My first few days have been spent mostly on getting acquainted with everything I'll be doing for the next ten weeks. I've been reading papers related to my project with Peter Brewer and his fellow researchers, Peters Walz and Ed Pelzter - some are broad overviews, while others discuss small details of the methods I'll be using in lab. I've also been learning how to set up, calibrate, and run the laser Raman spectrometer, which is the instrument that I'll be using to study the chemistry that goes on in the deep ocean (carbon dioxide and methane being primary focuses). And finally, I've started to learn how to use MATLAB... no major issues with it yet so I can't complain!

It's been a good first week (hasn't it flown by?!), hope you all agree.

I've jumped right into lab work, spending a lot of time with my mentor to go through the procedures I'll be using for my project. So far, I've prepared reagents and plates for the lab work we'll be doing in the future. I have enjoyed meeting with MBARI staff (sometimes, as I get lost in the hallways...), and am excited about learning/contributing along with our awesome group of interns!

I am working with Francisco Chavez and Gernot Friederich, analyzing the carbon chemistry datasets from the mooring stations in the Monterey Bay as well as from the wave gliders. The long-term mooring stations have collected an extensive amount of data over the last twenty years on pH, air/sea pCO2, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and salinity to name a few. This week, I worked with a small two week dataset from one of the wave gliders and got familiar with how to use standard oceanographic packages like CO2SYS and the Gibbs Seawater Toolbox for calculating carbon system and thermodynamic parameters in seawater.

This first week has been a load of information to process and it's been fun so far. I started developing my project premise this week with Danelle Cline. We've decided to do a comparison of human and computer program's abilities to identify specific organisms within the video's taken over the last 20-some years. I've been reading background papers on comparable papers studying plankton identification as well as playing with te VARS identification library.
Other than my project research, I've been slowly getting accustomed to using a Mac and finding my way around Canyon Head and the MBARI buildings. I've been enjoying meeting my neighbors around my cubicle and loving the never ending supply of coffee.
Excited for this 1st 3-day weekend that we have and looking forward to the activities we have planned for the upcoming weeks.

This first week has been really cool.  Orientation was great, I was especially impressed that we stayed on time for everything and at the end of the day I felt like I could figure out my way around (by week 3 or 4).  I met with my mentor the first day and we discussed project ideas with Yanwu Zhang and Sergey Frolov.  I may be developing a project similar to what one of my former labmates at MLML worked on during her time at MBARI.  Since then I met with Dorota Kolberg to discuss programing, and we mostly looked at CTD and UDAS data sets, though we also looked briefly at some AUV data. We also talked Matlab script and data presentation techniques, which was kind of fun because I had one of those moments where you realize you know a lot more about something than you originally though you did.  I still think I have a lot to learn, so I'm happy for that opportunity.  I think it's super cool and a little intimidating that AUV data files are massive.  I'm really excited to start working with the data so I can ask questions of it to see what we can say about bloom and nutrient dynamics via the available physical oceanographic data.  I'm also looking forward to applying the data analysis skills I've learned at MLML during the past two semesters and becoming a Matlab wizard by the end of the summer. The rest of my time this week I have been reading papers related to AUV mechanics and data analysis and better familiarizing myself with the facilities and operations at MBARI.

This first week has been just fantastic with a lot to process (in term of information and food!). I met most of the members of the communication team and I settled down nicely in my office. Our first big meeting will be next Wednesday so in the meantime I am preparing this meeting. So I first drafted a timeline of this project:
1. Evaluate the MBARI social media situation today (pre-evaluation)
2. Clearly define MBARI SM goals
3. Design strategies fitting our goals
4. Apply the strategies
5. Re-evaluate the MBARI social media situation (post-evaluation)
6. Compare pre and post-evaluation to see if our strategies helped to reach our goals
7. Conclusion, recommendation, future direction

This timeline should be applied for the 4 social media used today by MBARI (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Tumblr).
Then I started evaluating the situation of each social media. I started with Facebook and dove into all their metrics and try to understand their meanings and focus on the ones that seem the most important and significant to me. I am now doing the same for Twitter but since Twitter is providing very few metrics and I looking at additional applications providing those statistics for Twitter account. I also found websites providing advises concerning the use of social media for non-profit (still need to read most of them) to give us some direction for our future strategies. I also thought about different strategies that I would like to test on different social media.

So in a nutshell, an intense and exciting first week, can't wait for the second to start!

I've accomplished alot in these first four days. Most of my time is spent working on mounting various equipment to the top surface of the buoy. This serves two purposes: 1) allowing me to re-familiarize myself with Solidworks and various machining equipment, and 2) preparing the PowerBuoy for presentation to the Board of Directors on Tuesday. I am particularly excited for deployment, the week after next. There is also much to accomplish before then. I have been assigned my own project, but have yet to start on it. My task is to design and then construct an acoustically triggered recovery system for the heaviest and most cumbersome component of the PowerBuoy; the 18' x 10' steel plate sitting 55 meters below the ocean surface. Seems challenging enough.

First of all, I would like to thank George and Linda for helping us have a very smooth startup. This first week has been fabulous with wonderful work environment at MBARI and our awesome group of interns. I have two mentors: Jim Bellingham and Sergey Frolov, and I am primarily working with Sergey. He's moved to NRL, so I might not be able to see him in person very often. But, we've been having a daily meeting on the phone so far, which is great and has been working out so well. Sergey developed an algorithm of surface flow velocity prediction based on historic HF Radar data and tested using the data collected at Monterey Bay. I brought a 5 year long HF Radar dataset for the ocean off the coast of Georgia, which was collected by Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. So, we are trying to figure out whether the data I have can be used to apply his algorithm. Currently, I am working on visualization of the data using MATLAB and also reading his paper. Hopefully things work out well so the transition to the next step can be smooth. We will eventually aim at running the prediction algorithm inside autonomous underwater vehicles.

This has been quite a busy week, I like busy! Between orientation, settling into my office, and getting started on my project there hasn't been a dull moment. Orientation day was a blast... and filling! I look forward to the social events put on by the MBARI employees (cookie breaks, BBQs, etc) and getting to know my fellow interns. I am working with Leslie Rosenfeld in the CeNCOOS lab. I spent most of this week getting familiar with my workspace, updating the computer, and reviewing literature pertaining to my project. We also had a meeting with Scott Hamilton (MLML) to discuss data sources and the utility of my project. My project goal is to aggregate historical time-series oceanographic data (sea surface temp, HF radar, chlorophyll, COAMPS) into 1-3 day averages and make them available for analysis in GIS. The scope of this project is the offshore area of the entire California coast! The products will serve as new variables for ecologists in evaluating factors that influence the distributions of marine animals. The challenge will be learning MATLAB so that I can create the bridge between oceanographic and ecological analyses. There is a lot to do in the remaining 9 weeks!

I have had a great week so far. Thank you to Linda, George, Chad, and the other interns for making me feel so welcomed!

When I first arrived at MBARI, my project goals weren't entirely clear. I knew I would be working on something to do with the software and electrical systems on the swFOCE (Shallow Water Free Ocean Carbon Enrichment Experiment). This week, my mentor (Chad Kecy) and I decided on my specific focus for the project, which is to develop software for the swFOCE's Low Voltage Load Switcher. In a nutshell, this device prevents its accompanying scientific instrument from destroying itself by pulling too much current or being supplied with too little voltage. It also interfaces with the swFOCe's ground fault detection board, which detects low-impedance paths to sea water in the case of a pressure housing leak.

Most of my time this week has been spent familiarizing myself with the swFOCE's existing hardware and software. This includes other boards in the system, including the CPU board (which consolidates data from the chassis boards and sends it to the FOCE stack) and the environmental board (a daughter board which monitors pressure, temperature, humidity, etc. inside the housing). It is important for me to learn how these boards were originally designed to interface. The load switcher will communicate with the CPU in a manner similar to that of the environmental board. Therefore, I am modeling the load switcher's software after that of the environmental board, since it has already been written and tested.

I've also been familiarizing myself with the individual components of the load switcher. Most importantly, this includes the microcontroller that serves as the "brain" of the board – the PIC24FJ256GA106. I spent much of the day yesterday and Tuesday reading the PIC24FJ256GA106's datasheet, as well as the datasheets of some of the other important components (the I/O expanders, digital potentiomenters, and anaolog-to-digital converters). I've also been looking over other documentation related to the board, such as previous interns' papers and electrical schematics.

This morning, I have been working on installing the compiler and IDE I will be using to write the board's software. After the developer and compiler are set up, I will begin looking at the code written for the environmental board in more detail. I may have to wait a while before I can begin coding for the load switcher, because the programmer (an ICD 3) that Chad ordered for me is still in the mail. For now, I will be kept quite busy just trying to decipher the code that the previous intern wrote for the environmental board.

That's about it! Thanks again to everyone who has made my first week such a great one!

Sorry to write it a little late.
This first short week has been incredible. The people so friendly and the other internship so lovely. Excuse me if sometime I don't understand what are you talking about.
I work with my Mike Mccann. My project have two parts, the first one is work with the STOQS system (Spatial Temporal Oceanographic Query System) and the other one is compare two outputs from the Monterey Bay ROMS model, one from JPL and another from USCS.
I am very glad to be here and to work during two month and a half in a place so unique as MBARI.

This week was mainly spent finishing a couple things from last month because we are going to have our big video lab meeting next Tuesday to discuss what new things I will do this summer. I worked on the data quality page of the Deep Sea Guide that I will be spending the first couple weeks finishing. This page is really only relevant to the video lab, so it won't be available externally. We discussed possibly making the Deep Sea Guide external this summer, which would be amazing! I had my final yesterday morning, which is why I'm late, sorry about that!

I want to apologize for being late with this post:

WOW! What an incredible week!
I am so excited to be a participating in this internship with all of you, incredible people!
I still cannot believe that I am here at all!

My mentors in the Geology (Submarine Volcanism) lab are amazing! Dr. David Clague and his team: Jenny Paduan, Julie Martin, and Ryan Portner, have made me feel at-home in their labs, and have already showed and taught me so much! It is an honor to have such great mentors!

Dr. Clague had to leave town for a couple of days, but his team introduced me to the new seafloor data collected during the Western Flyers's recent expedition to the Gulf of California. The expedition involved a detailed sampling of the Alarcon Ridge and Seamount, as a new hydrothermal vent community was discovered there on this voyage!

Jenny and Julie gave me tutorials and introductions to the incredible seafloor map images of the Alarcon Ridge that the they created GIS. Julie showed me how to grab images from the video footage from the ROV dives. Ryan showed me a few of the plunge cores taken of the seafloor sediment taken during the dives, and introduced to me to the descriptive process of the cores. He also showed me many of the rocks that were collected during the dives. Amazing!

This week consisted of seeing and doing things that were familiar, yet VERY different from my previous experiences!

I believe that my summer project will be involve the utilization of the seafloor map images, photos, and rock samples to discern the two major types of basaltic flows of the Alarcon Ridge. I am so excited! We will narrow down the details of the project when I have a chance to meet with Dr. Clague again on Monday.

I want to take this moment to thank George and Linda for being such wonderful coordinators, and all MBARI personnel for such a warm welcome this week!

I look forward to seeing you all, on Monday morning!

-Patti

Sorry for the late post:

Today I believe the method I will use for the remainder of the summer has finally been perfected. I am looking at corals in the Monterey Bay Canyon and on the Davidson Seamount: specifically primnoids, paragorgia, and isidids. I'm also looking at type of substrate the corals are adhered to and their size classes to help determine where are the areas of highest population density. After a slow start, I've learned how to use the VARS annotation and query systems and am now adding information and annotations that I will query later for physical data. It's super interesting being able to watch videos of the deep sea! 

Thank you so much to Linda, George, Lonny, Nancy, all the interns, and all the MBARI staff for being amazingly supportive! I'm very excited about the rest of the summer.