Halfway to my Master’s!

11 June 2018 | emilyanndavidson

Hey everyone! Just a quick update for now – what a crazy, busy year it’s been!

In a nutshell, in this past year I’ve:

Traveled to so many new places: New England, Quebec, Iceland, and some new cities out west
Made it halfway to finding a geocache in all 50 states
Moved from California to Asheville to Raleigh
Completed half of the classes for my Master of Arts in Teaching – Secondary Science… and learned, honestly, much more than I could have ever anticipated!
Become a bit of a hobbyist geologist thanks to Earthcaches – below is some amethyst I found on Catalina Island

I’ll write a longer update later, as I’m hoping for a relaxing summer teaching kayaking to daycampers with the city of Raleigh! Are you in the triangle? Lets meet up!

Headin’ down south to the land of the pine…

2 June 2017 | emilyanndavidson

I’m giving up the island life (for now) and returning to North Carolina for the next couple years! It was a hard goodbye, but there’s big things on the horizon…

The goodbye committee at Toyon, and Morgan motoring me to the ferry

Catalina Island from my airplane window. I’m not ashamed to admit I was crying as I was flying away.

I’m returning to the homeland to earn my Masters of Arts in Teaching to become a high school science teacher! My goal is to focus on chemistry and environmental sciences. I start classes this fall, but I’ll be bouncing around for the summer, visiting old friends and new places. See ya soon, NC!

The Life Aquarist

10 April 2017 | emilyanndavidson

This fall I became an aquarist at CIMI! What is an aquarist? It’s hard to define… but it’s a position that revolves around our aquariums we use for teaching invertebrate, algae, fish, and shark lessons.

Students explore our shark barge. They get to pet several native species of sharks and rays – one of the best ways to get kids over a fear of sharks!

We’re an intimate team of four instructors who rotate week-long shifts, and teach the rest of the time. At the beginning of each season we work together to set up and break down our aquarium systems and collect animals, but most of the year we work independently. Just because we have solo shifts doesn’t mean we fly solo – we still work together to solve tough problems or collect on scuba.

The AQ crew! From left to right: KO, Crash, MoMo, and me (aka Ed or EmD)

Most of our daily work looks like this…

Scrubbing out the big octopus tank.

Or this…

Scrubbing out the big ol’ fish tank. The confused fish were taking cover behind my legs.

So, lots and lots of scrubbing and cleaning to keep the animals healthy and the displays looking nice. But, we also get to spend a ton of time out in the ocean, collecting animals and algae for our educational aquariums!

Me with a Giant Black Sea Hare (GBSH). These are the largest gastropod (slug or snail) in the world, weighing up to 14 pounds! They’re also supremely huggable critters, and eat an insane amount of algae. Photo credit: Jorie H.

Slugs are easy to catch… Fish, not so much. They’re a lot smarter and faster than you think! Sometimes nature makes collecting really easy, like when we had thousands of pelagic red crabs wash up on our beach this week!

These little guys are the Snickers bars of the ocean… Everyone wants to eat them! Many baleen whale species feed on them, as well as tons of fish and invertebrates. I collected them right off the beach – their antics bring a lot of entertainment to our touch tanks! They also provide a stimulating hunt for our sharks and other creatures, which don’t get much live food in captivity.

Which, conveniently, brings me to feeding! Our critters are fed a steady diet of squid and fish, but our octopus gets live crabs. We make a special “shake” for our filter-feeding invertebrates – algae, saltwater, fish/squid, and nutritional supplements are blended together. Yum!

Sometimes AQ work requires some weird moments of innovation… like pulling apart squid with a hammer.

Now, I want to introduce you to some of our incredible creatures!

Lil’ baby red octopus! Check out those lovely arms.

The residents of our smallest tank, formally known as Tiny Town. the yellow ones are juvenile blacksmith; the neon blue ones are bluebanded gobies, one of my favorite species.

A Melibe s. sea slug opens wide for lunch at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. We have smaller ones in our aquaria, this one’s a monster!

We have some more sedentary residents as well – meet our incredible algae! Believe or not, algae and plankton produce approximately 70% of the oxygen we breath – trees only produce about 10%.

Red and brown algae in a tidepool in the bay.

A brittle star crawls to cover in a kelp holdfast. Holdfasts are the “roots” of the algae, anchoring them to the seafloor. This holdfast (roughly 18″ across) contained over 60 individual brittle stars. The nooks and crannies are perfect hiding places!

Our gregarious two-spot octopus, Nala, shows off her suckers and false eyespot she uses to intimidate predators. Her actual eye is white with a black horizontal pupil – can you find it?

Only a few hours old, a juvenile swell shark calmly peers out of her tank.

If you look closely, you can hundreds of tiny bumps on the pups. These are dermal denticles, literally “skin teeth”. These act as a form of protection, and also help sharks swim faster through the water.

Kellet’s whelks in invertebrate lab. The algae growing on their shells provides excellent camouflage.

A Kellet’s whelk uses its massive proboscis to feed on a tasty squid. Incredible!

Seemingly annoyed yet curious, a two-spot octopus peers out of her den.

A cluster of strawberry anemones add a lovely burst of color to the tanks.

One of our grumpier residents – a southern kelp crab feasts on codium, a green algae.

Seemingly on high alert, this nudibranch actually has no eyes or ears. They can sense light and dark, but primarily use their senses of touch, taste, and smell to navigate.

A coronado “crowned” sea urchin uses its tube feet to crawl its way around the tank. In the center, you can see its five-pronged beak, also known as Aristotle’s lantern. They use this magnificent piece of engineering to feed on algae.

A distant relative of sea urchins, a fragile rainbow star also uses suction cup tube feet for locomotion.

In order to keep all these critters alive, we have a set of pumps pulling water up from 70 ft deep in our bay. The water then runs through a series of sumps (water reservoirs) and a filter before going into the tanks. The water then flows out into our drainage ditch and then back into the ocean. The constant flow of seawater is essential for keeping the animals cool and oxygenated. A big part of our job is maintaining these systems – I’ve learned A TON about plumbing and aquaria!

The glamorous behind-the-scenes of our aquariums. The big tarp-covered boxes are sumps that store water that is pumped through the sand filter (the big round thing) and then into the tanks.

Anyways, back to the animals…

Another shot of Tiny Town and one of my favorite species – Bluebanded Gobies. How many fish can you spot? I count eight.

Our baby two-spot octopus, Kala, saying hello.

A juvenile horn shark snacking on strawberry anemones.

A California Moray Eel peers out from behind some algae.

We build habitats to fit the needs of our creatures – our eel tank includes a series of PVC shelters meant to mimic eel’s natural hiding spots.

The best way to start the day as an aquarist – with a bowl full of blue tangs and clownfish!

Morgan and Katie enjoying sunrise coffee on the boat – a little Team AQ bonding!

Catalina Island just after sunrise, a few miles off shore.

One climate to another: Ketchikan adventures

30 October 2016 | emilyanndavidson

Hello everyone! I have some solid internet access, and it’s time to cram my whole incredible Alaskan summer into one blog post!

I don’t even know where to start – the Ketchikan climate was the extreme opposite of Catalina. Even after visiting delightfully rainy Seattle, I was overwhelmed by the lushness of the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska.

Rainforest at Ward Lake

As you walk through the rainforest, the rich, loamy ground and plethora of needles and leaf litter beneath your feet softly give way, with the impression that you’re almost walking on something very much alive. And that you are – moss covers the ground, and saplings sprout wherever light peaks through the canopy.

Refuge Cove sunset

The shoreline is also stunning – the magnificent Alaskan Inside Passage surrounds Ketchikan, located on Revillagigedo Island. Most of the beaches are pebbly or rocky, and experience tidal swings upward of 18 feet – more on the magnificent tidepools and creatures later! These beaches also set the scene for many a barbecue and bonfire at lowtide, nestled in among the logs that had washed ashore. Logging and salmon are at the heart of Ketchikan – the town would have never existed without the incredible natural resources of the archipelago.

Campfire at Bugges Beach

During one of these beach bonfire gatherings shortly after my arrival, I saw my first humpback whale surfacing a few hundred yards off shore… It was cruising slowly along, blasting plumes of water in the air as it exhaled, dipping back under, only to create another awesome blast a few minutes later. Finally, it took one last deep breath, raised its fluke in the air, and slid down deep beneath the surface. I was overwhelmed by the presence of such a massive, mysterious creature, and my friend Shelby captured the range of feelings I experienced as it graced us with its brief foray to the surface:

The many emotions of seeing my first humpback whale. Photo credit: Shelby P.

Speaking of humpbacks… A few weeks later I was graced with the best day of my life thus far: we were preparing to lead a tour, when we got word that a humpback was steadily cruising towards our snorkel site. We hustled our guests down to the shore, and hopped into the water just in time to have a humpback surface about 20-30 ft away. Though the visibility underwater that day was equivalent to pea soup, as it came up for a quick breath, we were able to see it’s massive rostrum (snout) surface. I could see every sensitive hair, its baleen, eye, and blowhole as it took a quick look at us and disappeared beneath the surface. And I. Totally. Lost. It. It was an out of body experience, I was high on adrenaline and endorphins. I kicked out as fast as I could, screaming “THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE” at the top of my lungs and crying. I almost lost my voice. I was on a high of the rest of the day; I almost couldn’t function I was so enthralled. And a few moments later, we were blessed by the acrobatics of the whale as it breached over and over out of the water. My boss captured the moment:

The best day of my life. Just look at that humpback. I’m to the far right with my hand on the red lifeguard tube.

Photo credit: Fred D.

I was also lucky enough to see orcas twice during my time in Ketchikan, but both while I was sadly stuck on solid ground (the joys of bipedalism). The first orcas I sighted during my lunch break at the snorkel shop – jumping and playing as they headed out to sea. My second orca sighting was a few weeks later when my dad came to visit. During the summer the sun rises around 4 am, and we had woke up before dawn to look for bears and eagles catching salmon at low tide. On our way back to town, as we were passing Bugges Beach, I saw a massive dorsal fin slicing through the water out of the corner of my eye. We immediately turned around, hopped out of the car, and watched silently as a pod of about 8 orcas cruised past, and then began to slap their pectoral fins and breach and play as they headed out to sea. It was another blessing to see these incredibly intelligent creatures in the wild.

Photo credit (I wish I had the opportunity to photograph these incredible animals up close)

If you want to learn more about orcas, their intellegence, and their imprtance to the ecosystem, I highly recommend reading Listening to Whales. I just finished this book a couple months ago, and it was life-changing. An incredible memoir of a woman’s life with whales.

Going from some of the biggest creatures on earth to some of the smallest – the cold Alaskan waters are perfect for many interesting marine invertebrates. One of my personal favorites that we often found on tour and when I went tidepooling is the humble leather chiton. These little critters are one of many species of chitons, and belong to a grouping of animals known as molluscs. They’re related to snails, octopus, sea slugs, mussels, and abalone, just to name a few.

A leather chiton patiently waiting for high tide

Now, the reason I think chitons are so cool is because inside their little mouths, there is a tongue-like organ called a radula covered in rows and rows of little teeth that they use to scrape algae off rocks. The crazy thing is, their teeth are covered in magnetite, an iron-based material that makes them extremely strong. Thus far, they are the only animal we know of that has metal teeth. Pretty hardcore! Some scientists think they may even be able to use this magnetite to sense the earth’s geomagnetic field in order to navigate among the rocks and tidepools. Along with other intertidal creatures, chitons have adapted to being submerged half the time, and high and dry the other half. Southeast Alaska’s extreme tides mean that twice a day, the waterline drops up to about 18 feet. Creatures like chitons, mussels, and even sea anemones have either adapted to seal in water or to carefully select a place to attach where they’ll stay submerged in a tidepool.

Mussels at Bugges Beach during low tide

Of course, I couldn’t spend time in Southeast Alaska without doing some fishing! Ketchikan is the salmon capital of the world, after all, but there is also a bounty of halibut, rockfish, and many other tasty critters too. Choose sustainable seafood – catch it yourself, don’t eat farmed salmon, and most of all, check out the sustainable seafood guide (updated regularly) to protect our oceans!

My boss, Fred, generously took my coworkers and I out fishing on his boat. I didn’t get the big ‘but, but I did snag a tasty quillback rockfish! These guys are a lot of work to filet, but still delicious. They also look a little alien, or as my grandma referred to them, “those big ugly fish” (don’t worry rockfish, I still think you’re beautiful).

Me and my two quillback rockfish! To be fair, I only hooked and reeled one, the other one I just reeled up.

Photo credit: Fred D.

Fred had a little more luck and hooked a nice halibut, which he then skillfully showed us how to filet. Here he’s just cut out the cheeks of the halibut, a local delicacy:

Fred expertly filleting a halibut

This was the first time I caught my own fish, filleted it, and it cooked it myself. I’m pretty proud of the result – rockfish parmesan!

The final result of my rockfish: rockfish parmesan!

In addition to all the animals in the sea, the sky and forest hosted quite a collection too! All around Ketchikan, you can see the influence of these creatures on the local culture and industry. Murals and artwork inspired by nature abound, but the traditional artwork of the indigenous peoples of Southeast Alaska were what struck me the most. In the heart of downtown stands the Chief Johnson totem pole, which tells the story of Fog Woman, the mother of salmon, and is topped by a mythical bird, Kajuk, who overlooks the town:

Kajuk, a mythical bird of local legend overlooking downtown Ketchikan

You don’t have to look to legends to see incredible feathered creatures though! Here, bald eagles are aptly referred to as “Alaskan pigeons”, and at any given time, you can hear them whistling to one another or see them gliding over head. On tour, we could get within a few feet of them as they scrounged for tasty bites on the rocks at low tide. These incredible birds have a 6-7 ft wingspan and are incredible to watch as they dive and swoop within inches of one another when scrabbling over fish.

Bald eagles chasing herring scraps from the Aleutian Ballad

Shelby and I had to do the most touristy thing before we left Ketchikan – take a tour on the Aleutian Ballad, of the show Deadliest Catch fame. It was a nice cruise along the calm Inside Passage where we learned a lot about the commercial fisheries for halibut, crab, and prawns in the region. I do have to say, my favorite part was when they tossed out herring for the bald eagles (permission for this was granted by the local tribes), and dozens of bald eagles burst out of the forest to grab up the tasty (to them) fish.

The ship of “Deadliest Catch” fame

The Aleutian Ballad also had a touch tank on board with a few local creatures. However, in my opinion, the touch tanks can’t beat the natural beauty and diversity of the tidepools on the shoreline! I did get to get up close and personal with a live prawn for the first time though! Fun fact: shrimp are omnivorous, prawns are carnivorous.

Prawns are friends, not food!

Shelby and I with the “Deadliest Catch” crew

As I mentioned earlier, my dad also got the chance to come visit me and see the great state of Alaska himself! It was awesome to be able to share this experience with my adventure partner from day 1!

Dad and I at Salmon Falls

I even managed to squeeze him into a wetsuit and take him on tour in our chilly waters! We had a ton of fun as it was a small, relaxed tour group that morning, and I think he gained a new appreciation for how much work it is to get people into super thick wetsuits and into that chilly water!

The two of us post-snorkeling, all cozy in our 7 mm thick suits!

Since I was always leading tours, I didn’t get the chance to photograph the unbelievable life beneath the surface. But, later that week, we took a trip to Knudson Cove and I spotted one of my favorite sea creatures on a pier piling – a nudibranch! There are over 2000 unique species of these flamboyant sea slugs, and the Alaskan species are some of the largest.

False lemon peel nudibranch at Knudson Cove

Dad’s Alaskan adventure wouldn’t be complete without some fishing, so we braved one of the rainiest, nastiest days of the summer to fish for some halibut and salmon.

Braving some gnarly weather for father-daughter bonding

Now, there’s a reason why they call it fishing and not catching. Either the gnarly weather or our determination drove the fish away, but we did emerge victorious with one salmon!!! I turned it into a tasty sauteed filet with chickpea curry and rice.

Salmon, sea –> table!

At the same time, some salmon were already making their way up the creek in the center of town to their birth sites, where they would ultimately spawn and die. A salmon has to overcome many obstacles to reach it’s final destination, journeying from the sea to calm headwaters requires most of their strength and energy, and predators lurk around every rock and eddy. In the sea, humans, seals, sharks, orcas, and birds are always hunting for these nutrious creatures. In the streams, they still can’t escape! Though legally protected from humans once they’re in the creek, seals will still hunt them at high tide, and bears and eagles are always eager to catch them. Natural predators aren’t the only threats to these fish however – construction and logging have created barriers like dams that the fish can not pass, and runoff into the streams can be extremely harmful to the fish and their fry (young fish). Fish ladders are a creative engineering solution to allow fish to get past some of these barriers while conserving their energy.

Why is it so important for these fish to reach their headwaters? Salmon will typically only spawn where they were spawned, and they are essential to the ecosystem, as well as a major food source for humans. After they spawn and die, their bodies are reabsorbed by the forest, providing essential nutrients to the plants and animals around the streams. You can actually look at the tree rings in these forests and tell which years had good salmon runs – more salmon = a bigger growth ring. Once the young salmon grow large enough, they head downstream, into the ocean, where they will grow and act as a major part of the marine food web – feeding humans and other large predators such as orca.

Salmon heading up Ketchikan Creek to spawn

Dad and I also explored many other parts of the island…

Thunderbird, whale, father, daughter at the entrance to Totem Bight State Park.

Dad was really hungry… Trying to steal a bear’s salmon at Salmon Falls Resort.

Not pictured: a handful of blackbears and dozens of bald eagles. About 4:30 am, a few miles north of Ketchikan.

The entrance to the communal house at Totem Bight State Park. These homes had only one small doorway that served as both the entrance and exit to protect it’s residents from attack.

Dad got really into the totem poles.

Totem poles returning to the earth. This is a tradition among the tribes in the region – once a pole rots and falls, it is left to return it’s nutrients to the forest. In order to preserve these precious windows into history, native carvers now create accurate replicas once a pole falls. This also supports the continuance of this traditional art form.

Communal house with totem pole (I have to say the orca is my favorite part)

Hiking among the giants of the forest at the north end-of-the-road

Pictures truly can’t capture how massive these ancient trees are

The rainforest is full of slippery slugs

Salmon Falls

Wild blueberries abound! I gorged myself on fruit every time I hiked…

I was sad to see my dad go, but glad that we got to explore the island from end to end together. With only a few precious weeks in Alaska left, I started doing a lot more adventuring on my own, hiking trails like the Rainbird Trail:

The view from the start of the Rainbird Trail, overlooking Ketchikan and the Inside Passage

This trail meanders through the edge of the dense forest, while offering some fantastic views of the town below. Since one of my friends started working in trail maintenance and construction, I’ve taken care to examine the work that goes into the creation of these trails. The Rainbird Trail was cut from the hillside and forest by hand, and all the logs, steps, and fences on the trail are constructed from the trees cut down when the trail was being cleared. All of the stone was locally quarried, and the trail is art in itself:

The trail is composed of locally quarried stone, and red cedar harvested during the construction of the trail

To my delight, the Rainbird Trail is also home to bushels of my new favorite fruit, thimbleberries! These delicious berries are extremely delicate, and are more flavorful than raspberries or strawberries. If you try to pick them or take them with you they instantly become squashed to oblivion, so I took a 25 minute break (no exaggeration) to feast on these natural delicacies. I’m glad there were plenty of salmon in the streams – I didn’t have to worry about surprising a bear in the berry patch!

Thimbleberries, incredible bursts of deliciousness

One of my friends from Catalina, Chris, also visited me in Ketchikan during my last week of work. We took on the oceans – blessedly clear and calm this time – and went for a day of fishing with friends old and new.

Gone fishin’

Our boat came out with a pretty solid catch! Guess who caught a rockfish? Yours truly! Chris managed to snag a big ‘ol halibut.

The combined catch of the day

While the guys filleted the fish, I raced around the docks with our guide’s son – he was tough as could be and zoomed through all the splinters in his bare feet!

Racing Wolf around the docks in the Ketchikan Marina

We also got this young soul to take a picture of the fishing crew – excuse the 5-year-old thumb taking up most of the picture. Chris and I are on the right.

The result of asking a 5-year-old to take a picture

Chris and I jammed in a ton of geocaching, fishing, and adventuring in his short visit, but we still hadn’t conquered the ultimate goal: hiking Deer Mountain. This beautiful mountain overlooked Ketchikan, and I had a perfect view of it out my bedroom window. Most days, the peak was buried deep in clouds and rain, but Chris and I got a perfect clear day to hike it. Though the trail was only about 2.5 miles to the summit, that distance included 3000 ft of elevation gain and the potential for sudden storms and dramatic changes in weather. The whole trail was basically stairs, but even after an 8 hour day of leading snorkel tours, I couldn’t resist the chance to hike the mountain!

The rainforest gave way to alpine varities as we hiked uphill

Fairy pool near the peak of Deer Mountain

The hike was intense, but full of breathtaking views of Ketchikan, remote glacial lakes, and the Inside Passage. Chris and I were loaded up with water, snacks, waterproofs, and all sorts of layers in case the weather made a sudden shift. I was most impressed by a few locals we ran into when we were hiking back down – an elderly man and his two sons steadily making their way down the trail with nothing but tennis shoes, a walking stick, and a branch of wild blueberries for a snack.

Chris near the peak of Deer Mountain, with a view of Ketchikan, the Inside Passage, and glacial lakes

Overall, Ketchikan was an incredible experience. I have no regrets for moving out to such a unique, remote environment unlike any other for the summer. If you can, take some time to visit this beautiful corner of our country – you won’t regret it!

Friday Harbor, WA – Possibly my new favorite place on planet Earth

20 August 2016 | emilyanndavidson

Hello, everyone! I’ve got a good bit of catching up to do, and the present is the perfect time and place to do it! Get ready for a lot of posts…

After our Seattle adventure at the end of May, Shelby and I parted ways. She headed up to Ketchikan, AK, a few days ahead of me, and I drove up to Anacortes, WA. My final destination was Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. I had heard wonderful things about the region from friends and family who had traveled there and I was interested in checking out the Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), part of the University of Washington.

I drove onto the state ferry bright and early at 5:30 AM, and cruised through the calm waters surrounding the relatively undeveloped San Juan Islands. When the ferry arrived at Friday Harbor, a lovely ocean town beckoned through the window. I wish I had a good picture of the town from the water, but I just couldn’t do it justice.

I drove off the ferry and straight down to FHL where I was greeted by the Diving Safety Officer, Pema Kitaeff. Pema welcomed me to the island, handed me a pair or rubber boots, and we hurried on down to the dock to board the Centennial. This fishing ship-turned-research vessel is utilized for a menagerie of marine research and outreach programs by the university.

The R/V Centennial docked at FHL.

Pema had invited me to join her and a couple volunteer scuba divers on the Centennial for a few outreach trips for local elementary students. Though these students are raised on the surrounding islands and enjoy boat and kayak access, getting into much less below the local waters is a much bigger deal. The waters here range in the 40’s-50’s F throughout the year – a bit too chilly to spend much time in without specialized gear. Pema and her volunteers were here to introduce these students to the vivacious underwater world of the Pacific Northwest.

We stopped by the Friday Harbor Marina to load up the students, teachers, and chaperones, and then we were off! On the short ride over to the dive site, the two volunteer divers, Rhoda and Jess, told the eager group about the scuba dive they were about to embark on. They would both be using standard scuba gear, with a couple specialized pieces of equipment you wouldn’t typically find on a standard recreational dive:

Dry suit: Unlike a wetsuit, which uses a thin layer of water to insulate body heat, a dry suit seals at wrists and neck and keeps the wearer completely dry except for their head. However, being dry isn’t enough to stay warm in these cold waters – the wearer must either wear thermal undergarments underneath the dry suit, or have the suit made out of a thick insulating material (such as neoprene) in order to stay warm.
Full face mask: A bit different than a typical mask (which only covers the eyes and nose), a full face mask also covers the mouth and contains the scuba regulator (which provides air from the tank). These divers had specialized face masks that were equipped with communication devices (or “comms” in dive slang) including a speaker and microphone so the divers could converse with everyone on the ship in real time.
Tethered video camera: Used to transmit a live feed of video from the divers up to the ship. Students were able to view what the divers were seeing in real time, accompanied by live audio.

Volunteer divers Rhoda and Jess talk about their equipment to the eager students.

Getting prepped for hopping in the cold water!

During the dive, Rhoda and Jess collected several species from the ocean floor and brought them up to the ship for the students to experience hands on! Here you can see a sea cucumber (the lumpy one being petted), a kelp crab to its right, some sea slugs scattered throughout the bin, what appears to be a mottled star (hard to ID from the picture), and the bright orange arms of a vermilion star are peaking out near the bottom.

All of these are fairly common Pacific Northwest species, and I even found these all the way up into Southeast Alaska!

The students gleefully inspected all of the creatures in the tank, asked many wonderful questions, and then enjoyed the ride back, using the Centennial as their exciting new playground. They reminded me of my own curious students back at CIMI – I mean, who wouldn’t squeal about petting a lumpy little sea cucumber?

That afternoon I took the opportunity to join a graduate student and one of the volunteer divers, Jess, on a scientific dive. We motored out away from San Juan Island through calm, quiet waters. The surrounding islands were dense with spruce, cedar, and many plants I didn’t recognize, being an East-coaster. We reached the site after a few minutes: an undeveloped island with forests of bull whip kelp gently bobbing at the surface. The kelp itself was the object of study – underwater sets of quadrants were laid, dividing the rocky bottom into different sections. The divers were going to survey the growth and proliferation of the bull whip kelp throughout those quadrants, as they had been doing as part of an ongoing study. The boat driver (also a volunteer – Friday Harbor runs on them!) and myself stayed topside, keeping an eye on the streams of bubbles coming to the surface from the divers. After only diving recreationally for the last few months, it was nice to be back in the scientific diving world. When the divers surfaced, we carefully helped them and their heavy gear back onto the boat, chatted about the dive conditions, and headed back to the labs.

Jess at the bow of the dive boat.

Though it was peaceful and relaxing topside, it’s not so much on the flipside. Scientific diving takes much focus and training, the ability to remain calm underwater (even when science and nature don’t want to cooperate), and significant dive experience. Anything can happen underwater, and our time below the surface is unfortunately always limited by the laws of chemistry and physics. Efficiency is key! Despite the stress of underwater tasks, it’s pretty hard to complain when your office is made of saltwater and your officemates are fish and creatures of all shapes and colors.

In addition to exploring the scientific side of the San Juans, I also took the opportunity to explore the island and its flora and fauna…

Clockwise from top left: Island coastline as viewed from the Centennial, rocky coastline with a bull whip kelp forest at low tide, “Hey, I can see Canada from here!” – Victoria Island in the distance.

Clockwise from top left: Foxgloves grow wild all around the PNW – Highly toxic, they are used to make cardiac medications. Wild salmonberries (similar in flavor to tart blackberries) growing wild by the FHL dorms. The trunk of a Pacific Madrone, a beautiful tree with bark that naturally peels away to reveal the bright green growth beneath. Oh look, it’s the coastline again! Let’s pretend I didn’t post that picture twice.

I made my way over to Lime Kiln State Park, on the western side of San Juan Island, hailed as the best park for whale watching in the world. At this point the only whales I had seen in the wild were various species of dolphins and two grey whales, so I was full of high hopes for seeingthe local pods of orcas. Unfortunately, me standing in the rain for three hours made no difference to the orcas, as they never decided to show up (I did get to see a couple Dall’s porpoises though… I’ll take it).

The lighthouse at Lime Kiln State Park.

Luckily for me, I love invertebrates just as much as I love marine mammals! When I finally accepted that the whales probably weren’t going to show, I went exploring and found some gorgeous tide pools! The creatures that are found in and around tidepools are known as intertidal species. This means that as the tides change and the water level rises and falls, these animals are commonly stuck high and dry for a few hours at a time. They’re specially equipped to survive these extreme conditions – some, like the anemones, only live in spots where they will still be in water when the tide recedes, or some even hold onto gravel and sand to shield themselves from the hot sun and wind so that they don’t dry out. Other creatures, such as mussels or barnacles, close up tight, seal in any water, and simply wait for the tide to come back in. All of these intertidal animals survive relatively extreme conditions everyday! Imagine if your house was on a hill above the ocean most of the time, but twice a day the ocean rose and completely covered it for a couple hours. That’s what it’s like to be an intertidal creature!

Clockwise from top left: A massive group of unidentified anemones in a tide pool, close up of some of the anemones in the pool, another unidentified species of anemone, gooseneck barnacles at low tide.

Even though I didn’t see any whales, all in all Friday Harbor was an extraordinary place. Everyone both at FHL and in the town was incredibly kind and welcoming, and FHL was brimming with curious minds, smiling faces, and legions of volunteers who are there simply because they absolutely love what they’re doing. I have a feeling I’ll be making my way back to Friday Harbor… Whether it’s as a student, volunteer, or someone simply on vacation remains to be seen. Until then, these fins will keep on wandering!

Seattle adventures (in 48 hours)!

29 June 2016 | emilyanndavidson

I decided early on after I found out I’d be working in Ketchikan, AK for the summer that I had to make a stop in Seattle. I’d heard so much about this fabled city from friends and family who had either lived there or visited previously! …And they all made it clear that it was somewhere I needed to go!

So, my friend and coworker, Shelby and I arranged to fly from LA up to Seattle for a few days before beginning work in Alaska. She had been previously to visit family, and I wanted to check all the “must-see” places off my list in addition to visiting Friday Harbor and the San Juan Islands.

After a long day of travel (golf cart -> ferry -> car -> plane -> car) we arrived in the evening, stopped by Elysian Brewing (a cornerstone of craft brewing in Seattle) and hit the sack early to prepare to dive into Seattle!

Of course, the obvious first place to stop was…

Pike Place Market of course! The first morning we slept in a bit, and the market was already crowded with hoards of people milling around and trying to take shelter from the rain. But oh, the RAIN! After months of being on dried-up Catalina in extreme drought conditions, it was truly incredible to feel steady rain coming down. I think I grinned uncontrollably the entire way down the highway from the airport to our lodging because of how incredibly green and lush the vegetation was everywhere I looked. I didn’t realize how much the lack of greenery (green cacti don’t count) had worn on me.

Which brings me to the miracle of having farm-fresh berries… If I could live off berries alone, I would. One of the most unfortunate things about living on an island are the delays and gaps for produce to be delivered. These berries were my very own delicious miracle that morning.

And, I mean, if you start buying one thing from a market, you just keep going…

Quite possibly the most delicious cinnamon roll I’ve ever had.

The throngs of tourists beat us to the original Starbucks on day 1, but on day 2, we were ready and there at 6 AM when they opened – no other tourists in site! I got the obligatory drip coffee and a picture. Say what you will about Starbucks, but they really were the driving force behind the incredible coffee culture still present and strong in Seattle. I definitely over-caffeinated this entire trip. Worth it.

On day 1, I also noticed that a little bakery near the Starbucks had a line even longer! Day 2, curiosity got the better of me, and I had to figure out what on earth a piroshky was. Turns out they are a delicious traditional Russian fried dough pastry! It was delilious! I definitely recommend going there (and getting in line early) if you’re ever in that part of Seattle.

Okay, I promise I’ll stop typing about food now… Just one more picture… My friend, coworker, and travel buddy, Shelby, and I having a fantastic breakfast at the Sound View Cafe at Pike Place overlooking the sound. The picture really doesn’t do the delightfully rainy view of the Puget Sound justice!

Then we ran all over downtown Seattle seeing all the sights we could! Here’s the Fremont Troll, an unbelievable art instillation under a bridge at the so-called “center of the universe”. The scale of this piece is incredible – the VW bug in its left hand is an actual car!

And what did I find by the troll? A geocache of course!

If you don’t know what Geocaching is, it’s a world-wide treasure hunt of sorts that has become my favorite hobby! Using the Geocaching website and a smartphone or GPS, anyone can search for remarkably well-hidden “caches” all over the world. Most are like a puzzle – your GPS or phone will get you close to the location, and then you have to figure out where the cache is using a few hints. Some containers are puzzles themselves, requiring some ingenuity to retrieve or open the container, and other ones are just incredibly well-camouflaged in plain sight! Here’s a typical geocache:

Every cache contains a log for the finder to sign with their geocaching name and the date, and some have room to trade out trinkets or other goods.

One of my favorite finds was in Post Alley off of Pike Place, notorious for it’s bubble gum wall:

And after some unfortunate accidental sticky contact, Shelby and I found the cache!

But, not all of our adventures were cache-centered! We made our way over to the Seattle Aquarium, and I got to hang out with their two lovely Giant Pacific Octopuses (note: the plural of octopus is not technically octopi, but I’ll forgive you if you still use it). This amazing species is accepted as the largest octopus species in the world! They can change both color and texture, and have the intelligence of a 3-year-old human child. They can solve puzzles, recognize faces, engage in play, and trained. If you’re looking for an interesting read on octopus intelligence, I recommend The Soul of an Octopus, which I finished last month. It’s much more so a naturalist than a scientist’s perspective, but is an incredible read overall.

Shelby and I also had a wonderful dinner on top of the Space Needle! The dining area slowly rotates 360 degrees every hour, and we were lucky enough to squeeze in without a reservation and catch the sunset. I would have loved to get a picture that would do the view justice, but I don’t think the people in the outer ring of tables would have appreciated me climbing over their dinners for a photo!

And, of course, there’s no way I could visit Seattle without getting a picture of the Space Needle from the outside!

I took this picture from the Chihuly Garden and Glass, and incredible museum at the base of the Space Needle. All of the artwork – most of it consisting of hundreds of pounds of glass and metal – is the brainchild of one individual, Dave Chihuly. Working with a team of glassblowers and many other workers, he has permanent and temporary installations all over the world.

I think this was my favorite piece:

And the museum adventures didn’t stop there! We headed to the Pacific Science Center to check out a travelling exhibit, The Art of the Brick, consisting of art made completely out of LEGOs. The artist, Nathan Sawaya, used to work as a lawyer and built with LEGOs to relax after work, and eventually his LEGO art turned into a full-time career! The pieces were often larger-than-life, and unbelievable:

In addition to original creations, the exhibit featured some 3-dimensional takes on classic works of art:

We got to be a part of the artwork, too!

I really loved this “be different” piece (despite the cheesiness), as I was heading to Ketchikan, Alaska, the salmon capital of the world, in just a few days!

Well, hello, we should catch up! Winter and spring – East coast and West

31 May 2016 | emilyanndavidson

Wow, I have been a terrible blogger recently. My apologies. It’s time to catch up!

So much has been happening over on Catalina… Time has been flying by! Our fall school year program runs mid-August thru late November. Then, we have 6 weeks off over the holidays to travel or visit family. I split my time between SC and NC with family and friends. In early January the Davidson clan embarked on a skiing adventure in Colorado!

I found Sasquatch on the slopes of Breckenridge, CO!

3 out of 4 of the Davidson clan.

I was lucky enough to meet up with a college friend (and fellow underwater hockey player) for a day of skiing.

We hit every peak in Breck in one day. Legs = jell-o.

Snow clouds blowing in on the top of Peak 7.

After an epic week of shredding the Rockies with the fam, I headed back to Catalina Island for the spring season which just ended last week. The spring season was somehow even more amazing than the fall! We had a lot of incredible life in an around our camp, including a mother grey whale and her calf in out bay – unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of them, but here’s some I did capture:

This is Mike Bison, Toyon Bay’s resident bison. Though traditionally called buffalo, their scientific name is Bison bison. They are the largest land mammal in North America, with adults typically over 1000 lbs. They can run faster and further than a race horse. Bison were introduced to the island for a silent film in the early 1920’s, and the herd is now managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy to stay at approximately 150 individuals.

A pod of Pacific White-sided dolphins swam right under our boat!

Those dorsal fins are from Risso’s dolphins, which are usually shy. This pod was unusually curious and cruised right through a kayak with students (Trevor, a CIMI instructor, is pictured).

This baby harbor seal wandered onto our beach to take a nap! My apologies for the poor quality – I didn’t want to get to close and disturb it!

Maybe I’m a huge nerd, but the Catalina Walking Sticks are pretty incredible! These are an endemic species, which means they’re found only on Catalina and nowhere else in the world! Catalina Island has over 60 endemic plant and animal species.

Speaking of animals, when I return to CIMI in the fall, I will not only be teaching but also be working as an aquarist! This means I’ll be teaching school groups most of the time, but will rotate shifts with other aquarists to care for the animals in our exhibits. I have lots of tank scrubbing, siphoning, and animal food prep ahead of me, but it’s going to be incredible working directly with such amazing creatures!

This is one of my personal favorite creatures from our aquariums – the Mantis Shrimp (click the link – you won’t regret it)!

Mantis shrimp are divided into two categories: Spearers (left) or smashers (right). They can throw these terrifying arms out at speeds as fast as a bullet from a gun when attacking prey or defending themselves. The friction between their arms and the water at this high speed causes the water around them to boil (a process known as supercavitation) and they hit their prey with a sonic boom before they hit it with their arms themselves. Photo credit

In the fall, my friend and coworker, Jorie, introduced me to Geocaching. In a nutshell, it’s a global treasure hunt where you try to find “caches” hidden in plain sight. You can find them using a handheld GPS or a smartphone. And I am hooked. Completely. And they are EVERYWHERE! Now, of course, a treasure hunt is nothing without some adventure, am I right?

This bison skull is part of a geocache on the Hermit Gulch trail on Catalina!

THIS geocache was one of the most unique and challenging ones I’ve done – Jorie and I army crawled to the back of this muddy and incredibly spidery cave. Totally worth it.

On a trip to San Diego, I found my 100th geocache! I’m almost up to 200, just a few months later. I told you it’s addicting!

We had a lot of other incredible adventures this spring… Here’s the season in photographs:Looking back at the peak of Red Mountain (officially Whitley’s Peak), a beautiful and somewhat sketchy hike. Toyon Bay is at the bottom of the canyon to the right.The CIMI crew takes Red Mountain by storm. (Britt doesn’t always look like that – we use the charcoal from burned out trees as “face paint” with our students)Chasing the sunrise over the Pacific Sunrise progression during my hike up the ridgeline to Avalon.A college friend, David, came to visit! My first visitor to the island! Hooray!Wildflowers bloomed after a little much-needed rain. Catalina is still in an extreme drought.My parents came to visit the island – and we had some adventures on other islands too!Danny and I tried to be fashionistas for our time-travel themed squid dissection. I think we pulled it off. A friend invited me to go flying with a local pilot, Scott, above Catalina Island! What an incredible experience.Avalon, the tourist mecca of Catalina, from above. Home sweet home! Toyon Bay from above.Cactus overlooking Shark Harbor, a popular spot for surfing on the backside of the island. Hiking up East Mountain. Avalon is in the background. The “wine stop” near Blackjack Mtn. on Catalina. We hiked up for sunset, but my pictures of the sunset just don’t do it justice.We finished off the season with an all-staff make-your-own-sushi night! Featuring yellowtail caught by my coworkers and locally caught tuna. Lesson learned: I do not make pretty sushi.So, that pretty much sums it up! I’m currently all the way up in the beautiful state of Washington for the first time! I’m traveling through Seattle up to San Juan Island. Then, later this week I’ll be heading to Ketchikan, Alaska, where I’ll be working as a snorkel tour guide for the summer! Now that I have a good internet connection, I am hearby promising to stay on top of this blog for the summer. Hold me to it! These fins are ready to wander north!

New fish, poop fish

1 October 2015 | emilyanndavidson

The Fall 2015 CIMI new fish class. Back row L to R: Alex, Jordan, Katie O., DannyBoy, Teresa, and Katie MO. Front row L to R: Anneliese, Katrina, Jorie, and yours truly.

At CIMI, there is a tradition that the new folks hired at the beginning of each season are henceforth referred to as the “new fish” for the remainder of the season. Each group also gets a name… Some past ones are the Odd Fish, Sorority Fish, iFish, the list goes on! During our training, the topic of poop kept coming up – whether it was whale fecal plumes, marine snow, bird poop and the nitrogen cycle, or sperm whales exploding out ambergris from swallowing giant squid beaks, it just never stopped! Of course, it didn’t help that one of our trainers, Lauren, always says her signature phrase “Oh, poop on a stick” and helped to carry the theme. We rounded out our training by each doing a 10-minute teach on various labs that are a part of our fall program. We each managed to weave in at least one mention of poop while staying completely on topic while teaching, and were henceforth dubbed the “Poop Fish.” It’s truly an honor.

It has been fantastic getting to know all the poop fish! Jordan, Katrina, Teresa, Jorie, Anneliese, and myself all started at the beginning of the summer and the rest joined us mid-August. We’re a wonderful eclectic group of people with a whole spectrum of personalities and interests from all over the country, but we’re all here because we want to teach and we love the ocean!

Wait… it’s September? Already? What a summer!

9 September 2015 | emilyanndavidson

Hello everyone! My apologies for such a huge gap in posts – the internet here is minimal and summer sea camp was insanely busy – but I’m back! I’ll be doing a short series of posts to bring everyone up to date.

Stained glass window in the Marine Mammal Hall at CIMI Toyon Bay. Featuring: giant brown kelp, sea lions, garibaldi, a two-spot octopus, a sheepshead, a horn shark, and several sea stars.

Wow, I don’t even know where to begin… So much has happened since my last post! The summer was a whirlwind of summer seacamp sessions, traveling around the interior of the island for the first time, meeting and getting to know amazing kids and coworkers, and lots of learning experiences.

The five summer “new fish”.

I arrived to the island a few days before the rest of the “new fish” – what everyone calls the new folks each season. We were 5 strong, all having recently graduated from college. We were promptly engulfed into the “nerd herd” a.k.a the summer science and adventure staff (some people also refer to it as science & leisure staff, but please, we worked our tails off). The rest of the sailing and dive staff also arrived, along with a host of counselors, adminstrators, and a whole photography and social media crew. We kicked off our summer season with an physically intense week of lifeguard training followed by a week of training on the summer labs, courses, and activities we offered. I studied, paddleboarded, kayaked, went to training lectures, snorkeled, realized that a 7 mm thick wetsuit was definitely a good idea, studied some more, wrote lesson plans, hiked a mountain, shimmed past the bison in camp, went through more training… It was a jam packed week! Never have I learned so much about such a variety of topics and activities in so little time, not to mention learning all of the logistical procedures… Once our brains were so full of wonderful new knowledge that we thought they would explode, training week ended. We jumped right in to a couple days of team teaching with our more experienced coworkers during the first week of camp, and then were unleashed to teach on our own.

A troupe of morning kayakers hits the water and heads for another CIMI camp, Fox Landing, on a longer kayak.

Our summer season began with three one-week sessions of Junior Seacamp (8-12 year-olds), followed by two three-week sessions of Senior Seacamp (13-17 year olds). Per company policy I can’t post any pictures of campers to keep their privacy, so I wasn’t able to document most of our amazing adventures, but you can check out a fantastic photostream on the Catalina Sea Camp Instagram!

One of my favorite classes to teach during Junior Seacamp was Marine Mammals. The beautiful window at the top of this post is in the Marine Mammal Hall and is probably my favorite building at Toyon Bay. It originally functioned as a library when the buildings were constructed for the all-male boarding school that was established at Toyon in the late 1920’s. Most of the buildings around camp are nearing 100 years old and have plenty of character and stucco charm. Instead of books, the marine mammal hall now hosts an impressive collection of marine mammal specimens from populations found all around Catalina.

Some of the most unique educational resources we have at Catalina are our gray whales. Our first is an incredible life-sized inflatable of an adult grey whale:

Grey whales can reach up to 50 ft. in length and weigh over 70,000 pounds. Whoa. (He’s a little deflated at the moment)

The best part of our inflatable grey whale? You can go inside! A life-sized heart, brain, lungs, and rib cage are inside, and students can roam around so that they can experience how incredibly massive these creatures are. Grey whales are spotted around Catalina on occasion, and have even come into our bay before to feed. My fingers are crossed and I’m hoping I’ll have the opportunity to see one of these amazing creatures with my own eyes during my time here! Grey whales are baleen whales (mysticetes), and do not have teeth like odontocetes. Mysticetes use massive plates of baleen hanging down from their upper jaws to filter out tiny krill, plankton, or invertebrates from water or sediment. Grey whales are nicknamed “mudsuckers” because their feeding strategy involves diving down to the bottom of the ocean and scraping up sediments into their mouths by swimming sideways on the bottom. They then use their baleen to filter out all the mud and water which leaves behind tasty tasty little invertebrates for them to enjoy! I always have my kids act out this sideways bottom-scraping feeding in class – it’s absolutely hilarious.

Peach and Igor having lots of fun deflating the whale (I promise I was helping and not just taking pictures)

We are lucky to have a beautifully grey whale skeleton inside Marine Mammal Hall (yes, all the skeletons inside are real – I get asked that all the time). I challenge you to guess how old this whale was when it died, keeping in mind that it is approximately 20 feet long and most likely weighed between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds at the time of death:

Meet Bomber the grey whale!

Another great view of Bomber the grey whale and the interior of our marine mammal hall.

So, how old did you think our whale was when it died? Bomber (named for the beach this grey whale was stranded on) was only 9 months old. Can you imagine being 9 months old, 20 feet long, and weighing over 15,000 pounds? The scale of these whales is unbelievable.

Junior Seacamp was a whirlwind of activity – tons of kids stoked to be at camp and thrilled to see each and every creature they possibly could. Campers went to the majority of activities and labs with their cabin group, but were also able to pick some of their own activities. Every night of camp was filled with fun activities, games, dances, ice cream socials, and campfires full of songs, skits, and dances. Everyone put in an incredible amount of work to have tons of participation from staff, counselors, and campers alike. I’ve learned so many songs this summer… I could write an entire post of them!

Senior Seacamp came with a whole new schedule, feel, and the opportunity to really get to know campers. Every senior seacamper gets to choose what classes they want to take ahead of time – anything from a menagerie of scuba courses to sailing to science classes to leadership to kayaking to climbing to art and jewelry creation. It was fantastic to see a lot of these campers having the opportunity to choose exactly which classes they wanted to take and what they wanted to do. For many of them it was certainly the first time they’d had unrestricted freedom, without a parent or teacher guiding them, to choose what they wanted to do. I taught seven different courses: Nature Photography, Invertebrates & Ichthyology, Nature Expression (an art class), Climbing & Kayaking, Advanced Kayaking & Climbing, Seafood Cookery, and Island Exploring.

My favorite class that I taught was definitely Invertebrates & Ichthyology. I was nervous about learning and teaching so much material I had just learned, especially coming from a chemical and not a biological academic background. Luckily I was so excited to teach I caught on to all of the material right away and enjoyed reading up on the various topics I was teaching in my spare time. Both sessions I was lucky to have incredibly inquisitive classes, and after every class they sent me home with homework and tons of questions to answer. That’s what I love about teaching – students push me to learn more!

Blue-banded goby (endemic – meaning the only place this species is naturally found – to the Channel Islands) and an eel larvae I found washed up onshore at Toyon Bay. Strawberry anenomes are also in the background. Picture taken in one of the tanks in our Fish Lab.

Both Senior and Junior Seacamp included several big social events including dances and carnivals. All of them were themed and the instructors and counselors were way dressed up and dancing completely ridiculously which gave the kids a lot of freedom to have fun with their friends and not worry about looking silly. My personal favorite theme was the Sci-Fi carnival, which I of course had to dress for in full Na’vi attire:

Took two hours to do the makeup – totally worth it!

The best part of the costume was going up to my campers and even some of my coworkers, casually chatting with them, and watching them go completely wide-eyed and trying to figure out who on earth was under all the makeup. Most of them figured it out!

This summer was certainly the fastest summer of my life… I still can’t believe it’s already September. Unfortunately the end of summer also meant saying goodbye to many amazing staff members that were only around for the summer – we miss you!!!

Getting ready to set out on a day-off hike during the summer. From left to right: Katrina (one of my current roommates), Enize (our energetic and amazing seafood cookery instructor who has returned to South Africa), Mossy (a wonderful dive instructor and dive buddy, now back in Australia), me (hey, I’m still here), and Courtney (another fantastic dive staff member, currently off adventuring on the playa). Also – that colorful stuff on our faces is colored zinc – the best kind of sun protection. Stylish and functional!

We’re now deep into our school year programs – a whole other animal than our summer seacamps! I’ll keep you all updated – thanks for reading!

Wandering Fins

The adventures of a scuba diving science teacher