Riley - Week 2; Down in the Mud

June 30th- July 4th, 2014

     This week I was introduced to the area I worked in for the larger part of the summer: the mudflats. I had the pleasure of experiencing what it means to get stuck (and really, I mean in mud that I sunk past my knees in) and having to have the physical and mental strength to continue on. Although somewhat challenging, the mudflats are a great place to work and have fun in the process.

     The first trip to the mudflats I was introduced to the technique of measuring shell bags. A shell bag is mesh sac that has been filled with oyster shells. 25 of these bags were laid out last year across the flats in the Yaquina bay to provide hard substrate for settling crab larvae. They were placed throughout the different habitats in the mudflats, including bare mud and the different eelgrass species (Z. marina, and Z. japonica). These shell bags are used to help determine where crab larvae and juvenile crabs prefer to settle. By providing a substrate that is known to be favored by the crab larvae, their movements throughout the different habitats demonstrate their preference of living space. The method of investigation I learned to be somewhat extensive.  

To sample shell bags, we first placed a crab corral around the shell bag. This is a small metal square that is softly pressed into the sediment surrounding the bag in order to prevent crabs from escaping. We then cut open the bag and emptied the contents into a box sieve (a wooden box with a screen in the bottom that allows water to wash through, but prevents the crabs from getting out). We then visually investigated each shell, looking for juvenile crabs. We also dug out all the mud within the crab corral down to approximate three centimeters, and sieved through that as well. If crabs were found, each individual had its carapace width measured and recorded. The carapace of a crab is the hard shell that covers the majority of their body.

     Also, sampling shell bags included a quick assessment of the areas within five meters around the bag. This meant picking a random spot, and dropping the crab corral there. We recorded the different types of vegetation cover in the corral, as well as sieving through the mud in it. Here, we were looking for young crabs that had migrated from the shell bags to the habitat of their choice. These assessments are what really help us determine where the crabs like to live. Although this entire process when repeated 25 times was really long (taking beyond five hours to complete) it’s still really fun. Getting covered by mud and playing with the baby crabs is what made it all worthwhile.

Riley - Week 1 ; Welcome to Hatfield

   
 June 23rd-27th, 2014

      My name is Riley Brostrom, and I came to Hatfield from Chemeketa Community College in Salem. I am transferring to Oregon State University in the fall with my Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer Degree, pursuing a major in biology with an emphasis in marine biology. Since being introduced to the subject of marine science in high school, I knew that this is where I wanted my career to take me. This field is something I find fascinating and exciting. I believe that there is still a lot left undiscovered in the world’s oceans, and I would love to be a part of those discoveries. When I heard about the COSEE Prime internship available at Hatfield this summer, I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity I had to be a part of.
     For my project I worked with Dr. Brett Dumbauld of the USDA, and his graduate student from OSU, Daniel Sund. The main component of our research was investigating the use of structured and unstructured habitats within the intertidal mudflats by fish and juvenile crabs. This meant we studied areas that had eelgrass present (structured habitats) or areas that were bare mud (unstructured). More specifically, we were comparing the use of a non-native eelgrass species (Zostera japonica) to the use of a native eelgrass (Zostera marina). This way, we hoped to gain a better understanding of what Z. japonica’s role is within our coastal ecosystem, and how that compares to Z. marina. This study was carried out by a few different methods:
     One of the methods we used was the sampling of shell bags. These were placed in various habitats last year, and were recovered this year to count the number of juvenile crab that had settled in them. A second method was the deployment of underwater cameras. These were used to see fish and crab in their natural environment, while having the ability to count them. Such methods we hoped would inform us as to which habitat appears to supplement the most diversity of creatures, thus leading to their importance within the coastal ecosystem.

Week 6 - Matthew Mischke: OIMB Visit and Data Analysis

Hey everybody!

     What a week to come back to after my retreat! With all the data finally in the database and properly examined for quality before I left, this week we started analysis of the historic data Bridget and I spent so long working with. Before we could do any analysis though, there was a lot of reading to do. Over Monday and Tuesday we learned 3 species diversity measures, a new statistical analysis and started to use a new program with its own coding language neither of us had ever seen before. It was a lot of work but it has been making me feel much more like a serious researcher, as well as regret not retaining more from the stats class I took last year.
     Two of the diversity measures we learned were the Shannon-Weiner Diversity Index and the Simpson's Diversity Index. Both of these indexes are calculated with abundance data including how many species are present in a sample, how many individuals of each species there are and these species being studied need to occupy the same or similar habitats. The Shannon index, represented by H' when its calculated, ranges from 0-5. It measures uncertainty in correctly predicting the species of the next hypothetical individual collected. If H'=0 all the individuals in the sample would belong to one species. H' has never been calculated higher than a 5, meaning that every individual in the sample would be unique and there would be a near equal number of individuals and species. If every individual is unique, there's a high uncertainty that one could correctly predict species of the next individual. The Simpson's index, represented by D when calculated, measures the likelihood that 2 individuals chosen at random will be part of the same species and ranges from 0-1. If D=0, then all individuals are of the same species and if D=1 all the individuals are unique.
     We also learned about rarefaction and how it can be used to balance species richness across multiple sample groupings and put more weight in less represented species and take weight away from dominant species in a community.
     The final statistic we learned about was MRPP (Multi-response Permutation Procedures). It's a non-parametric multi-variable statistical tool for testing the hypothesis that a group of a priori selected samples is identical to a group chosen by random chance. Before conducting an MRPP, a similarity matrix must be created from abundance and species data using a program like R, the statistics program utilizing a coding language mentioned earlier. A similarity matrix takes all the species in a sampled community and plots them in an abstract space where more taxonomically related species are closer together than distance relatives. The matrix measures their difference from each other in special units, in our case Bray-Kurtis units and plots records the differences in a matrix. Thankfully we had R to do that for us so all we had to do was type up a script importing and transforming the data until we were able to type a couple lines and the MRPP ran itself 1000 times.
     Needless to say, learning complicated new statistics tests and coding was mentally exhausting, so Wednesday's trip to OIMB was a refreshing change of pace. We were able to go out in Cape Arago to the tide pools and out on the rocks near the kelp beds to see where Peter and Leyia collected their plankton samples. It was a lot of fun. We also got a nice tour of some of the labs and classrooms, including one full of stuffed seabirds, some baleen and a sea otter fur! We were also treated to an amazing cafeteria lunch of chowder, salad, cheesy garlic bread and marionberry cobbler. It was a fun day with a beautiful long drive there and back through amazing forests, dunes and over many bays.
     It was a long and eventful week, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Until next week...

Thanks for reading,
Matthew

Week 6 COSEE Experience

The sixth week of my internship under ODFW's wing was quite an adventure, however the most exciting part of this last week had nothing didn't involve ODFW. All the COSEE interns staying in Newport, hopped aboard an OSU van with intentions of Charelston. The ride down was filled with anticipation, and the ride back to the central coast was designated nap time for most of us. The most important part of this journey was visiting with the other COSEE interns over at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB).

We were able to wander around their cozy cottage like campus (a University of Oregon funded institution), eat a wonderful lunch with them in their dining hall, and we were able to visit the labs they're working in. Before we took a tour of campus, we went in the field with the gang, I fell behind while climbing the many rocks and didn't quite hear their presentation about field work. However, I discovered one of the most beautiful places of the Oregon coast that I've seen (I've lived here over a decade)! I envy the interns who are able to look, feel and touch such a wonderful spot in Oregon. Warning, pictures do not serve this location justice. 

The first thing my eyes were drawn to as I approached the beach, a neatly organized stack of rocks! (People enjoyed this marine reserve in a playful manner!)

The entire gang approaching the beach, some with buckets in hand.

Last full week(end) at HMSC - Cindyjo Keomani Boungnavath

Greetings to all! ສະ​ບາຍ​ດີ​ຫມົດ​ທຸກ​ຄົນ

sa bai di mod thuk khon

It was a bittersweet week as many of us began to wrap up our projects to reach some sort of conclusion/result to culminate all our efforts here at HMSC for these past two months. This week, there is much to note- the beginnings of presentation-forming, continued Tommy's (my mentor) and I discussion on environmental ethics, visited Bridget's office at the Berry-Fisher Building at NOAA, made up a game I like to call "marine bio-ball", and also attended a POW WOW.

photo credit: bridget begay
pose: thinking...until it hurts...ouch!

Although the project that I am working on, The Human Dimensions Project (ODF&W), which started three years ago and will continue until 2020 is yet to be finished, much of the data I collected still holds its importance among all the other numbers (the zeroes and ones). Because I am not given a clear-cut final result of my efforts, it proves a little difficult to explain that all my hard-work will be a contribution. With the presentations, I hope to plan a different strategy of bringing about my project's goals and results compared to that of my colleagues who have obtained sufficient evidence to draw conclusions and make visual aids (charts, graphs, etc.). I will hope to go more into depth about the Marine Reserves Project as it pertains to the socio-economic impacts to that of coastal communities. 

-bing

At the office (SB Annex), Tommy Swearingen and I have been corresponding via email, as we sit a far distance of 2 cubicals from each other, about the philosophical side of this program. As we evaluate and observe the attitudes and values people place upon natural sites such as the beach, it serves as a beacon to understand the inner-workings of the valuation of such things. Because peoples' interaction with these sites inform one about their perception of it, the question arises; where does value come from? and what importance does it hold? It no longer was statistics to be analyzed, but moreso thoughts to be pondered. Do the reasons people treat beaches, the ocean, marine animals etc. the way they do, offer an insight on whether or not these very things have intrinsic or instrumental value, and in what view, an anthropocentric one? These ideas and philosophies are what keep me going, people are fascinating creatures, yet dangerous because of our capabilities. 

Later this week, I also had the pleasure to visit my colleague/friend/roommate's office at NOAA and met with her mentors, Dr. Waldo Wakefield and Matthew Yergey; two of which are exceptional men. I was met with Waldo as he was leaving and had also ran into one of his long-time buddies from one of my field-days at Cape Perpetua where he mentioned to say hi to Waldo for him- as I did. Waldo's frind, Erwin Suess, an illustrious oceanographer, was a phenomenal man. I ran into him, his wife, and another lovely couple, whom were all visiting from Germany. We had a great discussion about hydrothermal vents and chemosynthesis where he later informed me about a newly-founded phenomena termed "cold seeps." It was a great time to talk to both men and hear them expound on topics they both delight in, an appreciable experience. 

-bing

Moving onto "marine bio-ball," this creation manifested itself as my dorm neighbor's classmate was staying overnight since they had class at 5am the next day to catch low-tide. There was maybe eight of us and so I figured it appropriate to propose that with every serve, a marine-bio fact must be stated and verified by others, before the serve was deemed acceptable. What started off a little wonky with hesitation, became a fun, informing, and great way to express our interests and what we knew to each other. We learned different kinds of seaweed, geneses, facts that weren't really facts, invertebrates, plankton, and different words in Japanese! All in all, a blast of a time with great teammates! 

-bing 
"siletz pow wow aug 10,2014"

And to end on a cultural note, a group of about five of us, attended the Siletz tribe POW WOW on August 10th, a Saturday. It was a lively place with so much history and stories to be told about. We were greeted with the sounds of bells dancing on the dresses of the Native women, drums in the air, and the sight of men in head dresses and cultural regalia dancing to the rhythm. The music, aroma of fry bread in the air, and the countless booths of jewelry, and different gifts were all a sight to be seen and felt. It was a beautiful, quaint location on the reservation within the forests of Siletz, where the moon hovered overhead and lit the sky. Among things tasted were: elk stew, "indian tacos", fry bread, freshly juiced juice, fruits, etc. where the likings of the taste buds were met. 

~ All this is to say, a great week ensued! I definitely look forward to the challenge of creating my presentation and spending the week actually delving deeper into the results of the interviews I conducted. Wish me luck! See you on the other side - (of next week)!

Hannah Lyons - Week 7

This week we finally got to put our snorkeling practice and SMURFing experience to the test and get in the water to collect the SMURFs! We left Depoe Bay Port early in the morning and it was a beautiful day out on the ocean. Tabi and I took turns swimming out to the buoy with one of our favorite ODFW employees, Neal. She went out with the net and either Tabi or I followed with the new SMURF to replace the one we were picking up. Once at the buoy we would pull up the mooring and wrap the net around the SMURF that had been hooked out there for at least two weeks, while holding the net closed we hooked the new SMURF in place and then signal to the boat to come and pick us up. Once our captain Keith signals that the boat is in neutral we both swim towards it with the net and hand it to the other people on the boat. Once out of the water, we pour water over the SMURF and collect any adolescent fish that might be hiding inside!

It was really fun to accomplish a task in the cold water, all suited up in gear, with hardly any possible communication with the other person. My favorite part was when after one trip we came up out of the boat and realized that there was a Grey Whale only a few hundred feet from where we had been in the water. I have never been in the water so close to a whale before. It was a great day and so glad we finally got to show off the skills our mentors have given us.

On my weekend I drove up north to hike Cascade Head. It was a nice little hike up and had spectacular views of the ocean and the Salmon River. I watched the crab boats while sitting in a field of wildflowers. The Oregon Coast is the most wonderful!

Morning out on the boat
 

Neal and I



View from the top of Cascade Head

Peter Sheesley - Week 7; Reflections On the Practice of Science & the Practice of Art; Watercolors from the Summer, T-shirt Design, Coral Costume

Imagine this. It is 11pm and a person is going to bed. He sets his alarm clock for 5 am, switches off the light and gets into bed. He lies there, running through the events of the next day in his mind. Each step of the morning is imagined and the possible kinks in the plan are ironed out mentally--he runs through it again, and again . . . Before the sun has come up his alarm clock startles him awake. He puts on the working clothes laid out the night before. He collects the gear; the tools for the day are vital. He runs through the process in his mind again, just to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything. It all goes in the trunk of the car. With a sack lunch and mug of coffee he is in the car and on the road within 15 minutes of waking. He knows the site well, having been there several times a week in the last few months. As the sun comes over the horizon in his rear window, he sips coffee from his mug and follows the same roads he’s followed before. Arriving at the site, he grabs the gear from the trunk, straps on the backpack, and has a tool under one arm and another tool in his hand. He leaves the parking lot and follows a trail through underbrush to the site. Now it’s go time. Things are unpacked, set-up, calibrated. The work begins. It is all encompassing and requires focus. Time is both urgent and ignored. Then, just as quickly as it began, the job is over. The gear is packed up. The “thing,” the “artifact,” the object of the work is handled carefully on the walk back to the car. It is now the most important thing, the evidence and result of the work. He stretches and breathes freely when the car is packed. When he gets back he moves the “artifact” inside first and places it carefully on the table. He looks at it once more before going to unpack the rest of the gear from the car, knowing he’ll be returning to it again and again.

Hopefully this sounds familiar to you, like something you’ve experienced. But, what specifically was he doing? He clearly planned something, went somewhere, used tools, and returned home with an “artifact” that somehow represents the place he was. For me, the scenario above could describe several activities. The two activities I was thinking of while writing it are 1) going out to collect samples for a science project, or 2) going out to make a plein air (on-site) landscape painting. At the end of week 7 of this summer internship, I am again finding the processes of science and art too remarkably similar to ignore.

In general terms, both of these processes involve a person having an inquiry, followed by a planned experience of reality, resulting in an abstracted artifact. In other words, the person is curious, goes to observe, and records his responses. Or you might say, we have ideas, we check them out, we take evidence to show what we’ve found. The real world in it’s 3+ dimensions is siphoned, squeezed, brushed, tabulated, digitized, into a 2 dimensional record, concept, or data—image, words, numbers, symbols.

In neither case is the actual concrete place or thing being observed the end product. Instead it is filtered somehow, abstracted into the results. Several things will influence the results; the tools used, the historical context in effect, and the observer’s intentions. Just as the types of paint, brushes, canvas size, etc., will in part determine the what the painting looks like, so too the size of the sampling tube, the method of casting, and the methods of counting, will influence the data found. Just as the historical context of the science (what is already known, what needs to be known, what is the accepted form of practicing) will impact the results found, so too the historical context of painting (what styles are already done, what styles are drawn on) will impact the image made. Just as the scientist’s particular question will influence what he pays attention to, the painter’s particular interest will drive the marks he makes. Tools. Context. Intentions.

What we have in the end, in both cases, is an artifact that tells us something about the actual place or thing observed. Of course, with Art and Science they are not the same types of artifact. The content is different. Usually a scientific artifact consists of words, numbers, and logical concepts, whereas an artistic one is made of colors, lines, shapes, and symbols. And they are generally put to different use. The scientific is often used to better understand how something works, why it is the way it is, or how it can be classified. The artistic is often used to move a person’s imagination to a different place, recall memories, provide visual stimulation. (I admit that attempting to define what science or art are used for in two sentences is inevitably very inadequate. These questions could fill books or even libraries). Yet, maybe there are times when scientific results are used in artistic ways, and visa versa. Maybe a well formed hypothesis and result provides a reader with a certain logical pleasure, or moves the imagination. Maybe a piece of art helps to classify something or describe how it works. Taking it to an even more exciting level, maybe a scientific finding inspires art, or visa versa.

Here is an interesting quote from the introduction of DeBoyd L. Smith and Kevin B. Johnson’s book A Guide to Marine Coastal Plankton and Marine Invertebrate Larvae (Second Edition, Kedall Hunt), a quote from Stanford University Professor Emeritus, Rolf L. Bolin, 1971, “In addition to their importance to our well-being, these planktonic organisms claim our interest because they are strange, beautiful, grotesque, and have adapted to their environment in manifold marvelous ways. It is an inert student indeed who cannot sit fascinated over the microscope for hours simply watching and admiring them. But no real student is content to watch. They want to know.”

With my above reflections on art and science in mind, I’m going to share the watercolor paintings I made this summer. They do loosely connect to our water samples because many of them were painted at, or nearby, the actual sites where we took samples. They were all painted on site, and generally took about 1 – 1.5 hours to make. The image sizes are app. 8x10.5 inches on 9x12 inch, 90 lb paper. And so I wonder, did the water sampling and inquiry about plankton content and hydrodynamics of the surf zone, impact the watercolor paintings. Maybe the watercolor paintings will, in addition to doing what art does, inspire some further scientific inquiry—or at least a sense of awe and wonder about the place they were made.

Cape Arago

South Cove Fog

Charleston Spit, Looking South

Charleston Spit, Looking North

Arago Shelf

Pack Trails

South Cove, Looking South

Shell Island

Additionally, this is probably a good time to share two other collisions of art and science; my OIMB T-shirt design, and my costume for the Invertebrate Ball.

Inspired by all the phytoplankton I've been identifying and counting.

A coral. Inspired by a hoola-hoop and plastic basket at Goodwill.

Matthew Mischke - Week 4: Quality Control

Hello!

I spent this week working on an important part of the experimental process, data processing and quality control. As I've mentioned before, up until this point most of the work in the office has been data entry. I've spent pretty much every day going through the data collected by Kryger, Pearcy and their colleagues in the binders full of data sheets from 1977-1979, putting that information in the FOIS database. However, the last few beam trawls were added to the database at the end of last week so now that data has to be processed. That means that this week was spent checking random records using the random number generator in Excel to produce SBMT's and cross-checking every fish length, depth, tow length, and note recorded in the database with it's corresponding datasheet from the binders. Together, Bridget and I processed and reviewed 119 records and made 217 corrections to spelling errors, number typos or species misplacements and omissions. We also made a combined 40 corrections to notes in the database.

After random checks were finished we exported records of all the fish lengths recorded in the historic data into an Excel sheet and looked at each fish species individually with lengths sorted from shortest to longest and longest to shortest, searching for outliers, values that lie far outside the distribution of the rest of the data. We found a few more errors that way, and they were reconciled in the database.

In addition to these kinds of quality control, we also went back through the database and created a new length type (UN) for unmeasured fish marked in the notes as either not getting measurements, being in pieces so a measurement would be inaccurate, or just for general notes of organisms being caught and dumped overboard. We created records for all of these fish this way so accurate counts and database-wide trends could be seen easier. We also did some clean up by mapping out the historic cruises and looking for outliers on the map as indications of incorrect coordinates in the database.

Overall, it wasn't an exciting week but the work needed to be done and has moved us a lot closer to starting some actual analysis, and therefore closer to having some results to report for many years of hard work. Its really encouraging to see things moving forward. I'll be gone next week on a spiritual retreat but I'll be back to post in week 6.

Thanks for reading,
Matthew

Hannah Lyons - Week 6

This week it was our turn to visit the other interns at their campus at Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston just south of Coos Bay. The campus is beautiful and I loved being able to go into the labs and classrooms. In one of the wet labs we were able to hold a Giant California Sea Slug! Another had a lot of specimens in jars from all over the world and some creatures I'd never even heard of from the deep ocean. I especially liked the ornithology lab where they had so many beautiful species of birds to look at. OIMB is very cute and it was nice again to hang with out co-interns. The drive from Newport to Charleston is also very beautiful and we drove by one of my favorite Oregon lighthouses, the Heceta Head lighthouse.

On a personal journey down that way I stopped outside of Reedsport to watch the wild elk that graze near the highway. They were very close and huge! In the photo you can see the males in front and some females and young in the background. I also stopped at the Darlingtonia Wayside outside of Florence to see the carnivorous Cobra Lilies that grow in a small marsh there. Insects are attracted to the plant by sweet smells and nectar and once inside of the hood they struggle against downward growing hairs along the leaf tube. The insects are also confused by the thinner "windows" of the tube and exhaust themselves by banging against what looks to be an opening but is not. Eventually the bugs will fall into a pool of liquid that contains a digestive enzyme and symbiotic bacteria and will be digested by the plant to boost nitrogen levels. Such an interesting plant right here in Oregon!

Bird specimens at OIMB.

Heceta Head Lighthouse at sunset.

Darlingtonia californica (Cobra Lilly)

Elk outside of Reedsport.

Peter Sheesley - Week 6: Sea Lions, A Lumber Baron, A Stubborn Reel, and Water Samples

Week six began with a few days of collecting samples. On Monday afternoon we went to Horsefall for samples from two locations. Then on Tuesday morning we sampled at low tide at four locations off Bastendorff Rock, one at Bastendorff Beach, the two at Pack Trails and one at Shore Acres. These were low tide priorities because of accessibility. We were then able to stop at Lighthouse Beach, and two locations at North Bastendorff Beach before lunch on Tuesday. On Wednesday we sampled at Cape Arago and South Cove, with the group from Newport in attendance. Wednesday afternoon was spent touring the OIMB campus with the Newport group. Thursday afternoon included a video conference with a presentation on how to give good presentations—especially in Power Point. And Friday afternoon we had a video conference in which we heard presentations from the four COSEE PRIME interns in Hawaii. During the times in between the above activities I found time to count plankton in the samples in the lab.

One minor issue I ran into while collecting samples was with the reel on the fishing rod I'm using to cast the sampler. It became increasingly difficult to crank the handle within the course of a few casts. The mechanism to spin was working fine on top of the reel, but the hand-crank functionality became nearly impossible. This meant pulling the line in by hand for several of the casts. When we got back to the lab I spoke to a few of the OIMB fishing experts and was encouraged to take the reel apart and clean it with water and tweezers. I enjoyed admiring, though not understanding, the mechanics of the reel as I loosened screws and pulled it apart. Deep inside the reel I found wet sand I was barely able to access with the tweezers and dislodge. A few squirts of WD-40, reassembly, and the reel was back in action. I was quite happy because my attempts to take things apart and fix them don't always end so well.

In the spirit of historian Dr. Carmel Finley’s presentation on local fishery history at Hatfield last week, and because we are taking water samples there, I’ve done a little bit of investigating into the history of Shore Acres, along the Cape Arago Highway, on the way to Cape Arago State Park.

Taken from the cliff above our Pack Trails #2 sampling location. (my picture)

Our Shore Acres sampling location. (my picture)

An overhead view of Shore Acres. Image from Google Earth, with my labels.

Shore Acres was at one time the location of an exquisite estate belonging to Louis and Cassandra Simpson. Louis Simpson (1877 – 1949) was the son of a California shipping and timber magnate. He established the family timber company in the Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he founded the city of North Bend, neighbor city of Coos Bay. He was influential in establishing a railroad line through Coos Bay, and also in the building of a military highway during WWI, which would eventually become US 101. In 1906-07 he built the estate at Shore Acres as a gift to his wife Cassandra. In addition to a spectacular view off the cliffs over the ocean, it had a 76-foot ballroom, a 52-foot indoor pool, elaborate formal gardens, a farm, and a dairy herd. In 1921, shortly after the death of Cassandra, the estate burned down. In 1928 Louis Simpson moved back to Shore Acres into a new house with his new wife. The market crashed in 1929, and in the following years Simpson lost many of his properties. Simpson had a stroke in 1939 and was bankrupt in 1940. In 1942 the estate sold to the State as parkland. In 1948 the second house was burned down by the State as it was deemed unfit for restoration. Louis Simpson died from cancer in 1949. Today the park has maintained the formal gardens and puts on a well-attended Christmas-light show in the gardens each year. There is also a tourist information center and gift shop, as well as trails to the beautiful views of the cliffs and ocean.

Louis Simpson

I think this is the second home (1928) built on the Shore Acres property.

When larger waves hit the cliffs they can spray hundreds of feet in the air.  I haven't seen anything close to this during this summer; I think it is more of a winter occurrence. 

The formal garden, looking South. Keep in mind that the cliffs and ocean are only about 100 yds. away. (my picture)

The pond at the South end of the Garden. (my picture)

(Images and information about Shore Acres and Louis Simpson above are from the following websites, unless otherwise noted: http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/simpson_louis_j_1877_1949_/#.U90mcShPnx8, http://theworldlink.com/news/local/historians-will-tell-the-story-of-shore-acres/article_bd6a820f-0d68-5333-a5e3-8bee21bd002b.html, http://www.cooshistory.org/page-1663995, http://shoreacres.net/)

Only a few minutes drive south of Shore Acres is Simpson’s Reef and Shell Island. We drive South, past this area to collect samples at Cape Arago and South Cove. Over the last week or two the Sea Lions on Shell Island have been barking ebulliently every time I’ve visited. Based on the bark I think they are California Sea Lions (Zalophus californianus), though they do have some of the coloration of Stellar Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatas). Perhaps both are there? (http://www.dfw.state.or.us/MRP/mammals/species.asp). There must be over a hundred of them hanging out on the island, making a non-stop ruckus for days on end. I’ll attach a video I took with my phone. Unfortunately I couldn’t zoom-in on the island, so they are hard to see. Hopefully the sound is good enough to at least hear them. The chorus is quite impressive in person.

Shell Island. (Sorry for the picture quality; it's a camera phone.)

Just off Shell Island.

Jezzi Reynolds Scanning Electron Microscopy

We dropped the blocks at their sites.

In the meantime I worked on a couple of other projects. I did Electron Scan Microscopy on larvae samples.

First we separated out the larvae from the 70% ethanol they were originally stored in. I used a pipette to place them in ½ inch capsules with mesh coverings and lids on either end. The mesh allows other liquids to penetrate the sample when needed.  

After we did this we placed them into jars of ethanol solutions at different concentrations. The first jar had a 70% ethanol 30% water solution. The following jars had 80, 90, 95,100 and 100 percent. We used 100% washes to be sure that the larvae were immersed in ethanol.

We left them in the different solutions for 10 minutes each then we moved them to the succeeding solution.  

We then put all of the capsules  (sometimes as many as 8) into 100% solution to keep them wet until the next step.

The second step in this process was to place the capsules into the critical point drier. This machine replaces the ethanol with Carbon Dioxide. The point of this machine is to use carbon dioxide to dry the samples completely. Though carbon dioxide is used in both a liquid and gas from when the process is complete it is neither liquid nor gas but somewhere in between.

Then we place some 100% ethanol and the capsules into the chamber.

We then “purge” the capsules by letting in gas and then releasing it. We turned it on the stirrer to mix the capsules in the 100% ethanol efficiently. You can tell that there is ethanol in the chamber if you hear a sputtering from the valve at the back. This should only release gas. The sputtering means it is releasing a liquid (ethanol) and a gas versus just the gas. We use Kim wipes (kind of like a paper towel) to double check this, if it is wet then there is liquid. If dry there is only gas.

We usually have to complete 3 purges to get only gas. We lower  the temperature to 50 degrees Celsius from about 19 degrees room temperature.

When we do the the purges we look at the meniscus (liquid Carbon Dioxide) level through a circular viewing window. This is how we watch to make sure the levels don’t get too high when we intake carbon dioxide or too low when we let it out. If the levels were to get too high the chamber would explode (luckily there are several safety measures in place to prevent this from happening). Next we increase the pressure to 1250 PSI and the temperature to 35 degrees. These are the “Critical Points”. This takes about 15 minutes.

Then we lower the psi to 0 and the temp to 5 degrees.

The third step is to mount the larvae and place them in the gold sputter coater.

We mount the larvae by using a eyelash brush (literally an eyelash taped to a piece of wood) to pick up the specimens and place each of the larvae from a capsule on a metal stub with tape on it.

We put the stubs into the sputter coater which covers them in liquid gold. They have to be covered in gold so the scanning electron microscope will be able to read the larvae.

Finally we place the stubs into the electron scan microscope. Then we can clearly see the larvae up close. The machine can magnify them up to 5000 percent and we can identify and take pictures to be analyzed later.

I have also been completing video analysis of some shipwrecks in the Caribbean. I look through the footage to find good views where there are a large quantity of diverse organisms and variation in species. Then I take snapshots of these views to be analyzed later.

These are the stubs with larvae on them. On the right are after they are coated in gold. On the left are before they are put in the sputtercoater.

  All images below are taken using the Electron Scan Microscope.

Cyprid or Barnacle Larva

Gastropod Veliger or Snail Larvae

Ophiuroid or Sea Star (commonly referred to as Starfish) Larvae This is one of my favorites.

Also Gastropod Veliger or snail larvae

A magnified image of the center of a Sea star larvae. This is the underside of the Sea star where the mouth will form. This is one of my favorites because it clearly shows the 5-part radial symmetry that all Sea stars as well as Sea Cucumbers, Sea Urchins and Sand Dollars have.

Another Sea Star Larvae with only 3 arms.

This shows the structure or Ossicles of the Sea Star. The Ossicles are the part of the endoskeleton around the holes. They are made out of Calcium Carbonate.

A Gastropod Veliger with spikes to protect itself from potential predators. These will fall off when it becomes an adult and they are not needed.