Guest story by Jer Hendersen

In between early mornings and afternoon prep activities, Hacker lab field assistant extraordinaire, Jer, likes to crank up his laptop and plug away on his novella. I hadn't read any of this work until this trip - its good stuff, including many gripping stories about fishing and getting into trouble with stupid evil park rangers. And so I commissioned a short story about our adventures with macroalgae during the last field excursion. I did wonder what he was up to, typing away in the corner for much longer than I expected for a short story. What emerged, and what is posted here, is only the beginning of said story. He didn't even get to the real macroalgae caper! But instead, he sets the scene, with what I hope is a sarcastic and amusing tale of my use (and abuse) of his field prowess.



There are few things worse than getting up at four in the morning to go muck about in the estuary, unless it’s getting up at three in the morning to go muck about in the estuary, which is exactly how the week started.

“You ready to go, Jer?” Margot asked as we sat at the table gnawing on dry toast, wishing we had peanut butter.

“Mmmpphh?” I replied, rubbing my puffy eyes.

“Good. Here, drink this coffee.”

I reached for one of the two mugs she had just filled with scalding hot brew, but before I could grab it she pushed the other mug out for me.

“No, no. This one’s yours.”

“…Uh, why is this one mine?”

“Because this one’s mine.”

“Huh...”

We finished up and got in the car. On the ride out to the site I began to perk up and notice things; mainly that three-thirty is still too early for the sun, though not too early to do fieldwork.

“So what are we doing today?”

“Macro-algae additions.”

“What’s that involve?”

“Oh, clearing plots, counting shoots, collecting algae, taking redox, you know, all the fun stuff.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“No, you should go fast.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”
“Um, are you going to help?”

“Yeah, yeah. But you’ll go fast at your part.”

We pulled into the dirt parking lot behind the local bar, geared up, and trudged through the mud out to the site. At the first plot Margot gave me a brief run-down of the procedures, demonstrating how to do everything under the glow of our headlamps.

“So you put your quadrat down, stake out the corners with the PVC…” She began as we kneeled there in the cold mud. “…And then you count your shoots, trim around the edge, and sort the macroalgae out and put it all in these bags. Once you got that done, you just have to go collect two-thousand milliliters of algae, tuck it into the plots, stake it down, and then do the next one. Got it?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so.”
“Alright, well go ahead and get started.”

“Um, what are you going to do?”

“Redox.”

“Um, it seems like this might take me a while.”

“No, no. Once you do a few you’ll get faster.”

“Uh, okay…”

I plunged my hands into the icy water that was left sitting in puddles atop the mudflat from the receding tide.

“This sure is cold…”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll warm up in a minute.”

“Uh, maybe we could wear gloves or something next time.”

“Gloves aren’t in the budget.”

“Oh…”

As I was counting the shoots I noticed my hands starting to shake. Things didn’t seem quite right. I was beginning to feel a little funny.

“Margot, I think your coffee’s a little strong or something.”

“Yeah? You waking up?”

“Um, yeah, but my hands are beginning to shake.”

“Huh. Maybe we need to drop down your dosage.”

“Dosage?”

“Oh, I mean amount. Amount. Well give you less coffee tomorrow.”

“…Uh, okay.”

I finished up the shoot counting and moved onto gathering two-thousand milliliters of macroalgae. The algae stunk, and I had to stumble all around in the soft mud to find enough, but after a few hundred stinky handfuls I figured I was finally done.

“Do you think this will be enough, Margot?” I asked, showing her the pile lumped in the bottom of a dirty plastic bucket. She shone the beam from her headlamp on the mass and pondered it over for a second.

“…Hmmm… Doesn’t look like quite enough. Maybe we’ll have to do four-thousand.”

“Four-thousand milliliters?”

“Yeah.”

“Won’t that take a while?”

“Hmm. Yeah. Maybe you could run. And try not to take so much time rubbing your hands together. You’ve got a lot of sites to do.”

“Um, okay, but they’re kind of cold.”

“Yeah, yeah. They’ll be alright. Just work faster and they’ll warm up.”

I went back out into the darkness and tried to stumble around a little faster as I collected another two-thousand milliliters of macroalgae, but the mud was so soft I kept getting stuck. I thought I was doing pretty good, but then Margot hollered across the mud at me.

“Jer, you’re not running.”

“…Oh. Sorry Margot.”

“Don’t be sorry, just run.”

“Uh, okay…”

I finally finished the plot and moved on to the next one. I kept tripping while on my macroalgae sprints and getting all covered in mud. I tried to wipe the mud out of my eyes, but my hands were so dirty it just made it worse. On my forth plot, I noticed things starting to get light as the sun came peeking up over trees, kissing the beds of eelgrass and making them glitter. I looked over at Margot to see how she was doing with the Redox meter. It looked like things were going well for her as she stood there, daintily poking the probe into a plot a few thousand milliliters of macro-algae down the line. She scribbled down something on her data-sheet and then pulled the probe out, rinsing it down with a squirt bottle before giving her hand a quick douse where a spot of mud had splattered on it. I noticed she looked really clean.

“Jer, you doing all right over there?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Hmm, because you’re not working.”

“Oh, sorry.”

The next plot went faster, and the next one faster than that. Soon the sun was above the tree line, and everything was going fast. Things were spinning. I felt real anxious. I could count really quickly. It began to seem like I was counting, collecting, and consolidating all at the same time. Every time I finished a plot I was really sad I had to leave it, but every time I started a new one I was really excited about the possibilities and new horizons. I had a good conversation with a dead clam. He was really long winded though, and I had to carry him around to six different plots while he finished his story. Before I knew it, the tide had flooded us out and we were back at the truck peeling off our waders. I told Margot all about the plots and how much fun it had been. I really wanted to keep at it.

“Yeah, I could go back out there with my wetsuit and finish up if you want. I really like working. Working’s fun. The macro-algae stinks but when you squish it in your fingers and the water comes out you really feel like you’re doing something good for the world. People don’t do enough good for the world. The world’s really big. Have you ever been to Idaho. There’s not many people in the world who’ve been to Idaho, but I’ve been to Idaho. One time-”

“-Here Jer, drink some water and take this vitamin.”

“Vitamin? I used to take Flintstone’s vitamins when I was little. They tasted kind of like chalk, but it was a good kind of chalk, not like writing chalk. We should get some chalk and draw on the sidewalk later. Maybe we could make a-”

“-Yeah, yeah. Take the vitamin.”

I took the vitamin and started drinking the water. It tasted really good.

“Are you going to take a vitamin.”

“No I already took one.”

“Oh. Maybe you should take two. You can never be too safe, though sometimes too many vitamins can be bad. Maybe two is too many. There’s too many two’s. There’s too, and to, and two, and nobody can ever-”

“-Yeah, yeah. You ready for a treat?”

“A treat? I like treats. My dog likes treats. Have you met my dog? She’s-”

“-Alright, let’s go out for a treat. How about coffee and doughnuts.”

“Yeah, I like coffee and doughnuts. You know what else is cool, space shuttles. It’s crazy. I mean they go, like, way-way up there and float around. Space is really big. I think it’d be sweet to be an astronaut. I bet there’s one floating up there right now.” I said, finally stopping to take a breath as I pointed at the sky. I looked over to see if Margot could see where I was pointing, but she had rudely left in the middle of our chat and was already buckled in and firing up the truck. I ran around to my side and hopped in. I thought about how great seat belts were as I buckled in and told Margot all about how great seat belts were, along with all sorts of other things. By the time we pulled up to the little quaint deli that sat next to the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen I had told Margot just about everything I knew, and was starting to get exhausted.

“Man,” I said as we got out of the car. “I’m getting kind of beat.”

“Yeah, you feeling a little sleepy?”

“Kind of. More just exhausted.”

“Oh good. It’s working.”

“What’s working?” I asked as I reached for the door to the coffee shop.

“Hmm? Oh. Nothing. No, no. Not in there.”

“What? I thought you said we were going for doughnuts and coffee.”

“Yeah, but paying for food’s not in the budget. Besides, you can’t beat the conversation at the Salvation Army, can you?”

To be continued......


Jeremy Hendersen is a senior undergrad at Oregon State University. He likes to tie flies, catch fish, release fish, drink beer, write, grow miniature vegetables and is fascinated by the introduced Zostera japonica's potential ability to compete with the native Zostera marina. Below is an example of his fieldwork, after one tide. This macroalgae addition plot appears to be doing very well with 4000 milliliters of macroalgae stapled to the sediment, and nestled between the eelgrass shoots.