Hola mis amigos!
Wow do I have a bit of catching up to do. I'll start with last Sunday and work my way forward until I get to today, so I'll actually be writing for about two weeks.
Last Sunday was the last really gloriously sunny day we've had here, and Sarah and I decided to go surfing! She has surf boards, so the easiest thing to do is pull on your suit and rash shirt and walk to the water taxi dock. We definitely got some catcalls walking without pants or shoes, but it's better to not have anything to leave in the boat. We just told our driver to go to Black Rock, which is around the back side of Isla Carranaro, and asked him if he would come back in an hour. When we got there, he idled the engine while we jumped off with our boards, and presto! We were surfing.
Or I should say, Sarah was surfing. I had a hard enough time getting on my board the first several times I did it! All those people you see casually sitting on surf boards waiting for waves like it's the most stable thing in the world? LIES! Although I did figure it out after falling off about four times in a row, and now I too can sit on my board like a pro.
Turns out, though, that sitting on your surf board and looking cool does not actually constitute surfing. Nor does trying to paddle and realizing your arm strength totals negative five, and continually forgetting to get your feet out of the water and onto the board to decrease drag is also a bad thing. Eventually though, I figured out how to paddle semi-efficiently and to turn my board to face sort of the right direction as the waves were coming in. Success should soon be mine, right?
Nope, not yet. Turns out you need to be moving fairly quickly when the wave reaches you to have a chance of catching it. It also helps if you're completely perpendicular to the wave, so it doesn't turn you sideways and tumble you. (My sinuses were incredibly clean by the end of the day though!) It's a fun but tricky thing to learn how to read a wave; will that one break over my head and spin me, or will it peter out into nothing? Where will the center of the wave be? You actually have to just get fairly lucky to be near the center when the wave gets to you; I at least cannot move quickly enough to read the wave, move into position, turn around, and start paddling.
After probably a solid half hour of watching Sarah catch waves and of me alternately getting tumbled and just chilling in the sunshine, something incredible happened. All of a sudden Sarah's jumping off her board to give me a push, shouting "PADDLEPADDLEPADDLEPADDLE!" and I start windmilling like a madman and then suddenly I'm not the one providing the momentum anymore. I'd caught the wave! After a delighted two seconds of realizing this, I remember that this is the point where you're supposed to stand up. So I put my hands by my waist, lever myself up, and plant my feet on my board.
Unfortunately I'd planted them far off of center, and I promptly sent the board flying out from under me and landed flat on my back. But no worries! I'd officially surfed!
Sarah and the other guys who were out there were stoked for me, and were determined to get me another wave by telling me when to paddle. I managed to get caught in a lot of white water and yanked around by my board and leash, and soaked up a lot of sun just laying on my board watching everyone else. (Only a minor sunburn resulted, with which I was also pleased.) I'd liked that feeling of catching the wave, though, and I wanted another one. So I kept watching the crests, trying to turn around and paddling.
Hard work does in fact pay off, and I did catch my second wave. I wasn't entirely sure I had it, so I popped to my knees first. That was quite fun, especially when I realized I was still moving. I pushed to my feet then, and I stood for a solid five second count before landing in the water again, this time on my face.
It was about this time that our water taxi came back, and Sarah and I climbed back into the boat (which is not easy to do from deep water, thanks!) Overall, I think it was highly successful and I can't wait to go again!
On Monday a scientist named Melissa arrived from Baton Rouge, where she studies at LSU. She'll be here until August, using Amber's experimental set-up for her own project. With her arrival, it was time to start processing all the corals. This meant we glued them to microscope slides, labeled the microscope slides, and weighed each piece of coral.
So let's do a little math here. Amber has six different treatments (no heat no CO2, no heat moderate CO2, no heat high CO2, heat no CO2, heat moderate CO2, and heat high CO2) which are each replicated three times. This gives us the eighteen rain barrels. Each barrel has twelve tanks attached to it, scattered randomly across the tables. Eighteen by twelve is 216 tanks. Each tank needs to have three or four individuals in it at the end, so we put seven pieces of coral in each tank to allow for the fifty percent mortality rate she experienced last time. Seven by 216 is 1512. Add corals for Melissa's experiment and we're closing in on 1600.
That's 1600 labels to cut out and glue to 1600 microscope slides. 1600 pieces of coral to chisel into the appropriate size, and then glue to the microscope slides. 1600 corals to weigh on a buoyant weight scale (which is actually super cool, and allows you to weigh something in water and then back-calculate the weight in air using a reference weight and the density of the water). It was a daunting task.
The first day, Sarah and I walked at 8am in with high hopes of knocking out 500 corals and surprising Amber with how successful we were. Turns out we were way overly-optimistic. We glued 210 corals that day, and once we were finished we realized that almost every single coral had already fallen over off the microscope slides. The glass slides were just too smooth, and the glue was peeling off. The fact that the corals can't be out of water for very long and we were putting the glue in salt water half-wet wasn't helping. (As a side note, salt water destroys everything it touches. Metal, wood, fabric, and apparently superglue. It's crazy.)
So...trouble shooting. The glue was sticking to the corals, and last time Amber glued the tags (which are a cool plastic-y waterproof paper) to the base of the corals and left them laying down. So the coral-glue interface was not our problem. The coral-slide interface, on the other hand, was a problem. So how to fix that?
Sand paper. And lots of scratching slides. Blergh.
Gluing I didn't mind so much. Cutting out the labels and gluing them on was good too, because you could watch the numbers go up. Weighing was my favorite job, because you got a sense of satisfaction (and a chance to walk around) every seven corals when you put them in their tank. But scratching slides? There was nothing good about scratching slides, apart from a sense of rebellion I got out of doing something that is totally forbidden in every other scientific endeavour.
But the slides had to be scratched, and we were the ones who were going to scratch them. So we brought home a stack of slides, a roll of paper, several tubes of Crazy Glue (Kola Loca, here, which doesn't actually translate for some odd reason) and the labels. And after gluing corals from 8 to 5, we sat there and prepped the slides for two hours.
Turns out scratching the slides made all the difference. We also got better at chiseling the bases flat, at gluing the max surface area with the least awkward pull against gravity, and at not bumping the already-glued ones. The next day we glued 298 corals, and on Wednesday we glued 378 (a table and a half!) Thursday we had to collect more coral, but we managed another 378 corals, leaving us with only one table (252) and Melissa's corals left to glue. We were totally going to finish on Friday.
Except...remember that first table where everyone fell down? They'd been lying down all week, and they were also from the first batch of coral we'd collected the very first week we were here. Turns out they weren't super happy with their lives, and finally we reached the inevitable decision. We had to replace them.
We managed to get about two thirds of the table done before the chichras became completely unbearable and we were too tired to do any more. An 8-6 day will do that. We'd come so far at this point that we were determined to finish, so we came in on Saturday (although not until nearly 11!)to finish up the first table and a half (also coral from the old batch). It was entirely the right decision in terms of the experiment, and it felt awesome to see the new super happy corals in their tanks.
In many ways our hours of gluing corals was an experience I was very glad to have. In no way shape or form am I saying I would want to do that every day of my life, but it gave me a bit of an appreciation for people who do mindless, repetitive tasks day-in and day-out. I saw some of the girls who work at one of the little grocery stores here labeling cans of beans, and it seemed completely on par with my job. Hers, however, lasts indefinitely, while mine had a very finite end point. I also thought a lot about how people talk to each other while they're doing things like that. Amber, Sarah, Melissa and I chattered a lot while we were working because while our hands were occupied, our minds certainly weren't. We told stories about friends from home, about boyfriends, about our families, about adventures in science and elsewhere in life. It made me think about women who work in a kitchen all day, or about old-time quilting parties, and I wondered if the decline of labor like that (in groups, with the opportunity to chatter) had something to do with the difference in how we tell stories now. I also feel like it has to do with the different way we place importance on our reputation. Then, everyone in your little community would know every little thing about you, whereas now you have a much greater audience to worry about but that audience is also only privy to the biggest and most exciting things that happen in your life. I'm not sure exactly where this train of though was taking me, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.
Saturday night and Sunday were for laundry, picking up my things, grocery shopping, and chilling out reading. It was very nice to sleep in and do nothing! It also poured all day, so it was a nice day for it. Sarah also flew out early on Sunday morning, and we were all sad to see her go.
This week has seen the last of the set-up work, so long as nothing now goes wrong! (Everyone, find something wooden and knock, hard.) On Monday we put in the air hose for all the CO2 tanks, and on Tuesday we bought another 100 cinder blocks to build supports for the tables. As I mentioned earlier, the table legs are already rusting through, so we stacked four towers of cinder blocks under each table. It was quite an interesting job; each table is currently supporting about 400 pounds of water weight, and the cinder blocks need to fit pretty closely to the underside of the tables to catch them if they fall. It meant a lot of crouching under tables, lifting cinder blocks at very strange angles! Weirdly, I sort of love stuff like that. It makes me feel accomplished to get all dirty and sweaty and soaked with sea water (the tables drip) and sore.
After a bit of a break in the lab, Amber and I decided to run to Playa Ponch, which is about a mile past the Smithsonian. It was a really beautiful run/walk (neither one of us has run in a scary long time) and I can't wait to get out on that part of the road again. We searched for sea glass on the beaches on the way back, and as we rounded the corner to the Smithsonian we got probably the best surprise of the week. In one of the trees outside the guard house was a momma sloth and her baby! They are very, very high on my list of most adorable things I've been lucky to see. It was a great-after run treat.
Wednesday and today have been the beginning of our new post-set-up routine. Amber and I get to the Smithsonian around nine, take readings of fifty or so of the tanks, and come up to do data entry or in my case, write blog posts! Yesterday was a sort-of nice day, and we decided at one that we were leaving to go to Carrararo, the next island over, to lay on the beach and read. We walked along one side of the island, and found a beautiful little point that was maybe thirty feet above the sea level. (This is one of the highest bits of land I've seen since I left the States.) It was incredibly beautiful, and I have lots of pictures (that need to get uploaded and posted, of course). We did find a bit of beach and read for a while, and spent quite a bit of time laughing about how awesome our job was.
Today we'll not be doing any adventuring of the sort, however. It's been raining off and on all day today, and last night was definitely the biggest thunderstorm I've ever heard in my life. I woke up around 4am because the thunder was so loud; it was rattling the whole house and I could feel it resonating in my breast bone, the same way you can feel the bass if you stand in front of the speakers at a concert. It was completely crazy! I got up and watched the lightning for about ten minutes, but it was too bright and close to really make anything out. I have to say, I was certainly just glad that I was inside a house and that I've never been scared of storms.
The other bit of exciting news is that we have a new assistant arriving tonight. Alex is a master's student at Stonybrook (Amber's university) who does work with ocean acidification. He's coming so that there will still be two people here while Amber goes home and to a cousin's wedding in Hawaii for two weeks.
And with that, I think I've finally caught up on everything that's been happening! Next time I'll post pictures of Carranaro, updated pictures of our set-up (now that it's finished!) and hopefully I'll have some good adventure stories from my free time.
Hasta luego!
Wow do I have a bit of catching up to do. I'll start with last Sunday and work my way forward until I get to today, so I'll actually be writing for about two weeks.
Last Sunday was the last really gloriously sunny day we've had here, and Sarah and I decided to go surfing! She has surf boards, so the easiest thing to do is pull on your suit and rash shirt and walk to the water taxi dock. We definitely got some catcalls walking without pants or shoes, but it's better to not have anything to leave in the boat. We just told our driver to go to Black Rock, which is around the back side of Isla Carranaro, and asked him if he would come back in an hour. When we got there, he idled the engine while we jumped off with our boards, and presto! We were surfing.
Or I should say, Sarah was surfing. I had a hard enough time getting on my board the first several times I did it! All those people you see casually sitting on surf boards waiting for waves like it's the most stable thing in the world? LIES! Although I did figure it out after falling off about four times in a row, and now I too can sit on my board like a pro.
Turns out, though, that sitting on your surf board and looking cool does not actually constitute surfing. Nor does trying to paddle and realizing your arm strength totals negative five, and continually forgetting to get your feet out of the water and onto the board to decrease drag is also a bad thing. Eventually though, I figured out how to paddle semi-efficiently and to turn my board to face sort of the right direction as the waves were coming in. Success should soon be mine, right?
Nope, not yet. Turns out you need to be moving fairly quickly when the wave reaches you to have a chance of catching it. It also helps if you're completely perpendicular to the wave, so it doesn't turn you sideways and tumble you. (My sinuses were incredibly clean by the end of the day though!) It's a fun but tricky thing to learn how to read a wave; will that one break over my head and spin me, or will it peter out into nothing? Where will the center of the wave be? You actually have to just get fairly lucky to be near the center when the wave gets to you; I at least cannot move quickly enough to read the wave, move into position, turn around, and start paddling.
After probably a solid half hour of watching Sarah catch waves and of me alternately getting tumbled and just chilling in the sunshine, something incredible happened. All of a sudden Sarah's jumping off her board to give me a push, shouting "PADDLEPADDLEPADDLEPADDLE!" and I start windmilling like a madman and then suddenly I'm not the one providing the momentum anymore. I'd caught the wave! After a delighted two seconds of realizing this, I remember that this is the point where you're supposed to stand up. So I put my hands by my waist, lever myself up, and plant my feet on my board.
Unfortunately I'd planted them far off of center, and I promptly sent the board flying out from under me and landed flat on my back. But no worries! I'd officially surfed!
Sarah and the other guys who were out there were stoked for me, and were determined to get me another wave by telling me when to paddle. I managed to get caught in a lot of white water and yanked around by my board and leash, and soaked up a lot of sun just laying on my board watching everyone else. (Only a minor sunburn resulted, with which I was also pleased.) I'd liked that feeling of catching the wave, though, and I wanted another one. So I kept watching the crests, trying to turn around and paddling.
Hard work does in fact pay off, and I did catch my second wave. I wasn't entirely sure I had it, so I popped to my knees first. That was quite fun, especially when I realized I was still moving. I pushed to my feet then, and I stood for a solid five second count before landing in the water again, this time on my face.
It was about this time that our water taxi came back, and Sarah and I climbed back into the boat (which is not easy to do from deep water, thanks!) Overall, I think it was highly successful and I can't wait to go again!
On Monday a scientist named Melissa arrived from Baton Rouge, where she studies at LSU. She'll be here until August, using Amber's experimental set-up for her own project. With her arrival, it was time to start processing all the corals. This meant we glued them to microscope slides, labeled the microscope slides, and weighed each piece of coral.
So let's do a little math here. Amber has six different treatments (no heat no CO2, no heat moderate CO2, no heat high CO2, heat no CO2, heat moderate CO2, and heat high CO2) which are each replicated three times. This gives us the eighteen rain barrels. Each barrel has twelve tanks attached to it, scattered randomly across the tables. Eighteen by twelve is 216 tanks. Each tank needs to have three or four individuals in it at the end, so we put seven pieces of coral in each tank to allow for the fifty percent mortality rate she experienced last time. Seven by 216 is 1512. Add corals for Melissa's experiment and we're closing in on 1600.
That's 1600 labels to cut out and glue to 1600 microscope slides. 1600 pieces of coral to chisel into the appropriate size, and then glue to the microscope slides. 1600 corals to weigh on a buoyant weight scale (which is actually super cool, and allows you to weigh something in water and then back-calculate the weight in air using a reference weight and the density of the water). It was a daunting task.
The first day, Sarah and I walked at 8am in with high hopes of knocking out 500 corals and surprising Amber with how successful we were. Turns out we were way overly-optimistic. We glued 210 corals that day, and once we were finished we realized that almost every single coral had already fallen over off the microscope slides. The glass slides were just too smooth, and the glue was peeling off. The fact that the corals can't be out of water for very long and we were putting the glue in salt water half-wet wasn't helping. (As a side note, salt water destroys everything it touches. Metal, wood, fabric, and apparently superglue. It's crazy.)
So...trouble shooting. The glue was sticking to the corals, and last time Amber glued the tags (which are a cool plastic-y waterproof paper) to the base of the corals and left them laying down. So the coral-glue interface was not our problem. The coral-slide interface, on the other hand, was a problem. So how to fix that?
Sand paper. And lots of scratching slides. Blergh.
Gluing I didn't mind so much. Cutting out the labels and gluing them on was good too, because you could watch the numbers go up. Weighing was my favorite job, because you got a sense of satisfaction (and a chance to walk around) every seven corals when you put them in their tank. But scratching slides? There was nothing good about scratching slides, apart from a sense of rebellion I got out of doing something that is totally forbidden in every other scientific endeavour.
But the slides had to be scratched, and we were the ones who were going to scratch them. So we brought home a stack of slides, a roll of paper, several tubes of Crazy Glue (Kola Loca, here, which doesn't actually translate for some odd reason) and the labels. And after gluing corals from 8 to 5, we sat there and prepped the slides for two hours.
Turns out scratching the slides made all the difference. We also got better at chiseling the bases flat, at gluing the max surface area with the least awkward pull against gravity, and at not bumping the already-glued ones. The next day we glued 298 corals, and on Wednesday we glued 378 (a table and a half!) Thursday we had to collect more coral, but we managed another 378 corals, leaving us with only one table (252) and Melissa's corals left to glue. We were totally going to finish on Friday.
Except...remember that first table where everyone fell down? They'd been lying down all week, and they were also from the first batch of coral we'd collected the very first week we were here. Turns out they weren't super happy with their lives, and finally we reached the inevitable decision. We had to replace them.
We managed to get about two thirds of the table done before the chichras became completely unbearable and we were too tired to do any more. An 8-6 day will do that. We'd come so far at this point that we were determined to finish, so we came in on Saturday (although not until nearly 11!)to finish up the first table and a half (also coral from the old batch). It was entirely the right decision in terms of the experiment, and it felt awesome to see the new super happy corals in their tanks.
In many ways our hours of gluing corals was an experience I was very glad to have. In no way shape or form am I saying I would want to do that every day of my life, but it gave me a bit of an appreciation for people who do mindless, repetitive tasks day-in and day-out. I saw some of the girls who work at one of the little grocery stores here labeling cans of beans, and it seemed completely on par with my job. Hers, however, lasts indefinitely, while mine had a very finite end point. I also thought a lot about how people talk to each other while they're doing things like that. Amber, Sarah, Melissa and I chattered a lot while we were working because while our hands were occupied, our minds certainly weren't. We told stories about friends from home, about boyfriends, about our families, about adventures in science and elsewhere in life. It made me think about women who work in a kitchen all day, or about old-time quilting parties, and I wondered if the decline of labor like that (in groups, with the opportunity to chatter) had something to do with the difference in how we tell stories now. I also feel like it has to do with the different way we place importance on our reputation. Then, everyone in your little community would know every little thing about you, whereas now you have a much greater audience to worry about but that audience is also only privy to the biggest and most exciting things that happen in your life. I'm not sure exactly where this train of though was taking me, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.
Saturday night and Sunday were for laundry, picking up my things, grocery shopping, and chilling out reading. It was very nice to sleep in and do nothing! It also poured all day, so it was a nice day for it. Sarah also flew out early on Sunday morning, and we were all sad to see her go.
This week has seen the last of the set-up work, so long as nothing now goes wrong! (Everyone, find something wooden and knock, hard.) On Monday we put in the air hose for all the CO2 tanks, and on Tuesday we bought another 100 cinder blocks to build supports for the tables. As I mentioned earlier, the table legs are already rusting through, so we stacked four towers of cinder blocks under each table. It was quite an interesting job; each table is currently supporting about 400 pounds of water weight, and the cinder blocks need to fit pretty closely to the underside of the tables to catch them if they fall. It meant a lot of crouching under tables, lifting cinder blocks at very strange angles! Weirdly, I sort of love stuff like that. It makes me feel accomplished to get all dirty and sweaty and soaked with sea water (the tables drip) and sore.
After a bit of a break in the lab, Amber and I decided to run to Playa Ponch, which is about a mile past the Smithsonian. It was a really beautiful run/walk (neither one of us has run in a scary long time) and I can't wait to get out on that part of the road again. We searched for sea glass on the beaches on the way back, and as we rounded the corner to the Smithsonian we got probably the best surprise of the week. In one of the trees outside the guard house was a momma sloth and her baby! They are very, very high on my list of most adorable things I've been lucky to see. It was a great-after run treat.
Wednesday and today have been the beginning of our new post-set-up routine. Amber and I get to the Smithsonian around nine, take readings of fifty or so of the tanks, and come up to do data entry or in my case, write blog posts! Yesterday was a sort-of nice day, and we decided at one that we were leaving to go to Carrararo, the next island over, to lay on the beach and read. We walked along one side of the island, and found a beautiful little point that was maybe thirty feet above the sea level. (This is one of the highest bits of land I've seen since I left the States.) It was incredibly beautiful, and I have lots of pictures (that need to get uploaded and posted, of course). We did find a bit of beach and read for a while, and spent quite a bit of time laughing about how awesome our job was.
Today we'll not be doing any adventuring of the sort, however. It's been raining off and on all day today, and last night was definitely the biggest thunderstorm I've ever heard in my life. I woke up around 4am because the thunder was so loud; it was rattling the whole house and I could feel it resonating in my breast bone, the same way you can feel the bass if you stand in front of the speakers at a concert. It was completely crazy! I got up and watched the lightning for about ten minutes, but it was too bright and close to really make anything out. I have to say, I was certainly just glad that I was inside a house and that I've never been scared of storms.
The other bit of exciting news is that we have a new assistant arriving tonight. Alex is a master's student at Stonybrook (Amber's university) who does work with ocean acidification. He's coming so that there will still be two people here while Amber goes home and to a cousin's wedding in Hawaii for two weeks.
And with that, I think I've finally caught up on everything that's been happening! Next time I'll post pictures of Carranaro, updated pictures of our set-up (now that it's finished!) and hopefully I'll have some good adventure stories from my free time.
Hasta luego!
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