Written by: Una, Addy, Gabe, Kate

Thursday, it rained. We woke up this morning bright and early (7am) to clean up the dorms for the next group arriving on Sunday. We also cleaned up the lab, and all of the borrowed supplies was returned to Friday Harbor Labs. As this was happening our posters were in the process of being printed.

We were all very excited to see our posters, but we were even more excited that we were allowed into town for lunch. When we returned it was time to write thank you letters to all the scientists we worked with and all of the Salish Sea Sciences team members.

Finally we started preparing for the evening by setting the tables and chairs for dinner, as well as grabbing everything we would need for our presentations. by 4pm we were headed to the Whale Museum!

We set up at the Museum and spirits were high. Then the madness began, we all had so much fun presenting our posters and answering questions about all the work we’ve done in the past 4 weeks. Eventually the showcase had to end, and we walked back up to the dorms with our families and other guests in tow. Caroline and Adam shared some kind words and Tom had prepared us a wonderful barbecue dinner.

And that’s the end… guests have gone and most students are hanging out in dorms for the last night and we’ll be gone tomorrow morning. Thank you Salish Sea Sciences, toodles!

Written by: Una, Kate, Gabe, Addy

We began our day at 8:45 as we left for Jackson beach. We met up with Elaina Thompson and Rick Winings the Executive and Deputy director of IOSA (Islands’ Oil Spill Association). They are a small team and work to certify volunteers year round as well as respond to oil spills on Island, they gave us some excellent insights into how they set up and clean oil spill sites.

After finishing up with IOSA we ate lunch at Jackson Beach and wandered about as some students began collecting data and specimens for their projects!

We returned to the dorms then walked down to the Friday Harbor Marina to meet up with the SoundWatch team, a group who goes out everyday to collect data on boat interactions with whales! They gave us some interesting presentations on the tools they use and the data they collect.

We returned to the dorms with a little bit of time to work on our projects. We are excited tonight to welcome multiple guests! 3 Alumni of Salish Sea Sciences’ programs: Ella Cohen, Flora Vaught, and Mika Salomon.

Written by Una, Addy, Kate and Gabe

Today we woke up well rested, we started our day with breakfast and packing lunch. We then headed to False Bay to meet with Dr. Vik Iyengar who studies the sexual reproduction of insects specifically the marine earwigs on the island. We helped him collect over 100 earwigs to use in his lab. They were very easy to find by just flipping over logs.

After helping out Dr. Iyengar, we surveyed for Lugworms. A couple students dug them up and others used quadrats to record how many were in certain areas. Some students just threw the quadrats and recorded data like that, while others were deliberately looking for signs of the worms. The signs of the worms look like skinny piles of sand, since the worms basically eat the sand and poop it back out! They do this to digest the bacteria in the sand for food, but they don’t want the sand so it has to go somewhere.

After wrapping up our earwigs and Lugworms, we ate lunch at False Bay before heading back to the dorms. We quickly ran down to the marina and collected buckets of water for our aquarium to hold our testing creatures. Finally, we sat down and continued to develop our ideas for projects. Some students are still searching for the perfect idea, some are meeting with scientists, and others are digging deep. We are so excited to build these projects and share with our family, friends, peers and the locals of Friday Harbor.

We have no guest tonight, so many of us are exploring town before we have dinner and some fun group activities tonight!