I arrived in Santa Barbara on a Sunday and got to explore the small college town where I will be living. I met with Scott Simon, the head of the REEF program and got a rundown of the program.
The next day, I started working at my internship with the REEF program. This week I helped with an outreach program that REEF participates in called Tech Trek. The program is a STEM based program for outreach to girls in middle school to increase their involvement in STEM studies and to show women role models in science. In Tech Trek the girls get to learn about a certain subject and work in a group project to create a solution to a problem they are given.
I helped out with the Tech Trek program all week, but also got to head down a few times to visit the REEF center where I will be working after Tech Trek finishes. I started learning about the aquatic life at the center and fun facts about the marine life and animals that are at REEF.
Pod of dolphins swimming by our boat!
Baby swell shark, 2 days old!
On Tuesday, we took the Tech Trek program students on a boat trip and I helped them with their project and worksheets for the trip. While we were on the boat, there was a pod of dolphins that we saw out swimming. Pod is the term for a group of dolphins. We got to watch them playing around and they would get really close to the boat to ride the waves the boat created. To be sensitive to the safety of the marine life, we were on a boat with no propellers so the boat would not hurt the dolphins. There were also baby dolphins swimming in the pod! Also on this day, a baby swell shark was hatched and added to the 17 others they have at the REEF aquarium.
Beach close to the small college town I am living in!
On Wednesday, we had an online chat with a journalist and scientist on a boat called the Nautilus. The boat is on an expedition looking for the wreckage of the Samoan Clipper which is a flying boat that went down in American Samoa in 1938. They are looking to locate the wreckage and to try to discover the reasons why it went down.
The rest of the week, I spent working with the students in the Tech Trek program and helping out in Scott’s class.
In my free time, I have been with doing things with the college student I am living with named Lauren and her very cute black lab. Also, Jonah and Bryce, two other Pinhead Interns at USCB and I went to the beach.
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