5-20-14 Photography!

Hello everyone!

So this past quarter I've been taking 3 interesting classes. Marine Mammals, Marine Ecology Field Lab (my senior exit class), and Intro to Photography

Marine Mammals isn't exactly thrilling, but we've gotten to go whale watching. At least now I know I'm definitely more interested in fish!

Marine Ecology Field lab is a lot of work and almost entirely in the field. We've sampled snail populations in the mud, sand dune plant communities, tide pool communities, and sandy shore communitites. All really cool stuff. The second half of the quarter is now devoted to our own individual projects. My partner and I are doing our project on sculpin habitat usage within the San Lorenzo River. We just got all of our gear figured out and our first test day of data collection will be on thursday! Very exciting stuff!

Introduction of photography has been really amazing for me. It's opened up this whole new interesting world that I really like. I have a new Nikon D3000 DSLR (I believe Gpa Gerry also has the same camera) that I bought specifically for the class. I actually wanted to make this blog post just to show you some of my favorite images that I've taken so far both for the class and for fun. SO without further ado, here's some of the best photos.

Assignment 1: Scavenger Hunt

This is a photo of my Marine Ecology Professors showing us how to sample the sandy beach.
They're both very important individuals to the Monterey Bay so it was awesome to bring my camera along to this class. 

 Assigment 2: Portraits of 3 people

Assignment 3: Self Identity

Assignment 4: Street Photography (San Francisco)

Other:

Madison (my sister)

Lab Photos (for practice of concepts) 

Blurred

Panned

Light painting with the moon

Light Painting with a tripod and my cell phone

 Other

Overall I've really enjoyed the class. My last project is to construct a photo book. I've got a few ideas but I'll keep you updated!

4-14-14 Oceans of Disney: If you want to Spring out, Spring out; if you want to be Free, be Free

Hello everyone!

So much to talk about!

So since my last blog post I have finished Winter Quarter 2014.

The biggest triumph of that quarter was passing physics! (Woo done forever... er at least in my undergrad... with math-based classes!!)

I also did a large original research proposal in my Marine Ecology class with a group of 3 other Marine Bio undergrads. The final paper was bout 16 pages and we had to present it to our professors (giants in the world of kelp forest and rocky intertidal ecology). It was a ton of work but definitely gave us an idea of what being a scientist is actually like. I wrote most of the hypotheses and was sort of the head of the group as I've taken more classes on invert physiology, taxonomy, and ecology. This is the presentation we made that helps explain our project.

Then for Spring Break I went on a Disney Cruise with my mom in the Caribbean. It was completely amazing. Being on that ship is just so relaxing and fun that we never want to leave. We made some good friends while on board and had a great time in Cozumel where we we went Scuba Diving and in Cayman Islands where we got to boat out to a sand bar with lots of Sting Rays. Both were great experiences and have me excited to get going on finishing my scuba certification here in California!

Surreally Beautiful Caribbean Sunset from our room

Me and Mom after getting to pet some sting rays in Grand Cayman

This is us in our Scuba Gear - Pictures were too great not to buy! 

Me with an awesome Stingray Statue in Grand Cayman

This is where we got to go Scuba Diving in Cozumel, Mexico.
They employed a reef-saving system called Reef Balls which are essentially giant concrete soccerballs.
They have spaces cut out and allow different fishes and invertebrates to live upon them,
essentially supporting the reef without having to worry about coral bleaching, etc. 

Mom and Me in Cozumel next to our ship - the Disney Wonder.

Oh mom, sewing on deck 10.

Disney Cruise Line <3

Because, how often do you get to combine drinking with Mickey Mouse? 

After the cruise we headed to Disney World for a few days. This is Epcot!

Mom and me posing with Timon and Pumbaa during Epcot's Flower Festival.

Epcot!

I completely fell in love with the architecture and designs in Epcot's Morroco

The day we got back from our amazing Disney trip, my boyfriend Cameron came up with half of his stuff to move in with me! It's been really great to not be long distance anymore, and now Ramona has someone to play with while I'm away at school.

Of course the next weekend we had to go back to get the other half of his stuff, and since it's not every day that I'm in Anaheim and as if I hadn't had enough Disney already - We went to Disneyland with Alison and Jeremiah. 

A great shot of Ali and Jeremiah I captured on my new DSLR

Posing with the Ferry!

Castle!

We came back home and I started up a new quarter here at UCSC. This is my last quarter before I study abroad in the Netherlands in the fall, but more on that later.
Right now I'm taking Intro to Photography - which required me to get a better camera, so you may notice that now these pictures are DLSR worthy (even if the picture-taking itself is slightly spotty).
I'm also taking Marine Mammals, which means I get credit to look at pictures of whales, dolphins, and seals all day, I mean it's not my favorite school of Marine Bio but I'm certainly not complaining.
My 3rd class is my Senior Exit Requirement - Marine Ecology Field Lab. Basically we go on field trips instead of lecture and collect data and learn about field methods. The second half of the quarter will require me to run my own experiment and test my own original hypotheses - definitely something that will be scary, yet awesome.

Marine Ecology Lab - Left is Baleen and Right is live, in the bone, real Narwhal skull and horn, which is really a modified tooth. Cool stuff. 

I'm continuing my Internship at NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service.
Basically I sit behind a microscope and count eggs (pictured below),
 and this quarter this also extends to measuring eggs digitally on a computer
 and cleaning out rockfish tanks in the aquarium room! 

Microscopic Rockfish larvae. So cute :)

My Professors showing us how to filter out sand so we can count
the Sand Crabs, Blood worms, and other inverts hiding within the sand.
Keep in mind this is around 7:30 in the morning.

A cameraman followed our class out there in the early cold.
He was doing a piece on Sea Star wasting disease,
a disease devastating Sea Star populations throughout the Pacific which I wont go into here.
 My Prof (the guy in the middle) Pete Raimondi is an Invertebrate Ecologist
and spoke about the disease on the beach.  

You don't know real cold until you run in and out of 50 degF sea water in windy 40 degF temperatures
 in the name of science. Next time I won't be forgetting my boots at home. D:

I think that has you all up to speed.

Future events look like this for me:

• I'll be in Atascadero during May 9-12
• I'll be at Ryan and Kristen's Wedding on June 7th
• I'm done with Finals on June 9th (also Madison's birthday)
• I'll be at King's River the weekend of June 14th
• I'll be at Haley's Bridal shower on July 13th
• I'm going to be leaving for Africa with my Dad/Family on July 14th, where afterwards I'll be going straight to the Netherlands to study abroad for the fall. I wont be back in the United States until just before Christmas in December. 

So if you would like to see me before I study abroad I will probably have some sort of party/event at my dad's house (though definitely not set in stone yet) as a sort of going away party. But anything else should be planned before the middle of July! I'll also be updating this blog (hopefully more frequently) while I'm in the Netherlands so stay tuned! 

Alright so some cool stuff:

• THIS has got to be the coolest weather site I have ever seen. You can play with all of the graphs and really compare to previous years and all over the world. Awesome!

• If you were ever curious as to why predators are important to their respective ecosystems, I now have learned some in depth reasons as to why we need sharks, tigers, bears, sea stars, wolves, birds, etc. 
• So to start this off picture a system at equilibrium. All this means is that everything in in balance. All species are doing alright and there isn't anybody getting pushed out or threatened. Another way of thinking about this is that all parts in the circle of life are moving equally, or there are no gaps.
• Now picture what happens when one species starts to grow uncontrollably. They grow outside of their bounds, they take resources from others, other species start going extinct, the system goes out of balance and there is a very possible threat of collapse.
• Now think about this. There are very few predators compared to the rest of the 'food' or vegetarians in the system. The predators eat those organisms that would otherwise grow uncontrollably. They keep everything in check. They are the system of checks and balances to the wild. This is known as the Keystone Predator effect, something you may recall me talking about when I discussed the importance of Sea Otters. 
• Ex) The Sea Star is much more important than you might think. When you look at tide pools, the most dominant life forms are Mussels and Barnacles. There are many other things living in cracks and pools like Anemones, Crabs, Snails, Chitons, Nudibranchs, Fish, Sea Grass, Green Algae, Honeycomb Worms, etc. There is an overabundance of life within these tide pools. However, Mussels and Barnacles threaten these other species. They are very good at taking up space and keeping it, thus preventing other organisms from living there. Sea Stars eat mussels and barnacles. They are massive predators. They eat them as fast as they grow back and help create open space within the tide pools. Those other organisms depend upon Sea Stars. They are the keystone predator. 
• This example is replicated all over the ocean and nature in general. The medium amounts of disturbance provided by the predator actually help the entire ecosystem stay healthy. 
• This doesn't mean humans 'over-predating' is a good thing, we still have gone way past the limits of normal, medium levels of disturbance.
• This means that we should protect the top predators in systems instead of killing them or wiping them out. (Dont kill sharks please we like those)
• This means Sea Star wasting disease, a disease that literally tears a Sea Star apart and kills them, has drastic unfortunate consequences throughout the coastal oceans and perhaps beyond, as our Tide Pools are important for our Kelp Forests as our Kelp Forests are important to our Fisheries as those Fisheries decide the fate of the ocean as a whole.

• Ecology is a broad subject which is interdisciplinary. It draws from economics, taxonomy, physiology, evolution, meteorology, and philosophy, among other subjects. In fact for a long time Ecology was not considered to be a real science as the data you receive is difficult to interpret due to a plethora of constantly changing, unpredictable, underlying factors. However what is interesting about Ecology is the importance of it and also its analogies to Human Economics. I had a really great discussion with my dad in San Francisco about the Economical Applications of Marine Ecology. As MINDBODY is about to go public, many of the same laws that apply to ecosystems also apply to corporations. The analogy has money as the 'food/resources' of the system while the term 'niche' stays the same. We were able to solve a few questions he had about the economics of MINDBODY while using the foundations of Ecology. Very fascinating stuff! 

1-26-2014: Lets sum up fall and winter *long one sorry!*

Hello everyone!

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.

2. Chop off head, remove organs, pick off as much meat/flesh as possible. - This took roughly 3 hours, especially given that I found two MASSIVE parasites in the gills that were still alive. I had to call in my friend to extract them for me - they were too horrifying.

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.

3. Cook the head in water at sub-boiling temperatures - roughly 1 hour

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).

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