I am (in an evolving relationship with) Science.

*Warning: This post has photos of whale guts.  Be prepared.
I am science is an online movement that started with Kevin Zelnio's moving and heartfelt narrative about how he became a scientist.  The resulting tumblr feed, I am Science, is full of stories, long and short, about who scientists were before they were scientists, and who they are outside of science.  As a grad student, I don't really have much of a life outside of science.  In an interview a couple of months ago for a website giving advice to students interested in various careers, I was asked how I manage my free time, and my answer was a guffaw.  Lately I haven't seemed to have much time for anything but science, although I generally manage to squeeze in one fun event per weekend (last weekend it was the Valentine's Day Biathalon).

Image via etsy.com/shop/AfricanGrey

I think my relationship with science is a little bit like a human relationship.  I feel guilty when I neglect it to go out for a run - those files aren't going to analyze themselves!  At times, it feels like we spend so much time together that I forget why I fell in love with it in the first place.  I felt like we spent all our time together doing chores and errands, and weren't taking any time to enjoy each other.

Over the last couple of weeks, blogging has been to me what a romantic date might be to a relationship.  It's been my chance to take spend some quality time with marine biology and have a little silly fun together.  My relationship with science is suffering from grad school almost like a human relationship would (and does) when stress comes into play.  So I thought I would take a step back and look at how science and I found each other, to put our current relationship into a little perspective.

Dating

I am not one of those people who have wanted to a marine biologist their whole life.  In fact, when I meet marine biologists (especially people who study dolphins) who have wanted to study them since they were born, it kind of skeeves me out.  It's sort of like how I feel about marrying your childhood sweetheart - it's cute and sweet, but didn't you want to date a couple more guys first?  (Note: I am my boyfriend's first serious girlfriend, and he has wanted to study marine biology since he was 6.  This probably makes me a floozy).  

Aaaand bachelor number three is... Science!

5th grade crush on science.

Here's the list of things I wanted to be before I graduated from college:

1) Bear                              6) Novelist

2) Dog Trainer                  7) Othopedic Surgon

3) Olympic Skier               8) Water Quality Scientist

4) Marine Biologist           9) Marine Biologist

5) Journalist

You'll notice that Marine Biologist is in there twice - that's the 5th grade visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  I think most kids go through a "marine biologist" stage - it's that damn dolphin thing.  For me, it was just a school-kid crush.

Going Steady

It was not until my last year of college that marine biology and I ran into each other again.  I had started college as a pre-med, but something wasn't clicking for me.  I think it was probably because most of our lab work was replicating experiments that had already been done to learn good lab technique - which is very important, but just didn't catch my imagination.  During my senior year I finally decided to take Marine Biology.  It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  My professor, Dr. Joel Elliott, took the time to really expose his students to fieldwork.  Not only did we learn about plankton and haloclines (layers in the water where there is a change in salinity) in the classroom, but we went out in the Puget Sound and measured them.  We were encouraged to team up for class projects in which we learned something new about the biology of the Sound.  We were even allowed to try out cutting-edge technology, like the ROV (remotely operated vehicle).  Driving an ROV is similar to playing a video game with a joystick.  As you can see, I'm not great at video games:

The sea star I finally pick up there is a Pycnopodia helianthoides, which in

 latin means many-legged sunflower. Latin names are so cool sometimes.  

I wish every college student had this kind of opportunity - I think there would be more kids out there doing science if they actually got to DO science.  Not everyone can tag whales, but we know so little about the ecology of many things that everyone could do something.  Sorry, I digress.

Pisaster makes you crazy.

After my mini-project in Marine Biology, Joel allowed me to do an independent-study project on the predation of the ocre sea star Pisaster ocraceus on the invasive mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis.  Pisaster is the purple or orange sea star that you see all up and down the west coast of north America, and is very important in the ecology of the intertidal zone.  It wasn't a sexy project - I spent most of my time prying smelly sea stars off of a pier with a garden tool called the big dog, but fact that I could find out something new about the natural world really got me hooked on biology.

When I went to talk to my college advisor about graduate school, he took a look at my mediocre grades (physics just wasn't that exciting to me until I started applying it to underwater sound) and told me to go take some summer field classes at Bamfield Marine Science Centre.  I was obsessed with sea stars, but the invertebrate biology class was full, so I reluctantly agreed to take the Marine Birds class instead.  By the time there was an opening in Inverts, I was having so much fun driving around in boats and learning about bird biology that I decided to stay in the birds class.

Coasties are similar to mounties, but
with different uniforms.

One early Saturday morning, my friend Aija and I went out early to check on some birds we were thinking about doing our class project on.  On the way back, our motor failed.  Since no one at the marine station was awake yet, we ended up calling the coast guard for a tow back.  Canadian coast guard guys are both cute AND extremely polite, by the way.  After we filed our "broken motor" report back at the pier, we started talking to a few people at the dock.  They were going out to look for gray whales - would we like to come along?  Well, okay.  I guess.

The captain of the boat, Brian Gisborne, runs a water taxi service between the tiny coastal communities of Port Renfro and Bamfield.  He's lived in the area all his life, and has really great insight about the local biology.  Although he doesn't have a college degree, he's yet another example of how regular people can contribute to science, and has coauthored a book and several scientific papers.  Brian had some great ideas for bird research, and I ended up doing my class project on the association between marbled murrelets (a little seabird) and gray whales.  Both Aija and I eventually published our class projects, which is a testament to the both the seabirds class and Brian's wonderful mentorship (Aija's paper, and mine).

Brian was a contractor with the Cascadia Research collective, and at the end of my time at Bamfield he helped me obtain an internship with them.  When young scientists ask me how they can get into marine biology, I ALWAYS tell them to do an internship - working with Cascadia was truly a chance in a lifetime.  I got to try out a variety of different types of marine mammal research, from dissections of dead seals, sea lions, whales, and porpoises, to photo identification and acoustics.  It was also an opportunity to be mentored by very dedicated and professional scientists.

Whale necropsies require galoshes and a strong stomach.  Tissue samples from
the internal organs of this dead-stranded whale were used to determine
the whale's disease, parasite, and health status.

Commitment

Although I had applied to one graduate school right out of college, I didn't get in.  At a loss for what to do with ourselves, my boyfriend and I moved to Santa Cruz, where we both worked in retail and tourism jobs.  Working at a retail store really put my life into perspective - I did NOT want to spend the rest of my life hanging up clothes and telling people whether their outfits coordinated (and if you've seen me dress, you know I am the worst person in the world to ask).  Fortunately, I was still able to do some volunteering with Cascadia.  I spent a month with Scripps Researcher Elizabeth Henderson aboard the R/P FLIP ship, a mobile research platform that actually goes from a horizontal to a vertical position by partially filling with water. It sounds like fantasy, but I assure you I am not making this up.  The FLIP is really great for bioacoustic and oceanographic research, because all of the noisy parts are above the water.  While I wasn't on FLIP, I got my marine biology fix by volunteering at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (in the penguin exhibit) and with a shark research group.  Finally, in 2007, I was accepted to the University of Hawaii, and started on my way to being a bioacoustition.

Aboard the FLIP 

Part of the penguin exhibit (left) and measuring bat rays in the Elkhorn Slough.

So, what has been the point of this long, self involved trip down memory lane?  Reminiscing about the changing dynamics and expectations in my relationship with science puts my current position in perspective.  I may have ended up where I thought I would, but it turns out I never really knew where I was going - and it turned out to be pretty damn cool.

Young Ken Norris (left) at the start of
 his career as a cetacean biologist.
Scanned from The Porpoise Watcher.

It's always good to have a relationship role model when things are tough.  For my relationship with science, I look to Kenneth S. Norris.  Ken Norris is one of the more famous cetacean researchers, for his work with Hawaiian Spinner dolphins and groundbreaking ideas on hearing.  He even has a lifetime award for excellence in marine mammal research named after him.  He didn't start out in cetacean research - he began by studying discovered circadian rhythms in snakes and the function of color changes in reptiles and amphibians.  It wasn't until he was in his mid-30s that he started studying cetaceans.  No one who knew him when he was my age could have predicted that one day he would be a world-renowed dolphin expert.  In case you think this example just pertains to biologists, consider the fact that Rosalind Franklin, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA, did her original research on coal.

Much like science itself, our relationships with science are not static.  They change and evolve, and the lifetime journey through science is unpredictable.  The knowledge that we gain about one aspect of science gives us perspective about other areas.  This rough patch I'm going through isn't going to last forever, and my love for science is only going to be stronger with greater understanding (cue "My Heart Will Go On").

Oh yeah, and those people on I am Science?  Finding science is only the beginning - they're going to take it to a whole new level.

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