Date: 2-20-12 Time Spent: 7.5 hours Total Time: 15 hours
Action: The first part of the day was spent looking at preserved specimens in the collection at MLML. I got to see a bat ray, a couple skates, a frilled shark, some electric rays, a few chimeras and a spiny dogfish which is what my mentor Jenny is working with. That took up the morning and after lunch we moved on.
Action: We spent a couple of hours going over and organizing the specimens from the day before, simply because there were so many samples of cephalopods and inputing that information into a computer from the notebook that was used.
Action: It was around three when we started looking through the fish samples found in the dogfish stomachs. Some would be spines or partial spines, fish heads, chunks of flesh, and scales. We cataloged those samples and cleaned up the ethanol that need changing. The whole vertabrae could be used to identify species because each fish has a particular number of vertabrae in their spine. I got to see individual vertabrae of fish spines close up and learned that the atlas bone is the starting point of the spine and how scientists can tell if it's in tact or not. We also looked at some squid beaks and matched them with the squids they were taken from. We were done at 4:30.
How do I feel: It was definately a crashcourse in ichthyology, the study of sharks, skates, and rays. My mentor was very knowledgeable and did a good job instilling as much information in me as possible by running through scientific names, taxonomy and the anotomical differences between different species of sharks or skates and rays and even different quirks within a particular group of sharks, like all dogfish have spines on their two dorsal fins. I feel very accomplished in what I learned and what I can take from the experience but I know that two days does not put me anywhere near the level of my mentor who has had seven more years of education in her field so if I do decide to learn more about sharks, it's going to be a lot of studying and new information and discoveries and tests and ethanol and dead animals.
Important Side Note: The smell of ethanol is NOT pleasant. It's an alcohol, so it burns your nose. I have a strong stomach so I never felt like I was going to throw up but if I never smell it again, it will be too soon. If you have a weak stomach, do not become a marine biologist. Once again, ethanol= NOT PLEASANT! By far the most difficult part of the physical project was dealing with ethanol for hours on end.
Monday, February 20, 2012
1st day at MLML
Yesterday was my first half of my time at Moss Landing Marine Lab. I didn't post yesterday because it's an hour and a half drive, three hours roundtrip, and when I got back home we went out to dinner and when we got back from that, it was almost nine and we had to get up early to make the trip today, so I'll make my two posts today.
Date: 2-19-12 Time Spent: 7.5 hours Total Time: 7.5 hours
Action: The first thing I did when I met my mentor Jenny at Moss Landing was write an article about the slaty-spotted guitarfish (Rhinobatos glaucostigma) for their monthly animal focus on their website. Each month they pick a new species to give a summary of its biology, diet, distribution, identification, etc. I didn't know anything about the animal beforehand but I learned a lot about that particular guitarfish and how to read information on different sites. It wasn't too different from research I do at school but there were different ways to cite information and follow that information back to the first scientist to discover that guitarfish and any research done on that animal since then. That took up three and a half hours.
Next Action: After a quick lunch break we went back to work, looking at contents inside the stomachs of dogfish, specifically cephalopods, like squid and octopi. The specimens were each in their own vial that we dumped out and looked at to catalog and refilled with vials with new ethanol, which preserves the samples. There were many samples so dumping out the old ethanol, making observations about the specimen, like whether it was tissue peices, the tentacles, an eye, or part of the mantle, which is the top part of the squid that holds all its organs, and then refilling the ethanol for each sample took about four hours.
How am I feeling: I would be lying if I didn't say overwhelmed. Just trying to find information for a quick article for their website involved using a new search engine and following unfamiliar citations back to their sources or attempting to backtrack and then double-check information on the internet against hard copies in the library, or trying to find books with information on that particular species was time-consuming more than anything. There was a lot to learn in a very short amount of time and Jenny made sure I was paying attention by quizzing me on certain facts she had lectured about while we were looking for information or cleaning up and cataloging half-eaten cephalopods. I tried my best to suck up information like a sponge but it's hard when you're a strong visual learner and you are trying to keep track of different quirks to a species when you hear it's scientific name or even signs to tell whether the animal is a skate, ray, or shark.
Date: 2-19-12 Time Spent: 7.5 hours Total Time: 7.5 hours
Action: The first thing I did when I met my mentor Jenny at Moss Landing was write an article about the slaty-spotted guitarfish (Rhinobatos glaucostigma) for their monthly animal focus on their website. Each month they pick a new species to give a summary of its biology, diet, distribution, identification, etc. I didn't know anything about the animal beforehand but I learned a lot about that particular guitarfish and how to read information on different sites. It wasn't too different from research I do at school but there were different ways to cite information and follow that information back to the first scientist to discover that guitarfish and any research done on that animal since then. That took up three and a half hours.
Next Action: After a quick lunch break we went back to work, looking at contents inside the stomachs of dogfish, specifically cephalopods, like squid and octopi. The specimens were each in their own vial that we dumped out and looked at to catalog and refilled with vials with new ethanol, which preserves the samples. There were many samples so dumping out the old ethanol, making observations about the specimen, like whether it was tissue peices, the tentacles, an eye, or part of the mantle, which is the top part of the squid that holds all its organs, and then refilling the ethanol for each sample took about four hours.
How am I feeling: I would be lying if I didn't say overwhelmed. Just trying to find information for a quick article for their website involved using a new search engine and following unfamiliar citations back to their sources or attempting to backtrack and then double-check information on the internet against hard copies in the library, or trying to find books with information on that particular species was time-consuming more than anything. There was a lot to learn in a very short amount of time and Jenny made sure I was paying attention by quizzing me on certain facts she had lectured about while we were looking for information or cleaning up and cataloging half-eaten cephalopods. I tried my best to suck up information like a sponge but it's hard when you're a strong visual learner and you are trying to keep track of different quirks to a species when you hear it's scientific name or even signs to tell whether the animal is a skate, ray, or shark.
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