sad day...

For all of my love of an academic lifestyle, sometimes I hate it. I really really hate it.

In particular, I've never enjoyed the transient nature of student life. People come, people go. It seems that just when you've settled and developed a good network of friends, some of them leave. Or perhaps you leave.

As most of you know, I left southern California yesterday. But for as much as I've knocked Socal, I'm really going to miss it. It was a sad day.

So here are some pictures of the people that I am so grateful for becoming friends with. My apologies in advance to some of whom I did not have good digital pics of.

Ecology cohort '05













SDSU grads et al.












Of course MJ and Beaner










Vic, J9, and Tony



















C and Robo



















the persian doc













Carrie #1 and Sean Deese













and even though I've got things to look forward to in the bay area








I'm still really gonna miss it.

sponsored by Cheez-It ®

This post should really be called "Abuse of an Asian Mussel Part II" but I have to keep the sponsors happy if you know what I'm sayin'.

No sooner than after finishing my fried rice breakfast was I back in bed to catch some sleep due to round 2 of lobster tracking in La Jolla the next day. Mind you, this was not overnight fine scale tracking hell, this was a different form of tracking that doesn't involve grad student torture (or so I thought). Our task was to recover listening stations anchored to the sea floor from depths of 20-50 feet. These devices "listen" for lobsters that have little back packs that emit pings (barely audible to human ears). The great thing about them is that you can put them in the ocean (or wherever) and have them do the dirty work for you. No inhalation of carbon monoxide fumes necessary. This mussel is a big fan.

However, you still have to go out there and retrieve the data from them. This means driving up in a boat with a GPS and diving down and tying a line to the device. Then you surface and pull the station up, with its requisite 30lb block of cement. Somebody tell me why I went into marine biology?

That morning; Shakira, Beaner, Julia Guliah (no relation to Glenn Guliah), Princess Leah, Nelly (our new labbie), and I rally at the marine lab to assemble our gear. We break up into two teams, lets call one of them the "fast" team and the other oh....I don't know... the "slow" team.

Princess Leah, Julia Guliah, and I are on the "fast" team and we take my favorite boat (the one that almost killed me) out to La Jolla. We arrive quickly at the sites and recover our stations with relative ease. You can take a guess at how the "slow" team was doing. I'll keep their identities anonymous to preserve their dignity. No matter...we have to dock with the other boat anyways because they have the computer necessary to download the data from the receivers.

After docking, the "slow" team reports that they are low on air and ask us if we have any tanks we can spare them. We do (because we're so dang efficient) and we offer a trade. Air in exchange for food of some sort. "What do you got?" "Cheez-Its" replies Beaner. Uhhhhh...JACKPOT!



If you aren't in the know, Cheez-Its are the grad student equivalent to barrels of crude oil. Marine scientific research revolves around these tasty little baked crackers. How do they get all that cheesy flavor inside? Not only did we get Cheez-Its, they were BIG Cheez-Its. NICE.

After I finish doing some Cheez-It lines, it's time for a group picture. Little did I know that it could have been my last (even though I'm not even in the picture).

After we depart from the other boat we proceed to the sites where we picked up the receivers to deploy them again. This is a much easier job because you don't have to find them, you can just put them down and record the location. Julia Guliah jumps into the water at the first site and I begin handing her gear when a cell phone rings. I pick it up and its Beaner.

Beaner: "Heya, the lifeguards just came by on their jet-ski. There was an unconfirmed but reputable report of a white shark in the area. It might have been eating a seal."

Me: "Oh right, I saw some seals earlier, but there was so much blood I couldn't really see them that well. Haha. No really, where is the alleged shark?"

Beaner: "Uhhh, right about where you guys are right now."

Me: "Hey Julia Guliah, you might wanna get out of the water."

Nice... the tax collector is here and he's hungry. Julia and I quickly huddle and discuss our options. The problem is that we have deployed a receiver but there is a line attached to it. We could either do the wise thing and A) pull it back up and untie the line and devise another way of lowering the receiver without diving or B) dive down and untie the line (the preferred method in the absence of the man in the grey suit).

For some reason (perhaps it was my Cheez-It induced euphoria) we decide on plan B. I don my gear, while noticing the peculiar absence of the Harbor seals I had spotted at this very site 40 minutes prior, and join Julia in the water. On our descent I'm practically spinning like a corkscrew, keeping my eye out for you know who (no, not he who shall not be named). After what seems like an eternity we find the receiver, untie the bowline knot and get the hell out of dodge. Forget the safety stop, I might die here! I swear, every kelp bass I saw looked like it could have been jaws, ready to strike and eat me. I briefly think, with all the cheese in me right now, I bet I taste pretty good.

Upon reaching the surface I fling my gear into the boat (that I don't hate anymore) and hurl my body, like a salmon going upstream, onto the deck.

Great success! (insert Borat voice)

White shark - 0 Asian mussel -1

We deployed the rest of the stations without incident by lowering them down using lines in a sort of "cradle" fashion. However there is a clincher to this story. Later the Beaner tells us that the lifeguards now think that the shark could have been "a large bull sea lion".

Thanks.

I had a great story but now I just look like a wuss.

Well... at least I got some Cheez-Its.

As promised, here is a nice pic of Rothomabobo and Shakira.



Lookin' good gals.

abuse of an Asian mussel

---Rewind three weeks---

In our first weekly lab meeting to set the field work schedule I sit.... fading in and out of direct contact with the world. For the most part, these meetings don't really apply to me (because I've finished my data collection), and I ponder why I am here.

I am asked what my schedule will be like for the next two weeks. With a spurt of excitement I say "Well, I'm turning in my first thesis draft next week, then I'm off to Minnesota for a wedding. After that, I'll have two weeks of time to help out....."

The excitement quickly wains. It dawns on me. What the hell did I just say? I have a sinking feeling in my stomach, but it's too late... I hear the pens scribble furiously, no doubt writing something to the effect of "Abuse the Asian mussel before he leaves".

---Fast forward to this week---

It is 7pm and I am on a 18' center console boat. Weesa and Shakira are my comrades on this epic journey that will last about 12 hours. Our task is to determine the fine scale movements of spiny lobsters within the La Jolla Ecological Reserve. In other words, we are cheap labor employed to follow lobsters around all night. A reputable scientist in the field of remote tracking (see telemetry) calls this "grad student powered". Akin to those decals that you see on tricked out rice rockets that say "Powered by Honda" or "Powered by rice". Just throw a couple grad students at this labor problem and you've got a cheap solution. "They'll do anything."

Indeed.

We arrive at the site and quickly locate the first three lobsters. No problem. But as we navigate to the fourth lobster I have the urge to throw up. Now those of you that know me know that I am no stranger to the worst affliction a marine biologist can possibly have, but this was not it. It was the inhalation of the exhaust fumes from the ancient two-stroke engine that I was sitting next too.

That's cool, we only have 10 hours to go.

I feel nauseous and I volunteer to take the first sleep shift (3 hrs) hoping that the sleep would eliminate my urge to fertilize the ocean with partially digested cheez-its. Sleeping on this boat means curling up in a sleeping bag on deck and pulling a beanie over your eyes. This usually works well, for the waves rock you as if you are inside a fiberglass crib. A nice gentle crib that occasionally sprays engine exhaust in YOUR FACE. It seems that the engine is determined to take others down with it, aided by occasional southerly breezes which waft fumes toward me. I drift off to sleep, thinking I should have brought my carbon monoxide detector with me. Will I ever wake up?

---Midnight---

I wake to hear the quiet chatter of voices and the occasional 'ping' from our machine that tells us we are near tagged lobsters. How soon my slumber ends. I take the helm as Weesa curls up for a wink.



Shakira and I ponder the virtues of graduate school and speculate what people in La Jolla do to afford such grand homes. They probably don't track lobsters.

6 am rolls around quickly and we decide that the lobsters have stopped moving for the night. We motor back through calm seas and get to the dock and clean the boat by 6:45. I'm back in my real bed by about 7:15. Real sleep with real sheets!

I awake from my deep slumber at about oh......3pm. Nice. I earned it. I also earned this veggie fried rice that I made with edamame, red and green peppers. I topped it with a veggie patty and splashed some Braggs Liquid Aminos on there for a nice afternoon breakfast.














See I told you I would blog about food.

hello...

It seems that my I reflect the most upon my life when I should actually be doing something else. In other words, when I procrastinate. Recently I have been immersed in writing my MS thesis, the subject of which is the title of this blog. This involves long hours spent at the computer with tedious data management, analysis using fancy statistics and graphing programs, and of course scientific writing. What better time to start a blog?

However, I promised myself (really my faithful partner Weesa, at left) that I should probably finish my first draft before I begin blogging the world. The astute reader will then recognize that this of course means that I handed my first draft into my advisor! Essentially he'll have it for two weeks and return it to me bleeding red with edits like a stuck mock pig.

Mock pig? This leads me to another part of my life that I will invariably be talking about...food. I like to think of myself as a foodie but nothing like some of my friends who lust over $550 Shun knife sets, or have essentially lived in poverty to maintain their expensive culinary tastes in New Orleans, or those that have mastered Massaman curry recipes in Thailand. As my good friend Sean Deese says, "I think I am only friends with you because you like food so much." Thanks, love you too.

Ahem.... the mock pig? Right, well I like to call myself a vegetarian though I have been known to dabble in carnivory while intoxicated. For the technically minded folk, I like to classify my dietary habits as ovo-lacto-pescatarian. I once was a vegan for a while, but a deal with my sister and a slippery slope ended that one (more on that later). Mock pig because....well... I love mock meat. I actually do love real meat but there is a whole lot of reasons to eat less or even none of it.

That leads me to another topic of this blog, the environment. Or rather, what I study (ecology) and other things that I find interesting. I suppose you could just read the scientific literature (the means by which scientists communicate) but I can't remember the last time I saw my mom pick up the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lastly in this public diatribe of mine, I will be talking about YOU, the faithful reader. That's the people part of the blog. Because lets face it, you're really narcissistic and you want to see yourself made famous on the interweb. I know, I know, you have an illness and I've got your drug. But really, my motivation for beginning this blog is to document, to communicate, and to show embarrassing pictures of my friends.

Being a scientist, I must give credit to those who have influenced my thinking or given me ideas, in other words I have to cite others to escape being called a plagiarizer. Indeed, this blog was notably influenced by others before me (Chiaro 2004, Carson 2006).

So welcome to my blog.


Oh right, and here is a nice picture of the Bucket and Stinky Pinky.