Hello and welcome! If you’re new here, my name is Samantha Abate and I’m currently in Santa Barbara, California interning at UCSB for marine biology. This week was very fun! My fellow intern (Emma Galleger) and I attended some cool labs and started on a new project.
Monday was mostly just a work day. We went into the Miller lab and continued marking clams using the ViQi program. This program is where the images are stored and it is also how we observe them. We made it through an entire transect which in this case was about 42 images. We found a good amount of clams in most of those images, but we also got to observe several other creatures including a fish! This is the only fish we’ve seen captured in the images. After work, we headed down to the beach where we spent the rest of the day.
The fish we saw in one of the images.
Tuesday was our first lecture of the week. It was given by our mentor, Kristen, and it was about the rocky intertidal zone and its ecological interactions. This was a very interesting lecture and I learned a lot more about how intertidal ecosystems are shaped and what factors impact them. We also reviewed several experiments done in these intertidal zones that helped to demonstrate how limiting ecological factors like predation and competition affect different species populations.
After the lecture, we headed to work for a bit until it was time for the lab. For this lab, we traveled to Gaviota to observe stream and estuary ecology. We collected organisms from the stream at several places while also measuring the salinity of each location. As we got closer to where the stream opened into the ocean, we observed changes in the abundance and species type of the organisms we were collecting. 
This is a damsel fly larvae that we collected on Tuesday.
Wednesday was when we got introduced to our new project. Another member of the lab, Billy Ray, asked us to observe recordings of clams that had been taken over a week. The cameras were set to take a picture every 5 minutes. It is our job to go through each frame and record the frame number, whether or not the clam is filter feeding, and at what time. If the clam is feeding, we mark a 1. If not, then a 0. This is going to help him create a code using the data that we input.
Having another project to complete has been great. Emma (My fellow pintern) and I can now split up our duties, giving us each something to work on. She volunteered to work on Billy’s project while I continued to mark clams using ViQi for Kristen.
I found a ton of clams on Wednesday. There were 72 in this image alone! Each teal dot is a clam.
Thursday was another lecture and lab day. The lecture was a continuation of Tuesday’s where we went over more experiments and ecological interactions within the intertidal zone. Specifically, how populations of starfish and mussels are impacted by oceanic heatwaves. For our lab, we traveled to the far side of Isla Vista where we hiked down to the beach. There, we climbed up the bluffs and collected shells from three different layers. We were observing what types of shells were in each layer and what the beach may have looked like when those organisms were alive. I collected from the highest layer, which was the youngest. I found a lot of interesting shells and after we had collected a good amount, we sat down and started to identify different species. This was a very interesting lab and it was really fun to climb the bluffs in search of the best shells.
The patterned shell is one of the most unique that I found. It was preserved in hardened tar.
Friday was a pretty relaxed day. Our mentor was gone on a trip so we headed into the Miller lab and worked on our projects for a while. Saturday was spent cleaning our apartment and doing laundry. We had tickets to see a professional soccer match that day too. Wrexham played Bournemouth and we got to see them on the UC Santa Barbara field. They tied one to one but it was still a super exciting game. Sunday was spent getting groceries and at the beach. It’s been a great week and I can’t wait for more!
The view from our seats at the soccer match.
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