Hello! If you’re new here, my name is Samantha Abate and I’m interning at UC Santa Barbara for Marine Biology. Last week was a bit slow, but this week, we were able to get a start on what we will be working on throughout our time here. We have now been introduced to the study we are going to help with and a class we will be participating in. This class is about benthic ecology and we have been welcome to attend lectures and labs. My fellow intern, Emma, and I have been thoroughly enjoying our time here!
On Monday, we got the day off so we spent it exploring and watching shark documentaries. We also got Crumbl cookies which aren’t very common at home.
Tuesday was our first day in the lab where we are now going to be working. We were introduced to the project by our mentor, Kristen. We will be observing images of different areas of the sea floor taken out in the field. Each area has a specific name. We are starting with a site called Arroyo Quemado. It is our job to search through these images to identify and mark boring clams. These are a specific type of clam that make their homes by boring into solid rock. Tuesday was also the first day that we got to attend a lab with the benthic ecology class. There are about 18 members and we all traveled up to Pismo Beach. We went there to collect sand crabs. We all waded into the surf and scooped up sediment to collect them. We even had a competition to see who could collect the biggest one! After we had collected a few buckets of them, we used a sorter to divide them by size. We then recorded how many males and females were in each size group as well as the number of individuals overall.
This image shows one of the pictures that we analyzed. The small teal dots are marking clams.
This is the biggest sand crab our class found. It measured 29 mm.
Wednesday was spent observing images in the Marine Science lab. We completed an entire transect, which is about 40 images. Each image is divided into smaller squares that we must slowly move through, looking for any identifiable features that may indicate the presence of a clam. Sometimes, other organisms can be found within these images. We have seen a variety of anemones, kelp, snails, urchins, and even starfish.
A beautiful blue and purple starfish we saw when going through images.
Thursday was another lab day for the class. They also had an 8 a.m. lecture on beach ecosystems which Emma and I attended. It was a really interesting lecture and we learned a lot about not only beach ecosystems but also about what a college lecture is like. After the lecture, we headed into the Marine Science lab to continue identifying and marking clams. Later in the day, we headed down to Campus Point where we were going to collect sand hoppers for the lab. We learned how to construct pitfall traps so we could collect them and observe which direction they were going. While we were waiting for the sand hoppers to come out, we made s’mores on the beach!
S’mores!
After we had let the traps sit for long enough, we collected our samples and headed back to the lab where we counted and identified all the species we had caught. The class then constructed a visual of where we had collected specimens and we learned more about how beach ecosystems function.
Friday was another day spent marking clams. My dad also arrived in California that day. He came out to visit and enjoy the area. He brought surfboards as well so we got to spend the weekend surfing! It’s been a great week and I can’t wait to experience more!
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