C'ing MORE in Hawai'i

Wrap up & Final Reflections!

jjwright49 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:45:31 +0000

It’s taken me a ridiculously long time to get around to completing this blog but finally, here we go! I really wanted to write a sort of wrap-up on the course and in doing so reflect upon what I gained most from participating. Here goes:

1) The most valuable thing I gained from this course was a much deeper appreciation of the oceanic environment, and of oceanography as a discipline. I had no idea how little I actually was aware of with respect to general study and existing knowledge of ocean systems before coming to CMORE. I’m sure I still know very little, but at least I’m aware of my own ignorance and have an idea of some places to begin improving (for example, learning more about dissolved and particulate nutrient flux patterns in the ocean, and comparing and contrasting these patterns across different oceanic regions). I really appreciate the importance of understanding the environment in which one studies, because without a solid grounding in these fundamentals, it’s very unlikely that one will be able to interpret any results they may discover in an ecologically or culturally meaningful way. I realized that I really do want to be an oceanographer at the core, and to use my understanding of oceanography to interpret the microbiology of these systems (rather than being a microbiologist trying to apply the paradigms of microbiology in various environments). So I have a lot more learning to do, and intend to spend more time with the ocean sciences crowd at UBC now that I’m back!

2) I realized how small our field (oceanography, and especially microbial oceanography) really is, and that most of the great people I interacted with in this course will likely be my colleagues for years to come, given that we all stay in this field of study. I think it’s so amazing that I have been lucky enough to have become a part of this community at such an early stage in my career, and we all (the students) have so many resources at our disposal to help us answer questions, form collaborations, and make a contribution to each others careers.

3) This course also provided ample opportunities for development in the area of leadership, especially in leading groups. When it came time to amalgamate our research for the Student Presentations, it was the first time I had been working with a large group (16 students) under a timeline to achieve a common goal. I figured out quickly that to lead such a group effectively requires enrolling the leadership of others, such that there is not just one person telling everyone what to do, but rather drawing leadership qualities out of everyone so that we are all being the leaders. It was fantastic to learn this in a participatory manner, by actually experiencing it and figuring out what works and what doesn’t first hand, as opposed to learning it from a book or from a simulated leadership training experience. I realized I have a long way to go before I feel I will be an effective manager of groups of people and am looking forward to more challenges like this!

4) My confidence in my research probably quadrupled over the summer. To finally GET that I do have a fairly good grasp on many of the topics related to my thesis, and that others feel that my research is exciting, novel, well organized and most importantly that I’m making adequate progress was really a big deal. So far, graduate school has been a very challenging experience for me, as someone who is very results oriented and used to having some kind of bar to compare to, be it grades, times to beat in triathlon, etc. In a PhD, there is really no way to definitively say, “yes I am doing enough, and I am doing well” because everything is subjective and there is no one bar to measure up against. I’m sure this problem will not be solved overnight, but I have noticed a huge difference in my confidence levels at work and in my motivation to try new things and defend my ideas since being back in the lab in Vancouver. This growth alone made the course the most valuable experience I’ve had in graduate school so far and will make SUCH a difference to my next few years here!!!

I’m pretty sure I could go on forever about all the amazing things I learned, people I met, places I visited, things I saw and so on for a very long time but I think I’ve recapped the most important take home messages I got from the course. I intend to write a proposal for a workshop of developing Teaching Portfolios and participatory teaching methods for next years course, because I would just LOVE to be a part of this wonderful experience again and meet all of the students next year. Until then, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to all of the amazing faculty and staff for making this dream course a reality and for contributing more than you’ll ever know to all of the students who have had the superb fortune to participate! We truly cannot thank you enough- Aloha and Mahalo!!!

Bamboo Bike

jjwright49 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:59:29 +0000

I forgot to mention that the professor I was biking with on Sunday (Dr. David Ho) is one of the founders of a fantastic organization responsible for the design and implementation of bamboo cargo bicycles as a sustainable form of transportation in Ghana (West Africa). I bought a great t-shirt from him to support the cause and you can also order a super sexy bike jersey from him online (I’m going to for sure- he was wearing one on our ride and it was the nicest jersey I’ve seen in a while!). For more information on the initiative or to order merchandise check out:

http://www.bamboobike.org/Home.html

Prepping for student presentations

jjwright49 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:38:50 +0000

Since returning from the cruise, we have been analysing samples we took while on our research cruise (i.e. measuring nutrient levels of filtered water samples, performing molecular analyses on DNA, etc.) and organizing all of the resulting data, as well as data we generated while at sea (i.e. microscopy and flow cytometry cell counts, light levels etc.). Once all the data was organized, we started trying to compare the various datasets looking for patterns that might lead us to an interesting scientific story to tell about the north-south transect we sampled.

Cruise track

So far, we have seen some things we would expect- the nutracline (depth at which nutrient levels increase) shoals at the more northern stations and primary productivity increases. We have yet to examine the cell counts for particular organisms (Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus) in contrast to the nutrient levels and productivity but will be doing that today. In addition, the results of our molecular analysis are just arriving and we’ll be looking for changes or patterns in bacterial community structure (by identifying the constituents of different communities along the transect and evaluating changes in diversity). Hopefully it will all come together this afternoon as our 2 hour presentation is first thing tomorrow! What a great experience to be a part of such an intensive, complex and collaborative research opportunity! Will post a copy of our presentation soon- wish us luck!

What do you do when you fall off a horse?

jjwright49 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:50:01 +0000

After taking Monday off and going to physio since I couldn’t really lift my right arm, I’m back on my bike- it feels fine (since biking doesn’t require lifting of arms) as long as I don’t hit any big bumps The “diagnosis” (apparently physiotherapists are not legally allowed to diagnose injuries in the USA- very strange) is a shoulder sprain, but I’m not sure what degree. Rode one lap of my TT course yesterday morning, and two laps of the Tantalus climb this morning. No swimming for a little while obviously but I should be OK to do a light run tomorrow morning before our student presentations. I’m determined to get outdoors and enjoy the beautiful weather for the last 2 days of the course!

Worst of road rash Day 2

jjwright49 — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:42:06 +0000

This is the worst of it- the rash on my hands and all down the right side are not so deep. Coach says to go get it treated properly since tropical climate = higher risk of infection so I’ll try to find the health services on campus this morning. On a brighter note, my pipes look sweet in this photo (I did over 1000 curls- I don’t know if you noticed (Anchorman ) hahahaha.

Riding the Windward Coast (& my first road bike crash)

jjwright49 — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:40:21 +0000

Today I rode the windward (east) coast of Oahu up to Kahana Beach Park with Sam Wilson (a postdoc in Dave Karl’ lab) and David (not sure of his last name but he is a new professor in the chemical oceanography department. It was a gorgeous ride as the windward side is very lush and green, with a crystal blue ocean to your right most of the way and majestic volcanic mountains to the right. Sam got a flat about 2 minutes from the park which ended up taking a while to deal with because his spare had a busted valve (which he realized after putting it in)- luckily I had an extra spare and David had a pump so among the 3 of us we handled the flat:-)

The Route to Kahana Beach Park

We decided to turn around at the beach park rather than ride all the way around the island and back on the leeward (west) side because then we would have had to ride through Honolulu on the way back to the University which wouldn’t have been too much fun with the traffic. Another option was to ride up to the North Shore and turn around but apparently the way back leads you into an intense headwind – 90km back to the city in a headwind didn’t sound too awesome either so we opted for the turnaround at Kahana beach to finish with a 137km (85 mi) ride total. About 15km into the return trip from the beach, I crashed- it was a pretty decent one and my first real road bike crash in about 7 years of road riding (well not counting slipping twice on winter frost while riding too close to winter in Vancouver

Basically what happened is that the shoulder we were riding on became elevated but I didn’t see it coming because the white line delineating the edge of the rode went up on top of the edge of the shoulder instead of staying on the road (weird) so my tires got locked alongside the edge of the curb and try as I might I couldn’t get out. After about 5 seconds of trying in vain I totally endoed (“over the handlebars”) at about 30km/h. I thought I escaped relatively unscathed with just some sweet road rash, ripped shorts and rocks in my hands (yes, stupid me I took off my gloves earlier in the day because my hands were too hot), but I quickly realized that I did a number on my shoulder, probably a subluxed shoulder capsule as I’m having difficulty raising or lowering my right arm- am icing while typing with my arm pressed against my side right now.

The rest of the ride was still gorgeous and my shoulder was feeling OK while biking- we took a side road most of the way back down the windward side that was very quiet and scenic, with lots of windy downhills- fun! The only tricky part was that I could feel all the rocks in my hands every time I hit a bump, which was pretty much the whole time- you’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever driven a rural Hawaiin road However, I had the best bike lunch EVER at 7/11- they had these sushi rolls in the fridge with the nori separated from the rice roll so you could roll it yourself and have fresh nori… I never knew that sushi from 7/11 could taste so damn good!!!! (Maybe I was just deliriously hungry by this point… I’ll have to try another sushi roll on a normal day and report back.:)

We are off to China Wall now for a BBQ (a place where you can jump off an 11-12 ft rock wall into the ocean) though I may not be jumping in today as it’s quite an acrobatic feat to get back out involving timing your exit to get a boost from the waves. Should be a great evening for our last Sunday in Honolulu- can’t believe how fast time flies!

Will write more soon about the analyses we’re doing of our cruise data that will be presented this Thursday. It’s going well so far!

PS I do have pictures from all of these adventures but I think I mentioned I forgot the computer cable for my little camera so will be adding them when I get home – stay tuned!

First 4th of July in the USA!

jjwright49 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:23:09 +0000

And what a great day it was! I went for a long run in the morning from the university down to Diamond Head, then spent a few hours at Waikiki beach sunbathing and surfing! Caught a few good waves which was really exciting since I haven’t been surfing in a while. In the evening, we all went to a BBQ/party hosted by one of the Brazilian grad students here at UH who lives in a beautiful house up the hill in the Manoa Valley. The house is famous in the area for having a humungous 4 story treehouse in the front yard (more like a jungle really) that someone actually lives in!! It was one of the best parties I’ve been to in ages- we cooked lots of great food on the BBQ, there were about 6 musical instruments being passed around and played and people were singing (very well I might add!), we watched the fireworks over the lights of Honolulu from the front porch, and then danced the night away! I could definitely handle more 4th of July’s!!

Time Trial July 3

jjwright49 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:35:33 +0000

So I’ve had some great rides since I’ve been here, but they’ve all been pretty mellow (i.e. low heart rate, not much intensity) so I decided to invent a time trial (TT) course for myself to today to get my blood pumping and set a bar to race myself against for the next 3 weeks while I’m training on my own. I started with 20 min easy (with LOTS of stoplights trying to get down to Diamond Head- there are way too many long lights in Honolulu!), then did a few sets of single leg pedaling, 4x 20 pedal stroke sprints and 2x 1 min @ pace before I got started. Admittedly I didn’t choose the best TT course (it starts off which a pretty decent hill- usually you want a flat course) but it is the most beautiful- staying along the beach and residential beachfront property the whole time! My first lap was pretty decent (about 21:00 for 9.5km, so averaging 28.4 km/h with hills), though I knew I wasn’t pushing myself too hard as my HR was only averaging around 155bpm. I let myself get away with that one because I didn’t have anyone to pace against and I wasn’t even racing the clock yet because it was my first lap The second lap was much better- my legs were starting to hurt and I clocked in at 20:05. Rode back to the dorm and threw on my runners for a quick 10 minute tempo run (this is called a “brick” workout- doing bike then run) before heading off to another day in lab- what a great way to start the day!

Ride Map

(TT Course from Point C to Point D and back, 2X)

See below for link to GoogleMap
View Larger Map

Cruise Report (in brief)

jjwright49 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:25:49 +0000

I’ve been putting off writing this cruise report because there is just too much I could talk about and I wanted to be REALLY thorough, which apparently is not working! So I’ve decided to give a brief recap of what we did/learned each day and I can come back and elaborate more later:

Tuesday June 23
- DNA extraction with Mike Rappe (which I’ve done lots of before but was cool to see how our methods differ)

Wednesday June 24
- Nutrients with Karin Bjorkman and Tara Clemente (filtered water for measurements of phosphate, silicate and low level nitrogen (here in the subtropical gyre biological nitrogen levels are so low we must use special methods to detect it))

Thursday June 25
- Flow cytometry with Ken Doggett (counting microbial cells electronically. You can also sort populations of cells based on their properties- such as size and the type of chlorophyll pigments they contain- for further downstream analyses which is VERY cool!)

Friday June 26
- Viral and bacterial cell counts on slides + FlowCam with Grieg Steward and Mike Sieracki (counting microbial cells by staining cells, making slides and doing visual counts on a microscope- flow cytometry is MUCH faster

Saturday June 27
- Bacterial and primary production with Matt Church and Donn Viviani (This was my favorite day because I’ve learned methods for measuring these in my oceanography classes but this was my first time actually DOING them myself- very cool!)

Sunday June 28
- Deck ops with Brett Updyke (manning, deploying and recovering the CTD. Running the winch while recovering a sediment trap at 3am was the coolest part

Monday June 29
- Process sediment traps (full of smelly formalin!), packing up the labs, fishing (>20 tuna and 2 mahimahi were caught! Schools of them were following the ship almost all the way back to Oahu!)

Tuesday June 30
- Arrive home, offload!

What a great cruise!! Now back to the lab to process our samples and perform molecular analyses…

Cruise report coming soon!!

jjwright49 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:03:08 +0000

We just got back on land yesterday afternoon and are busily analysing all the samples we took, as well as getting our lives organized again (you know- banking, emails, and the like) and a big blog update is next on the list!

Stay tuned!