By Anders and Julia (Colette was busy but with us in spirit!)
**Broadcasting from Team Mako…
Wow, the week really flew by!
We think the soaked up knowledge from the past few days finally got to everyone because we were all a little exhausted today. Undeterred, we kicked things off with the knot of the day: the sheet bend.
After we felt our morning drowsiness had been washed away, we were quick to jump into fieldwork and data collection. Today’s task had us photographing our household utensils once more in order to practice using quadrats in our future experiments!
Today’s excellent speaker was Morgan Eisenlord, an expert in the field of marine ecology and infectious disease currently studying at Cornell University to earn her Ph.D. She has dedicated much of her research career to studying the plague of Sea Star Wasting Syndrome that tainted the waters of the Salish Sea in 2013. Morgan told us all about her experiments with Sunflower Sea Stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides). Once common across the seafloor of the West Coast, their numbers saw a significant decrease as Wasting tore through their population.
Although marine diseases are always naturally present in our oceans, Morgan explained how human-introduced environmental stressors often lead to worsen these issues and increase their prevalence. With her previous knowledge, experience, and awesome willingness to answer all our questions, we learned so much from her and are grateful for the time we got to spend with her today.
Our second field activity today involved further practicing our counting and observational skills. We were tasked with using transects to collect data around our homes. After rolling out 10 meters of line, we made qualitative recordings every 10 centimeters. The activity certainly required close attention, as if you weren’t careful, one mistake could render the entire data set incorrect.
While we have yet to dive fully into personal projects, our afternoon had us all brainstorming topics to explore in the coming weeks.
It really is hard to believe that the first week is already over! We have learned so much from the Salish team as well as all the incredible guests. We’re sure we speak on behalf of both teams when we say that we are beyond excited for what next week has in store!