First Update!

The interns jumped right into an exciting mix of job-shadowing activities during their first week at Makah Fisheries. Their activities mainly focused around learning about the work that is done at Makah Fisheries to manage their local resources and protect the health of the community. During the week they shadowed the Air Quality team as they completed their routine monitoring, participated in a marine mammal survey in the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Marine Mammal Program, helped out with habitat monitoring at Lake Ozette, learned about the Salmon Management Program, investigated a potential Dungeness crab die-off on Shi Shi beach, and got a thorough introduction to water quality sampling processes. The crab die-off was a great opportunity to see how science can answer real-world questions about the world around us. It was also a crash course in the importance of developing sampling methods that match the questions you are trying to answer – a lesson that each intern will use as they continue to work on their independent research projects.

The interns also spent a few moments during this busy first week to learn about their independent research projects and start to work on the skills they will need to complete them successfully by the end of the program. It was a busy week!

Their second week was spent learning about more exciting field work techniques with staff members and visiting researchers. The interns collected data for the čibu·d bait study on Monday, which gave Kaeden a chance to see some of the context around the data set he will be using for his independent research project. Monday afternoon the interns were visited by Jackie Lindsay from COASST (Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team) to learn about conducting seabird surveys and the important ways that data is used to monitor overall ocean health. Working with COASST was also a great opportunity to get a feel for citizen science projects and the importance of standardizing scientific data collection. The rest of the week was spent helping out with olive snail surveys conducted by the Marine Ecology program on local beaches and learning how to use a beach seine to sample eelgrass beds with Matt Damiano from the Northwest Indian Fish Commission. Angelina will continue to use the beach seine to sample eelgrass beds in order to evaluate the species richness and diversity for her independent research project. In between all of that activity, the interns also learned about performing necropsies on River otters, and visited the Makah Cultural and Research Center Museum.