NOAA fisheries

Howdy there little bloggeroo's,

Sorry to disappoint y'all yesterday. I was going to post at my scheduled blogg time but wouldn't ya know it, the college was closed for MLK day. You may have felt let down, but hopefully you spent the balance of the day celebrating the struggle for social justice. Anyhow, back to me. I spent this past Thursday and Friday helping out Sarah Morley and Holly Coe from NOAA. They have a pretty cool project going studying the marine derived nutrients Salmon provide to the riparian ecosystem, related the Elwha river. I spent much of the time helping Holly remove samples from underwater racks containing periphyton growing surfaces with differing nutrient availability in the growth medium, which was designed to demonstrate nutrient availability limitations on the periphyton, relating to nitrogen and phosphorus specifically. I also helped collect terrestrial invertebrates with a butterfly net. The second half of both days I was able to utilize an area of expertise that I have much experience in; grunt labor. I pounded numerous rebar stakes into the riverbed for the purpose of attaching Salmon carcasses to them this week, in order to study the effects of the nutrients they will release into the riparian ecosystem. Tune back in two weeks from now and I will probably jump to describing another project.