Blogs

 Week one of the CMOP internship started off slow, but I learned many things that I find will help me along the way.  On the first day, the other interns and I arrived at 9 a.m. to receive orientation.  I was introduced to  the other interns and learned more about CMOP.  After being oriented with the program, we all branched off, where I was able to meet Vena, my mentor.  Mariya, who also works in the lab I will be working in, gave another quick tour of the building  and lab.

 The first week of the internship went really well, I’m really excited for all the work we’ll be doing this summer! The first day we just had orientation, so we introduced ourselves a bunch of times and learned about the school. I met my mentors, Michelle and Tawnya, and learned more about what I will be doing for the summer. In the afternoon I measured RFU values of phytoplankton, then learned how to transfer the dying phytoplankton to new test tubes in order to allow them to continue growing.

This is the first week..I have been looking at papers and trying to get a feel for the project that I am going to work on this year. I am also excited that I get to work with Mariya this year.

After completing my first week of this internship with CMOP, I can tell that my project will be very interesting. I am working in Brad Tebo's lab with Roberto Anitori. The project focuses on microbes collected from ice caves in Antarctica, which oxidize manganese or iron from volcanic glass. My work for these next nine weeks will be focused on culturing these microbes, and identifying them using various methods.

I spent the day with students from the Native American Youth Association’s (NAYA) Early College Academy as they installed a bioswale on the school grounds. Bioswales are landscape elements designed to remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water. This is part of their environmental science class project for the year that is co-sponsored by CMOP.

The CMOP Spring cruise is coming to an end.  It is currently 11pm on 14 April and we are positioned just off Newport and about to enter Yacquina Bay.  It has been a rough trip the last 14 hours after leaving the newly deployed SATURN-02.  The winds reached 30 knots against us and the significant wave height probably reached 12-14 feet.  We were speeding along at about 6 knots the whole trip south-- rocking and rolling and not in a good way.

We left the dock at 10am on schedule.  The 40 knot wind from the night before has dramatically decreased.  There remains sigificant swell, however we were able to successfully launch the buoy Alder at the NH-10 site.  It was even a sunny day!  The buoy is called by cell phone every 3 hours and data are downloaded from some of the instrumentation.

This week, we worked on creating a powerpoint to show what we've been working on. It was interesting to think about how science can be fascinating, but really it's only as useful as your communication skills are. We've had to use different parts of our brain to figure out how to share our understanding of issues with everyone else, and make the information accessable to a wide range of skill levels.