Hello and welcome back to Santa Barbara, California! My name is Samantha Abate and I’m interning at UCSB for marine biology this summer. Things have been going wonderfully and I’m so grateful to be here. This week I completed a ton of work for my mentor and saw some of the most beautiful sunsets!
On Monday both me and my fellow pintern, Emma Galleger, went into the Miller lab to work on the tasks we were given. I worked with the ViQi program and continued marking clams. I was mostly just going back through and checking all my previous work. After I had checked several transects from the previous site, Arroyo Quemado, I started marking clams in a new site called Mohawk. It was a much different environment and I saw some new organisms that were not in any other site.
A camouflaged fish I found in the Mohawk site images.
A cult meeting of snails I found in one of the images.
On Tuesday, we attended the lecture in the morning for the intertidal ecology class where we learned about estuaries and salt marshes. This was a really interesting lecture! We learned a lot about how these unique ecosystems function as well as their importance to the overall environment. We also discussed estuarine circulation and how that impacts the distribution of species within them. After the lecture, we headed back into the lab and I worked some more on ViQi.
Wednesday was another day spent in the Miller lab. I finished the transects for Mohawk and went back through to check all my work. At this point, Emma had finished the project for Billy Ray and started to help me go back through and check each transect. We made it through the rest of the Arroyo Quemado transects as well as the Mohawk ones. We finished early and headed to the beach where we spent the rest of the day.
A very dense group of clams at Bullito.
Thursday was another lecture. This one was on mudflats and tidal creeks which was also very interesting. We learned about the types of invertebrates that are common in these types of areas and how their populations are influenced by their environment. After this, we headed back into the lab to continue marking clams. At this point, we had moved onto a new site called Goleta Beach. This site contained several new species of clam which was really surprising. Our mentor, Kristen, had to help us because we weren’t sure what these new clams were called. She said the next few sites will contain these new species which is interesting. After this discovery, we continued working through the Goleta Beach transects until we had completed them so that we could start the next site on Friday.
On Friday, I started marking clams in the Bullito site. This site was absolutely full of clams! Every single image I worked on contained at least one which hasn’t happened yet. After finishing one of the Bullito transects, we headed out to the beach and spent the afternoon relaxing.
The evening sky at Campus Point.
Saturday and Sunday were mostly just chore days which meant doing laundry, cleaning the apartment, and shopping for food. I’ve been going for a lot of walks in Isla Vista, which is where we are staying. On these walks, I get to see the sunset almost every evening and they have been absolutely beautiful! I am really enjoying my time here and can’t wait for next week!
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