The second week of the internship things have gone much more smoothly. Since we found housing that is close to campus I have been able to ride my bike to the lab everyday. At the lab I’ve worked more with the college intern Stephanie and helped her with her project. I learned that a large majority of the work that is being done at the lab actually deals with isotope values (An isotope is one of two or more atoms having the same atomic number but different mass numbers). For Stephanie’s project we cultivated phytoplankton and enriched it by adding the special carbon atom, carbon 13. After that we fed the enriched phytoplankton to her living samples of scallops, mussels and styela. My job this past week has been to transport the phytoplankton and dump the contents into the buckets where the invertabrates are contained. Next week we will continue her project by disecting the invertebrates and preparing their tissues to be dried and sent to the analytical lab to be measured for carbon levels.
I’ve also gotten to explore the Santa Barbara area more, they have an amazing lagoon on campus that has a really awesome running trail around it. Also there are tons of beaches that boarder the campus and downtown SB, it’s been fun hitting the beach after we do lab work!
Mikaela Balkind
University of California Santa Barbara
Marine Biology
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