West Cliff Drive

The First Place I took Piper was for a long walk along the coast on West Cliff Drive. There was so much going on on this street. There were all types of people and dogs walking by, loud traffic, bikes, ocean noise, and even a few segways. We took this route about five times while she was staying with me

She did fantastic considering everything that was going on around her! She was so interested in just watching the ocean so we stopped a few times to just let her take it all in. It was so much fun watching her experience new things! 

There were so many boats and kayaks out that day! And we stopped to watch a bit of the surf contest going on that weekend. 

Watching the surfers out at Steamers

Piper's favorite things to chase and maybe her one problem area are birds. She loves chasing birds. Here is a picture of her watching a bunch of sea birds on a rock.

More to come!

By the way, I will be at Fun Day tomorrow at the GDB California Campus, Hope to see you all there!!

My Goofy Friend

I haven't posted in a while because I haven't had anything too interesting happen lately. Mainly because I can't post publicly about my adventures on the Marine Mammal Physiology Project. I'm going to really try to post more!

I am living in Santa Cruz this summer to continue working on the project so this is my first summer in Four years that I am not working at Guide Dogs for the Blind. I can't even begin to express how much I miss it! But I will hopefully be there to help out with Fun Day on the 21st. I Can't wait to be back!!

I have my parent's goofy boston terrier staying with me this week in Santa Cruz so stay tuned for pictures of our wonderings!

Piper

Helping Save a Species

Just wanted to give everyone a small update. Things are going fantastic working on the Marine Mammal Physiology Project. I spend most of my time smiling there and I am learning a ton.

As I mentioned before we have a Hawaiian monk seal known scientifically as KE-18.
Here is a little info if you are interested.

MMPP

I have now settled in to my shifts on the Marine Mammal Physiology Project.
I am learning so much and so far it has been very amazing!

I did have to sign some papers saying I wouldn't take or post any photos. Sorry I can't show you any pictures of what I have been doing. I am hoping to get permission to maybe share some stories in the future!

As you can see from their website, I work with dolphins, otters, birds, and a Hawaiian monk seal. It has been amazing getting to see and care for these animals up close and personal.  I get to watch a lot training sessions. I am learning how to do food and enrichment prep. And I do lots of cleaning and data keeping.

At the end of the day my clothes are wet, my muscles are sore, there is a slight fish smell coming from my hands, and there is always a smile on my face!

Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz 

#4 Has Arrived

Baby number four hatched sometime in the night. The fourth egg always hatches a day after the rest so this is no surprise.  There are now four hungry mouths for Clara and Fernando to feed!

New Hungry Mouths!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Just wanted to give an update on Clara and Fernando.
Three out of the four eggs hatched this morning!! Very exciting!

Video of new babies!

Fernando has adjusted to his adopted eggs fantastically and now he will be adjusting to even more fatherly duties! I'm sure he will do great!

Now we are just waiting on baby #4 to hatch!!

New Adventure!

I just got accepted into the Marine Mammal Physiology Project down at the Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz. I will be learning about marine mammal training, diet, behavior, and what it takes to keep them happy and healthy in captivity.

This means that it is official, I will not be going back to Guide Dogs for the Blind this summer. :( :( :(
I am more than sad about this fact but i absolutely cannot pass up this fantastic opportunity.

I will hopefully be able to share everything that I do down at the lab on here. I will absolutely miss all of my smiling guide dog faces and all the friends I have made in the kennels but I look forward to this new adventure!!

Orientation is next week and then my shifts start. Wish me luck!!

Done With Finals!

My school is on the quarter system which means we only get 10 weeks of instruction per class. This is finals week and I just took my last final this afternoon! I can now put Invertebrate Zoology + Lab, Exercise Physiology + Lab, and Peregrine Falcons behind me.  I'm so excited to move on to a new set of classes.

Bring on spring break!

The UCSC Squiggle 

I walked by this every night I had my peregrine falcon's class. It was always a beautiful view of the ocean at sunset. 

Introducing Fernando

A name has been given to the new tiercel who is now calling San Jose city hall home. Fernando has been performing all of his partnerly duties for Clara. He brings her food twice a day and has performed all of the courtship rituals and has even begun to figure out his share of the incubating. After checking out the eggs several times trying to figure out what to do with them, he has finally succeeded in sitting on them. Even though it was only for a very short time it is still a big step.

Now here was my initial reaction to this:
Clara is currently sitting on EC's eggs and Fernando gets no genetic or fitness benefit for raising EC's young. But, after thinking about it, perhaps what matters most to peregrines is the territory and potential for future offspring. But still, why isn't it instinctively ingrained in their genetics to not care for young that they know isn't theirs? And then I started thinking, if the chances of them abandoning their own young accidentally was too high, than evolution would have caused them develop into birds that care for any eggs and any babies inside their nesting area. The fitness benefit for their own young is increased when their parents are guaranteed to care for them. In the end, Fernando helping to raise EC's babies benefit him in the long run.

Being an Ecology and Evolution major involves trying to answer one big circle of questions all of the time. It's fun trying to figure things out though.

Sorry for my giant rant!

Thanks for reading if you did!

Strongylocentrotus Purpuratus

The Purple Sea Urchin!!

This lab was pretty fun, I have always wondered what is going on underneath all those spines!

The aboral side, this is how they look when you see them in the ocean. Their anus is right in the center there.

 

This is a view of the underside. That is the mouth right in the middle. They have 5 teeth.

A close up of their spines and tube feet. You can see how the tube feet have lines down the middle. Water enters the foot high in waste and low in oxygen and leaves the foot to reenter the body high in oxygen and low in waste,

Couldn't get a good picture of this, but those little white dots in the center are called pedicellariae. They are three sided pincher like structures sitting on stalks. They would open and close and grab around and looked like hungry little baby dinosaur mouths. These guys prevent anything from settling in or growing on the urchin. 

If you want to see them in action, watch the video below and look at the tiny stalks in the center. You can see them grabbing around, it's really cool.

The first view into my urchin after I cut out a window (which was not easy to do!) That big orange thing is the gonad or gamete producer. They have 5 gonads.

I quickly found out my urchin was a male. It was spewing  sperm which can be seen in the picture above. This led me to change my water every ten minutes... Not fun.

One gonad removed, here is what the insides looked like.

A view after I cut along the equator and the whole aboral side was removed

A view after all reproductive and digestive organs were removed

A close up of Aristotle's Lantern

This was the last lab of the quarter! I'm excited not to spend four hours drawing things but also sad because it was really interesting and fun to share. Lab practical is next week, wish me luck!

A Nest-side Battle

San Jose city hall is home to one of the peregrine falcon nest cameras. The pair living here are named Clara and EC. Is is about that time of the year when peregrines begin laying their eggs. While we were waiting for Clara to drop her fourth egg, a stranger male showed up and EC set out to chase him off. The thing is, EC  was unsuccessful and did not return. The other male currently know as the new tiercel has now claimed that territory and Clara as his own.

Volunteers searched the area extensively and no injured E.C. was found. Chances are he has moved on search of a new territory and a new mate.

Here is a video of the new male

Here is a video of Clara sitting on hers and EC's eggs while the new tiercel sits above on the ledge.

Nest Cameras

As I have previously mentioned, I am taking a class about peregrine falcons this quarter. As part of the peregrines recovery, two nest cameras were set up in the bay area to keep an eye on their life in the city and to learn more about their behavior and life style.

Check out the cameras at the links below!
And I will be happy to answer any questions!

San Jose:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/scpbrg/nestcamSJ.htm

San Francisco:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/scpbrg/nestcamSF.htm

Dog Sledding

Had to share! This definitely brightened my day!

Second Star to the Right and then Straight on till Morning

As you all know, I went to Disneyland last weekend and I wanted to share some photos!!

 

The Fam =]

 

I found a braille map! I got kind of excited.

I though my GDB friends might appreciate this.

  

Indiana Jones

 

Pixie Hollow

Paradise Pier 

 

A bug's life

 

Before the world of color show

 

 

What's Happening in Exercise Phys

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that my class took video of ourselves doing an activity to later slow down and determine the kinematics. I chose to kick a soccer ball. Below is the video that I did my lab on.

The coolest thing I found was that my foot actually stopped accelerating right before it hit the ball. This leads me to believe that it hit a maximum speed right before impact. Kicking a ball is all muscle memory to me and it was very cool to not only get to see myself do it but to also break down the movements.

We also started a lab to examine and compare the energetic costs and temperature changes for swimming, running, and biking. I had to do all three of these things at three separate speeds for either a set time or distance. I recorded speed, respiration rate, heart rate, and temperature change in certain body regions.
Lets just say I am not a swimmer, and getting my data for the swimming portion was a little less than torture.

I am also going to be starting a group project soon. We are going to be testing the physiological effects of exercising with music. More to come on that later!

Terrestrial Arthropods

Last week in lab, we went hunting for bugs outside.

I can't tell you how much I got a kick out of seeing a bunch of 20+ year olds outside digging through the dirt looking for bugs.

Looking for bugs next to one of the whale skeletons down at the lab.

Look at that view!!

We were given 5 different classes under the phylum arthropoda that we had to find. Once my group had all of them in our jar, we headed back inside. 

Now here comes the cool part...

We had to draw each bug into our notebook and to do that, they had to be still.

Apparently if you freeze a bug with dry ice, when it thaws out, it walks away like nothing happened!! 

How cool is that!!

My frozen Endopterogote aka the cricket

Terrestrial Crustacean: Armadillidium vulgare aka the rollie-pollie

Close up of the cricket

Myriapoda: Diplopoda aka the millipede

When I looked through the microscope, its legs were still moving. It gave me the creeps big time!!! 

Chelicerate: Aracnida aka the spider

I would have to say this was probably my favorite lab. Hunting for bugs was fun. Certainly brought me back to my many hours spent as a child playing in the dirt in the backyard. It was really interesting freezing them and being able to see them under a microscope then unfreezing them and getting to watch them walk away. And the best thing of all, nothing to dissect!! 

Phragmatopoma Californica

This last week in lab, we dissected the sandcastle worm.

They build and live in huge colonies of little parallel tubes made of sand and an underwater glue they produce. They actually sort through grains of sand and keep only the best ones for constructing their tube... Not really sure what qualifies one grain of sand to be better than the next but its very interesting to think about!

Now for something I am very excited about!

 I took pictures through my microscope... You better be excited because I am very proud of my efforts. I am now officially that weird girl who takes pictures of her dead mutilated squishy critters in lab... 

But seriously! How cool are these pictures!

This is the worms face

This is a dorsal view of the anterior end. Basically the back of the head and upper body. All of those bristles are the worm's gills. 

This was a shorter lab this week (Thankfully!) and we only had to make one cut. It was a vertical cut down the middle. It is so hard to make cuts on something so small! And I'm impatient on top of that! I pretty much completely cut my worm in half. Also, worms have hemoglobin like humans do, so they have red blood. It wasn't a very pretty site and I didn't take any pictures of it. Sorry!

Next week we are going to go hunting for bugs outside to be our next victims.

A Surf Day

In exercise physiology this last week, we hung out at the beach and watched people surf

...I know, hard life I live... 

We actually hooked some weird devices up to our surfer classmates and then sent them on their way. This allowed us to take measurements while they were out in the water surfing. That is our surfer carrying the red board into the water.

Once again... I LOVE LIVING HERE!

Taking more measurements once she is out of the water. This is taking the skin's surface temperature. We were also measuring heat flow over certain parts of the body, heart rate, and respiration rate.

After the surfing measurements were taken, we headed back to the Long Marine Lab. This is where my exercise physiology lab usually takes place. We were testing the effects of cold water during a breath hold. When you hold your breath under water, your heart rate slows down. It was really cool to watch people's heart rates go lower and lower the longer they were under.  

This lab took place in the dolphin tank. They closed off this portion of the pool for our lab, so unfortunately we didn't get to swim with them but it was still really cool hanging out next to them!

This is the Life.

Walked to the beach today... I think the pictures speak for themselves.

I LOVE LIVING HERE.