The Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

After being accepted into the CICOES program, I got to be part of a cohort that included 14 amazing people. We all immediately grew close and spent time together whenever we could. We all were involved in wonderful research projects, and I was thrilled to work in Jacqueline Padilla-Gamino lab. I got to work alongside two amazing people Miranda Roethler and Núria Viladrich. I had the opportunity to work with Miranda throughout the first part of the summer. Our goal was to determine how a heat wave might affect the rate of photosynthesis in kelp. We gathered kelp from Elliott Bay and Whidbey Island every week. We used kayaks to harvest the kelp and paddling in the water made me appreciate the ecosystem we have now and reminded me how calming the ocean can be. The second half of the summer I worked alongside Núria. Were our primary goal was to see the effects of gradual ocean warming on coral. The coral was brought to us from Florida five months before our project started. Kelp and coral are vital in our oceans today, infect if you didn’t know kelp and coral are the foundational species that provide food, habitats, and shoreline protection for tropical and temperate ecosystems. In both experiments we worked hard and got good results, but it wasn’t easy, we had a lot of obstacles to overcome troubleshooting to work through. However, I also learned to analyze data and create graphs that display our results. Half of the work we did was in the lab and the other half on the computer looking through the data. One can’t function without the other. I’m so grateful I got to be a part of this project and worked with so many amazing people. In addition, I was able to gain a lot of knowledge, grow as a person and grow my confidence.

Project introduction

Research poster