SEPTEMBER 2024
Maren's Blog
Maren Duffy, undergraduate student
1 September 2024
Hello!
August has gone by super quickly. I got back from Alaska on the 6th and my family and I saw tons of harbor seals, eagles, otters and bears. It was really great to get out on the water there. When I got back, Haley and I started collecting more data on salmon runs. Specifically finding any run in close proximity to the sites, as well as collecting relevant WDFG run abundance data. We talked to Dietmar about what variables will be best to use for modeling our data and about how to start figuring out spatial analysis. We are still working out GIS, problem solving as we go, but we have made some cool maps to visualize our data! SURP is also going well, we are preparing for our poster session in October. Haley and I are roughing out some ideas for our poster, but we are expecting it to change as we will continue to make progress until October, and likely get some more visuals.
We also just recently went out on a lab boat trip around the San Juan Islands on the 23rd. It was so great to get out with everyone and see some really incredible things. We started at Williamson Rocks, and checked out a couple hauled-out harbor seals and nesting cormorants. Then we went out to Smith Island and saw a ton of seals, plus the kelp forest that surrounds the island. After that we went up along the south side of San Juan Island, stopping at Seal Rocks to see the Steller sea lions, and Salmon Bank, then moving north near Moresby Island in Canada to stop at an orca pod that I heard about through my co-workers at my whale-watching job! It was a group of four, the T060 pod. After seeing them, we went over to the north side of Orcas, stopping at Patos, Sucia and Matia Island before going back south on the east side of the islands, making one quick stop at the Peapods to see some more harbor seals and eagles. On the 6th of September we are going back out on the boat with SURP, which will be really cool! Hopefully we can find some whales then as well!
Until next time,
Maren
Rachel's Blog
Rachel Strober, undergraduate student
1 September 2024
Hey all!
It’s wild how fast summer has been flying by and how close we are now to fall. I have been working to finalize my class schedule and although I am not ready for summer to end yet, I’m starting to get excited for all that will be happening soon. Seals have been at Whatcom Creek and large fish (possibly salmon) have been seen jumping! We should be getting a lot of action soon and even if you are not a lab member I encourage you to get out to the creek at high tide and check it out!
This month has also been very exciting for me in the lab as with the help of Alex and Vic, I ran my first PCR! It was just a practice run on specimens that have already been identified, but it was a great way to become familiar with the process. The next step is to learn how to run a gel, which will tell me how many different DNA fragments are present in each sample and how large they are. Also, of course a lot more practice running PCR and getting the steps down will be necessary before I am confident setting up the process on my own, but it has been a great step towards learning the skills needed for my project!
Apart from the lab and other work, I also had the chance to do some camping, watch Mariners games in Seattle, and go on a small backpacking trip up at Mt. Baker before the weather gets cold again. This next month will be much of the same balance of fun outside and progress in the lab which I have grown to love! Thanks again for reading and I can’t wait to share more updates as they come.
Until next time,
Rachel
Ellie's Blog
Ellie Taylor, undergraduate student
1 September 2024
Hi everyone, hope you're all enjoying the last month of summer. August has flown by, I can't believe classes start soon. I have been staying quite busy with work and lots of adventures.
The log pond team has been collecting lots of data through our observations. There's still quite a high seal presence comparative to colder months. We are also still seeing the pups, though they are definitely getting bigger.
This month I also got the opportunity join in on a boat day with all the MMEL managers. This was all thanks to Maren and Haley's project. It was great to spend time with everyone and we got to see lots of harbor seals, sea lions, porpoises, and orcas!
Hope you all enjoy the end of summer and stayed turned for all the exciting things to come this fall!
Ellie
Haley's Blog
Haley Recob, undergraduate student
1 September 2024
Hello all!
Happy September! I can’t believe that the summer is nearly over and fall quarter is just around the corner. I am very excited for school to start and for everyone in the lab to be back on campus, but I am definitely trying to make the most of the last weeks of summer. Before school starts, I plan on going to the San Juan Island, Montana, Oregon and making a few trips back home. In between these trips, I’ll be going to Whatcom Creek and working on Maren and I’s project. I love staying busy!
I’ve been keeping busy this last month as well. Maren and I have been making huge strides in ArcGIS. We have been able to map out areas of high human disturbances using a heat density map of marinas in the Salish Sea. We’ve also started mapping where the salmon runs are in relation to our haul out sites. We are actively trying to research salmon hatchery escapement reports to try and see if we can narrow down the abundance of salmon in each waterway. This way, we can weigh the waterways differently and see if water channels with greater or lesser abundance of salmon have different effects on harbor seal sex ratios. This has proven more challenging than anticipated as hatchery reports vary widely depending on if they are statewide, tribal, or international. Additionally, we are starting to get more versed in spatial ecology to figure out how to analyze our variables while incorporating their distance to our haul out sites. Though this is the last week of my grant, I hope to continue making the process in our project in the weeks to come. Luckily with my grant, I was able to spend some of the extra funds on a boat trip around the San Juan Islands. We got to visit harbor seal haul out sites and informally observe how harbor seals at different sites would react when our boat got near them. We also saw orcas thanks to Maren’s whale watching tour connections! It was a super fun experience to spend with the lab management team.
In other news, Whatcom creek observations have been in full swing, anticipating the return of the chinook salmon. Though no salmon have been officially seen yet, there have been other fish in the creek which seem to be bringing back our harbor seals (and fishermen)! Observations have increased to multiple times a week and we’ve been seeing harbor seals at some high tides. Some of my past few observations have made me very excited for the fall.
Additionally, this month, I got the opportunity to volunteer with WDFW again and go on another marine mammal stranding survey of the Ozette triangle trail. We ended up not finding any strandings again but saw many harbor seals hauled out and saw some beautiful views out in the Olympics. The day before, WDFW found a stranded pygmy sperm whale. Alex and I were invited to go and watch the necropsy back at their office in Tacoma. We even ended up getting our hands dirty by helping them bag samples! It was a very unique experience, and I am very grateful I got to witness such a rare event.
More to come soon,
Haley
Alexandreas's Blog
Alexandrea Otto, graduate student
1 September 2024
Hi There and Good-Bye Summer,
It is a pleasure to say I have finally handed off the majority of my samples to the WDFW Genetics Lab in Olympia this past week!!! In these last few months of graduate school, all a graduate student can wish & dream for is data, and I’m hopeful it will come soon now!
Stranding hikes in the Olympic National Park this month were amazing scenic views again but unfortunately/fortunately no fresh harbor seal strandings to add to my sample scheme for genetics. An incredible educational event did happen though that Haley and I were fortunate enough to observe and even aid in the necropsy…a pregnant adult female Pygmy Sperm Whale stranded on the coast. It was an incredible opportunity to learn anatomy and so much more from such an incredible deep-diving marine mammal. Deepest diving marine mammal right away pinnipeds (Southern Elephant Seals!). Additionally last week was one of the most surreal field weeks as I also witnessed my first Orca pod sighting! Washington’s waters cease to amaze my mind, heart, and soul for these capable creatures. The Orcas we sighted seemed to be from the transient population and the male dorsal fin is as dramatically straight and tall as pictures!!! What a week. Lesson to learn about field work in Washington though, you can catch a cold even in the middle of summer. Without proper field gear, its easy to get the sniffles and more after a week in the wet and cold field... Worth it to me still.
Now I believe I’ve procrastinated this long enough and the time has come for me to say farewell to all the incredible, wonderful, inspiring & motivating MMEL undergraduates that graduated with their Bachelor degrees last June and are now graduates from Western. It has been an absolute joy and privilege to get the opportunity to work alongside and learn from every senior this past year in the lab-especially the lab managers: Maya, Jack, and Jasper (aka Casper). Shout out to Isabel also as her and Maya have been incredible and driven teammates to work on my project and their mtDNA contributions as well this entire time at Western! I remember the first Whatcom Creek observation I ever officially went to; I carpooled Maya (and others) and it was both hers and my own first observation together for the lab. I also remember Isabel helping me the entire summer last year on multiple long days driving for subsamples, collection subsamples, and driving back to Western to eventually extract the 250 subsamples over the next year. We’ve all shared such MMEL bonding memories together in this lab, including the NWSSMM conference this past spring... I cannot express how genuinely happy and excited I am for these encouraging scientists (including all the other recent MMEL graduates)! It was the hardest to say goodbye to this batch of graduates as we all started together in the lab practically at the same time and now it has time for yall to conquer your next adventure! We all miss you dearly and please stay in touch!
Seals & Salmon,
Alexandrea
Victoria's Blog
Victoria Vinecke, graduate student
1 September 2024
Hello everyone!
I have some exciting updates to share will you this month! But first, let’s check in on the synthetic DNA mock mixed samples. I have decided to pivot with using blood instead to make mock mixed samples due to little progress figuring out the issue with the synthetic X DNA lack of amplification. I am still able to make mock mixed samples with blood once I know the concentration and normalize the DNA to amplify in the range of the eDNA samples. I plan on getting that started this week and hopefully have results by next blog post!
For the exciting news, I was able to join in on Haley and Maren’s funded boat ride around the San Juan Islands through the grant they received for their project! Big thank you to the both of them for allowing me to join, it was a fantastic experience! I saw harbor seals, sea lions, harbor porpoise, lots of gulls, and my first Orca!! It was such an amazing moment to share with everyone on the boat. Orcas are such beautiful creatures and seeing the giant dorsal fin in person is mind blowing! Below are photos from that day.
Orca 2024. Photo by V. Vinecke.
Post seeing an Orca excitement! Photo by V. Vinecke.
Lastly, Alex and I took a tip down to drop off our samples for GT-Seq! In terms of my project, we are testing to see if GT-Seq could be a sequencing option for aquatic eDNA samples. So, wish me luck on finding some SNP’s within my samples!
Until next time!
Victoria