Crunching numbers and outreach

     Monday I met with Dr. Dinnel and we went over what I will be doing with all the data that was collected at the trestle.  Happily Nam loves playing with data and he has offered to help me with some conceptual stuff that is a bit out of my experiential range at this point.  Then I procrastinated and caught this blog up instead of entering data.

Denise spreading the word of marine science.

     Today I met up with Denise who does outreach and a graduate student Gemma.  We loaded up the outreach trailer with sea life and want went to main campus.  Happily we were outside in a big lawn and it was sunny out.  We met first with a group of younger students, around 10 years old.  Most of them were really interested and excited which was fun to see.  Later we met with a group of young adults (early teens) who are looking at careers in veterinary science.  They were fairly intrigued as well and asked a lot of good questions.  While they were there the water in the tanks got warm enough to trigger spawning in the giant scallop and he was so determined he clouded up the whole tank.  I think the student who asked what was happening was a bit embarrassed by the answer. Don't worry we had bags of ice clipped inside the tanks to keep the temperatures within acceptable levels.  My favorite though was a little boy, with his nanny, who just happened to be passing by.  He was so excited he was shaking but always asked permission to touch and said please and thank you. They came by three times in total while we were there and his excitement level never dropped.

A blood star and giant scallop in the outreach tank.

Sea cucumber mouth.

     I returned to Shannon Point just in time to head to Dr. Dinnel's house with Anne and Annie for dinner.  I knew we were in for a treat because when we first arrived everyone at Shannon Point raved about Dr. Dinnel's cooking.  Also there were Nate SPMC's scientific diving safety officer,  his family,  Josh who works with abalone as well, and of course Mrs. Dinnel.  We ate on the back patio on this gorgeous evening,  conversation was great and the food was absolutely amazing.  We started with oysters on the half shell followed by baked oysters, some with a cheve, ginger, wasabi topping and the others with fresh greens from their garden and garlic.  They were divine!  Next was the main curse grilled salmon and something we had to guess about first.  It tasted so close to abalone I was in heaven.  It was calamari steaks cooked specifically to resemble abalone.  The evening was rounded out with a rhubarb cake with fresh rhubarb from the garden.

I was so busy eating I forgot to get pictures until the end.

Delicious!

I managed to remember my camera before we devoured the main course.

     Dinner inspired me and I came back and shelled the rest of the crab I got this past weekend diving in Langley.  Tomorrow I will make everyone crab rangoon.