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.