gmonkey42

I thought we had lab meeting today but I misread the e-mail, it's on Monday. At least I'm here for Seminar. Which starts at 3:30pm. I suppose I could look for stuff in the library for my Methods project. Except I don't really feel like doing that. I came all set to have a lab meeting and now I'm all... NOT having a meeting. It's thrown off my whole schedule!

...I will probably just read things on the internet until Seminar.

Actually, I could realistically print out the reading for next week's Methods class and get started on that, that will be manageable. OK then.

1. Supplementary report for the IACUC committee - DONE

2. Give my grant application to Dr. H to get his feedback before I submit it - DONE

Still to do: stats methods section for my thesis proposal.

I didn't go on the boat today, the other student changed her protocol and didn't need help. But I'm still going Friday to catch & tag seals.

I've been reading this blog Halfway There by a math teacher at a community college and the post linked above contains some great advice for getting things done: commit to spending 15 minutes on it every day. The idea is some days you'll only do the 15 but a lot of times you'll find yourself wanting to do more once you get started. I think it's a great idea and I'm going to do it with my thesis proposal, which I need to finish and turn in ASAP.

1. My original plan was to come to the lab for a few hours before Seminar to work on my thesis stuff (priority 1: IACUC application!) but there's a thesis defense this afternoon, so instead I arrived shortly before Seminar then worked on my IACUC application and now I'm about to go to the thesis defense for free food - I mean to support my fellow student - no, mainly it's the free food. I helped this student with her subtidal work!

2. I thought there would be more bullet points but the defense starts at 4:00 so I need to go down to the seminar room in a minute. Uhhhh. I really thought there was something else to post. I'm hungry. My flu is getting better. I'm still a little congested but it's like 80% better now.

3. Oh! I remember what the other thing was: I'm listening to Pandora Radio and a song came on and I thought "wow, I like this! Who is this?" And it was Jason Mraz. I think I have to punch myself in the face.

I've had a busy few days!

Wednesday we had our student body new officers orientation meeting. I am now officially President! We'll have our first meeting with just the new officers next week. I have lots of ideas!

Thursday I went to the weekly seminar talk. It was cool, this week's guest speaker was from the USGS and he talked about methods for mapping the seafloor and about his project showing changes in the seafloor here in the bay over time. Like erosion vs deposition. It was at an appropriate level and pretty interesting. Some speakers get really technical about their methods and it's hard to follow if you're not in that specific sub-discipline but this one was good.

Then after seminar, I had a meeting with the new Treasurer to give her the info she needs. Ooh, I just remembered, I still need to write a letter to the bank so they can put her name on the account. Theeeen after that, I had a meeting with Dr. H's wife, who studies fish and has hired me to help with her project for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Sweet!

And today, I went up to the NMFS office in Santa Cruz to learn about their database and I start working next week. I'll have to go up there once a week but apart from that I can do it all from here. Then I came home and had lunch and relaxed for a while and played Star Trek Online. We got to keep our usernames! I'm still funkyspock! :D

Also I've been going to Bikram yoga again. I'm already starting to regain my flexibility!

And now I'm huuuungry! I think I'll have some soup and toast. Mmm, sourdough toast.

We got a load of market squid donated for Open House. Whole, frozen squid, with beaks and squidgy organs and everything. And I'm on the food committee.

On the plus side, we had a load of leftover squid guts and we fed some to the invertebrates in the aquarium. The anemones were all NOM NOM NOM, it was so cute.

And then after we'd finished that, I went into the vertebrate lab and I discovered someone had put my crappy otter skeleton from last year on display. Its legs are falling off! Because the glue didn't work and we sort of did a crappy job! So I got a drill and some nails and I fixed it. It should hold together for the weekend, anyway. I should have used nails in the first place.



One of these days, I'll do a grad school post that's actually about, y' know, school.

Until I get a cool picture of me in the field, this is going to be my "marine biology post" icon. Because it has an otter.

Yarr! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys! And I be havin' an amazing nautical story to tell! Me crew and I were out on the bay yesterday doing a practice survey for the birds and mammals class pirating, when we came upon some humpback whales a mob of fearsome sea creatures! We kept our distance because they're a protected species but two of the blighters came right up to the ship! We took pictures had a heroic battle and finally escaped! I didn't have me camera so here be an illustration:

I was up til almost 3:00AM finishing the stats homework. Note to self: "almost done and hey I think I know how to do the last problem and it'll be easy" isn't the same as "done."

I still like statistics. It's just that sometimes the homework questions are unclear.

I want to go home and eat a big dinner and go to sleep. At least lecture's done and lab will be all in the computer classroom. Lab is pretty fun.

That's right. We think it's a sub-adult male Cuvier's beaked whale. That's pretty rare in the Monterey Bay! It wasn't as big as the adult in the drawing - it was about 3m long.

Here's how it went down: we got a call to the stranding network (our lab deals with the dead animals called in) about a dead dolphin at Asilomar state beach. The stranding coordinator wasn't in yet so we decided to wait til she arrived. Then about an hour later, we got a call from another ranger that the dolphin was in the surf zone and if we wanted it we'd better come and get it before it got swept away. The coordinator (who's also a grad student in the lab) arrived then anyway so four of us took the stretcher and the pickup truck to collect what we thought would be a bottlenose dolphin and take it back to the lab for necropsy.

When we got there, we went "man, that's a bigass dolphin. Wait..." The dorsal fin was further back than a dolphin's and it had a pretty short beak. And it was way too heavy for the four of us to even roll onto the stretcher, let alone carry to the truck. We couldn't take it back to the lab, therefore we'd have to do a field necropsy. Except the tide was coming in and it was getting dark, so we had to tie it to an anchor and leave it until low tide tomorrow.

There were spectators walking by. A few had video cameras. So I'll see if I'm on YouTube in a few days. I did get a photo of me with the whale but it's on the lab camera so I don't have the file yet. I'll post it here when I get it. Don't worry, the whale isn't all gross or anything. People asked if it was alive but from the condition of the skin, it was probably floating for a day or so before it washed up (but my photo is with the good side up - whenever a big enough wave came up, we floated/rolled it as far up the beach as we could). A bunch of people asked if it'd been killed by a shark - a great white shark attacked a surfer last week, which is really rare here - but there weren't any obvious injuries. Then there were the dumb ones like "did it get caught in a trap?" Yes. A whale trap. And someone asked "aren't you worried someone might steal it? [since we're leaving it overnight]" Not without a small crane, they won't. Hypothetically, that would be illegal anyway. You have to have a permit.

A bunch of people wanted to touch it, and did when we weren't standing right there guarding it. Not that it matters to us; we're mostly concerned with sampling the internal organs. But dude, it's a dead animal! We're wearing these gloves for a reason! Not that there's a huge risk of disease transmission but I'll bet they wouldn't walk up and touch roadkill.

In conclusion: best. job. evar.