Holding Out for a Hero

... Or at least a blue whale.

Day Five - Friday

Feeling of the day: Determined.

It was a pretty laid-back day. After the wild night of Manatee Mayhem, no one really wanted (or were able) to concentrate on lots of talks in the morning. So I went to a few, just the ones I thought I'd really get something out of, but spent a lot of the day sleeping and exploring downtown Tampa.

The reason the feeling of the day was determined was that I found myself with a really strong grasp on what I want my Masters to look like. And I think that while it's problematic to close yourself in too much, because then you lose out on opportunities, it's important to know your limits and what is going to make you happy. An opportunity is torture when you are miserable.

So I started working through a lot of that during the week, but today it was finalized in my mind.

I don't want to go to school in the United States. I don't like the way their graduate school system works, it's ridiculously expensive and quite frankly, I really prefer Canada as a country and as a people. I've been asked if that means I wouldn't consider going farther abroad for school, but I think I'd be okay in another British-style country. Which works out for me, because that's where a lot of blue whale research goes on (for example: Australia. Or the UK).

Another thing I determined is the type of "perscientist" I want to be. Yes, I just made up the word 'perscientist'. It is a combination of 'person' and 'scientist', because with some people, they way they are professionally is different than the way they are personally, and that just doesn't sit right with me. Unfortunately, I am trying to throw myself into an exceptionally competitive field. So when it comes to other people in the same state of affairs as myself, it's natural to want to don fangs and claws and beat them at everything.

And I have met them all here. The people who are amazingly supportive of my dreams and offer lots of advice and names and business cards. And the ones that give you the once over when you express similar goals to theirs. It's part of the game, but you have to figure out what kind of 'perscientist' you want to be, because it's not enough to just be nice to those farther down the line. The best way to know someone's character is how they treat their direct competition.

Another thing (sorry this post has no flow!) is that over this week I got a lot of advice. Which is great, but can seem overwhelming as you try to sift through it all. That's why it's important to have a really clear idea of what will make you the most happy. Because it's really easy to feel like you have to take everyone's advice, because they've been around the field longer and do probably know better. But they don't know you better. So while one person was telling me all about places to try and get research spots pertaining to killer whales, I smiled and nodded and wrote them down, but in the back of my mind I was thinking 'I don't want to invest too much time into looking into all this until I know that my blue whale research will fall through.' And if there's is the smallest chance that I can start fulfilling dreams, I am going to take them, even if it's a little bit more work.

So advice: know your limits, be nice to the competition (one day they won't be competition anymore), be nice to those struggling beneath you (you were once them) and don't feel like you need to take everyone's advice all the time, because they don't know you as well as you do.

Wow. A whole five days of blogging. How do people do this on a regular basis? I should be going back to my sporadic updates now that I am back home in Sarasota and that the internship is winding down.

But something for all you readers to look forward to... 27 days until I land in Puerto Rico, then 12 days later I start my next internship!

Speak Loud!

You May Say I'm a Dreamer...

...But I'm not the only one.


Day Four - Thursday


Feeling of the Day: Inspired.

I will honestly admit that I can't believe I've had something to say for every day of this conference. You would that that it would just get repetitive and dull, but in reality every day has brought new ideas and challenges, and I think that's a big part of my passion for this science.

Now I'll admit, not all my inspiration of the day came from the conference. While talking to a friend of mine teaching in Thailand, he was telling me all about his adventures on an elephant preserve. Now elephants are my favourite terrestrial animal, because they produce infrasound just like the loves of my life, the blue whales. But he was telling me these stories (called this because of the lack of scientific evidence, sorry TW!) about suicidal elephants. And that got me thinking about potential connections between the cognitive abilities of animals and their ability to commit suicide (as there have been known cases in dolphins as well, although no papers as of yet).

It's also made me wonder whether there is a connection between the social structure of an animal's grouping and their memory, as elephants are able to recognize the calls of dead martriarchs, and killer whales live in similarly structured pods.

Now, I'm not jumping off the boat just yet, because as you can see, I have connected these ideas to marine mammals, because I have not put in this much time, work, energy and sanity to not study marine mammals.

Add this to the myriad of topics swirling around this conference, and it almost makes me want to scream! There is so much science out there yet to be discovered, and it frustrates me that I can't seem to do it all!

I'm working full steam ahead to get in graduate school now that I have a much better understanding of the 'who's who' of the field. I think I have a decent shot of doing what I want to do for Master's, although the timeline of it all is still a little iffy. But now that I am asking a zillion (real number) additional questions, it makes me want to become a professor just to have student minions to do my bidding in the lab!

I don't think I want to give up my dreams in blue whale infrasound anytime soon, but all these other questions are just so intriguing, it's hard to just leave them alone. For the time being they are written down, and maybe if I get desperate or lucky, I'll have a chance to work on these projects on the side.

So I guess I should give some advice now... I guess it would be to not be afraid to branch out from what you think your singular goal is. A lot of biologists don't study the same thing for their entire lives, so you never know where your career is going to take you. Don't wait too long though, otherwise someone else might have the same idea as you (as I realize that once again, I've shared my own ideas with the general internet public... damn). At the same time, it's not always about having your name on the paper. Sometimes it's just about finding out the information. I'd almost be just as happy to hear the results of someone doing the work on these ideas than doing the research myself. Almost.

Friday might be a slow day. Everything is winding down, and Thursday night is the Student fundraiser party. It's going to be a late night!

Speak Loud!

PS. On another inspired note, if a certain newly created fund (you know what I'm talking about) has not already been promised to any particular organization, I think it should become a funding opportunity for Jewish females pursuing a career in the research sciences (emphasis on non-medical). Just saying.

Reality Check

Day Three - Wednesday


Feeling of the day: Shamelessness.

I felt a lot less overwhelmed today, probably because I took some breaks when there wasn't a talk I was interested in. And I've already seen the most interesting of posters, so I could use those times as a break as well.

That being said, Wednesday was all about connecting for me. Networking using all means necessary in order to pursue my goals, which have been a lot better defined since I got here.

The feeling of the day was shamelessness because you have to be that in order to be able to walk up to a complete stranger, tell them your name and ask for a job/graduate position. I did that. You have to be ready to do that because you never know who you are going to meet.

As well, don't be afraid to use your peers or supervisors in the same way. When my boss from the DFO found out that my goal is to work with blue whales, he gave me a name and said he would introduce us if he got the chance. Don't use something like this as an excuse not to walk up and introduce yourself, but it's a good way of making things happen if you don't know what the person looks like.

Name drop. Seriously, it's not just about Hollywood celebrities. If you are working for a big name in the field, use it shamelessly, because that shows people that their colleagues have faith in your abilities or have trained you in some aspect, and that really means something to them. I've been dropping my DFO boss's name and the head supervisor of the dolphin project's name like they are hot around here, because they are well known people in their respected areas and having worked for them gives me a bit of a boost.

So even though it's sort of frowned upon in regular society, break that and do it, because you never know who's going to hire you based on it.

One piece of advice: have business cards. I didn't want to make any because I don't have an affiliation or even a permanent phone number, but I really should have just printed up just a hundred or so with my name, degree and email address to give out to people I am meeting here. Not that any of them would be the first to contact me, but then if I contact them in the future, they have something that reminds them of where and when they met me, so I'm less of a stranger.

Also print out copies of your CV. We don't have a printer in the apartment so I couldn't do this, but it's a suggestion I've been given in the past and really I think it's a good one. Because you might meet the boss/supervisor of your dream, and you won't want to wait until later to email them a copy.

I know that if my brain is becoming anything like the one's of these esteemed biologists, theirs must be complete mush and fried to a crisp and can barely retain what they ate for breakfast. So if you just meet them and leave them, they aren't going to remember you in an hour (that happened to me). So everything has to be fresh with them, which is why business cards and CVs are great ideas.

The evening had a workshop just for students, and I didn't hear a lot that I didn't already know. Make sure it's a passion and know what you are or are not willing to do to attain your goals. It's a tough process. Get used to ramen noodles. Learn to sleep 6 in a room because that's how you'll afford rent. I already know that I'm probably going to have to go back to a teaching job part time, even though you have no time to do anything once you're a Master's student. There's no money anywhere in this career.

So another piece of advice (I got this one from the pros): Try to get funding before you even apply for Masters. Or if you are sending out emails to professors, find out which ones will take you if you have funding versus the ones that really just can't take you on. Write a killer proposal for a project and start applying for everything. Literally everything.

One of the first things I'm going to do when I get home is start trying to piece together a proposal for a project I think I could make happen. It's going to be a tough process, but once you have a strong proposal you can use it for every grant you apply to, just tweaking it slightly here and there.

Okay, I think that's mostly what I wanted to say about Wednesday. Let's see what Thursday brings!

Speak Loud!

PS. I should say that on top of the feeling of the day, the feelings of the week are exhaustion and hunger. Because I refuse to pay lots for food, and half packs of ramen aren't very filling. I have never eaten so much crap in my life, but whatever my friends have left over I am scavenging like a vulture. Welcome to the life of a biologist.

I'm Melting....

Or at least, my brain is!

Day Two - Tuesday


Feeling: Overwhelmed.

Wanted: Single young Marine Mammologist seeking interested Physicist for companionship and brain picking.

The way today (and the rest of the week) is set up is to choose one of 4 talks at one time, 15 minutes long, all day long.

Go.

And is you took my advice from yesterday, you are like me and attending basically every single one that you think could be interesting. Which I did.

How much of it did I understand? Little to none. How much do I remember? Less than that.

How much did I learn? Tons.

Osmosis may not work for studying, but somehow it manages to work at conferences. You pick up on a lot more that you ever thought you could.

I spent the entire day in presentations about acoustics, acoustic monitoring, tagging and tracking. So much physics. So much biology.

But science is no longer uni-disciplinary ( I think I made up that word...). My friends are also chemists, physicists, geologists, geographists (another made up word). But the questions we are killing ourselves (almost literally) for are all biological in origin, so we call ourselves biologists.

I think it's the atmosphere, or maybe just being surrounded by so many people who are so much smarter and more ahead with their lives than mine, but while I feel completely depressed about trying to find a Master's position, I am also inspired. It's finding the happy medium and actually putting things in motion that is the tough part. But until I do, I'm just going to whine about it. Because that's what I do.

Tomorrow will be more of the same, except lots more about my favourite animal ever. Bonus points for whoever can guess it.

I`m excited to see what the feeling of the day is tomorrow, and I hope you are too!

Speak Loud!

How Many Marine Mammologists...

Does it take to change the world?

That is the question the approximately 1900 of us are trying to answer here at the 19th biennial Conference for the Biology of Marine Mammals.

The theme this year asks us to consider the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on marine mammals.

Bascially, it's not enough that we are polluting the habitat that we haven't destroyed, but we are also invading their space with boat traffic, spilling oil into their backyards... oh, and the climate is changing.

So how does all this effect the research that we are doing?

I'm not going to answer that here, because really, you need a week long conference with over 600 presenters to answer that. Oh wait...

What I am going to do, because this is a teaching blog, is just go through the general day by day of the conference and my own personal feelings for each day.

So Day One - Monday


Feeling of the day - Excitement

The day was spent listening to people present work that exemplified the cumulative effects theme, and was presented to everyone at the conference. It was a good introductory day, and gave you a good taste of what to expect for the next four days. Also we got a first view at all the posters on display, and a chance to mingle a little bit with other people at the conference.

Advice: just take it all in, but be ready to start planning. With something like 300 posters, you want to try and select the ones that sound the most interesting to you, write them (and their location) down and try to hit them up first, like on the Monday and Tuesday. Or at least as many of them as you can/want. That way, as the week progresses and you steadily lose your mind, if you skip out on the poster viewing you're not missing out on the chance to meet and talk with people with particular similar interests.

Also, people that you might be spending time with at the conference might want to skip bits and pieces. This in not the time to be a sheep! If you are in my shoes, where you have no particular project, and you need to at least pretend to be well versed in lots of marine mammal-related topics, you have to listen to the presentations. So let them sleep in or go for a late meal. You should not skip out on learning experiences.

Okay, that's day one! On to day two...

Speak Loud!

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky... I'll be Looking!

Finally!

After three and a half weeks of photo-ID, we finally got to go out on surveys again!

It's really simple. We drive around on a boat looking for dolphins. When we see them, we take pictures. That's all.

Ha ha. I wish.

It's actually really hard to see the dolphins. You're just sitting on the boat, looking out to the horizon, hoping to see a dorsal fin or two. Waves make this hard, and a dark day where the dolphins are the same colour as the water... for an amateur like myself, it's daunting.

But miraculously, with a little (lot) of help from our supervisors, a pod of dolphins is spotted.

There is a lot of data collected for a sighting. Latitude, longitude, depth, salinity, water temperature, general location and the conditions (glare, cloud cover, sightability and wave height).

Then there's the taking of the pictures. Wouldn't it be nice if dolphins stayed in one place and posed pretty for a picture? Yeah, I think so too. But they don't. So they are swimming around, doing their thing, and we are doing our best to take a photo of their dorsal fin. My supervisors are absolute pros. I am honestly surprised when it turns out I took a half decent photo.

We go out for 10 days a month, which is half the month when all goes well. The weather defines if we can go out, although it doesn't always deter us. We have a route that we have to get through each time, and how long it takes depends on how many sightings we get.

Some highlights from the surveys I've done so far:

--We sometimes see other cool wildlife on surveys. Like manatees, sea turtles and rosiette spoonbills.
-- One of the dolphins is totally habituated to humans, so much so he comes up to the boats to beg for food. His name, no surprise, is Beggar. It's cool when you see him because he comes right up to the boat, so you get really close to a dolphin!
--We saw the oldest dolphin in the population, she's around 60 years old which is amazingly old for a wild dolphin.
-- We've seen some cool socializing and playing
-- Some dolphins have created really cool ways of eating. A couple families will actually chase fish along a sea wall and use that as a means of controlling where the fish swim. There's something known as 'kerplunking', where they slap the fish around with their tails, essentially knocking them unconscious before eating them. Smart cookies.
-- We see a lot of calves and young of the year. AKA really small and cute dolphins.
-- We went out in the rain one morning, boy did it rain HARD! We boated around in the rain all morning, stopped for lunch, and then the sum came out for the afternoon. Hopefully no cold comes from it!

It's a steep learning curve, but our supervisors are pretty patient and really helpful. And besides, in the real world, on the job training means that you have to train while the work is actually being done, so mistakes are easy to make, but certainly not appreciated.

But this is the type of work is the work I love. All I want to do is spend plenty of my days on boats and in the ocean looking out for the animals I love.

Speak Loud!

That's Fin-tastic!

So marine biology might seem to be all glitz and glam, but it's not all about being sloshed around on the ocean and swimming with dolphins. In fact, it's nothing like that at all. True marine biology is work. Hard work. Now ecology usually does require some field work, so there are some fun aspects to the job, where yes, you do go out on a boat and get to look at cool animals. But like most sciences, there are fun parts, then there are dull parts.

But to quote one of my favourite books (I am so happy I get to do this!): "He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness." (Bonus points to whoever can name that book. The answer will be revealed at the end of the post).

In order to appreciate the field work, I need to put in lab time. So this is an explanation of what "lab work" means to a dolphin intern.


We take pictures of dolphins. Lots and lots of pictures. Of lots of lots of dolphins. And we care about which is which. So we need to figure out who all these dolphins are.


Now we can't just ask them their name and genealogy, that's just silly. So we need to match their dorsal fins to pictures of known individual's dorsal fins.


So they give me a picture of a fin of a dolphin they don't recognize, and based on scarring, notches (bits of fin that are missing) and general shape, I have to see if I can find the fin in the database of all known 
dolphins.


Easy? No, no my friends. The picture I'm given is from 2010, and the database pictures start from back in 70s. And these are living, wild dolphins. So maybe now they have 5 cuts on their dorsal fin. But the picture of the exact same dolphin might only have three.

How do I know I'm looking at the same dolphin? Heck if I know!!

No, there are some tricks. You have to look at where on the fin the cuts and notches are, the space between them etc. And dolphins don't lose notches either. Their skin doesn't  grow over it. So if they have it, they have it.

But to break up the monotony (and it does get monotonous!), we have the chance to help with data entry and data checking. Which is also monotonous, but at least it's social and it's a different kind of monotony.

It's been exciting though, I've found a few fins in the database, which is really uplifting! Then again, I haven't found a lot of fins, which is a little depressing. It's an educated guessing game. But that's science for you!

Speak Loud!

PS. The quote is from the book The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Read it. Seriously. Read it. Don't watch the movie. Read the book.

Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy...

So now that I am living 85% of the marine biology dream, it's high time I shared a little more insight with all of you. Particularly because this blog is supposed to help aspiring marine biologists, I should give you more details about what the job actually entails.

My internship is made up of 3 parts: 49% Photo-ID, 49% Dolphin surveys and 2% Fishing surveys. By the time I got here, they had done most of the fishing, so I only got to help out on four days of fishing.

But what a four days it was.

The short story: We collect fish and measure them so we can get an idea of the composition in the bay and how well they are doing (based on size). We take more measurements and weigh the fish species that dolphins like to eat so that we can figure out the nutritional value and whether dolphins think they are yummy.

Now for the fun story:

We use a technique called purse seine netting to catch the fish. Basically the net is really big and has a heavy string at the bottom. We throw the net overboard and drive in a circle so the net goes in a circle.

The net all folded up, ready to be thrown over

The corks of the net, in a large circle

Once the net is all set out, you take the ends of the heavy rope (the "purse line") and have hydrolics pull them closed. Like tightening the purse strings... everyone get it? Now the net starts to look like a bowl (if you could see underwater). You pull and pull and pull until the purse line is as small as you can get, then you start to bring all the excess net back on board, again using the hydrolics.

We also need information about the habitat. General appearance, depth, salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen and the conditions that we are sampling in (from calm and pretty to tropical storm, basically).

This is where the fish come in. To be the best fisher you can, you select the size of hole you want your net to be based on the size of fish you want to catch. Not too big that fish you want will swim through, but not too small so as to catch small fish you don't want. Generally this works really well, but you will get fat fish that get stuck in the net holes, or stupid fish that start to swim through, then want to back up and get their gills caught in the net (what we call "getting gilled"). So as the excess is getting pulled back up, you want to watch it come through in order to find any fish caught in the net (and there will be fish caught in the net).

Because you need to count every fish. Every. Single. Damn. Fish.

And you need to be fast. Because we like fish, and we don't want them to die. So the faster you get them out and get them measured, the faster they back in the water. And the faster you can move on to the next set and the faster you are finished.

So yeah... you need to be fast.

And fearless. Fish bite. And some have really pointy spines (that's the scientific terminology). Some even have sharp skin. A couple are poisonous. But they all need to be handled and counted. As an intern, I could get away with a little bit of wariness and shirking away from some of the fish, but when I grow up you have to suck it up and get 'er done.

Insider advice: only wimps use gloves. If you don't leave the boat with hands totally scraped up, you did something wrong.

We took two types of measurements because we were doing two types of projects. The first measurement was on every fish, and that was the fleshy length. That is the length from the end of the fish's nose to the end of it's skin/body (where the body turns into tail fin).

On the dolphin prey species, we took: total length (nose to very end of tail), fork length (nose to the inside of the fork), fleshy length (see above) and standard length (nose to the end of the spine). We also weighed it to the nearest 2 grams.

Once all the fish had been measured and thrown overboard (dead or hopefully alive), clean up, set the net straight and repeat.

And as bonus data, we collect samples of water to look for red tide ( some kind of algae/small organism that turns the water red. It's pretty harmless to humans unless you're allergic).

Sounds fun, hey? While it is a lot of work, it really is also a lot of fun ( if you're into that sort of thing). And I discovered that the Sarasota Bay really does have a lot of totally awesome creatures living in it. Ones that I have studied and seen dead and pickled, but here I saw them alive and kicking!

Animals like...

Sharks!

Rays!

Horseshoe crabs!

Octopus!

Burfish! (like pufferfish!)

Halfbeaks!

As well as a sea turtle or two (one was swimming in our net and a volunteer had to go out and save it).

So the moral of the story: The fishing was hard, you had to be fast, my hands look like ground beef, you smell like crap, you sweat so much and I have not had that much fun in a very, very long time.

Speak Loud.