A Typical Day in 176B

Ok. So this is it: my science blog. Here is my desk in Science Center (which is unfortunately two full words) 176B. If you've seen my Facebook album, you've already seen this--sorry!

Now add in this little detail: toshi's perpetual presence smack in the middle of that desk. Indeed, that is the exact habitat that I find myself in right now. A typical day involves calculating the information that I found on the boat. So let me catch you up to date on my project.

My whole goal is to figure out if this shoal, which is an underwater island, in the St. Lawrence River can in any way be responsible (even partially) for the decrease in phytoplankton population that has already been discovered as the river progresses from the headwaters of Lake Ontario.

We (and by we I mean my advisor, Dr. Twiss, who is a limnologist and has been studying this for a few years now) think that the shoals could be contributing to the loss because there are lots of plants on the shoal. Our fancy name for these plants is "SAV", or submerged aquatic vegetation. These plants could 1.) be altering the water chemistry in some way that inhibits phytoplankton functioning, 2.) be using up the nutrients, like phosphorus, that phytoplankton need to survive, and 3.)be providing more surface area and thus more available homes for little grazing creatures that eat our phytoplankton. These creatures could be insect larvae, mussels, or zooplankton.

So there we have it! With that in mind, our goal is to figure out as much as we possibly can about this shoal. Not much information is out there about this area of the river, because it's an international section between Canada and the U.S. (thus why I end up going to Canada often when I go out on the boat :D).

So...today, actually, I'm using bathymethic maps to determine the surface area and volume of the shoal, and we're going to use GPS drogues and labeled oranges (no joke!) to figure out the velocity and path of the water flow over the shoal. We're also sending down trap like things (called ponar dredges, officially) throughout the summer to see what types of plants are common on the shoal. And we'll be able to measure these plants and see how they progress through the summer--we expect the phytoplankton populations to drop as the summer goes on and the plants get bigger.

We're also collecting water samples at 10 stations on each day we go out. When we do that, I sit in the little cabin of our boat with a rack-ish thing with open, plastic beakers magnitized to the top. I connect the rack to a vacuum, and I put different size filters (tiny, round little slivers of science!) in the beakers. Then I pour certain amounts of the collected river water into the beakers and let the vacuum do its work. When the filtering is complete, I carefully slide off the little filters, which now hold different sizes of plankton, and plunge the filter into a test tube of 90% acetone. These little tubes can't see the sun once the filter is in them, or the phytoplankton die. So it's like a game to shove the filter in the tube, pop on the cap, and stick the tube in the tube rack under a black, sun-ray eliminating bag as fast as you can. Anyhow, I do this for each of the ten stations. It takes about 2 hours, minimum. Crazy!

Apart from this, we also collect samples to analyze the nutrients in the water: I'm going to be comparing levels of phosphorus, nitrate, and silicate.

Each of these collections we do on the boat have a corresponding analysis in the lab, so a busy day in lab is when I'm actually measuring what I collected on the boat the day before.

Other than that, I'm going to do a little mini-experiment that will allow phytoplankton to grow in the same container as a plant, but the plant will be in a filter that only allows its chemicals to get through. In other words, I'll be able to tell if it's the little critters on the plants or the plants' chemical effects that are making it hard for the phytoplankton to thrive.

If you're still with me, congratulations! I'm impressed! I probably wouldn't have read all of that if I were you.

So there we have it. And days in lab like today, without any actual processes to carry out, are interesting. I just kinda have to make myself productive. However, the REU program requires quite a few presentations, and my second one is this Wednesday. So I'm busying myself with making the power point that I'll present then, and I'm also trying to make sense of the data I have from last Thursday. This being said, I end up in that chair above for a LONG time. My day is technically supposed to be 8 hours long, so I feel like I should stay at least that amount of time.

I have come up with methods to cope. These include: 1.)actually going back to my apartment for lunch rather than packing my lunch in the morning and eating it in the hallway outside of the lab. My apartment is close, and that lets me eat with my friends for lunch as well. This is good. 2.) Whenever I go get some water or go to the bathroom, I walk back outside rather than through the halls. It's my little break! Although today it's been awkward, because there are two guys doing some sort of study on blue jays just outside the building. They've got this little platform set up with some bird food on top. To add to this, they have two cameras on the platform, and they're sitting outside in camping chairs watching the platform. Enter Katie, dazed by the sun but grateful for the outdoor air. Funny. So I will be in their video of the platform every once in a while. I hope that's not a problem! And I hope I'm not scaring away the blue jays! I sure don't want to be responsible for ruining their summer research! (Which is rather humorous, if you ask me, to begin with. But I'm sure I don't know the whole story. ;) )

So anyhow, now you know about my everyday life. And the science, for those of you that care.

I hope this is at least remotely interesting to some of you, but if not, it's not a huge problem--it's only been the result of a little fraction of my time in 176B. :D