message still holds true for the US, as these problems are still not resolved. In the bluefin tuna example that problem has only gotten worse - ichthyologists are now suggesting 7,000 tons instead of 10,000.
-Cute sharks having babies.
My other two classes were both very interesting as well.
-In Philosophy, I got to do a project on Empiricism. I did some of the drawings for the video and I think it turned out pretty good!
-In Latin American & Latino Studies, I learned a lot about the history of latin america and latino immigration to the United States. This was an unbelievably enlightening class. The struggles that those countries have been dealing with are complex, but we essentially got to the root of a history of oppression that has persisted for 500 years.
What's most interesting is that the country that is improving most quickly in Latin America is Cuba, largely because of the embargo with the US - Since our big businesses can't go there, they are able to control their own land and make their own improvements despite what any US propaganda might say here. All in all, very interesting stuff.
Another interesting thing to look at is Latin American immigration. While there is lots of media out there that makes Latino Immigrants look like they're coming over is a bad thing - the truth in instead much more complex. When you look at the data, while Mexico may have the highest number of immigrants, the largest number of new latinos coming to the US is legal births. Latino immigration is actually declining. There's many more confusing stats that definitely make you question the validity of our news sources and the practice of Lobbying. I think that in order to solve any of the problems facing the US, including wealth inequality, climate change, overfishing, water, war, renewable energy, immigration, marriage, etc we must first eliminate lobbying. The people cannot get anything done when corporations are providing a steady flow of cash into congressmen's pockets.
-Also this video about wealth inequality in America.
Besides school, I have a new boyfriend. His name is Cameron and we met online on Reddit. He lives far away in Anaheim, so it's long distance. But he makes me really happy and he could be transferring to Cal Poly SLO soon.
![]()
Over winter break I got to get a behind the scenes tour of Diablo Nuclear Power plant with my dad, courtesy of John Lindsey who is a meteorologist for SLO county. He first took us out on a boat, where we got to see the intake and output portions of their marine water cooling system. -Talk about a lot of water! While the output releases oceanic water (non-radioactive, if you look at the data Nuclear Power plants are actually less radioactive than a coal-powered plan and are certainly much better for the environment), around 20 degF higher than the water coming in, this plume of warm water has little effect on the surrounding Marine Protected Area. The major issue actually lies within the the intake itself. Upon suction there are large metal grates that prevent anything large from going into the system, but it does not prevent the entrainment of the plankton. To give you a little insight as to why this might be so dangerous, every animal and alga in the ocean (excluding possibly marine mammals and sea birds) spends part of its life cycle in the plankton. This means that they start out as microscropic organisms who cannot control where they go in the current; Plankton is the term used for anything that fits these qualifications. When the system heats up it kills everything in the plankton, possibly damaging the next generation of sea creatures. PG&E employs marine biologists to study this effect on the surrounding ecology. The data they have been collecting since the 70's is one of the longest and most complete of any coastal area on record. Anyways, it was really interesting and inspiring to see how things I'm studying are affecting large scale things such as Diablo Power Plant. (They have 2 generators there, each providing roughly 5% of the energy needed in California).
This quarter (Winter Quarter) I have just started taking Marine Ecology (learning how to study patterns within nature, and I eventually will have to write up a Scientific Proposal), Physics 6B (Hopefully the last difficult, math-related class I ever have to take), and The Beatles (no not the bug, its a history of the band! Homework is to listen to Beatles albums and watch Beatles movies... I have no complaints with this class!) Overall it's a pretty good schedule. I'm also interning with the National Marine Fisheries Service in their Early Life History department. I'm basically just working at a microscope counting rockfish eggs with (hopefully) a few trips out to sea as well as some fish processing days (free filets!).
I've also been accepted to study abroad in Maastricht, Netherlands this fall. I'll probably save telling you about it for the next post (hopefully within a month) as this one has already gotten to be too long.
Thanks for reading!
Emily
Over winter break I got to get a behind the scenes tour of Diablo Nuclear Power plant with my dad, courtesy of John Lindsey who is a meteorologist for SLO county. He first took us out on a boat, where we got to see the intake and output portions of their marine water cooling system. -Talk about a lot of water! While the output releases oceanic water (non-radioactive, if you look at the data Nuclear Power plants are actually less radioactive than a coal-powered plan and are certainly much better for the environment), around 20 degF higher than the water coming in, this plume of warm water has little effect on the surrounding Marine Protected Area. The major issue actually lies within the the intake itself. Upon suction there are large metal grates that prevent anything large from going into the system, but it does not prevent the entrainment of the plankton. To give you a little insight as to why this might be so dangerous, every animal and alga in the ocean (excluding possibly marine mammals and sea birds) spends part of its life cycle in the plankton. This means that they start out as microscropic organisms who cannot control where they go in the current; Plankton is the term used for anything that fits these qualifications. When the system heats up it kills everything in the plankton, possibly damaging the next generation of sea creatures. PG&E employs marine biologists to study this effect on the surrounding ecology. The data they have been collecting since the 70's is one of the longest and most complete of any coastal area on record. Anyways, it was really interesting and inspiring to see how things I'm studying are affecting large scale things such as Diablo Power Plant. (They have 2 generators there, each providing roughly 5% of the energy needed in California).
 |
| Can you believe this was taken on Dec 26? #ReasonsWhyCalifornia |
 |
| "Everything with blue trim is spinning and creating 5% of the energy in California" Me: *Steps away from it* Dad: "Lets take a picture leaning against it!!" |
This quarter (Winter Quarter) I have just started taking Marine Ecology (learning how to study patterns within nature, and I eventually will have to write up a Scientific Proposal), Physics 6B (Hopefully the last difficult, math-related class I ever have to take), and The Beatles (no not the bug, its a history of the band! Homework is to listen to Beatles albums and watch Beatles movies... I have no complaints with this class!) Overall it's a pretty good schedule. I'm also interning with the National Marine Fisheries Service in their Early Life History department. I'm basically just working at a microscope counting rockfish eggs with (hopefully) a few trips out to sea as well as some fish processing days (free filets!).
I've also been accepted to study abroad in Maastricht, Netherlands this fall. I'll probably save telling you about it for the next post (hopefully within a month) as this one has already gotten to be too long.
Thanks for reading!
Emily
