John Ryan and I confirmed my conclusion that LISST-HOLO images from SIMZ cruises last fall consistently underrepresent the plankton community. We are currently exploring ecological stories from Julio's Gulper molecular results and the AUV physical data. I hope to add this section of the project to my presentation. John and I also had the great pleasure of meeting with Mary Silver yesterday to discuss our progress. She is a shining star!

Semi-frustrating week, didn't get the results we were hoping for on Monday which means I won't have time to make E. coli grow. But I've been working on the paper and presentation, which is a pretty good way to see how much I've been able to get done this summer. I'll be doing lab work up until the presentation, and am crossing my fingers that a new round of sequencing finally gives me the sequence data I've been missing.

As much as I don't want the internship to end, it feels good to wrap up my project and see it all come together in my paper and presentation. Rich shed some light on how to read a mask matrix into the C++ code, which was the final step in fixing the logic errors I discovered last Friday. This weekend will entail a lot of practicing!

Presentation done. Paper writing time...

I have produced haplotype networks for three genes that I will present as preliminary results. Tomorrow I will try to phase the nuclear genes and add some more information. My final sequencing plates will be ready on Saturday, but I am not sure whether I have enough time to run more sophisticated analyses before Wednesday.

This has been the best week of the summer for me because I've been at sea and it's been amazing. We've been exploring with the ROV 12 hours each day, deploying respiration experiments and searching for deep sea cephalopods to collect. In the evenings we trawl and it's so much fun to see all the weird life that comes up in the nets. Mike Vecchione, a cephalopod expert from the Smithsonian, is on board and has been great to talk with. A representative from Tentacles is also on board collecting for the aquarium. I'm collecting Histioteuthis eye species that I can use for histology and microspectrophotometry after the internship. We've caught 7 so far so I'm very happy. The only downside to being at sea is that I've been busy and not had as much time to work on the paper and presentation as I would on land, but it will get there. Can't wait to hear about everyone's projects on wednesday!

So managed to get my presentation made ready to test out in the Forum after Jon's presentation (well done by the way). Had a run through of it with Esther Thursday afternoon which went down well, especially for pretty much the first run-through. A bit over time and some changes to make after the feedback but if all else fails I have a talk I can give. Having another run through on Monday with Esther. Made a good start on the report and have finished the methods and am most of the way through the results. I usually don't like doing it so the presentation is made first, as I never really have all of my arguments together until the report is finished but all the key figures I had already made so it wasn't too bad putting the presentation together first.

Also started discussing the plan for the October cruise and data that would be useful to collect to carry on with the project and back in Southampton - has meant that my 'future work' section may actually become a reality!

Had a hart time pulling myself away from the test tank and modeling - just so much more fun than writing and presentations. But alas I'm off and running on those fronts as well.

Where did the 10 weeks go?

Well done Jon.
Have had another eureka moment today, making two in total this week.  So anyone that saw me walking the hall ways today with a (more than usual) puzzled look, might have been later rewarded with an orgasmic, "OH YES!" emerging from building A.  Going back to basics and working things through step by step pays dividends.  All will be revealed on wednesday.....  Discussion on paper in full swing, first version almost complete, proper sciency sounding version ready in the wings.

That calls for a beer.

Today I did a practice run for my protein extraction and analyses for my cells. Tomorrow is the final sampling day, I will be sampling my replete cultures and collecting samples for DIN, POC/N, and POP analysis. I presented in front of my lab on Tuesday... or maybe it was Monday.. I can't remember, I've practically lived here this week so the days just kind of blur together. Anyways, I'm happy to announce that I will NOT have to come in on the weekend for this first time in a long while! Yay things are finally starting to come together.

Life at sea changes a man...
Just kidding. Things on the Western Flyer have been amazing. The Doc Rickkets ROV has been seeing some really cool stuff deep down. Lots of cool squid and jellies. Makes me regret that I have to work on my presentation/paper in the meantime.

I'm in the process of crunching figures for my final presentation. It's mostly done save for those parts. I have a feeling I won't have time to write the paper until after the presentation Sad face.

We'll see. Good luck everyone, and good job Jon!

Everything is going great. I have a lot to do this weekend though to be ready for next week. My cultures are acting up a little bit but they are almost done with their grow out. Meaning I will have a lot more time next week to write and get ready for the presentation! Looks like I will also get sunday off!!! First day off I think since the weekend of fourth of july!!! woop woop!

loooooonnnnnnnnngggggg hours this week. working on data analysis and presentation. Haven't even started the paper yet. Cool things are coming out of my data! I converted voltages from 9 sensors into pH values, separated each time stamp into half hour segments in the day, and have made the following representation to show the means of these half hour segments over 14 days. 1-5 are mooring locations from intertidal to offshore

I'm a bit late posting this week.  I've had a few minor problems in the last two weeks that have made me consider a pacemaker, but I have now managed to get all of my annotations out of VARS, converted to 'real' measurements accounting for the Canadian perspective grid (not a reference to my nationality), and am merrily plotting some statistics.  I will soon join the other interns in writing and presentation mode.

This week I have also been trying to take a long-term view, beyond the intern paper and presentation, and try to finish other tasks that could be useful to long-term collaboration with MBARI and my PhD. I had an excellent discussion with Linda this week going through the Station M Deep-Sea Guide with my Porcupine Abyssal Plain species guide. We have been looking at morphotypes in each that were unclassified, and have made some improvements to both guides (this is a reasonable comparison since both areas are abyssal).

Since others have been posting pictures, I thought I'd share a couple of fauna from Station M that have been on our radar this week. The first is a sea cucumber that has sparked some contention - it looks like the genus Paroriza (as named at the PAP), but not like Paroriza (as named at Stn M), but may also be more similar to Psychronaetes hanseni.

 
The second photo is a Cnidarian without a name that burrows and creates tracks in the sediment (rather than attaching to hard substrate).

I think I may have singlehandedly destroyed Building B extension's tea allocation this weekend.  Does the correlation between caffeine consumption and productivity imply causation?  Discuss.

This week I edited all possible graphs, I did all the changes that were suggested for the presentation, and it is completed. I am also working on the writing report.

This week I finished up the last of my designs and am working on my presentation and paper. Everything looks good and now its time to just write write write. I can't believe we are headed into the final week already!