Hello dear readers! It has been awhile, I hope everyone has been having a wonderful summer so far.
Today was my first day working at Western for one of my professors. My job this summer is in a marine invertebrates studying benthic organisms (critters that live in the sand around bodies of water). These particular benthics were collected from the Bering Sea.
My primary job this summer will be to help finish up last summers collection as well as begin this summers. What I mean is that I will be working to identify various animals that have been collected in the Bering Sea sand cores. The ones from last summer have already been sifted from the sand and been organized into basic categories. "All" I have to do for those is figure out what class or (if i can) species they belong to. The samples from this summer haven't even been taken off the ship yet.
Professor Shull (whom I work for) arrived back in Washington on Friday but the ship doesn't arrive in Seattle until tomorrow (Tuesday). I'm leaving bellingham with Professor Shull bright and early at 7AM tomorrow to get to Pier 12 shortly after the boat docks. Once there I'll be helping him unload all of the samples and equipment into a truck that can take it back to Western. The samples will then be treated with a dye that makes organic matter bright pink and thus can be easily picked out of the sand. And then more classification! Shull wants me to learn all about different aspects of the lab so while classification is going to be my biggest responsibility I'll be moved around some in order to learn more.
So far there is one other woman in the lab, M-. She's a lot of fun to work with and has been working with Shull for two years and so was a great help when I was getting started. It can be incredibly hard to identify something when you don't even know where to start! The lab is stocked with text books that can be used to identify invertebrates but until you understand how they work it can be difficult.
This summer is going to be a huge learning experience.
