Hiking Cold Canyon

Here are some pictures from hiking at Cold Canyon a few days ago. Enjoy!

Fall in Davis

Halloween has come and gone already. We hosted a fairly successful pumpkin carving festival. Mine was a screaming, crazy-eyed 'Foot Eating Pumpkin,' and luckily remained unmolested by neighborhood teenagers. (It's the one behind Jack Skellington in the photo below).















We lit our squash-like gords and set them on the front step, but they failed to bring many trick-or-treaters. I was reluctant to give candy to two kids who looked about 19, only one of whom had a costume. They were definitely past the cut-off, but I didn't want a trick. It could have gotten ugly:



Having recently discovered the UC Davis Meat Lab, we pitched in and bought half of a pig last weekend. The barbeque isn't finished yet, so we elected to cut the pig up and cook pieces individually. Bones made stock and fat was rendered for lard. Some cuts were smoked, others braised. A portion of the braised meat was pulled and fried in lard to make carnitas. Mushroom-stuffed trotters, paired with roast tenderloin, were excellent. The pig is a wonderful, delicious animal!





















It is about time I start exploring what is actually outside of Davis. This year up north is going to come and go before I know it; the time is now to take advantage. Tomorrow, a few friends and I will be doing a half-day hike at Cold Canyon. Pictures to follow...

Mimosas in the countryside

Preface: I like mimosas. I like mimosas even more over an outdoor brunch in the countryside. The Krimmenel had us over to his new swanky spot, which happens to be out in the middle of nowhere. Perfect. He's got chickens, horses, gardens, copious (and delicious) prickly pears. We stopped by the Winters Farmers Market along the way for some fresh local fruit. I must say, I am mighty envious of his chickens... need to get my hands on some of those. What a great way to spend a Sunday morning. Finding time to relax is important!

Wonderful Davis and Midwestern nostalgia

I'm settling into Davis very well. Here, in no particular order, is a brief list of things I am enjoying:

1) Biking EVERYWHERE (and saving money on gas)
2) Farmers markets selling produce that is actually local
3) Having these at home again: a real table to eat on, big kitchen to cook in, and backyard to garden
4) Amazing housemates (and they cook!)
5) An incredibly professional, supportive, and welcoming graduate group
6) Big green trees
7) Friendly people and a slow way of life (despite the hustle of grad school)

On the other hand, I am waist-deep in grant writing season. :/ It would be nice to score some cash this year ... we will wait and see, wait and see.

In other news, I took at trip to my alma mater (Ohio State) recently. It was great to catch up with old friends - those that are still around town. I also had the chance to meet with some colleagues from my old lab. I felt nostalgic.















The campus looks great, too. Renovation of the main library is complete and the new student union is almost done. I felt nostalgic.















It rained the whole weekend, but what better representation of Columbus? I hadn't sat and listened to a thunderstorm in over a year. I felt nostalgic... but in a good way. :)

The Odyssey

I've just returned from The Odyssey. Sounds intense, right? The Odyssey is a week-long extended orientation field trip for new ecology students at UC Davis, with the goals of introducing us to field stations, research opportunities, and each other. We packed up into 6 vans and drove east. First stop: Tahoe Environmental Research Center for a tour of Lake Tahoe. Oh and I started out in the "Mario Van," which included built-in Super Mario Bros. 3 for the entertainment factor. The slogan, "Keep Tahoe Blue," has a lot of truth to it. Because the watershed is so small compared to the vast size of the lake, the water is clear and a surreal shade of blue.














We spent the night at Sage Hen Natural Reserve and were off to Mono Lake the next day. Mono Lake is like something from another planet. It is super salty, but alkaline (it feels oily like soap). Not much can live in this environment, mostly brine shrimp and alkali flies. Washed up along the shoreline are piles upon piles of fly pupae casings. Hungry yet? However, the lake does have some redeeming values. Tall carbonate deposits, called 'tufas,' can be found here. Also, Mono Lake acts as critical resting and feeding habitat for migratory shorebirds. Nearly all of the migrating shorebirds in North America stop here for lunch.



















The TAs wore costumes the whole trip, which lightened the mood and was an integral part of the experience. Vans had themes... Big Lebowski, Derek Zoolander's Derelicte Campaign, Mario & Luigi, etc. Pink day and costume dance parties were absolutely wild. Acting ridiculous is a great way to get to know someone!





















We next visited the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab, or SNARL (nice acronym, huh?). Late night activities included hot springs, which I had never experienced before. It was pretty incredible. A series of pools provided a gradation of heat to suit your taste.

We visited Rock Creek and Inyo National Forest for a bit of hiking, although a few people fly fished instead (catching lake trout mostly). During the hike to Mono Pass (10,599 ft) we went for a dip in Ruby Lake, which is snowmelt-fed. I lasted about a minute. The vistas of mountains and high-elevation forests were unbelievable. Until now, I hadn't done much exploring at this elevation, among such striking mountains.






























We continued to gain elevation, exploring the bristlecone pines in the alpine tundra of the White Mountains. The geology and biology of this region is, of course, breathtaking. Bristlecones grow very slowly at high elevation, resulting in incredibly dense wood. They are thought to be among the oldest organisms on the planet (some perhaps 5,000 years old). Even the dead trees are beautiful, since decomposition occurs so slowly at elevation. Small lichens growing on rocks are typically thousands of years old, as well.





















Finally we reached the ultimate goal of The Odyssey: climbing White Mountain (14,254 ft). The hike started at about 12,000 ft and is roughly 5 miles each way. But, the climb is "up-down-up-down-up" and with the thin air was intense. It is remarkable how low oxygen kills performance. We first five up the mountain made it in under 2 hours - respek! Lunch and nap on the warm roof of the summit building was a necessity before the return hike. The next day, on the drive back to Davis, we stopped by Yosemite for lunch.













In every way, this was an amazing trip. Definitely full of memories that I will cherish. More amazing than the stunning sights and exciting activities were the 50 new friends I made. In meeting all these new people, I am really looking forward to a year at Davis. :) It is going to be hard to leave.

Whirlwind

The summer has flown by yet again. In May I could see it all outstretched in front of me, but now feels like it passed in an instant. Why does summer seem particularly fleeting? I have been making some moves since my last post 3 weeks ago. I took the train to L.A. to visit an old friend. The train ride sports spectacular views...















... and is reasonably priced compared to Northeast counterparts. The first stop off the train? World-famous Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, naturally! What's that you say? Never heard of this combination? Well... neither had I, to be honest. But man, it goes together like scrapple and eggs!















We visited the Venice Beach an Santa Monica farmer's markets, both funky scenes. I avoided Hollywood as much as possible (OK, we drove by...). The San Fernando Spanish Mission and Griffith Observatory/Planetarium were both cool and educational. The Mission had some very old maps of the west coast, some suggesting that the entirety of California was actually an island. Fascinating!

















Back to San Diego and off to D.C. for a wild weekend with Rucas! I visited the Air and Space Museum and Smithsonian Natural History Museum, places I haven't been since I was a kid. I continue to be amazed. I joined my cousins at Comet Ping Pong, where they specialize in sustainable ingredients, novel pizzas (soft-shell crab, clam, eggplant...), and, um, ping pong? Nothing like losing to someone who's age is in the single digits... dang. My trip wasn't complete without a visit to Ben's Chili Bowl for artery-clogging goodness (the chili half-smoke is out of this world!). Mmm, I can feel my right arm getting numb just thinking about it.
















I've had some very good friends from high school visit San Diego. We cruised up to Del Mar for horse racing and free live music (reggae legend Steel Pulse). They went to the zoo, SeaWorld, and San Diego's beautiful beaches. Of course before, they left, I had to take them to In-N-Out Burger for some serious West Coast eats.















In other news, I finally started some of my own field work in the late summer. I've got a small pilot study started, which is good because I'll be land-locked for 9-12 months. Lets hope for some good data. I'll be leaving for Davis early next week. Between traveling and showing friends around town, I'm starting to realize that I will miss San Diego. Davis should be very, very cool, but I think I'll be happy to come back in 2010.

Urchins in the LJER and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Been diving a bit in the La Jolla Ecological Reserve. Some of the lab's current research is looking at predation on urchins, both during the day and at night (which comes with a different suite of predators). Here are some cool pics!

















































In other news, I am leaving San Diego in just over 3 weeks! Ahh!!! I have a lot of my own research to get done before then, but I am looking forward to UC Davis.

Finally, my friend, office-mate, and future roomie is on a UCSD New Horizon cruise, on her way to the "Garbage Patch" in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. Perhaps you have heard about this place on such shows as Oprah?

Due to our propensity to construct and litter non-biodegradable waste, and concentric ocean currents, there is a concentration of garbage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is estimated to be from the twice the size of Texas to that of the entire continental United States! Hopefully she'll find lots of trash (her passion) although it makes me sad to think about all that waste that will be here for, in practical terms, forever. You can read about her very interesting research on marine debris and bioaccumulation of plastics here and the blog on the Garbage Patch cruise here.

Live music, baseball, and carnitas

I checked out some live music a few weeks ago. Stay Classy hosted a concert, street festival, and tickets to the Padres game for only $20! Not a bad deal. Cage the Elephant opened for Del the Funkee Homosapien of Hieroglyphics and Souls of Mischief. What a sweet outdoor venue... both artists brought the house down! And the Padres won! I need to cruise downtown more often, it has a lot to offer.









































Scruffy celebrated his birthday last week with home-made carnitas and smoked ribs. Mmmm.... :) That's all for now!

Trip back East

I took a short vacation and flew to Delaware for a few days. There were lots of outdoorsy activities, such as visiting Longwood Gardens, hiking at the Laurel Preserve, and canoeing the Brandywine River. Here are a few pictures:












































































































I also went to see Wilco at Frawley Stadium. They do a really good live performance. I got my fix on a lot of my East Coast favorites which are scarce here in Southern California, including scrapple and eggs, big green forests, and rivers with moving water! I got to see a lot of family at my uncle's 70th birthday party. Plenty of good people in this bunch, both the young...





















...and the young-at-heart.





















There is whole roast pig at said party? Why, yes, I would be interested in that! Turns out that pig cheek really is delicious, but I prefer snout.

Independence Day

Funny how our holidays are no longer representative of anything beyond an excuse to take a day off and party. Just a quick post here about this year's Fourth of July, which of course has more to do with BBQs, parades, and fireworks than remembering America's independence from Great Britain. Even though we may have lost some this holiday's patriotic purpose, it is a good reason to relax with friends and family.













To me, it's all about the food (right?). Scruffy put together a real feast. Pulled pork sandwiches (using slow-grilled, hickory-smoked pork shoulder), grilled ribs and corn-on-the-cob, tostada chips with fresh pico de gallo, watermelon (of course), peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream, and of course plenty of beer. Serious food porn...

I enjoyed some San Diego sunshine on a friend's boat on Mission Bay in the afternoon and later migrated to OB. This is a great spot for beach fireworks. We caught fireworks from OB, Mission Bay Yacht Club, and SeaWorld. You could even see the shows downtown and in La Jolla from a distance - very cool!

Home brewin'

A couple of friends and I bottled some delicious home brew this week. This was the first brew I participated in from start to finish and I can't wait until the beer is ready to drink. It's in the style of a Russian Imperial Stout and so dark, heavy, and fairly high ABV.

Scrombini Imperial Stout
12 lbs dark malt extract
1 lb Simpson's Chocolate barley
1 lb Weyerman's CaraArmona malt
1 lb amber dried malt extract
2 oz Challenger hops
2 oz Perle hops
WLP004 Irish ale (stout) yeast

Steep grains until 165 degrees C and remove. Next bring to a boil for one hour, adding the following ingredients for at the indicated remaining time:
60 min: 6 lbs dark malt extract, 1 lb amber dried malt extract, 2 oz Challenger hops
30 min: 6 lbs dark malt extract
20 min: 1 oz Perle hops
5 min: 1 oz Perle hops

During secondary fermentation, add two 4-oz bags of bourbon-soaked oak chips at two-week intervals. Be sure to soak the wood chips for a couple of days and drain them well before adding.

Original gravity = 1.100
Final gravity at bottling = 1.034
Approx. ABW (before priming) = 9.8%
Brewed April 11, 2009
Bourbon-soaked chips added on June 1 and 15, 2009
Bottled July 1, 2009
Final volume = 4.4 gallons

We also sipped on some of J-rod's Darwin's Rainwater, a double IPA that he put together this year in commemoration of Chuck D's 200th birthday (and made with real San Diego rain). The beer was bottled with some of the leftover hops, making it extremely hoppy, floral, and, above-all, delicious!

















Father's Day was about two weeks ago. And what did my dad get? Only the finest in San Diegan charcuterie. My brother and I shipped a whole cured cabrito (baby goat) together with goat prosciutto (a twist on the Italian classic) from North Park Meat Co., the retail end of the restaurant The Linkery. All their meat is from pastured animals, so that is cool. Plus they roast whole pigs over wood fires right there on the sidewalk. The whole neighborhood smells like savory swine! I can only picture the horror on my mother's face as she unwrapped the package to find this beast:













Wonderful pair of sons, huh? Small goat or chupacabra? I'll let you decide. One last thing... I don't care how old you are - homemade ice cream sandwiches are pretty badass.

A little bit about research

The lab that I am a part of does ecology research in marine ecosystems, with a focus on invertebrate species and work that has applications to conservation. I think this blog is an appropriate place to share a little bit about what it is that we do. I'll try to make this readable for non-science folk.

We have a number of projects going on at the moment. One project is looking at urchins and how they are affected by predators. It is not only academically interesting to understand urchin predator-prey dynamics. Urchins play an important "role" in kelp forests as they are voracious grazers. Unchecked by predation, urchins may be capable of consuming so much kelp that they completely transform the ecosystem from complex three-dimensional structure to much simpler "urchin barrens." If the habitat is changed, this will have consequences for other species by altering food availability, shelter, and so forth. Some urchin species are also commercially important, or provide food for fished species. Predators of urchins include spiny lobsters, sheephead, and other large fishes.

Other ongoing work involves the California spiny lobster, Panulirus interruptus. Spiny lobsters tend to live in a limited geographical area, but it is unclear how big their "home range" is exactly. Lobsters typically shelter during the day and travel after sunset in seatch of food, mates, or shelter. One study underway is looking at the distance and patterns of these movements. Spiny lobsters represent one of the larger fisheries in Southern California. In an effort to protect biodiversity, conserve habitat, and sustain fisheries, "no-take" marine reserves are being established up and down the California coast (CA MLPA). If spiny lobsters move around a lot (or have big home ranges), marine reserves may have to be larger to protect the species. Other work in our lab on spinies includes a collaborative project with the California Department of Fish and Game, investigating lobster populations in the San Diego Bay.

Still other research is looking at food web interactions in kelp forests up and down the California coastline. There is contention over what factors are most important in controlling the structure of ecological communities in these rocky-bottom ecosystems. These factors are generally split into "bottom-up," which includes things that affect plant/algae growth, and "top-down," the processes of predation and herbivory. Obviously both of these broad processes are important, but their relative contributions are unclear.

Another project is examining abalone populations, seeking to understand how connected different populations are (in other words, how "open" or "closed" the populations are). Most marine species have a planktonic life stage in which they are more-or-less subject to the currents. Eventually they settle out and either live at the ocean floor or swim about water column. For many species, including abalone, it isn't perfectly clear how much the populations disperse and how genetically distinct sub-populations are.

Kelp forests aren't the only place we play - we also do research in seagrass beds, which are mainly in shallow soft-sediment areas, such as bays and estuaries. Current seagrass studies in our lab focus mainly on predator-prey dynamics. Seagrasses are touted as classic "nursery habitat," meaning simply that juveniles of lots of species live there because of the high levels of primary productivity. Many species that are found as adults in other environments may spend the early portion of their life amongst seagrasses. Lots of fish species here eat small crustaceans which in turn nibble on algae. This algae competes with seagrass for light and space. So, understanding how predation works under different conditions is important for the health of the entire ecosystem, as well as neighboring ecosystems.

This brings me to my research interests! I'm planning on looking at how different factors affect the "health" of seagrasses and their animal communities. Soft-sediment ecosystems have the ability to transition from dominance by algae/plankton to seagrass and vice versa, representing "degraded" and "pristine" ecosystems respectively. In short, I'd like to examine whether these transitions are gradual or abrupt. If they are abrupt, what is the breaking point? How hard is it to transition from one to the other? Perhaps more importantly, can the species living within seagrass beds mediate transitions between seagrass-dominance and algal-dominance? The evolution of my research ideas is ongoing, but this is the general direction that I would like to take my work.

Back in the water

I borrowed a recipe for bánh mì from Menu In Progress, using chicken instead of pâté . Came out pretty well! Not nearly as good as Saigon Sandwiches in SF or K's Sandwiches in SD (both big winners in my book), but still pretty good. It's easier than you think - give it a shot. The hardest part is getting really good bread.

Finally I'm getting back to diving! I dove La Jolla Cove a couple of times over the last week. For those that haven't been: It's a mix of rocky reef and sandy bottom with towering kelps, diverse macroalgae, and dense seagrass (the surfgrass Phyllospadix spp.). We saw fishes including bright orange garibaldi, kelp bass, sheephead, fluorescent blue banded goby, barred sand bass, sculpin, and jacksmelt. More interesting, in my opinion, are the invertebrates! There were loads of California spiny lobsters and purple urchins. We also came across other inverts, including (the more-delicious) red urchins, sheep crabs, keyhole limpets, nudibranchs, and a group of four mating giant black sea hares. Kinky, I know.

Here are some pictures from my latest dive, courtesy of some new friends with the UCSD Dive Club:

Upclose and personal with a sea star













Beautiful coral polyps













Our fearless leader goofing off with a kelp holdfast















A mating mess of sea hares















A gorgeous nudibranch













The author, pretending to be hardcore...
















...and playing with a sheep crab