^ A conglomerate of eager researchers. Photo by Katie.

By Katie Chin, Sam Feit, Max Liu, Scarlett Thornton

The day began with a pleasantly late start and a quiet (although rejuvenating) breakfast, allowing us to slumber through the long night, and recover after yesterday’s laborious schedule.

After filling our bellies with food, we set off to 4th of July Beach to observe the diverse and magnificent intertidal seagrass habitat. With our captains Riley and Emma at the wheel, we arrived at our destination with due diligence and pace.

^ Students on their way down to the beach. Photo by Scarlett.

We met Dr. Olivia Graham, an eelgrass extraordinaire who has been researching the vital organism for years. Accompanying her was Michiko the dog, her loyal companion and an invaluable assistant in our ventures. Our time with Dr. Graham began with reading up on different aspects of eelgrass, such as biology, importance, and need for conservation.

^ Esteemed Shih Tzu researcher Michiko. Photo by Katie.

After our reading and subsequent group discussion, we headed down to the beach to explore the low tide, and the newly exposed eelgrass meadow. Dr. Graham explained that once, the meadow was so dense you could barely take a step without landing on some eelgrass. But now, it was easy to see the swaths of eelgrass that had been wiped out by the seagrass wasting disease–which forms the basis for many of Dr. Graham’s studies.

Following twenty minutes of exploration, we were joined by Dr. Becca Maher–a postdoctoral fellow at Friday Harbor Labs–and Angie, an undergraduate spending her summer at the labs. They enlisted our aid in collecting eelgrass specimens for Angie’s project, which involved comparing the various microbiomes found on healthy eelgrass. While the eelgrass itself was fairly abundant, finding healthy, hearty leaves was difficult: we were limited only to selecting the second rank leaf of the entire plant, and the vast majority of them were stricken by various ailments, ranging from heat damage to wasting disease. But despite our struggles, we ended up collecting 30 samples with the help of Dr. Graham, Dr. Maher, Angie, Emma, Riley, and most importantly, Michiko.

^ Students hard at work gathering eelgrass samples. Photo by Katie.

After bidding our farewells to the FHL researchers, we headed back to the dorms for lunch and some work time for our research projects. Some members of our cohort split off: Sam and Tyler collected samples at Cattle Point; Ansuya, Ben, Max, Gretchen, and Caleb visited the Friday Harbor Labs to meet with scientists and collect data. Everyone else remained at the dorm, some in the lab beginning preliminary work, and others back in the common space, diligently plugging away at their research.

And soon this evening, we’ll have the pleasure of dining with Shauna Barrows, a field steward with the San Juan County Conservation Land Bank! We look forward to hearing her story on how she got involved with the San Juans, and her approach to conservation, forestry, restoration, and the Salish Sea as a whole.