Final stats

Because scientists love numbers:

Days at work: 41

Hours work: about 400 (396) including travel and overnights

Total pay: $2,400

Pay per hour: $6.00

Sites worked:

· PKS 176

· PKS 182

· PKS 184

· PKS 220

· PKS 252

· PKS 260

· NC Aquarium

· Morris Landing (near Topsail, NC)

· Jones Island (near Swansboro)

· Hatteras Island

Number of seines: app. 50

Fykes: app. 50

Species caught, ID’d: upwards of 4,000

Lab crew:

· Rachel Gittman – pHd candidate

· Michael Prakfa – undergrad at UNC

· Jane Lee – UNC graduate

· Diana Roycroft

Favorite site: Jones Island

Least favorite: Morris Landing

Favorite fish: mummichog

Least favorite: pinfish

The end.

Early wake up. It’s the last day. 8 weeks ago I was up and going, nervous and excited. This morning, the long hours and demanding routine caught up with me. I am pretty exhausted! Work at 7am because I wouldn’t be allowed to leave without one more day of field work. Rachel decided to take us to Morris Landing to do vegetation. So we got an early start to avoid high tide. Thankfully it was a bit overcast so the heat didn’t take over right away. It was weird to be out and know that I wasn’t going to get wet. Today was devoted solely to plants. Vegetation sampling involves working along transects. We basically run 12 meter lines along the coast, from water to upland. On the transect we pick three locations where we drop 1 meter quadrats. We then record percent cover for each plant, count stems, and measure heights. After 3 transects, the task becomes monotonous and quite dull. But it is a very important part of the research. The easy quadrats are the ones we measure in the water and on sand. But the upland quadrats are usually in some pretty thick plants……lots of tall grasses and my favorite, Juncus (terrible…..it could poke your eye out). We were making good progress until we saw a dark cloud moving towards us. No way! The one day in 8 weeks that it was going to rain. And I wasn’t even supposed to be out in the field. Sure enough we got rain. It poured. We worked on, until the thunder started. I couldn’t believe it. Karma. We finished 2/3 of the task and then hopped in the van to eat and stay out of the storm. Well it didn’t pass over so we left. Done.

Back at the lab we unloaded and then I realized it was over. I was really finished. I feel bad now realizing how much more work they are going to have to do. Fish sampling will continue each month until October. The whole process will start again in the spring. So I have only been a part of a small blip in the whole project. It’s nice to know that I was able to contribute a lot of time to her work and I am certainly looking forward to the final results. I don’t’ anticipate the paper being completed for another year and a half. Probably just around the time I am going to be graduating!

All in all I am really happy with my decision to intern at the lab. It was a very rewarding experience and I learned a lot not just about science, but about everyday things - from cooking on my own, to driving a truck, to conducting personal research, to organizing a group of people to work together. I feel like I have grown up a lot this summer and got a great look into post-grad life. I can’t say right now what I want to do for sure after graduation. I am thinking that a career in the sciences is probably not going to be a top choice. I can’t say that I can see myself doing what I did this summer for the rest of my life. But that in no way means that this summer was for nothing. It was perhaps even more important to participate in a unique opportunity so I know what else is out there in the world and see for myself how such an operation is conducted.

Many thanks to Rachel Gittman and the Peterson lab for accepting me as an intern.

easing into closure

Last minute changes in our schedule called for today as my final day in the lab. It was also my final day with Michael around before he headed to New York city. The day was spent doing tasks in the wet lab facility and staying dry! I organized and cleaned, counted frozen shrimp, and tried to ID all of our frozen unknown fish species. It was a nice change of pace and not too repetitive. I also was able to enjoy hanging out in the lab with the other technicians because we were each doing our own tasks….and we finally had a means of playing an ipod, which meant legit music without skipping. The highlight of the day however was our lunch break. The lab treated me to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, El Zarape. We had about 10 people go and feast compared to our typical lunch breaks. So so good.

Family arrived today. It’s finally hitting me that my time here on the Crystal Coast is at an end.

A Natural Farewell

Today’s sampling trip was to, the recently voted team favorite site, Jones Island. We headed out this afternoon, stopping at Subway first of course!

With the boat fully loaded, we sped off towards the island. Business as usual. By mid afternoon we were working the sites. Thank goodness we didn’t have any plants or transects to run!!!!! This meant that all the technicians were working on fish sampling. It was hot hot hot!!! But the fun began. We hardly caught any fish and completed the process by 5 pm (record speed). It was an emotional closure for me! My last seining procedure and my last fyke net set. I’ve had my mind set forward for so long that the end finally caught up with me and it was quite a surprise.

Delicious picnic dinner at our favorite picnic tables, Frisbee triangles, lounging, and gin rummy (our favorite card game)! Finally the time dwindled to 10:30 and we could set out nets by the light of a full moon.

It was a rough 6 hours of sleep, if I got anywhere near that at all. We were up by 4:30 am to retrieve nets….my last fyke retrieval and last time up so early for a long time!!!! BUGS!!!!! Little terrorists! Because there was no wind out, they attacked in number. The ringleaders were nouseeums. As Michael said “It feels like I am on crack.” We were constantly yelling, slapping, and itching….while attempting to count fish. Not a very enjoyable last experience. But once again we didn’t catch very many fish. By 6:00 am our boat was loaded and we were preparing to head back to the mainland. Very quick! The sun started coming up over the horizon and it was breathtaking. A gorgeous natural farewell to my field work. And then as we pulled away from shore, dolphins jumped around our boat. Its almost as if I am being persuaded to stick around haha.

Clean up. Home. Two more days.

TEAM

Nothing could have prepared me for the beast of a week I just finished. And to be honest, I am still finding it hard to believe that I survived the ordeal. But I found it very rewarding to push myself to the limits. I was pleasantly surprised to see how far I could go.

Day 1: Roadtrip to a new destination…..Morris Landing. Continuing my tour of the east coast, we left the lab around 11am and drove an hour and a half south to the Topsail beach area. There is a Natural Reserve that Rachel is now using for her research. After a car ride of studying GRE vocabulary, we drove to the end of the road that literally dumped right into the sound… welcome to Morris Landing. All that exists at this site is a boat ramp and a wooden pier (small). Picnic lunch complete with our famous watermelon snack. Work begins: Michael and I started seining. I took one step into the sound and sunk to my ankles…..hello mud. It was a joke….literally I laughed at how ridiculous it was. Every step meant sinking. Probably the worst nightmare for my knee…plant and twist. Finally we got the seine set and started walking. Hello wind. The wind inflated the net and tried to send it flying like a kite. So with strong wind, currents, and sinking mud, we started walking. Hello fish. Lots of fish. A new species….bay anchovies. Fun fact- they die pretty much instantly out of the water. The process was sooo slloowww. The wind meant I had to hand weigh everything. I sat on a bucket cramming fish into ziplock bags and hanging them on hand held scales. An hour and a half later we finished our first site….5 to go!!!! By 4 pm we were done with 2 sites and the tide was coming in really fast. (that was 3 hours later). Frustration set in as Rachel was clearly getting annoyed at how long we were taking. Michael and I kept our cool and pushed on. Eventually we ended up bagging all the shrimp to weigh/measure later. Finally at 7 we finished. A sloppy miracle. Very very tiring and mentally draining. We headed to Surf city to grab some dinner. Ended up at an Italian place and had some yummy pizza. Trust me, we ate as slow as possible to stall getting back to the Landing.

We set up tents next to a pile of oysters. It was a joke thinking we were going to sleep there but the tents were great for anti-mosquito protection. The bugs were terrible! So we huddled in the tent, eating hot tamales and playing catch phrase and cards to kill some time. The temperature in the tent reached upwards of 90 degrees. Finally at 1 am we got back to work pulling in the fyke nets. We set up a little camp station where Jane and I counted and measured fish. Yay for having actual chairs. But the lantern attracted some crazy insects. Michael and Rachel had a run in with two pairs of yellow eyes in the marsh (and some crazy sounds). We believe that they were a pair of foxes. Sort, measure, count, bag, weigh, repeat. 2 am ….. 2:30 am….3 am…..3:30 am done. Throw everything in the van. Start driving. Make the car 60 degrees to keep Rachel awake. Try not to fall asleep. In and out of conscious. 5 am back at the lab. Just want to get home.

6am shower, snack, bed time.

10am force myself to wake up

spend the day exerting minimal energy

amazing night of sleep

Day 3: pack up the truck. Roll out after lunch. Destination SOBX. (forgot our pastries in the lab….terrible). THe whole trip takes about 5-6 hours….sitting in the car, sitting in line, sitting on the ferry. A lot of sitting and waiting. And trying to stay as cool as possible. Heat indexes around 100. I finished re-reading the 7^th Harry Potter book as my entertainment. We had a nice dinner in Ocracoke before waiting out a long ferry line to Hatteras. Lots and lots of people in the OBX this weekend. Stocked up at the grocery and finally reached our lab house.

Day 4: I made everyone cinnamon roles for our pre-work breakfast. Then we went to the marina and met up with our boat guy – Jim. He is awesome!!! Jim hauls our equipment across the channel and tells us stories about fishing. The routine began. Well the seining was quick because we hardly caught anything! Literally ZERO fish in one of the nets. Otherwise it was pretty much just handfulls. The heat was definitely the worst this whole summer. I think that my experience at camp really has helped me learn how to cope with heat. I know it was hot. But I adjusted and really didn’t have a big problem with it. I just accept what its going to be like and try not to think about it. So my resilience to the heat made me maintain a good level of energy. You could definitely tell everyone was slowing down though. By noon especially. Unfortunately, the vegetation sampling was taking a while. We had to break for lunch because there was no way we could keep going. No shade. And the bugs were terrible because we lost the wind. MY escape was my Yummy PBJ. The problem now was that we had planned to be done. Hence I did not have my sunscreen. It reached the point where we could feel out skin burning. This resulted in very creative wraps. Rachel was walking around in a towel cape, I tied my rash guard across my shoulders and into my sunglasses to shade my nose. Still 6 more transects of vegetation to go. Hoorah! The water was boiling. Easily hot tub worthy. Everything was stagnant. Michael and I were counting plants. He climbed through some pretty crazy shrubs that could have easily poked out eyes. It was 2 pm now. We were all starting to daze…heat exhaustion and dehydration setting in. But somehow we finished.

AMAZING shower. Sat on the couch and didn’t move for like 2 hours. The interns drove down to Buxton and ate dinner at a Grille. I had ½ pound of boiled shrimp and veggies. Man it hit the spot. I love it when you have the perfect meal.

7:00pm. Time to break out the canoe and paddle ourselves back to our site. Set the fyke nets. And I ended up sitting inside one of the fyke nets haha.

9:00pm Bed

1:30 am awake. Already. Geeze. Canoe again. Still. MOSQUITOS. No wind.

It’s all really a blur now. But Thank goodness the process only took us a little over an hour. A miracle really because it has taken use upwards of 4 hours. But our catch numbers were low. It is a but discouraging to realize that all of the driving, unloading, set up, etc… involved for the Hatteras site only ends up in us catching a very small amount of fish. The same occurred last time. I know it’s part of the research…..but sometimes I question the rationality.

4 am bed…..can’t fall asleep. 6 am finally asleep. 7 am awake again

back to the site. Pack up all the gear. Pile it in the truck. Head to the ferry. The whole island decided to take the 9 am ferry. We spent over an hour sitting in the same spot in line. Finally on the ferry. The ferry almost got stuck on a sandbar. I can only imagine……..

12:30 ferry to Cedar Island. A very long 2 hours. Drive back to the lab.

5:00 pm Home.

Tired yet of reading this. I would be. It might seem like a downer but I really wanted to show the rigor of the job. This was a hard week. But I know that in a few months I will look back and laugh at how ridiculous it was but also how accomplished I feel. THe best thing about this week was that I feel like our lab got a lot closer. We have really reached the level of a team. We work well together and have a good time. We no longer talk just about work but about other more personal things. We play games, laugh a lot, make fun of each other, do ridiculous things, and share some pretty incredible memories. We each have our highs and lows. But in the end, I think we have bonded really well. Fun fact: I have been awake and working with the people in my lab at every hour of the day. 5 am to 4am. We have seen each other in a very raw and real environment. It doesn’t get much more true than that.

Only 4 more days left. Hard to believe it has been 8 weeks.

Time capsule

Wednesday

Done.

I survived 4 overnights unscathed and still in one piece. My body is aching now from hauling and lack of sleep. But the sense of accomplishment is overpowering. Two major rewards today: 1. A large flounder that we caught and 2. Panera breakfast greeting us when we finished counting fish at 7:30am. Best bacon, egg, and cheese ever!!! Consensus on the flounder was dinner. So with a background of rain and thunder, I spent the day napping and relaxing before heading over to Rachel’s house in Beaufort. The flounder was now covered in onions, lemon, and was baked. Haha owell. We ended up having quite a feast with the lab gang. A great gathering

….actually our first outside of work. Learned a lot about everyone I work with and realized that we haven’t really gotten to know each other. Yay group bonding!

First full night’s sleep in ag

es. AMAZING!!!!!

Thursday:

Chill day in the lab. I tackled data entry and powered through it for the whole day. Thank you ipod.

Went and saw the Morehead city Marlins play baseball with some of the other interns. Being social! It was nice to be enjoying something that the locals were involved with. Lots of families and diehard fans. Altho

ugh I really dislike baseball and find it incredibly boring, it was a great activity just to sit and watch effortlessly during a beautiful sunset.

Friday: Day off = beach all day long. Really I have only had a handful of these this whole summer. I decided to stay dry and spend the day reading….The Little Prince and a quick reread of the 7^th Harry Potter. I watched a poor stingray get tortured by a kid who somehow caught him in his thrownet. But I decided not to intervene. Dinner at my favorite PKS spot….the Ramada. Movie night….Sweet Home Alabama…..chick flick, I know but it’s a classic.

Saturday:

Turned out to be a surprise day for me!!!!! Laura’s parents were in town so I headed to Camp Seagull with the whole group. We planned to tour the camp and go out on a motorboat. Well, surprise surprise, the afternoon storm rolled in. But we stuck it out.

THe fact that I drove my car onto CSG’s grounds was crazy. After my 7 years in the Camp family, I had never accomplished this. To be honest, I’d only been to Seagull for 4^th of July (6 times), for golf team, for racing team, for tower team, for staff dinner, fireball carnival, and maybe that’s all. It’s sacred grounds from the perspective of a CSF camper. But in one day I drove through the gates, checked out the main office, and walked around camp like I owned the place haha. Thanks to having two Seagull counselors with us, and the lax rules we were able to roam. The boys were stuck in their cabins but unlike rainy days at Seafarer, they were out running around their cabins, no shoes, no shirts. Literally a little boys’ dream. It was the first time I got an outside glimpse of how things really operate there. It’s amazing how different the two camps really are. I also go to walk through the sacred sailloft and motor repair, and the racing room. All home to the infamous Seagull sea program. Its really overpowering to walk down to the dock and see the enormity of their program. 60 sunfish, 5 hobies, 12 lightnings, lasers, 30 boston whalers, outboards, etc….very impressive. But I was astonished at how clean and organized everything was. Really neat….to the t. Walking around the loft brought back memories from the 2004 summer when I was on racing team. 14 years old, nervous about racing with boys, I had been at the loft preparing for a day of racing. Little blips popped in my mind all day. I read the list of camper champions names for sailing seeing names of campers that had been central to cabin drama, old Johnny Seagulls, sailing, legends…….there it was. My teenage years. CSF and CSG are like time capsules. Passing the mess hall, I remember running through it for golf team, singing to the boys. Or the time I ran into Matt Sims running across the soccer field after 4^th of July.

I was at Seagull for an hour or so. It was raining as I said before. Everyone was supposed to be in their cabins. I was standing at

the mess hall. A figure runs towards me, counselor. Closer Closer. No way. It’s Lambert. You have to be joking. Literally, the one Seagull counselor I knew was at camp. Just so happened to be on his way to his cabin. And just so happened to run into me. Camp is a weird place.

I am so so so happy to be a part of the Camp family. It’s a magical place.

We ventured to CSF to give the girl’s camp tour. Every time I drive through the gates I am overwhelmed with a since of fun, of energy, of personality, of character, of me. I feel like I am truly myself. I always have the urge to yell, to sing, to give hugs, to smile. As the front sign reads….”future leaders of the world at play.”

And we made it just in time to take out an outboard. A rare treat to go out on a motorboat. A blast of a ride though. Since acti

vity period ended, we decided to head out of camp. Also, an infamous dark cloud was rolling in. 5:40 girls outside on the porches, shaving, and pizza boxes out back. Cookout and dance!!!

We drove to New Bern and enjoyed a delicious dinner downtown followed by an evening of pool and games at their hotel. I had a wonderful time. Best part about it, was that the whole day was unplanned. I didn’t have to worry about any logistics. I simply went with the flow. And things worked out. Lovely.

As you leave the gates of camp a sigh reads, Come back and play with us. I think to myself, when will I be back. I always come back. But what will the circumstances be. I hope nothing changes. My time capsule. So real, so alive.

Blue lights and silhouettes

I walked into the marsh around 4 am and was about to retrieve a net. I looked down and saw that as I moved around, tiny blue fluorescent lights flashed in the water. I waved my hand through the water and little blue sparkles would shine. I stopped moving, looked up and for the first time recognized the beauty of the early morning in a marsh. Everything is still. The water hardly ripples, an occasional fish leaps out of the water, the bugs sing in harmony. And out into the horizon, a deep blue light escapes from the darkness. Stillness. I breath a sigh of relief and completely relax. Meanwhile my other lab partner is stressing about walking through oysters and completing the job. All of a sudden I become one with the marsh. I feel apart of its being. No fear. No rush, Just slow movements. The blue flashes continue and the I see blue sparkles that outline a jellyfish. I realize that they are the lights of ctenophores, basically moon jellies. So cool. Mother nature always puts beauty in your path. Whether or not you take a moment to see it and appreciate it is another story. I then looked up and saw my partner completely silhouetted with the fyke net we were about to retrieve on a background of orange, purple, and pink as the sun slowly edged its way up the sky. The sun was awakening life in the marsh. Birds starting moving around, the fish were splashing, and I continued to move with the marsh, hoping that I could join in the morning awakening process.

That morning was a very enjoyable one. I relished each moment I spent in the waters. Meanwhile, everyone else continued to move with the quick-to the point motions that I had once been a part of.

Now whenever I am going into the field, whether the sun is setting, or rising, or darkness blankets the sky, I feel a new since of passion and beauty around me. It’s no longer just a job. It is understanding the world around me and its intricacies that most people have never seen at work. I’m the lucky one. But shhh it’s a secret.

11:00 pm. I walk into the marsh, into the warm water, look up, and am surrounded by an infinite field of stars. I wish I could lay back, float, and get lost in nature’s awe. Blue lights and silhouettes.