Final Week at OIMB

        My last week was good. We presented our final presentations (as powerpoints) on August 15th. I pretty much explained what our results were and scanning electron microscopy and video analysis (I mentioned these in my previous posts).We picked up our first long term plates and our second set of short term plates on the 14th. Unfortunately we only had time to pick up and analyze our first set of short term plates (3 weeks). 

        We found that there was the most settlement on the plates at site number 3. This was equidistant between the site farthest away from the reef (site 5) and the site directly in the reef (site 1). We thought that this might be because there were less places for the larvae to settle on in this site so the larvae were more likely to choose our plates to settle as well as the surrounding reef. We found 3 major organisms; Barnacles, Hydroids (an example of this would be cup coral) and green worms. Barnacles were the most abundant.

        Overall I loved doing this internship and it was a great opportunity. It was a lot of fun setting up the materials for the sites (creating the cement blocks and plates etc.). It was exciting and interesting to analyze and identify the species we found. I would like to than my mentor, Kirstin Meyer for allowing me to have this opportunity. I would also like to thank Coral Gehrke who was in charge of the other interns and I at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB). I would also like to thank the COSEE-PP Prime program and the National Science Foundation for making this possible. The students at OIMB were also friendly, supportive and interested in the project we were working on, so I would like to thank them as well.