Emerald Bay and rockin the intertidal...

Over the weekend I went down to Catalina to visit my new job and it is so amazing. Really, I'm in love with the place and I've spent a grand total of 48 hours there. Here's a picture of the visitors center as seen from the front porch of my house (yes, I get to live in a house down there). It's quite a gorgeous place. I'm going to be living there year round for the next couple of years so moving is going to be intense but I'm looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to living so close to the beach, even though it's in California (which I'm still denying by the way).

Here's the view from my front porch including the giant eucalyptus tree which is right by the house. You really can't ask for a prettier view than this one. The house has great big front windows that face the water which is exactly the way I want it. The house comes with a washing machine and drying, good thing so I don't have to wash stuff by hand. I also get my own entrance to the house and my own bathroom! That makes me happy since I'll be living with a pair of twin brothers. They're really cool by the way.

This morning I started the field work for my research project on urchins, only to find that the calipers I've been using decided to go all crazy on me so I can't take any good measurements with them. This is a picture of little urchin pool with all my equipment next to it. I'm using the tape measure to take volume measurements, and then scale and the calipers to measure some urchins from each pool. That is if everything works properly. I also set up an urchin removal experiment to see if other urchins will move into newly vacated holes. It's a bit of common knowledge that urchins stay in the same hole throughout their lives and don't move, but I just want to see if that's true or not. I guess to be more accurate I would have to watch the holes for a longer period of time, but I only have a week so that will have to do.

I was thinking this morning how nice of a day it was in the intertidal. California may have more sun, but I wouldn't trade any of the foggy Oregon mornings I've had out here on the coast. I'm so lucky to be able to do what I'm doing that I feel like I've earned it because of the hard work and personal sacrifices that I've put in. I really do love this place and will sorely miss it when I leave in a month.