 Tuesday, Feb. 12 from 6:30-8:30pm grad student Hannah Rempel will give a talk on 'Conservation, Corals & the Caribbean' at 7Sisters Brewing Co. Join us for this free, all ages event!
Hannah will give an overview of some of the work accomplished by graduate Madelyn Roycroft and share her ongoing research on the patterns of coral predation and coral healing in the US Virgin Islands.
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Emily K., Senior in Biology, started a pilot mark-recapture study for Pismo clams on Pismo Beach! Mark-recapture studies are a tool to estimate population size. In the simplest form, you “mark” a number of individuals and release them back into the environment. You later return to “recapture” individuals. Based on how many individuals are marked vs. not marked, you can estimate how large your population size is, understand individual growth rates (i.e. how much does a clam actually grow in a year?), and get an idea of mortality rates. For her senior project, Emily tested several tagging options to mark Pismo clams and be able to identify individuals. Ultimately, she found a metal tag paired with a numbered tag was easy to detect through the sand. On December 8th, we set up a pilot study! A total of 50 clams were marked using Emily’s methods. In the coming months, we will attempt to find these clams again. If all goes well, this will be the start of a longer mark-recapture study. This is an exciting step towards understanding how far Pismo clams move across the beach and how quickly they grow on Pismo Beach!  Emily burying the last marked clam!  The survey team helping rebury clams. Start your day with a cup of conservation! We are fundraising for our summer research by selling a medium roast coffee blend from a small farming cooperative in Kenya. $20/lbs. Each bag covers the cost of one of our research dives this summer!
 Yi Hui's first paper at Cal Poly on offshore wind pubbed today. Congrats Yi-Hui!
Check it out, online here, or download here! Master's student Hannah Rempel (3rd from the left) has finished her second summer of field work in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands with recent graduates Maurice Goodman (left) and Marilla Lippert (2nd from left), and undergraduate Peter Vanderbloomer (right). Hannah is tracking the recovery of corals from parrotfish bite scars and all told the team tagged and monitored nearly 100 coral colonies! 
Madelyn and Ben gave a talk to the Friends of the St. Croix National Park in Christiansted, USVI. There were lots of great questions! Madelyn was awarded a prestigious American Academy of Underwater Scientists (AAUS) Scholarship, and she wrote a great piece about it here! "Crunch... crunch... crunch.” I will never forget the first time I heard the unforgettable sound of a parrotfish grazing on coral reefs. Nearly two years after hearing that sound for the first time, I, along with my research team and hundreds of pounds of scientific dive equipment, headed from California to the Caribbean... |
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November 2018
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