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Hannah was awarded Best Poster Presentation at the Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean! Congratulations Hannah! Check her poster here. She was also awarded a AMLC Student Travel Award and a Cal Poly Graduate Presentation Award that allowed her to attend this conference and is thankful for funding to support her travel to present at this conference! Alex Marquardt just returned from the Triennial meeting of the World Aquaculture and National Shellfisheries Societies in New Orleans, LA! She presented her first year of data collection on Pismo clam population trends in Central and Southern California! The presentation was well received! Lots of great comments, questions, and ideas for future research!
Thank you CSU Council on Ocean Affairs, Science, and Technology (COAST) and the National Shellfisheries Association for travel funds which made this trip/presentation possible! We are excited to announce that Madelyn Roycroft received the 2019 California Sea Grant State Fellowship! The purpose of the California Sea Grant's State Fellows Program is to provide a unique educational opportunity for graduate students who are interested both in marine resources and in the policy decisions affecting those resources. This year, 24 fellows were selected and matched with 17 different host agencies throughout the state. Through a rigorous selection process in Sacramento, Madelyn was matched with the Port of San Diego-Aquaculture and Blue Economy Program. As the aquaculture and Blue Economy fellow, Madelyn will assist with a variety of current and upcoming pilot projects to support the growth of shellfish and seaweed aquaculture in San Diego Bay through the Port's Blue Economy Incubator program, In addition, she will participate in the San Diego Ocean Planning Partnership to collaborate on an ocean planning pilot in the ocean space offshore San Diego County, and will assist with mitigation banking projects and drafting grant proposals and planning documents (e.g. CEQA, Coastal, Army Corps of Engineers, Regional Water Quality Control Board). Madelyn is looking forward to having the chance to contribute to a variety of projects that share a common theme to promote sustainable ocean activities for the Port of San Diego and San Diego citizens. Congratulations Madelyn!!! Hannah gave a public talk on 'Conservation, Corals & the Caribbean' at 7Sisters Brewing Co. She presented on her previous research studying the patterns of coral predation and coral healing on St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, and future research conducting a comparative study on Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean. Thank you to everyone who came to hear about our research! 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!
Yi Hui's first paper at Cal Poly on on 'Assessment of surface wind datasets for estimating offshore wind energy along the Central California Coast' was published today. Congrats Yi-Hui! This research provides a comprehensive assessment of seasonal and diurnal error metrics and spatial differences in near-surface wind datasets for Central California. This work can be used as a framework for assessing wind data products for offshore wind energy. 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!
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Well, we're a collection of science-minded marine misfits. But we're always up to something... Archives
April 2023
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