new in Coos Bay....

10 New Things during the last field trip to Coos Bay:


1. New sampling methodology: floats to catch drift algae


2. New excuse to wear wetsuits for servicing new methodology

3. New lab safety equipment (for deliriously long days!)




4. New Friends: Bonnie and Clyde of the Spruce Ranch


5. New Experiment at Fossil Point



6. New Explorations

7. New Art: algae wrack mobiles



8. New lovely underwater shots of Z. japonica (J. Hende pic)


9. New Skillz for Hollis

10. New All-American experiences: Charleston 4th of July Pancake Feed

Sally's Bend

For those of you who aren't aware, my supervisor, Sally Hacker, has a very intimate connection with a nook of Yaquina Bay baring her name. The name of the spot, Sally's Bend pre-existed her, but I think she can now rightfully claim the namesake based on the number of hours she has spent emerged in in its muddy depths. You see, Sally has been conducting an experiment on the two species of mud shrimp that co-occur here for the past 2+ years. Granted, she has had some help in the mud, but its only through her perseverance, fortitude and gumption that the experiment has persisted. Most sane people would have given up after day 1, but not Sally or her students - they are a bit nuts and very hard core. Here are some reasons why:

1) you can't walk in mud: no you have to do a special strut with lots of forward momentum to go anywhere. some people have it, some people learn it, others wallow. alternatively, and especially near the end of the day, you can crawl or try the back-crawl. it takes awhile to perfect these techniques and some people lose it trying to take a step.

2) early mornings and long days: its not so bad waking up really early for fieldwork, there's always a lot of coffee to get you going, but the early hour tends to catch up with you once you've been out on the mud flat for 6 hours digging, strutting and hauling things around. I joined Sally and Jer on day 7 or 8 of the experiment take-down. At 5-6 hours a pop that makes for a lot of hours in the mud! Given the coffee consumption at dawn one undoubtfully has to take a break at some point. The guys are lucky, the girls have to head for shore.....

3) mud is yucky: which brings me to the next point. you get used to being covered in dirt and grime while in the mud. waders keep you nice and protected and you begin to sport mud flecs on your face as war wounds. However, some bodily places are just not made for mud, and it is really disgusting to get it in your ears, nostrils and other places that get exposed when you have to make that bathroom break - yuck!

4) mud sucks you in: for this experiment we use a giant metal core as a sampling unit (it can fit a child inside it). we dig out all the mud within the enclosed core area. one person is in charge of digging out the core, while the others go through the pallards of mud and collect all the shrimp and clams for later analysis. as you sit there digging or picking you gradually sink into the mud. this doesn't seem like a problem until its time to move or your foot goes numb. at this point you have to dig yourself out. you're on your own for this one - doesn't working well digging others out. so you have to do a dance, a wiggle back and forth motion with all sorts of twists and turns thrown in to extricate yourself. being limber might actually be the best attibute of a mud worker!

5) gross creatures lurk in the mud: you never know what you're going to unearth in the mud... for the most part we get harmless shrimp who are pathetic once you get over the size of their claws. but occasionally you find ginormous (apparently now an official dictionary word) worms. if you see or touch one of these beasts, most likely a Nereis spp. you can't help but squeal. even the most macho of guys can't help themselves. their undulating parapodia give anyone the heebee geebees.

I hope I've convinced you that this work isn't for everyone, but haven't deterred anyone too much. You're curious right? Everyone should try it at least once, its fun stuff, but a warning that it can be addictive for some unknown reason (perhaps the sulfur fumes?). All in the name of science you could say..... Do the two morphologically different species, Upogebia pugettensis and Neotrypea californianus compete? Do they bioturmate and change the sediment in difference ways as they burrow about? What structures their marked zonation in the mudflat? But there's got to be more ....... Its an excellent work out with market potential as the next exercise/diet craze - both quads, upper body and abs all at once, coupled with a menu of giant pizza slices, cupcakes and cinnamon roll bread pudding (with vanilla sauce) afterwards. Most of all though, its the feeling you have when its all over, re-hashing the morning's events in the coffee shop with your mud-mates, still speckled in salty earth, but relishing the fact that very few people could ever fully comprehend what you've already experienced that day.

June Monitoring trip

I'm back in Corvallis right now, getting things together for our next big trip down to Coos Bay and doing some office work. But in the interim, here's a recap of the last trip. Val and John came with me again. We did the usual monitoring routine at four sites and marked some shoots that will be collected next time to measure eelgrass growth. Tides were pretty darn early..... in fact the latest sleep-in was 4 am! I think I'm still recuperating from lack of sleep. Weather here has been downright nasty of late, although we lucked out on 2 of the 3 mornings. Rumor has it that NOAA is on the verge of declaring La Nina!

Here's a glimpse of the state of our awakeness on Day 3. Note: vocalization at this hour is sometimes difficult...

We did have time to show Valerie some of the local sites on the first afternoon (before we attacked the mega algae sites the next two days, which take all afternoon to process). We explored a new down-home breaky joint (Joe & Jeannie's) where we were encouraged to dance, play guitar and chose some tunes on the juke box (at 8am we weren't really in the mood). I tried to get Val to come to Wall-Mart with us to get a true sense of local culture, but she declined. And then we went to the Cape to have a gander at the sea lions (Val couldn't understand why the other tourists were some entranced with their laziness and annoyingly repetitive barks - arf arf arfffff!). At South Cove a pair of Harlequins with their namesake plumage put on quite the show for us, and Pelagic Cormorants whizzed by. We were en route back to the lab when the sun made a sudden appearance, so we followed it out to the bluffs and rejoiced for a bit:

My signature move

My field assistants were, as always, marvelous! Valerie, visiting from Quebec was especially remarkable in her ability to laugh it off with too-big waders in too-deep mud. John kept us all going with his yarns and humour once again. Here are some pics of Val to show to friends at home.

Valerie post-mud at Danger Point (she didn't get sucked in!)

Val with her new friend the Roughskin Newt (Taricha granulosa)
(little does she know that they can be toxic!).

We stopped for a picnic leftover lunch at Honeyman State park en route back to Corvallis. The sky was going crazy with colliding weather systems manifesting in a bizarre array of clouds. I think someone was trying to tell us something, but we couldn't quite figure it out. Stormy? Sneezy? Super? Whatever the sign may have been it passed directly overhead and then snaked off to the South.

Quick return to Willapa

On return from a conference in Vancouver, I picked up my new crew (John and Valerie) and headed back to Willapa for 2 more days of fieldwork in order to finish this round of data collection. We'll return later in the summer to see how things have changed at all 3 of the sites. Last time, Kate and I didn't make it out to one of the sites - Nemah. This site requires boat transportation, which we coordinated with Brett and Lee for this trip. Taking the boat is alway fun and never for lack of adventure....


We made it out to Nemah way too early the first day. This is always a bit annoying because it means that you could have slept in for another 3o+ minutes. We anchored in the channel and waited for the eelgrass to emerge. With the tide still high you have no idea that an intricate maze of oyster cultivation, rotation and ownership exists beneath you - only an inkling as indicated by the weird tree boughs popping up from the water haphazardly around you. These aren't as random as one would guess, but mark the channels and the different oyster beds.



With two extra hands we finished the work just before the tide flooded the sites. I was very gracious for the extra set of hands as the tides were much worse this week, and we had to hurry to get things done in time. Things weren't too stressful out there though as John and Brett are old hacks at this line of work, and Valerie is an experienced fieldworker, on loan from Universite de Rimouski. She's currently visiting the Lubmenge lab, and was really good natured about yucky fieldwork, most likely because her work involves scraping mussels off of frozen St. Laurence River buoys in the dead of winter!


When the tide starts to bite at our heels we can be assured that Brett's phone will ring. This is always Lee, wondering where the heck we are, as we're suppose to pick him up further up the estuary. Answering a cell phone is very difficult when you are wearing layers of clothing and also trying to drive a boat, not to mention the occasional passing downpour! The winds picked up daily just as it was time to power up-estuary. This slowed us down some, but we managed to cut through the rough chop at high speeds. The knees are a little worse for wear despite my best efforts to absorb the boat bounce with my snowboarder stance.


I'm glad the cell coverage is good out here though, or we may just have missed Lee and Steve before their little oyster hummock went under! (Note: this is not as dangerous as it seems, the water is still quite low and they could have walked home if we didn't show up in time.... I hope!)

Back in town, we stopped for a quick coffee (of course) at Adelaide's before getting ready for the afternoon's eelgrass and algae sorting and packaging extrazaganza. More to come re Adelaide's later this summer when we do our official rating of the Coffee Houses of the Pacific Northwest, but here's a picture of the bookstore adjoining the shop to shop you just how upscale quaint little Ocean Park can be!I have some more good videos, but until I figure out how to upload them faster or cut them down to size I'll wait with those. Until the next trip to Coos....

Kate's Day 7: Newport to Corvallis

We had a quick coffee with Dafne this morning before heading back in the truck and driving inland from Newport to Corvallis. Margot drove me by Hatfield Marine Sciences Centre, where she and Dafne do a bunch of experiments. It is definitely a little bit less remote than BMSC, however, it doesn't have the proximity to rocky intertidal or quite the character of Bamfield!

We viewed one final lighthouse, Yaquinna Bay Historic Lighthouse, which overlooks the entrance to Yaquinna Bay and the bridge over to where Hatfield is located.


Finally, we arrived in Corvallis, dumped our stuff at Margot's really neat house, and came up to Oregon State University to finish weighing samples and so that I could write the blog up while Margs sorted out stuff!

Kate's Day 7: Fieldwork day ?: Netarts Bay to Newport

Fieldwork in the morning was pretty smooth... we were going to rent a boat to access what sounded like a really cool site, but... we were tired so we chose a walk-in site *right* next to the road. After a coffee in the sweet town of Oceanside, which has thsi fantastic view of sea arches, we waited for the tide to go out, and watched the sand beach in the middle of the channel of Netarts Bay fill with clam diggers.

We were just doing random quadrats for counting eelgrass shoots and macroalgae. It was a VERY high density of eelgrass - in one quadrat I counted something like 321 shoots!!

I also found this really cool oyster shell full of the boring sponge, covered in some ophlitaspongia (the red sponge), as well as a couple of tiny opalescent nudibranchs and some brittle stars!! If you really want to see them close, you can click on the picture to zoom in :)

We returned to the campsite to pack up and move out of the yurt, then sat down at a picnic table in the sunshine to measure eelgrass and count macroalgae from the previous day as well as today. It took a long time and I went a little bit crazy part way through and started speaking in a french accent and interjecting french words into everything.





We finally finished, packed everything back into the truck and drove down to Newport where we pulled up in front of Dafne's lovely housesitting abode. I am ready to shirk my duties with my summer job, uproot myself, and move into her bungalow with Darla the dog, to spend the summer in Newport. She is about a block from a huge sandy beach that is perfect for running on, she has the cutest dog to sit for the summer, the house is the ideal lovely beach house, and the part of Newport that she lives in, Nye Beach, is really cute and full of cool people. We took Darla for a walk after making another huge gourmet meal, and stopped into the Cafe Mundo which was hosting an open mic night - looks like a super awesome place to hang out in the evenings.



Unfortunately Dafne and her boyfriend Toshi were out for most of the night at a sailing lesson, and Margot andI were pretty exhausted and not really too sociable, so we had a quick visit and a really good night's sleep.

Kate's Day 6: Stony Point, Washington to Netarts Bay, Oregon

Fieldwork in the morning was at the same site, an hour away from where we were staying. We had decided to pack up all of our things (another reason why that final night in Ocean Park was SO crazy! and probably while I am SO tired right now!) and get the heck out of Dodge right after our fieldwork, so we jammed everything in the truck at 5:30am and drove up to the site, did the work, and hopped back in the truck for a sweet drive down the coast.

On the North side of the Columbia is an oddly named (again, by Lewis and Clark) site called Dismal Nitch.

On the South side of the Columbia is the lovely town Astoria, which I fancied as likely having cheap cute tall wooden houses with a view of the Columbia.

We found another AWESOME cafe!!



and I considered finding work here:

_____
I forgot to put this in the post from the other day but we watched Michelle Obama speaking on CNN one night and were totally captivated. She's an amazing speaker (makes sense, since she is a successful lawyer). After being down here in the States for a while I feel like I should be walking around with a VOTE OBAMA pin).

_____

We also stopped in Cannon Beach as we meandered down the Oregon Coast. Known for the giant sea stack called Haystack rock, Cannon Beach is a giant sandy beach with a few awesome bird colonies full of seagulls and Common Murres.


Phalaropes? Haven't had time to ID these with the bird book yet!
I could feel the ocean calling me, so I walked as far as I could (until I realized that it was a pretty scary tide, and giant waves... oh yeah and that there was a hole in my Xtra Toughs - gumboots).
Lots of Guano on that one!

We hopped back in the car and continued down the coast. The road signs down here are kind of funny. Not only are there the crazy Tsunami warning sign, but also crazy ones that just say "DIP".

We next stopped at Cape Meares, which houses a beautiful historic lighthouse, overlooking an awesome Common Murre colony.


This outhouse had the thinnest toilet paper I have ever seen.


We ended up in Netarts Bay at the Cape Lookout State Park. In a YURT!