Springing into Summer

Just a picture to entice visitors to visit me on the Oregon Coast!

Whoa, I can't believe it's already June. Let's see...what have been up to as the time has been flying by?

Well, a lot of work. Being a marine biologist and all, my "busy" season is spring and summer --- when birds are nesting, fish are spawning, animals are migrating, the ocean is upwelling and plankton are blooming...You get the idea. And the weather improves! Always a bonus when your job requirements include "spend 30-40 days at sea every year".

So after my last stint at sea chasing killer whales in March, I was out at it again for 8 days at the end of May. Not necessarily the chasing whales part, but still on a big boat on the ocean! Substitute NOAA cushy research cruise ship with the Canadian fishing vessel the R/V Frosti, and viola! I'm fishing for salmon! It was my first time on a *real, live fishing boat* (cue oohs and aahs). Okay, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm a dork. But ever since I turned down a job offer to work as a fisheries observer in Alaska circa 1999 (post-WWU biology degree in hand), I've wondered what I missed. It was very cool to be on a working fishing vessel - and quite a contrast to the NOAA ships. For one, the crew (there's only 4) work extremely hard, even when they're chartered by us to fish at certain locations. They call our cruises with them "vacation". But they're still up sunrise to sunset, sometimes longer. We worked transect lines that run East-West off Washington and Oregon about 20-30 miles offshore in search of the elusive Pacific salmon. And boy did we find them!! There are about 7 stations on each transect line, where we stop the boat, take water samples for chrolophyll, plankton, and temperature, and lower a CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) instrument to the seafloor to get a record of what is going on at every point of the ocean directly below our boat. Once we have done all of this, we put a trawl in the water and tow it for 30 minutes at the surface, catching salmon and many other fish species. It was very fun for me to see so many fish up close and personal - species like black rockfish, anchovy, sardine, herring, dogfish, and of course salmon!!



P.S. something else "springing" into summer! Whoa, my favorite succulent plant sprung a 2-foot stalk!? It's now dying, it spent all it's energy on spreading it's seeds to my rug...