Western Pacific Diatoms Project

As an undergraduate, I was encouraged by my teachers in high school to volunteer for a professor to help with one of their research projects. Since professors are usually juggling classes and research, many of them need the manpower. I decided to volunteer for my professor Dr. Chris Lobban (now retired as a professor) who had taught me for biodiversity photomicroscopy and scientific writing. Because a portion of one of our classes had to do with microscopy, I would visit him at his office to have a nice chat and I inquired one day at the end of a semester if he was looking for volunteers. And so began my dazzling diatom experience into the world of microscopy. I didn’t know it then, but that was some golden advice I was given.

One of Dr. Lobban’s long term research projects was the Western Pacific Diatoms Project. He was one of the experts of marine and aquatic diatoms but lacked the time to work through all his carefully dated and labeled slides from numerous locations throughout Guam and the Marianas. I set to work on a bunch of slides from Guam as well as Saipan (since I’m from there, he thought it would interest me more). I was already familiar with handling a LM from my undergrad studies, but the cool thing about his microscopes at the lab in House 28 (his research space) was that the microscopes also had a camera and could take photos. There were 2 ways to go through a slide, he explained to me. One way was to zigzag randomly everywhere, covering as much of the slide as I could. The other way, was perhaps more time consuming, but more thorough, and that was to begin from a corner and work your way systematically to the opposite corner on the other side of the slide, overlapping slightly so you can get EVERYTHING (I usually began at the top left and ended at the bottom right). I am a much more systematic than random person, so I chose this method. Every time I took a photo, I had to note down the location of the slide as well (going by the ruler on the side of the microscope) and as he was looking through the photos I took he would attempt to locate the ones of diatoms of interest. We made progress.

In addition to my LM microscopy, Dr. Lobban also taught me how he went about mounting the slides he used for his high-powered Phenom scanning electron microscope (SEM), which used a beam of electrons to form images at a higher magnification than any other microscope I’d seen or used before. I was amazed at how many steps it took to get to a finished, mounted stub, but was grateful that he shared his process with me. As a first mentoring experience, Dr. Lobban took care in teaching me his approach to the scientific method and his philosophy on research, which I loved. He also discussed my career goals with me at the end of a few of our microscopy sessions over a mug of hot chamomile herbal tea. I truly felt at home performing the research and having something meaningful to contribute my time to. Although I spent much more time on the LM, we did go through a few stubs with the Phenom, though I preferred not to use it without Dr. Lobban in the lab in case I made a costly mistake. Costly mistakes are not what I wanted to make this early in my research career.

I continued to visit House 28 in my spare time between classes as a freshman and sophomore, but before the beginning of my junior year I had to turn the keys over to the beloved House as I was now juggling school and a job, which left little time to contribute to any research. Dr. Lobban e-mailed me not long after I turned in the keys with a link to his published manuscript, including me in the acknowledgements along with his other student researchers. I was happy to read that he described many new kinds of diatoms in his paper. I was, and am, extremely thankful to have had this as my first long-term volunteer research experience. It led to many doors being opened later, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

Fish Market Surveys

As a small volunteer gig I decided to volunteer with a great mentor of mine Dr. Peter Houk, currently a Professor at the University of Guam Marine lab, as well as founder of Pacific Marine Resources Institute. Because I had a small amount of experience with the fish market surveying techniques from my internship, I was already acquainted with the overall process.

The reasoning behind fish market surveys was to estimate abundances of common food fish species by surveying as many fish markets as possible for the size (fork length) and species of fish being put up for sale. Fish market surveys are especially helpful because the fish are already caught and by comparing sets of data from the same time but say different years, or sets of data from different times of the year, abundances of food fish populations can be estimated.

Practical skills acquired:

• identifying common food fish in the Marianas to species level
• measuring fish fork lengths
• working in a team

Link to the publication published using this data.

This short-term volunteer stint was probably the most fun I’d ever had doing research at this point. The work was interesting, albeit a bit smelly, and the team I worked with were fun and easygoing. One of them, Kai Staal, was a swimming prodigy in CNMI, and it was also his first intro to research. I should add that it takes some finesse to handle slippery dead fishes in a way that won’t offend the fish market owners..

Coral Reef Initiative Internship

For my first important internship I was accepted into an internship program at the Coastal Resources Management Office (CRMO), a government office in Saipan (note: CRMO is now a division of the newly created Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality (BECQ)).

The internship was called the Coral Reef Initiative (CRI) Internship and the P.I. at the time was Mr. John Starmer. As a CRI intern I was a part of the Marine Monitoring Team.

Condensed version of events:

• surveyed reef flats of the lagoon in a team to contribute to long term monitoring data sets
• surveyed marine invertebrates and algae for long term monitoring data sets
• published a news article on the internship
• participated in fish market surveys
• created ghost crab surveys and parrotfish identification sheets for fish market surveys
• created the agency’s poster presentation board for the Pacific Islands Environmental Conference
• presented a research report on chosen research paper

Practical skills acquired:

• worked in a team
• learned surveying methods using quadrats
• learned surveying methods using transect lines
• learned data input using Excel
• learned local and scientific names for common fish, invertebrates, and algae

Along with two other interns–Steven Johnson and Tyler Warwick–I had a ton of fun and we managed to get a good amount of surveys done all in one summer. It was a wonderful intro to the life of an intern and researcher, and although sometimes I actually dreaded going for a survey run (can you believe it? I dreaded going to the beach! Me!) I was glad that they worked us hard because if they didn’t then I wouldn’t have been as well-prepared for the rigors I’d go through in my future research experiences and data collection. They always say that data collection can be the most fun part of the scientific process. If it involves a clipboard, mask & snorkel, clear waters, and a bikini, I’d have to agree.