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| http://malawimedicalteam.blogspot.com Currently in Malawi with limited internet access. Please check website above for team updates. Five days of clinic left. Daily work in triage (I take heart rate, temp, bp, etc.) and teach Bible lessons to kids. Pray for: energy and health, teaching gospel. Thanks! MOM- there's a little beef jerky in the fridge snack bin from Vancouver that I left for you and dad to finish. (singapore style). Trip makes me think of you two a lot. You would love the work and the experience. -me | | |
| Multiple marine biologists over multiple years have used multiple methods to tag sea stars. For example, some have tied strings around the star arms. Unfortunately, sea stars can release their arms and regrow them if they feel that something is amiss. Unfortunately, it's difficult to recover sea stars if they are casting off their tagged arms.
My labmates prefer to implant microchips. We collect stars, implant microchips, release them in the wild, then come back later with a reader in an attempt to recover our experimental subjects. The reader is a scanner about the size of (but not shaped like) a shoebox. It is an expensive piece of equipment...maybe twice the value of my snowboard and bindings together. This summer, we started out with three functioning readers. We would climb over the wet, rocky shores, pushing the scanning button on the back of the scanners as we run them over sea stars. When a reader button is pushed, it emits a clicking sound and shows a red light until it senses a tag. Then the green light goes on and we hear a 'ping!' The reader also shows the time of day until it senses a tag, then the screen morphs to reveal the exact identification of the sea star.
Since each tag is worth...a super value meal, and because we don't recover the majority of the stars releases, and because sometimes we'll scan hundreds of stars all over the place and only come up with twenty tagged ones, and because we hope for respectable sample sizes, we rejoice at the recovery of each wandering star. (Not that we actually recover money by recovering tags, but it's nice to see your bucks one more time even if you're going to leave them wrapped in invertebrate, bake them in an oven, then chuck them into a dumpster.)
In order to recover as many stars as possible we attempt amazing acrobatics. We climb into crevasses, dig stars from ditches, fly across faces of rock, and balance on bolts of slick seaweed. All this in order to behold the red light that means missing microchips turn into a green light which reveals recovery, to hear the constant clicks convert to a precipitous 'ping!', to witness the regular reminder that we're climbing on rocks in drizzle at 5:30 am turn into GFP-8930D-B492!!!
Last Sunday, I was on a mission. I wanted to find some tagged stars, and I wanted to find them bad. I claimed the backside of a bench of rock the size of a small bus as my territory and began the hunt. I had a plan of action: first, I would scan all the stars in the tidepool ten feet to my right, then I would work my way along the top of the bench moving twenty feet to the left. Finally, I would drop down into the ten foot long center crevasse to complete the survey. I began my pursuit, pulling stars from their safe tidepool abode, but without successively finding any tags. I moved up the bus-sized boulder and began working my way along the bench, shuffling my bum along the sharp barnacle facade. I spotted stars clinging to the wall below me, masked by algae shrouding the rock surface.
The length of my hand and forearm together is about eighteen inches. Taking into account the loss of hand length from that (my hand was curled around the handle of the reader), the length that is left is very short. I sat on that bench, stretching out the twelve-some inches of arm, endeavoring to scan stars that were well over a foot below my feet. My feet...were resting on nothing. They were hanging over the edge of the bench, alongside the brown, slimy algae. I reached down towards a star. I shimmied my bum a bit closer to the edge of the bench and reached again. I shimmied a little more and reached again. I could see the stars, the whites of their ossicles. I was prepared to fire the scanner.
A big deal in the rocky intertidal is zonation. Several factors attibute to organism zonation: predation, space competition, facultative interactions, recruitment, dessication, wave exposure. Different flora and fauna settle and are successful at differing tidal heights. As a result, you see zonation. For example, the rocks in Barkely Sound generally feature small barnacles up high where there is less submergence time, then mussels, then maybe some more larger barnacles, then various bands of different slippery algae as you descend closer to low tide water levels.
As I shimmied, I shimmied down into a different zone...an algal zone. I shimmied, reached, shimmied, reached, shrieked, slipped, dropped the reader, reached...up, sank...down. I had fallen. I had fallen and I couldn't get up, or out. I had fallen into a crevasse, but it wasn't the crevasse of my premeditated canvass. That one wasn't part of the ocean. This one was. Crazy thoughts tumbled through my brain like dice spilling out of a Yahtzee cup. Can I pull myself out? I think I need help, "Help!" Did I bring my camera today? Is it worth staying in this water if someone can get a picture of me? If my gumboots fill with water, will they really pull me under? I guess I shouldn't kick, then. Are they full, yet? Shoot! The reader!
I used my arms to tread towards the wall, and tried to pull myself up using some hand holds, but fell back into the water. Then Cynthia's very concerned face appeared over the edge of the ridge. "Can you throw me a line?" "Here, put this on!" [life jacket comes into view]. Alan climbed to other side of the crevasse and wedged himself between the two sides. "Grab my leg!" ('Wow. I've never seen Cynthia look so worried. What? What is he talking about? Oh, the foot that's directly in front of my face.') "Where's the reader? Let me get the reader!"
My labmates dragged me out of the water cold, wet, and down a functioning reader. I think that's the most extreme incident I've experienced in the past two summers, and hope that nothing tops it next summer in Bamfield.
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| Have you ever heard music so lovely that you couldn't describe the way
it made you feel?...or inhaled air so fresh that you wanted to keep
breathing in and never exhale?...or tasted something so fresh and light
and delicious that you thought you might be able to keep consuming it
and never be tired or full?...or seen a vista so stunning that you felt
like you could stare forever?
Sunsets in Bamfield are breathtaking. There is a deck in
front of the main building on the marine station from where I liked to
sit and be quiet and gaze upon the water, earth and sky. Looking out
beyond Trevor channel I see the Deer Group islands, pine covered and
rising out of the water. Beyond those are the Broken Group islands,
rocky and pristine. Beyond the Broken Group, the Island's snowcapped
mountains cast down their shadows. When the sun sets, the islands fall on a rose and orange backdrop. Surface currents on the water mingle with the wake patterns of fishing boats returning to
Bamfield Inlet, etching a web of lines across the channel. The beauty
can't be adequately put into words; a verbal description or digital
snapshot would not do it justice. It is not really the beauty that aches,
but the pressure that builds up in my core as I attempt to fathom and
share it.
Regarding our Great God, Job said, "He stretches out the north
over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the water
in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it. He covers
the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud over it. He drew a
circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light
and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at HIs
rebuke. He stirs up the sea with his power, and by His understanding
He breaks up the storm. By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; His hand
pierced the fleeing serpent. Indeed these are the mere edges of His
ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His
power who can understand?"
The beauty and wonder of creation are merely on the edges of
the LORD's ways. His power is far beyond the scope of my inadequate
description of the earth He spoke into being. | | |
| My mom likes sea shells, so I went a huntin' for some whoppers.
These mussels are the size of my face!
BUT, these are not edible! Due to red tides (blooms of toxic dinoflagellates), we are susceptible to PSP (Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning)...only 738 micrograms can kill the average person! So, if you're at a clambake and your lips start to tingle, get some help right away!
I am earning my master's degree at the expense of giant mussels not fit for human consumption.
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In other news, I'm going back to LA tomorrow to spend my week of summer 'vacation' before I wrap up things back up here in Canada.
That's great because I'll get to fellowship with my peeps at GCC and hit up a Malawi team mtg....47 days left till takeoff!
Please check out our blog if you haven't yet http://malawimedicalteam.blogspot.com/
and remember us in your prayers as we strive to be diligent in preparing spiritually and logistically for the trip. Please pray especially for the Biedebachs, who will be moving from South Africa to Malawi in mid-August.
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| I got to go to church in Victoria this morning. I attended Charis Community Church (http://charisvictoria.ca/),
which was very small (there were 8 people there this morning), but
composed of believers who love the LORD and His Bible. It was a great and
refreshing experience (I haven't been to church since I left LA), and I
got to ask the pastor all kinds of questions about the church in
Canada. Please pray for their ministry, that God will sustain it and
give them encouragement, and that they will seek for Him to lead them in ministry decisions.
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