March 25-31

This week was different and awesome! My best friends Parker and Amy came and spent the week with me. I had an amazing time with them, we went across the bay and hiked to the Grewink Glacier. The glacier was beautiful, and so were the views along the way. They helped me with my research project as lookouts while I snorkeled in the harbor. We went skiing, played trivia at Alice's, and I kicked Parker's ass in pool. We ate tons of good food and just had a great time. Thanks to them for coming to visit me.

The internship was a continuation of last week. A project we are going to start working on is applying for a new research permit. Humpbacks are still listed as an endangered species, so the permit is extensive and will require a lot of work from many parties. Since things are starting to thaw, the opportunities to finally get on a boat and search for whales and marine mammals is opening up. We have scheduled a few trips and have alerts to new whales in the area, and we will respond to them as quickly as possible if our schedules permit.

In class, I continue to work on my research project. We finally collected data on the abundance of invertebrate species to compare high- and low-traffic areas in the harbor. I am also slowly working on my final presentations and research papers.

Lastly, the sharing science class went tide-pooling on Saturday in the pouring rain. It was a new experience for me, and it was a ton of fun to discover many things I had never seen before, like sea peaches, gnome toes, anemones, six-rayed stars, periwinkle snails, and much more. We explored tide-pooling while learning how to communicate an experience like this to a diverse crowd.

Finally, a summer update. I will stay in Alaska for the summer, working as a deckhand and naturalist on a wildlife tour boat in Ketchikan. All the ecological knowledge I have learned as an SBB student will be coming in very handy.