took the day to remember the talented, fashionable, and all-around lovely vanessa pham.

nymphaeaceae, vallisneria, potamogeton, oh my!

FRIDAY
We have a new Lodge Lab Field Technician! His name's Ricky, and he'll be here through August helping with all of the intense sampling we're going to be doing. Yay! It's pretty cool having such a complete lab now because we can form some pretty great ultimate frisbee teams ;)

SATURDAY
I baked my first ~real~ german chocolate cake! It was for Ashley's birthday, and I know that she likes chocolate and coconut. It was a challenge (and a bit expensive) buying all of the ingredients from the store instead of just a cake mix (unbleached flour, buttermilk, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, pecans, coconut, etc.) but now I can do so much baking! It Will Happen! And the frosting was sooooo good omnomnom.

To celebrate, we all hung out in A Apartment, and at one point there were four ukes being played! so wonderful!! I ended up getting the chords for Happy Birthday, so three of us attempted to play and sing when it was time for singing, but it wasn't very successful. oh well, it can only get better.

SUNDAY
plant workshop! ashley's boyfriend, eric/k, is incredibly knowledeable on plants (it's his thing) so we went snorkeling for plants and every so often stopped to talk about what we were collecting. then at the end we put them in different bins to compare and practice identifying. I don't think that I've got it all completely down by name, but it was helpful to hear the words and start recognizing the families. We need to know this stuff because in a few weeks we're going to be doing lake surveys on 10 different lakes as a follow-up to an experiment that was carried out 10 years ago. unfortunately, we won't have eric/k with us since he was just visiting, so it'll be all up to us (and our guidebooks!)

pics on the way

FIELD 930 - 8
Papoose, High, Big Lakes

pics/mayb even some vids are on the way! the internet is incredibly slow tonight so I'll post them hopefully tomorrow.

today's tasks:
- native crayfish container checking in the three lakes
- collected snails (my favorite!!)
- set fyke nets in Big

Things I can now add to my Resume:
- boat usage: launch, steering, general care of Big Jon. trailer skillz.
- YSI water monitor
- fish collection: sein netting, fyke netting
- animal care: adult and young-of-year rusty crayfish, bluegills

FIELD 830 - 9

morning: collected some ephemeroptera, pulverized some crayfish food.
afternoon: trout lake. basically reorganized and recreated the whole feeding crayfish experiment. long day, but fun.
Lodge lab matching outfits!

one week later

LAB 9-2
FIELD 2:30 - 9:30

I just had an incredible conversation with a temporary roommate we had here in B2, Kim T. Kim is a post-doc who is researching at Chapman, and travelled here for a few days with her colleague, Steve, to collect research supplies. We talked about science, what biology means, when exactly is it that you become A Scientist. We talked about her past when she attended Chapman for undergrad as well, where she studied nudibranches (!) and coral reef ecology with Dr. Wright, and her experiences doing her master's in Japan. She was telling me about how she got so far along in her scientific career was basically due to the fact that she just wanted to keep learning, and didn't really know what she wanted to do. Also, I think it's time for a biostats class.

There are days when I'm here that I'm really excited to be A Scientist, but there are times when I can't help but think how intimidating it all is, and is this the direction I really want to go? Writing grants and building crayfish containers? Although, I gotta say. I'm getting pretty good at using a drill and the whole visiting a hardware store thing.

Today's Tasks:
- Buoy construction
- Crayfish feeding experiments @ Trout Lake w/Ashley. First mortality.
- Supposed to set fyke nets in Tenderfoot, ended up just walking through it instead.

Also, I took my camera out today for the first time! I'll upload some pics hopefully tomorrow.

weekend updates

what a lovely weekend!

SATURDAY
- morning grocery shopping
- afternoon p90x yoga
- hammock loungin' on property w/ Carol (an undergrad from UVA who works on the cascade project and lives in Ward) and knotted friendship bracelets.
- ultimate frisbee
- casino! I didn't win a ton of money, but since it was my birthday week, and now that I'm a Superior member, I got $15 promotional dollars to play with. I could only use it on certain machines that were less likely to win, but I still left with $10 in my pocket! but I had also given my apartment mate Katie $1 to play on the machine next to me, and she ended up spinning a bonus round which lead to her getting 3 mermaids in a row which lead to her winning $50!!! we were hysterically yelling as the credits kept goin' up and rockets (on screen) were shooting in the air. She gave me the $1 I had given her back :)

SUNDAY
I joined the undergrads who are here for a 6cr class on their field trip to an Ojibwe village, a re-creation of the historical reservations. Nick Hawkings and his wife created the village 19 years ago and it has been visited by many scholars and referenced for museums like the National Museum of the American Indian. It's been cool to be so engrossed in so much native culture, apparently four of the undergrads are 1/4 -- 1/2 native and they were all very open discussing their cultures. I've never been so exposed to hearing about so much native culture.

After we got back, I did go to hang out at the Taj by myself for the first time, which was nice, but not overwhelmingly awesome. We played pool with our feet and watched a fairly strange HBO show titled "Game of Thrones." I'm glad we don't have a tv in our apartment.

MONDAY
Joined the undergrad class again for their field trip to the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Comission office in Odanah, WI. This agency works with the 11 native tribes to protect and enforce the treaty rights granted to natives when they gave their land during the 1800s. I learned a lot about how the tribes work in relationship with the government, and how it is the native's right, not privilege, granted to hunt and fish. but even though they have that right, it is not an unlimited free for all to hunt & fish. To ensure ecosystem survival, there are still limits as to just how much anyone is allowed to take from the lakes/forests, and the GLIFWC communicates and regulates between the 11 tribes to ensure that over-fishing/hunting won't destroy a population. Pretty interesting stuff. It makes me want to take the Native American culture course offered at Virginia Tech.

skills I learned today

- how to use a PVC pipe cutter
- increasing knowledge of drill usage
- silicone glue

LAB 9-5, 730-1030
today I built the aquaria for my bluegill experiment, filling in pvc pipes splitting in upper and bottom halves. In the evening, Bradley and I went to Trout Lake with Ashley to feed her crayfish Afterwards we went to Ward for fun tiems.

two decades of knowledge

The past two days have been pretty uneventful because I haven't been working out in the field.

YESTERDAY
LAB/FIELD 10 - 10:30
- Ashley let me sleep in! Definitely needed it.
- Helped her create crayfish diets for one of her experiments down at Trout Lake, a field station owned and operated by Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison.
- Changed the water in all 139 crayfish containers and feed 'em.
- Listened to CP give a presentation on his research concerning stream ecology.

TODAY
LAB 9 - 6
- crayfish container construction. guerilla glue'd rocks into the bottom of these containers that will go into different lakes to observe and record native range crayfish growth.
- two of my bluegill aren't doing too well. they were laying on side on bottom of holding tank. Fed the ten of them nightcrawlers that I had to cut into pieces. soooo horrible.
- COLLECTED MUSHROOMS! AND THEN STIR-FRIED THEM 10 MINUTES LATER! yes, you read correctly, mom. I actually like the oyster mushrooms that are around here. CP walked back with us during our lunch break and we collected them on the way. It felt so good to forage something and then eat it immediately.
So, this morning I kept hitting the snooze button on my alarm because I didn't have to be ready until 9. In between snooze sessions, I noticed that Alexandra was sleeping in the top bunk, which is strange because a) she is always ready by 8 and b) she has her own bed. it wasn't until I came back from the bathroom that I realized that the person in the top bunk was not Alexandra, nor was she anyone I had met before. I later found out that her name is Sherry and she works in Ben's lab on ND campus. She is staying through Saturday as she checks out UNDERC (univ. of notre dame environmental research center) to get ideas for PhD research here next summer. But like, really? No warning from anyone that we were going to be having someone join us. Apparently she actually slept on the couch in the common room last night and moved to the bed when my suitemates were getting ready this morning. And Ben just told me that we'll be getting more temporary roommates next week? I just wish someone would've told us!!!

birthday!

june 14th, aka flag day, aka my birthday, has been wonderful! I spent the day on Lake Ottawa catching crayfish and collecting small-mouth bass eggs. The past few times we went to this lake it was cloudy and cold, but today was beautiful. The crayfish were easy to catch, the weather was incredible, and I got bumped by the father of the year bass who was trying to protect his eggs. So fun.

On the way back home, Ashley had the grand idea to stop by a casino for a quick birthday round. I had never been in a casino before and the whole process of it is kind of strange- spending your money to lose it. And there were so many old people! They wouldn't even go through the motions of pulling the slots levers. They all just had casino cards and would play round after round after round. But anyway, I had a good time... came out in the negative, but still had a good time. I was worried that I wasn't gonna get in cause I forgot my ID, but they didn't even card me! woo.

We got back late, and my roommates were lovely enough to plan a surprise pizza party birthday celebration for me! complete with decorations and sodapop and watermelon. A bunch of the other grad students from the apartments came over and we all hung out. We played some more weird games (so many weird games here), this time it was "pin the clothespins on eachother." basically, whoever could pin the most clothespins on themselves or your partner wins. woo!

AND I opened the packages that i've been holding on to for my birthday. Thanks Mom, Dad, Lena, Puffy, and Joey for the care package foods and WATERPROOF CAMERA!!! yey!

This is the first birthday in a long while that I've spent outside of Vienna/with my family so I was thinking that it was going to be a boring one, but my apartment-mates definitely stepped it up! Which is awesome considering that I've only known everyone for a little more than 2 weeks now.

last day of bein a teen

LAB 8-5

Not too eventful. I spent most of the day down at the wet lab collecting ephemeroptera insects, running some bluegill feeding trials, and making crayfish containers. I was mostly alone all day, and I think at one point I started going a bit craycray because I was definitely singing to myself and making songs. For example:

I need a sunfish, I need a sunfish, why don't you come in my net

I remember successfully rhyming at some point. I ended up finishing at a decent hour because Lindsey/Ashley were at Trout Lake, and Bradley was in a different lab today dissecting crayfish. For the rest of the evening, I've been watching Season 1 Psych and playin' ukulele. I also went to take a walk around the woods with my ipod when I got stopped by Cramer, the guy who is kind of in charge of everyone here. Apparently there had been a cougar sighting, and he invited me to hop into his gator. I felt like I was on a safari, riding in the wind while keeping our eyes peeled for the cat. unfortunately, even though we drove around the whole property (into new areas and lakes I hadn't been!) we didn't see it. But we did see three turtles, a cigar-smoking priest that was fishing, and a gorgeous sunset on the lake!



LAST NIGHT OF TEENAGE DREAMZZZ

weekend 2

another great weekend here in the northern forest!

YESTERDAY
teenage dreamzz. except, there were no dreams because we decided to stay awake to see the sunrise. Unfortunately, the "sunrise" was really a viewing of day becoming light. Nothing too majestic, but still pretty fun. We had been hanging out at Ward, the seven-dwarfs-type cottage that the Cascades research project members live. We were just playing cards and this really strange game called Pass the Pig where the sole activity is to roll these dice-sized piggies and how it lands gives you points.

It's a midwest thing.

Then we thought it was a grand idea to take the research boat out on one of the lakes, which seemed really scary/eerie because Jason was driving pretty much in circles in this small lake with these giant lights on which reflected on the fog. Eventually we stopped and turned out all the lights and enjoyed the starlight. We = Jason, Seekell, Alexandra (my roommate), Rachel and Katie (apartment-mates), and Carol, another cascader. Seekell and Carol are actually from UVA. go virginia!

TODAY
Alexandra, Rachel, Katie, Carol, and I took a canoe trip across Tenderfoot and through a bit of the canal that I had paddled last week. It was nice being out on the water again, and we stopped on an island to wade around and lounge in da sun. The only notable nature we saw today was a beaver, and a deer wading and drinking water on the edge of the canal/lake. He quickly pranced away though when he saw us approaching. Oh! And yesterday when driving on property back from the grocery store, we saw The Cutest doe and her fawn running on the road. The fawn was so tiny! so much nature.

When we got back, we pretty much immediately started chopping veggies because my apartment hosted this week's sunday night grad dinner. This dinner consists of about 20 people that live in these apartments and gives everyone a chance for everyone to hang out and share a meal. We decided to grill kebabs, and I made sure to include lots of vegetarian ones using eggplant, tofu, potatoes, peppers, pineapple, onions, and mushrooms (mom! mushrooms!). The mushrooms were actually incredibly good; they were collected by Chris Patric ("CP") who lives across from us. I also cut two watermelons with a very weak knife. I feel like I'm going to be dreaming of watermelon slices tonight.
Afterwards, I read a journal article titled "Optimal Foraging and the Size Selection of Prey by the Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis Macrochirus) in preparation for a discussion with Lindsey about my research project. The evening then finished off with a special presentation of David Attenborough narrating The Blue Planet's deep sea. Awesome. This one guy here, Mike Chips, ("Chips") literally owns every dvd that David Attenborough has narrated. So great.

See all of the Mentor Profiles? These are the awesome people I hang out with. It's such a great mix of interesting people studying all sorts of different things, and they're all pretty open and willing to share their knowledge (hopefully bird walks and frog catching on the way!). I love how our conversations always somehow revert back to science. Well, that and fishing. There are lots of anglers up here.

Disclaimer: the mentor profiles make the people sound really intense and nerdy, but they're really not. Well, not too nerdy ;)

And again, Lindsey Sargent and Ashley Baldridge are my advisors if ya wanna look at what they are doin' (and therefore, what I'm doing)

surge of science

LAB: 5 hours
FIELD: 1 hour
RESEARCH: 2 hours

today bradley and I were left pretty much on our own. the goals of the day were to:
- set up flow through tanks for bluegills
- switch out sand in the 4 individual tanks since it's too murky
- test if ephemeroptera (benthic macroinvertebrate mayflies) will bury into the sand when no rocks are around. it's better if they don't so we can see them in the tanks to determine if the bluegill have been eating.
- find articles saying at what age bluegills start eating rusties.
- sein net 6 more bluegills (mOiSt wetsuit, gross)

While we were on our own, a pretty amazing thing happened: I felt the researcher's wheels turning in my mind. Since this research project i'm leading involving bluegills isn't really my own--Lindsey suggested most of it-- I've been following pretty much her ideas and haven't felt the drive to find the answer to this question as much. She is giving me leeway and not controlling everything of the experiment, but I feel like I'm constantly trying to catch up to what she's thinking. As Bradley and I were searching for papers to see how old a bluegill is that eats crayfish, we realized that we just can't find any. None of the papers suggest what age will eat the most, or what size range allows for juveniles to be eaten. I felt a surge of science questions running through my head of possible experiments that could lead to answering these questions. And that's what research is all about: you want to know how and why something is the way it is in nature. We then got really excited about all the potential ways we could carry out this project- aging the bluegills using their scales (sidenote: this is a really cool process. apparently you can look at a fish scale under a microscope and determine it's age from looking at rings that develop, much like rings of a tree). I really need to know the answer to that in order to properly carry out my other research looking to see how the invasive vs. native range crayfish act differently in the presence of a hungry bluegill. It may not be possible because we need juvenile crayfish, a type that we have limited numbers on because they're incredibly small/difficult to catch and Lindsey's been breeding them in the lab for experimental use.

I've also been thinking a lot about My Future As A Biologist, if it exists. Working here has really been the best insight into what my future could hold and the different positions available to biologists of bachelor's and masters/phd levels. I was surprised to learn that you don't technically need a master's in order to go for a PhD- some PhD candidates here are 23 yrs old! I've got to see a bit more if research is what I want to do-- sometimes I feel like it's a lot of focus for not that much benefit in the long run, and it's a lot of DIY construction, which I don't enjoy (L&A know so much about hardware store stuff!). But I think I would like working for the DNR, or conducting surveys, or at least after college working as a field or lab technician, which are titles that quite a few people here hold.

These are just some thoughts.

FIELD: 8am - 8pm

Another incredibly long day in the field, and not the most pleasant one at that. The four of us went out to Lake Ottawa, that incredibly beautiful lake that I've talked about before, to look for more crayfish, collect RNA samples, and find smallmouth bass eggs. The weather was absolutely awful: it was overcast and probably in the 50's which is quite cold considering we were going swimming. I was decked out in a full heist man's outfit: two wetsuit layers, booties, a hood, and one glove (one exposed hand for ultimate crayfish catching). We ended up visiting five sites in the opposite order that we visited last week for an ultimate day of research collecting! Here's the breakdown of what we were collecting: the 15 males and 15 females is for Bradley's independent project where he's going to be dissecting the gut content of the rusty crayfish. Lindsey was looking for large numbers of crayfish to look for a parasite, and Ashley was doing RNA processing which involves the extraction of a bit of sample from the liver-type organ in the crayfish. This is similar to the method that Lindsey was doing yesterday: the crayfish must be broken in two while it's still alive. but, all is not lost because then the body would be placed in a ziploc and placed on ice in a cooler for bradley to dissect later. although, the horrible and terrifying thing is that when I went to put the crayfish in the freezer back at the ND research station, some of the crayfish were still moving, even after hours on ice. this is why I'm not sure I could do research: I honestly don't think that I can/want to do something like break an animal open, alive. I helped with Ashley's tissue extraction for RNA processing by sterilizing her tweezers and placing each dying crayfish in the bag and rolling it in a little creepy crayfish coffin-burrito.

Here are the specific sites we visited and how much we collected from each.

Site 1: 15 males, 15 females. RNA processing. Some bass eggs, and spawning(!)
Site 2: 15 males, 15 females. RNA processing.
Site 3: 230 males and females (huge spike for Lindsey's experiment)
Site 4: 15 males, 15 females.
Site 5: 15 males, 15 females. RNA processing. Lots of bass eggs; aggressive male

Site 1's highlight was definitely seeing the two bass spawning! How it works is that the male prepares a nest closer to shore and then goes out to deeper waters where he brings back a lady friend. He then nudges and bumps into her until she releases her eggs, at which time she returns back to the open water and the male then defends the nest.

Site 4 was especially difficult because there was no cobble substrate, which is the preferred habitat of the rusty crayfish and makes it easier for me to just lift a rock and scoop/nudge the crayfish into my net. instead, if I saw a crayfish, I had to rely on my ninja instincts and just shoot my hand out to encircled it and grab it. this was the first time I took such a direct approach to catching crayfish, but it was kind of fun. however, due to the poor visibility conditions, I only caught 5 crayfish (usually I would get about 10) and could only get them if I was right on top of them.

Site 5 was also cool because there was a particularly aggressive male defending his nest. sometimes the bass will be kind of skittish and actually swim away when something as big as a human comes by, but this male was the world's #1 bassdad and fought incredibly to protect his eggs. he was bumping us as we were snorkeling, and even bit lindsey in the finger and toes as she attempted to collect a portion of his eggs (really, just a "drop in the bucket"). It was really quite exhilerating, he was like the lake's equivalent of seeing a small shark zoom by.

me so sleepy

FIELD: 8am - 7pm

Bradley and I separated for the day. I went out into the field with Lindsey to High and Papoose Lakes to look at the crayfish containers and document how the juveniles have grown. There were still quite a few mortalities (~half), but not nearly as bad as what we found in Big Lake yesterday. Afterwards we collected snails at a site on High Lake for a study that Lindsey's Notre Dame undergrads (known collectively as the undergrads) are working on to find a parasite. This is done by carrying a bucket and picking the lilies for these tiny, golden-brown snails that like to hang on the underside. but! the tricky part is that you can't move too fast or too much because they'll drop off if there's a big cloud of dust coming. Sometimes I'd just walk really slowly, or I'd slide along fallen logs Tarzan style, but I think my favorite method was to float (it's really easy with 7mm wetsuits) and kinda grab at the petals for snails. The final task of the day was to find Three Large Crayfish where she needed to save the gut contents for analysis. That part is really gross and horrible- you have to break off the crayfish's claws, break the fish in half, then pull out the yellow liver-like inside. but it has to be "Fresh" so you have to do all of that while it's still alive. I didn't really want to watch her doing that, so she let me go off and snorkel for fun for a few minutes. this was awesome because I felt like a gator, prowling through the water. I even came across a school of bluegill and we hung out for a bit.

back to the crayfish cracking: I do take comfort in the fact that Lindsey doesn't like doing this either, and she always says that she feels horrible. And in general, she keeps the best interests of the animal (well, as best she can) like working with certain lakes where she won't have to kill the fish post-experiment and things.

so then it was about 3pm when we returned to the ND research station and Bradley and I went about trying to catch Bluegill on Tenderfoot Lake for my research project. We attempted to sein net the fish out, but neither of us had done it in a lake before. Each time we would only get 3-4 fish, none of which were bluegill. and bluegill are pretty common here. We tried for about an hour, and were basically just swimming around in our wetsuits or trying to catch fish with our hands. Right when we were about to call it quits, Ashley brought larger white net to the dock and tells us how it's actually supposed to be done. Apparently what you do is half one person standing at the shore, and the other out as far as they can until it's too deep. Then, the deep person walks in a giant semi-circle half arc, dragging the net along the bottom, towards the person on the shore who is now walking parallel to the shoreline and meets the person. Then, you quickly pull the ends together, successfully creating a "pouch" of the fish sampled. This method/technique was so much better! We caught 6 beautiful bluegills, rock bass, yellow perch, minnows, etc. so luckly we were pm;u etpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp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UPDATE: hehehe @ me. i had been typing this after my long day and was falling asleep on wednesday night (I was lounging in bed) as I typed, which at the end of the p's I guess I woke up and shut my computer. lols/

Today the day was filled with helping Lindsey check her containers for crayfish on the different lengths. A lot of them were dead or disappeared, completely disintegrated, in their containers.

aerate the aeration

FIELD 8am-8pm

Today we were with Ashley at the Trout Lake research station, owned by the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. Ashley is conducting an experiment to see if the intense burst of bass eggs (filled with lots of lipids) at the beginning of the summer actually influences juvenile rusty crayfish development. We helped set it up by constructing individual container-homes for the 140 crayfish (white food dish hot glued to the bottom of a tupperware and filled with gravel), labeling the 140 dark-bottle containers, and measuring the carapace length and mass of each individual. It doesn't sound like that much, but organizing homes filled with a glued down food bowl, gravel, air circulation, feedings, and preventing crayfish escape is a lot to figure out.

New Skills I learned today!
- AERATION. So Much About Aeration. I know so much now about now the air stones work, how to fix the airflow when it's not working, etc. You'd think that I'd have more experience than I do with this stuff do to my Aquarium background, but I really didn't. But now I know!
- MEASUREMENT and HANDLING of live crayfish
- PROBLEM SOLVING (leaks, construction)

Since it was so hot and mosquitoey, we treated ourselves to some icecream in Boulder Junction on the way back. I had an incredible coconut-nut flavor.

Interestingly enough, one of the guys I went camping with over the weekend (Ben) actually did a REU at the Trout Lake research station when he was an undergrad 4 years ago researching and collecting lots of crayfish. Their station has a different feel that ours. Ours is much more education-oriented: there is that UNDERC academic class that many times surprisingly has priority over the researchers when it comes to things like truck usage and microscopes. And in general, since there are less people at that station, everyone lives together in more cabin-type houses and is closer in general. I think that there are tradeoffs between the different living situations- I definitely appreciate having some privacy that UNDERC allows, and it's great that we're right on so many lakes itself.

weekend!

THE STARS HERE ARE INCREDIBLE! Last night, a few of us (Lindsey, Bradley Wells, graduate student Ben and I) took canoes out and paddled to a campsite on Palmer Lake. We embarked from Tenderfoot, the lake that our field station sits on, and paddled through a connecting marsh-like channel to get to Palmer. The sun was just setting as we left, allowing us to see so much Nature on our way over: loons, jumping fish, beavers, and birds. So beautiful. Getting to the campsite was a bit of an adventure because Lindsey didn't know exactly where it was, so we were all exploring the lake together with only the knowledge of a weakly drawn map that someone back at the field station had showed us before leaving. Finding the campsite was surprisingly pretty easy though. It was a boat-access only site up a 20 foot hill on a peninsula, with 180 degree views of the water through the trees. the site seems to be maintained by the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources, so firewood and bark was so courteously already available for us. So after we set up camp and lounged by the fire, Bradley and I canoed out again around midnight when it was completely dark. Hundreds of constellations shone in the sky, with a clear view of the milky way, orbiting satellites, and even a few shooting stars. When we turned off our own headlights, the stars reflected incredibly on the surface of the water (reminding me of Orisinal's shooting stars game) and just floated on this completely dark lake. The few lights from houses twinkled themselves like the stars. With all the stars in the sky, and in the lake, it really felt like I was floating in a globe of the sky. So wonderful.

Taken by our very own Bradley Wells.

This whole weekend has been filled with lake activities: swimming and snorkeling in Roach, canoeing in Tenderfoot and Palmer, and little john boating in Tenderfoot. I think this weekend was a little more relaxed than it's going to be normally, for most people do a bit of lab work on the weekends to catch up/get ahead, but Ashley was out of town and it was Lindsey's birthday today.

Tomorrow holds promises of experiment set up in the woods (yay, ticks!) and maybe a bit more snorkeling for crayfish. wahoo~!

loungin' day

The main goal of today was to spend the greater majority of it reading journal articles and finalizing the methods for my research project plan. I enjoyed this break from field work: slept in til 1030 and lounged around a bit and slowly watched "Medium" on Netflix Instant. It was nice. But then I decided to focus and actually successfully got through a really good article with lots of pertinent information that I think has helped me figure out what I'm gonna do. For those of you who are wondering, the premise of my project is to determine if Lepomis macrochirus, a bluegill sunfish and native predator of many WI lakes, prefer native or invasive juvenile rusty crayfish. Lindsey has already collected native populations from the Ohio area, and we have plenty of rusties here for the study. I'm still trying to figure out just how much a bluegill eats, and how to go about feeding the fish. I found one article that shows that crayfish are only 12% of a bluegill's diet and the rest is mostly benthic invertebrates. So in the lab should I feed a representative sample? Or just crayfish? Should I also add in another predator to the study, rock bass, whose diet consists of 58% crayfish, but which includes only adults? what size(s) of bluegill should we use and how many of each? Bluegill are especially pertinent since they eat only juveniles which could impact and help control invasive rusty crayfish population sizes. These are questions I need to discuss with Lindsey sometime this weekend.

I was reading in the small computer lab in the basement of Hank Laboratory and on the way over I met Ashley's boyfriend who is visiting for the weekend and they're going to Houghton in the UP (there's some local lingo for you) to see her parents.

In the evening we had an apartment stirfry dinner and headed to The Taj for what I thought was going to be a social event but was actually just watching Lord of the Rings, Two Towers. We only got through the first disc though before I headed back. The walk back was incredibly lovely: a warm night filled the sounds of nature.

land o'lakes

today was another full day out on the water. we visited three lakes with lindsey: Trout, High, and Big. It was all the same work as yesterday morning: checking the juvenile crayfish in the containers and measuring them, it was a good chance to see some new lakes though. First we drove to Trout Lake, which was 40 minutes away and Bradley and I went for our first grocery trip while lindsey prepared the crayfish that she was going to be adding to this lake. we didn't even launch the boat because the two crayfish container sites were within wading distance so we just carried a lab table and the other equipment out to the spots. oh! and it was here that I found a single crayfish claw that lindsey let me take home.... but i just realized that i left it in the truck. and that it was smelling kind of bad... whoops. I'll have to check on that tomorrow.

carrying on, I think High Lake is my new favorite. The boat launch is right in a little marsh-like canal which would be perfect for kayaking due to the long grasses and lilies. then, after maybe 1/3 of a mile it opens up into a huge lake with a few islands, peninsulas, and bays. lots of cool kayaking and snorkeling spots. and luckily this place is only 15 minutes away so I could probably convince someone to go back with me. and on the way back lindsey actually let me drive the boat--- that was fun, but manuevering the motorboat in that marsh-land was difficult especially when i had to navigate a narrow passage around a fallen log and i actually had to turn off the engine at one point. but, it's practice!

and at the third lake (big), I had more boat practice, but this time with the trailer. i backed the trailer up and launched the boat into the water. it was hard! i have a new respect for anyone that can back up the boat onto the ramp straight, especially in just a couple of minutes. mine was incredibly sideways, but still launchable.

then in the evening, my roommates returned at about the same time as me and we all had taco night. i used a vegan sloppy joe mix. afterwards, we headed over to "The Taj," the house where the Notre Dame undergrads live for a seminar speaker. This week featured the post-doc that my roommates actually work for, Stuart Jones, who studies the flow of terrestrial Carbon into lakes. It was an okay talk, and it was cool to hear what katie, rachel, and alexandra are working on, but I don't know, it wasn't incredibly interesting. we were going to cozy up the watch psych but instead a graduate student, chris, who lives at the apartment across from us came over and invited us over for board games so we played apples to apples and quiddle, a game similar to scrabble and was quite fun.

The Real Land O'Lakes

crazy 4 crayfish

I am so sleepy, recently returned from a full day of snorkeling for crayfish. I'm going to go to sleep now (it is 10:30). I feel like I'll be dreaming of crayfish tonight.


I'm gonna post a long post about all of my adventures tomorrow. here's what to look forward to:
- crayfish catching
- Ottawa Lake
- Guess How Long I Wore A Wetsuit
- my motor boat skills
- Scott's Sub Shop

So, the day was filled with so much crayfish catching! First we started out with Lindsey on Big Lake where she is measuring juvenile native crayfish growth and has placed individual containers with the juveniles into the shallow sites on the lake. Bradley and I were helping her check on the containers and measure their length. juveniles are usually between 7-11 mm long to they were quite tiny to find in these hand-held containers, and they're pretty good at hiding! oh and i'm gaining lots of other experiences too-- I drove the motor boat across the lake and back to the dock. :)

then we met up with Ashley who took us to Lake Ottawa, a lake about 45 minutes away where we were planning to catch adult crayfish and scuba to see spawning largemouth bass. unfortunately, it was too cold for the bass (13 degrees C--they need at least 15), but the lake was incredibly beautiful with an uninterrupted shoreline. This lake was also particularly special because there were no other boats out on the water and we were out for 6 hours. in the motor boat we visited five different sites to collect crayfish, benthic macroinvertebrates, and littoral vegetation samples. it's amazing how much I improved in crayfish catching in one day, although, the waters were calmer and clearer than yesterday. it's also pretty amazing how differently the crayfish nests act in different areas, even though we were always in the same lake. at some sites, the males would be big, fearless, and roaming out in the open. at other sites, the males would be smaller in size and more skittish. females were always pretty calm, and after lifting up a rock they usually wouldn't move. some sites contained more males, other more females. today I wore a two piece 7 mm wetsuit, booties, and gloves. the gloves made the collection slightly more difficult because they're slightly bulky, but having them made such a huge difference. Even though we didn't get a chance to scuba, i'm kind of glad we didn't because it would have been really cold without a hood. but, oh well! we'll be back in a few weeks to do more collecting.

On the way back home we stopped in Iron Town and went to Scott's Subs. I got a vegetarian (duh): lettuce, cucumber, gucamole, raspberry vinegrette, and two types of cheeses. I'm gonna try to make my own cuz it was real good.
then in the evening I was incredibly exhausted and went to bed after a long, hot shower.

oh, so in total I worked from 8am-9pm and wore a wetsuit from 830-630. kewl.