By Gray, Kika, Madelyn, Maddy, Jacob, and Joey

A lazy morning start was enjoyed by most on Sunday. Jacob, Joey, & Gray woke up early to make french toast for everyone, it was spectacular and loved by all. Promptly after breakfast we sat down with Derek and saw photos of his scuba diving adventures, and encounters on the Albanian coastline. Then we ate lunch together, and placed our sandwich order for dinner, before splitting up to enjoy our Sunday plans.

Gray: For my Sunday I walked into town to visit shops, try fresh pastries, and explore Friday Harbor. Upon my return, Joey and I did a chocolate tasting (Chocolate truffle with cream was the best) and then went on a bike ride to the top of the Missing mountain.

Joey: In the afternoon I spent some time relaxing and then headed into town. I was going to get a souvenir, but all of the stores close at 4 on Sunday. When I came back, Gray and I went on a bike ride past Jackson Beach. We did some exploring: we biked up on a ridge, sat in a tree and ate an apple.

Maddy: I spent the morning with everyone at the dorms, and then I headed to Friday Harbor Labs to work on my eelgrass experiment. I transferred the eelgrass wasting disease cultures into new petri dishes so that they wouldn’t run out of food to eat. Then, I sorted and cleaned a bunch of eelgrass shoots that we all collected the other day at Padilla Bay, prepping them for the next step of my experiment.

Jacob: I thought about ideas for the website. Then, I read a bit about the Salish Sea and its original discovery. The “Salish Sea” book by Dr. Joe Gaydos explained why places were named what they are and who they’re named after. Mostly I just rested. I also went for a short walk to the skate park and back.

Madelyn: After breakfast, I didn’t do much before deciding to go on a jog. It was really nice to just zone out and take in the steel blue sky and warm sun, brightening all the towering trees overhead as I ran by. Later in the day, I found myself under a tree outside reading a book, feeling the crisp air on my skin and creating fantasies in my head. So I really just relaxed today.

Kika: I went for an invigorating jog down to Jackson’s Beach before lunch, taking numerous detours to collect ebony blackberries and getting shredded by bramble thorns on the way. I ate a quick meal and then lounged in the liquid sunshine to read the news and drink a cup of mint tea. After my relaxing afternoon, I spent the evening. browsing local shops on Spring Street before settling on a lovely leafy mug as a souvenir.

We ended the day by attending the Island Stage Left adaptation of Much ado about Nothing, starring Paulina’s riveting performance as Hero. We picnicked in the garden before bundling up to protect ourselves against the swarms of mosquitos. The play was amazing, and our critics are giving it a rare 10/10. We would recommend seeing an Island Stage Left performance or donating if you saw a show and really liked it.

 We headed down to the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories’ docks to watch a necropsy. A necropsy is a surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause, mode, and manner of death or to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present for research or educational purposes. We watch 1^1/2 seals being dissected and sent to labs. It made most of us a little squeamish. While being dissected, we learned about how they relocate baby seals that have been orphaned and rehabilitate them to give them a better chance of survival. The one that we watched had climbed onto the beach where several eagles scavenged it alive, after being relocated. 

When the Marine Mammal Stranding Network and the Seadoc Society found him, they made the tough decision to euthanize him, since he had undergone immense suffering. They let us go down and look at the pup, it was quite bloody. We could see the teeth that had just started to grow in and the crevice where the pup’s eye should’ve been, but all that was left was an empty shell, carved out by the eagles. Then it was cut open and the liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart were removed. I learned about how the skull doesn’t get damaged even when the eye is eaten. They then showed us the brain. A few of us stayed behind to watch the start of the second seal pup’s dissection and ask questions. Afterwards, those that stayed behind left to catch up with the rest of the group who wanted to go up to the library.

 (Gray and Joey looking through books in the library, photo by Madelyn Crist)

( Gray touching a sea urchin in the tidal pool, photo by Gray Rager )

After the dissection fun, we were able to look around the Friday Harbor Laboratories. Walking in, we each picked up a postcard with a creature on it, varying from a sea anemone to a nudibranch. With colorful postcards in hand, we sauntered into the lab’s library. The room was flooded with warm sunlight coming in from the skylights carved into the ceiling overhead. Bookcases full of science discoveries and lab reports, bound by bright blues and soft yellows and cardinal reds lay out in front of the group. Books dating all the way back from the early nineteen hundreds, carrying evidence found by renowned scientists, sat in the rickety brown shelves before us as we perused between the tall structures.                                   

Not too long after admiring the old and new science pages, we carried on down the steps of the labs to find a small tide pool. We were each able to stick our hand in the cold, Pacific waters and touch a sea slug and a sea urchin or sea anemone. The sea urchins and anemones moved about our fingers when we plunged them into the water, as Derek gave us some quick interesting facts about the creatures.

Once we came back to the house, some of us found it more difficult than others to choke down lunch, while others were completely unphased after the dissection. Following the leftover pasta salad lunch, we began working on pisaster.org again, designing a logo, fixing the website structure, and writing blurbs for different sections of our lovely webpage. Working for a while, we made a lot of progress in layout and content, which is great and soon we took a break to play volleyball before dinner.

(the group working on our website, photo by Sara Sarmiento Ruiz)