Week 1:
Jumping Right In

May 28, 2022

This first week has been fantastic, giving me a taste of all the cool fieldwork I’ll be helping conduct at the Baruch Marine Field Laboratory! Many groups use the lab, including the University of South Carolina, the Belle W. Baruch Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s North Inlet-Winyah Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR). After driving nearly 18 hours and through seven different states, I arrived on Saturday evening with my dad and moved into a house on-site, where I’ll be living with 9 other undergrad and graduate students for the next 10 weeks. Once I got settled into my room and picked up some groceries, we went out for dinner in nearby Georgetown and ate some of the best seafood I have ever had. Don’t get me wrong, Iowa has some good food, but seafood out here is miles better. The next day, we explored Myrtle Beach a bit, which is about an hour away from the lab. After grabbing a bite to eat (more seafood of course) and exploring the boardwalk a bit, I took my dad to the airport so he could fly back home to Iowa.

This week has been anything but a slow start. On Monday, I had about a half-hour to set my things down and get a quick tour of the lab from Dr. Matt Kimball, my main supervisor and then immediately went out into the estuary for some fieldwork on oyster reefs. For the next few days, I spent the majority of my time measuring and collecting oyster samples from a variety of reefs in Winyah Bay with some other interns and Prof. Robert Dunn, another professor I’ll be working with this summer. Luckily, low tide was early in the morning on Tuesday, so it was nice and cool when we were out in the field. After work on Tuesday, a group of us interns decided to go out and find somewhere nearby to hang out and grab some food. It seems like between Georgetown, Pawley’s Island (about 10 minutes away), and Murrel’s Inlet (20 or so minute drive), there are plenty of fun activities to keep us busy this summer.

On Thursday, I shifted gears a bit and helped collect and analyze water samples from a nearby marsh with a few of the lab techs that work full-time here at Baruch. Working with them was especially interesting because I was able to go out and collect the samples in the field and also get a taste of the sort of lab work they do in order to monitor the chemical/nutrient composition of the marsh. It ended up raining on Friday quite a bit, which meant that another intern and I spent most of the day prepping the seawater lab for some shrimp experiments we plan to conduct next week.

At the end of the week, I found myself shocked at how fast it flew by. Every day seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. After getting a taste of what sort of research Baruch does, I’m really excited for the next 9 weeks out here in South Carolina!