add_filter('bloginfo_url', function($output, $property){ error_log("====property=" . $property); return ($property == 'pingback_url') ? null : $output; }, 11, 2);
 

Interns

...now browsing by category

 

Intern Logs: Tagging Sharks
in the Sunshine State

Monday, March 26th, 2018

by Claire Mueller

Selfie of three scientists with palm trees

Front to back: SERC interns Claire Mueller and Michelle Edwards, and SERC postdoc Chuck Bangley, explore windy Fort Pierce, Fla.
(Credit: Claire Mueller/SERC)

As the communications intern for the Movement of Life Initiative, I’ve had the pleasure of doing a variety of fun projects, but my favorite was accompanying our marine team this winter to Fort Pierce, Fla., to continue their work tagging sharks with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University. Our mission was to tag as many bull sharks and cownose rays that we could with acoustic transmitters, allowing us to collect location data and determine the movement patterns of these two species.

When I arrived in Florida on January 14, I first caught up with Chuck Bangley, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), and fellow SERC intern Michelle Edwards. They had been there since the previous Wednesday, and already had managed to tag four cownose rays and two bull sharks. Matt Ogburn (our fearless leader and principal investigator of SERC’s Fish & Invertebrate Ecology Lab) and Jay Fleming (the professional photographer documenting our expedition) joined the team on Monday night. Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Ecology, From the Field, Interns | 2 Responses »

Double Trouble? Tracking the Growth of Young Oysters Stressed by Acidity and Low Oxygen

Wednesday, January 10th, 2018

by Cosette Larash

The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is one of the most important species in Chesapeake Bay. These shellfish filter the water, their reefs provide shelter for other marine species, and they’re an important seafood resource. But their numbers have hit a historical low due to overfishing, diseases like Dermo, and stressors such as hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen) and acidification (low pH).

Biologists with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) want to find out whether the double stresses of low oxygen and acidification can stunt oyster growth. Studies have shown that juvenile oysters grown under low oxygen are generally smaller than oysters grown under normal oxygen conditions. However, scientists still don’t know how these oysters fare over the long term. The answers could help aquaculture and oyster restoration projects all over the Chesapeake adapt to the often extreme conditions beneath the surface. Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Ecology, Fisheries, Interns, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | Comments Off on Double Trouble? Tracking the Growth of Young Oysters Stressed by Acidity and Low Oxygen

Tidings from the Sunset Coast (3)

Thursday, August 3rd, 2017

Countin’ Crabs at Seadrift Lagoon

by Ryan Greene, science writing intern

Green crabs piled on top of one another.

European green crabs (Carcinus maenas) caught in Seadrift Lagoon (Stinson Beach, Calif.). Credit: Ryan Greene/SERC

The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s (SERC) largest west coast outpost, SERC-West, sits on San Francisco Bay in Tiburon, California. SERC’s main campus is 2,000+ miles away on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. In an attempt to bridge this distance, we’ve launched “Tidings From the Sunset Coast,” a summer series highlighting the work at SERC-West. Our most recent story was a spotlight of our summer interns. This post is about the invasive European green crabs in Seadrift Lagoon, just north of San Francisco. Enjoy!

How many crabs are in the lagoon? This question may sound like the middle-school carnival contest of how many jelly beans are in the jar. But for ecologists at SERC-West, it’s no guessing game—the health of an ecosystem hinges on the answer.

A view across water with houses, a mountain, and hanging mist.

Seadrift Lagoon is about 20 miles north of San Francisco Bay, and it’s said to have the highest density of European green crabs on the West Coast. Credit: Ryan Greene/SERC

Since 2009, Smithsonian scientists have partnered with the University of California, Davis, and Portland State University to tackle a two-clawed problem in Seadrift Lagoon: Carcinus maenas, the invasive European green crab. Seadrift is a small subdivision surrounding an artificial lagoon that sits smack between the Pacific Ocean and Bolinas Lagoon at the northern tip of California’s Stinson Beach. In the early 1990s, green crabs began to take up residence here, and since then they’ve done their fair share of damage.

The primary problems with green crabs in Seadrift are that they’re hungry and there are scads of them. This lagoon houses the highest density of green crabs documented on the West Coast, and they eat a whole lot. In nearby sites, like Tomales Bay and Bodega Bay, green crabs have caused native bivalve populations to plummet, and in some cases they have edged out other native crabs. In Seadrift, the sheer number of green crabs suggests that the impact on the ecosystem may be similarly drastic. That’s why in 2009, scientists at SERC-West, UC Davis, and Portland State started working with community members and citizen science volunteers to remove the crabs from the lagoon. Click to continue »

Share

Posted in California, Ecology, Interns, Invasive Species, SERC Sites and Scenes, Tidings from the Sunset Coast | Comments Off on Tidings from the Sunset Coast (3)
Tags: ,

Tidings from the Sunset Coast (2)

Tuesday, July 25th, 2017

SERC-West Summer Intern Spotlights

by Ryan Greene, science writing intern

An intern in orange waders sprays a net hanging off the back of a boat.

Intern Elena Huynh helps clean a net during SERC’s annual zooplankton survey in San Francisco Bay. Credit: Ryan Greene/SERC

The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s (SERC) main campus is on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. SERC’s largest West Coast outpost, SERC-West, sits on the San Francisco Bay in California. To highlight SERC’s work out west, we’ve started “Tidings from the Sunset Coast,” a summer series about the life and times of SERC-West. Our first post explored California’s wet winter. This post features the stellar interns who are spending their summer at SERC-West.

Interns at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have the chance to work on independent projects while receiving personalized mentorship in a multidisciplinary atmosphere. Some people conduct experiments, others develop educational programs, and others (like me) write about the happenings at SERC. Simply put, SERC internships let you grow in whatever ways you want to be growing!

Check out the spotlights below to see what the interns at SERC-West are up to this summer. Click to continue »

Share

Posted in California, Ecology, Interns, Invasive Species, SERC Sites and Scenes, Tidings from the Sunset Coast | Comments Off on Tidings from the Sunset Coast (2)
Tags: , ,

Food for Thought: Cooking for Invasive Beetles

Friday, August 12th, 2016

by Emily Li, science writing intern

SERC intern Cole Caceres collects Japanese invasive beetles from hormone trap for his experiment

SERC intern Cole Caceres collects Japanese invasive beetles from a hormone trap for his experiment (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) intern Cole Caceres has two passions: science and cooking. He enjoys doing research and adding to the larger body of knowledge, but he hasn’t given up on owning his own restaurant. When he’s not studying nitrogen filtration as a laboratory assistant at the University of California, Davis, he’s probably watching Food Network or frying chicken wings in a sweet soy sauce glaze.

But Caceres found the perfect mix of his interests as an intern with SERC’s Terrestrial Ecology Lab. There, he cooks for invasive Japanese beetles, hoping to help shed light on their dietary preferences so that plant conservation initiatives can be more fully informed—one beetle bite at a time.

Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Ecology, Interns, Interviews, Invasive Species, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on Food for Thought: Cooking for Invasive Beetles

Sink or Swim? Divining the Fate of Life-Giving Wetlands

Friday, August 12th, 2016

By Emily Li, science writing intern

You might have heard of The Giving Tree, a children’s picture book by Shel Silverstein about a boy and a tree. As the boy grew, he began to want more from the tree, and the tree happily gave and gave and gave: her apples, her branches, and even her trunk. While Silverstein’s heartbreaking story was a fiction, the plot is happening in wetlands around the world—and this time, it’s for real. Marshes improve water quality, mitigate hurricane damage, sequester atmospheric carbon, and serve as ideal habitats and nurseries for wildlife. In return, as sea levels rise, they’re in line to be the first casualties.

SERC intern Jefferson Riera shows off his sunburn.

SERC intern Jefferson Riera shows off his sunburn after a day in the field. (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)

That said, marshes are hardly a serene paradise. To Smithsonian Environmental Research Center intern Jefferson Riera, wetlands are ruined shoes caked in mud. Wetlands are wasp stings on his lips. Wetlands are spider webs of scratches from marsh vegetation. Wetlands are sunburns so severe his skin doesn’t match itself anymore.

And yet, he knows that they’re worth protecting. That’s why he, and the rest of SERC’s Ecological Modeling Lab, are working to develop a baseline understanding of local marsh elevation to educate policymakers on the state of wetlands—before their fates are sealed by the sea.

Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on Sink or Swim? Divining the Fate of Life-Giving Wetlands

The Mystery of the Muddy Creek Restoration

Monday, August 8th, 2016
SERC intern Lauren Mosesso takes a water quality reading

SERC intern Lauren Mosesso takes a water quality reading (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)

by Emily Li

One year ago, a team of scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center set out to restore a stream running through its campus in Edgewater, Md. No one ever said it would be simple.

At first glance, the restoration of Muddy Creek seems to be a closed case. Before the project began, the creek’s severely eroded banks were disconnected from its floodplains, turning the stream into a raging river during storms that stripped nutrients from the system and dumped them in the Chesapeake Bay. Now, after a facelift in January, the creek is nearly unrecognizable. Its gentle banks cradle the wide, slow-moving stream littered with leaves, ferns, and an abundance of other plant life. Choruses of croaks fill the air, accompanied by the hum of insects, bird chatter, and the occasional splash of frogs retreating into the cloudy water.

But another layer of mystery is clouding the waters. A mat of red Leptothrix bacteria coats some sections of the site, leading SERC senior scientist Dr. Thomas Jordan and his colleagues to ask a host of new questions. Are the bacteria harmful to the ecosystem, or an important part of the food web? Are they a short-term phenomenon or a permanent fixture to the stream? Exactly how much area do they cover? One SERC intern is hoping to find out.

Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Ecology, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | 1 Response »

Making Noise About Marine Sound Pollution

Thursday, August 4th, 2016
SERC intern Michelle Hauer sets up her soundscape ecology tank experiment

SERC intern Michelle Hauer sets up her soundscape ecology tank experiment (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)

by Emily Li

In high school, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center intern Michelle Hauer fell in love with sound. She discovered the cello, which she insisted on bringing to her internship this summer despite having limited space and housing. But her affair with sound didn’t stop there, even as she was exploring her interest in science. While still in high school, she wrote a paper on the effects of naval sonar on marine mammals. Then, while attending DePaul University, Hauer came across the relatively new field of soundscape ecology through a Chicago-based organization called Chicago Wildsounds—and she hasn’t looked back. Now, as a summer intern in SERC’s Fish and Invertebrate Ecology Lab, Hauer is studying the darker side of sound by researching how noise pollution can affect marine wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay and beyond.

Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Ecology, Fisheries, Interns, Interviews, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | Comments Off on Making Noise About Marine Sound Pollution

An Acid Test for the Coasts

Monday, August 1st, 2016
Graham cleans her equipment of marine organisms

SERC intern Jasmin Graham cleans her equipment of marine organisms (Photo: Emily Li/SERC)

by Emily Li

Watching educational programs like Animal Planet or That’s My Baby—a series that documents pregnant animals—might evoke memories of flickering classroom projectors for most. But for Jasmin Graham, an intern with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), these shows were her childhood. Her love for marine science and wildlife followed her through high school science fairs and university research on shark genetics at the College of Charleston. Now, at an internship with SERC’s Ocean Acidification Lab, she studies acidification not in the open ocean, but in a far more dramatic arena, where the marine celebrities she grew up with may be at risk.

Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Extreme Weather, Fisheries, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, SERC Sites and Scenes, Water Quality | 1 Response »

How Clay Caterpillars Help Unlock Biodiversity’s Secrets

Friday, July 22nd, 2016
Anna Nordseth surveys clay caterpillars for damage in BiodiversiTREE plot

Anna Nordseth surveys clay caterpillars for predation damage in BiodiversiTREE plot (Credit: Emily Li/SERC)

by Emily Li

Anna Nordseth, a summer intern for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Terrestrial Ecology Lab, wasn’t surprised to be taking work home the first week and a half of her internship. What she wasn’t expecting was to be making nearly a thousand clay caterpillars.

Each caterpillar began life as a half gram of green clay, with a wire spine and ends rolled into a worm-like silhouette. By the time Nordseth had finished—several podcasts and three seasons of House of Cards later—she had 900 caterpillars and the hand cramps to prove it. But she was ready to begin her research.

Click to continue »

Share

Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, From the Field, Interns, Interviews, Land Use, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on How Clay Caterpillars Help Unlock Biodiversity’s Secrets

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Shorelines