Hi everyone, this week was full of clams and field trips that i cant wait to share!
On Monday my roommate Sam and I had the day off so we watched a lot of shark documentaries. That night I fried up some marinated tofu and that was super good.
Tuesday the real w
ork started and we met our mentor Kirsten Michaud, who studies the effects of boring clams have on ecosystems. Boring clams are specially built so overtime they can grind a hole into rock to live in. Me and Sam spent majority of the day going through different pictures from sites and using a program called ViQi (Vicky) to tag clams. By going through and tagging specific clams and species we can teach the ViQi machine to recognize these clams for us, eventually eliminating the need for people to go through each picture. Later this day we got to on a field trip for a class that Kristen teaches, with Mark Page and Inez Mangino. With the class we got to go to Pismo beach to sample sand crabs and sort them based on size. We went into the ocean to dig for the crabs and got absolutely soaked!
On Wednesday we went into the lab and continued to work on ViQi identifying clams. We were able to complete an entire transect that day, which is a lot of work! Each transect covers a 40 meter stretch, with pictures taken each meter. Each
location we look at has six to eight transects.
Thursday we got up bright and early to go to a lecture about beach ecology taught by Inez Mangino. It was so interesting to learn about different beach types and different impacts humans have on beach ecology. After lecture, we went into work and completed transect two. Afterwork we came home for a quick dinner then went back out to participate in the night lab. We got to go out to Campus Point to help set up an experiment to better understand beach hoppers. We helped set up pitfall traps and dividers next to some of the traps. Once all of the traps were set up we made smores with our new friends. Some of the girls said they would even take us to Costco if we needed, which is super nice! After we finished up with smores we went back to the lab to count and identify species from the traps. From that data we were able to figure out what direction the beach hoppers were going and why.
On Friday we went into the lab and worked on transect three all day. Unfortunately for us we were unable to identify any of our favorite clams, chaciea or californica, in the entire transect. On the other hand we were able to find some small pholads(tiny clams), anemones, and starfish. After work we met up with Sam’s dad and went to the beach for a couple hours. Since I don’t have a wet suit Sam gave me one of her books to read called, “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert. The book talked about how we are living through the greatest extinction period since the dinosaurs were wiped out.
Saturday we did our weekly chores then went surfing for a few hours. Unfortunately I kind of suck at surfing and didn’t manage to catch many waves but it was so peaceful to be out in the water.
Today we are going to go grocery shopping and watch some fun movies. Can’t wait to share what I learn this week!!
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