Monday morning we all met at 8:00 am at SEA to clean out the dorm houses we have been staying in for the last month. After our chores we done, we were each given $50 a week for food (we were given $150 to cover 3 weeks) and our lunch cards for the Swope Cafeteria in the village, and we were dismissed to move into our new digs. I drove Steph and Samara over to the house in North Falmouth to drop off their bags from New York (they went there for the holiday weekend). Afterwards, we drove into Woods Hole to start our first day of our project. Samara and I are using the same image-analysis software, so we are going to be together quite a bit. We met my mentor Jay at the cottage and he ran us through some paperwork to get code access to the buildings. Yes, I now have a NOAA parking sticker AND code access. I actually have my own desk in an office we are sharing (which has AC and a waterfront view). Jay gave us the grand tour and we met with Richard McBride, who is overseeing the projects we are working on. He gave us a homework assignment in the library - just looking up four journal articles for him. We took care of that pretty easily. Monday was a pretty introductory day. We met almost everyone I think, and it was a nice slow first day. Steph, James, Samara, Sam and I all went to Papa Ginos for dinner and went to Stop & Shop afterward to get food for the week.


Tuesday morning we met Jay and Mark Wuenshel at the cottage. We went down to the Cottage basement to try to find the samples we will be working with. We walked over to meet Rich in the main Fisheries building and he took us down to the chemical room (lab) where we are predominantly going to be working. After a little trial and error of figuring out the best ways to analyze a sample by hand, Rich had us each take some subsamples and analyze them. The whole computer-image techy stuff hasn't come in yet, so the work we did was with the monkfish eggs that Samara will be focusing on. Basically there are two ways to count eggs: by hand and with a scanner and the computer. Since we don't have the computer yet, we tried counting by hand. It is TEDIOUS. We had some microscopes and external spotlights to shine on our samples. We cut little sections of a preserved monkfish ovary and put these in a petri dish. We blotted the sample dry to remove the excess water in was sitting in, and weighed the samples. Then we counted. We had to delicately tease the eggs apart because some lied on top of each other and this makes it difficult to count just by looking. We found various methods of making this work a little easier and that was some comfort. Fortunately, this tedious work was only practice so we understand the "old" method. The numbers we ended up with we just discarded. We had our first lunch in the Swope Cafeteria on Tuesday and it was good! Same Sodexho as school, but it was a nice spread of food. I had BBQ chicken, beef veggie soup, some salad, and some apple crisp for dessert. At the end of the day, we really felt like we had learned something. For dinner Steph and I made chicken burritos with fresh peppers.


In the morning we shadowed Drew - another summer intern (who is from URI). We learned that he is using ImagePro (the not-free version of what we will use) to analyze the ear stones of haddock. Did you know that you can age fish just like you do a tree? The odolith, or earstones of the fish, grow as the fish does. Each year, a dark band is formed. By counting the bands, we can age the fish. Drew showed us his routine of analyzing and even let us try a few! It's kind of fun, but tricky. The afternoon was kind of a lazy one. Rich suggested we go to the library and look up the ImageJ program and try to get a feel for it. So we did that for about an hour and then went to the Fisheries Picnic for lunch. Good eating there. At 3:30 we went to George's writing seminar which was less lecturing and more listening to Jarita Davis recite some of her poetry. Jarita also works for NOAA Fisheries, but not as a scientist. She is a creative writer, and reviews scientific literature for publication. She gave us some good tips on good scientific writing, and in fact, I found that these tips are applicable to good writing in general.


Thursday morning Rich had a lecture prepared especially for Samara and me on the reproductive biology of the species we will be studying (haddock and goosefish - aka monkfish). The lecture was very useful as it sorted out a lot of the scientific jargon and vocabulary that we have seen in several of the journal articles we have read. I won't bore you with the specifics words. After the lecture, Samara and I went back to the library to look up more on ImageJ. At 2:30, I opted to go out on the marsh collecting trip with Steph through the Woods Hole Science Aquarium. I wish I had brought my new underwater camera housing with me for that. I got some good photos of the aquarium interns interacting with the kids and it was a lot of fun. I drove back with wet pants, but that happens.


There's not a whole lot to say for Friday. I didn't go into work because I stayed in bed all day sick. 100.7 fever. Slept, watched TV, ate a bagel drank lots of OJ and water, and slept some more. I felt okay enough by 7:30 to drive home though. Steph was sick too. I'm home now as I write this so yeah, I guess that's it.

I will try to be better about making sure I get the detail in of what I am doing in my project.

More to come!

I convinced my cousin to get a deviantART and he did! So I'm featuring him! He really is quite the talented young photographer! Introducing, ~simply-muchbetter! He is planning on entry some of his work into the local art show, so if you see something of his you really like, please let him know!

Color "Aang and Katara Older" [link] by *SwissDutchess
Avatar and/or Chanters of Tremaris giftart for ~jwalley29


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