Kindly recounted by: Finlee Rice, Tatum Bunting, and Caleb Zulauf
This morning, Co-Science Director Adam Rogowski gifted us with a much-needed late start. After relishing in a chance to sleep in, we enjoyed a hot breakfast of waffles, eggs, sausage, bacon, and fruit.
Soon, the chaos of getting ready for the day ahead interrupted our slow morning as people slathered on sunscreen and pulled on boots.
Adam arrived early this morning, and upon seeing his outfit, Caleb, Finlee, and Gretchen decided that in honor of all that Adam has done for us, the only logical way to share our appreciation would be to dress exactly like him.
Once everyone was adequately prepared, we ventured off to Argyle Lagoon for a clam survey.
After Adam humbled us all by handing out survey worksheets for third graders, we quickly proved our maturity by getting thoroughly stuck in the loose silty mud. We may have been handed an elementary school worksheet, but Adam and Emma worked to create a college-level discussion about the role of invasive species in the ecosystem, exploring how the data we collected will add to a decades-long survey of clams in Argyle lagoon. By the end of the morning, we even left with a Tupperware full of invasive varnish clams!
The rest of the day was mostly quiet. We all worked through our projects, asking Adam and Emma for help and encouragement. Over the past two days of more devoted project work time, more and more people are beginning to settle into and develop their ideas. So far, we have projects focusing on everything from limpets and lugworms to sea hares and sand dollar larvae.
After picking Adam and Emma’s brain for any and all information we could get out of them, Adam took a few of us program members to FHL to look at some of the resources available to us. We took a look at the tide tables being provided to us by Dr. Billie Swalla, and talked to Michelle Herko about CRISPR. Unfortunately, some of the scientists we were hoping to run into were not available because they were preparing costumes for the “Invertebrate Ball”, a prestigious gala that happens once a year where all of the UW FHL students dress up as invertebrates for a night of fun. However, Adam decided that due to the fact that the ball serves alcohol, it would be inappropriate for 19 highschoolers to be present (some of us might just sit outside and look sad until someone lets us in though).
Tonight, we are lucky enough to be joined by Dr. Olivia Graham, an accomplished marine disease ecologist, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Cornell University, and a fellow at Friday Harbor this summer. We will look forward to discussing her current work on seagrass wasting disease. To learn more about her past work at FHL, check out this Tide Bite.