In an attempt to convince his students that studying plants was both fun and interesting, my Bio II professor gave a speech on the first day about why he liked plants. It went more or less as follows: plants can't run away when you are trying to track them, plants have lots of interesting uses, they look pretty, and they don't scream if you cut them open. I don't know about their superiority as a subject to study, but as far as living off the land goes, plants get my vote for being the the most fun.
I went blueberry picking Sunday and apart from getting a few freezer bags full of blueberries, it was great to get outside and hike around Peterson Bay in Homer. We took a boat across the bay where we saw a sea otter and a river otter which was way exciting. I also like blueberry picking for the fact that clean up/processing was way easier than fishing or clamming. And I didn't have to feel bad about killing anything. Blueberries don't writhe in pain. I plan on having blueberry pancakes for
brinner to celebrate the trip.
I have more pictures of the trip
here. My boss and his neighbor took their dogs on the trip. Apparently labs like blueberries. It was funny to watch the dogs chewing on the bushes, but not so funny when they were eating the bush you were trying to pick from.
The last two days at work I have been helping out at the weirs where yesterday I learned first hand that the laws of gravity apply to salmon too. Upon completing their migration from the ocean back up to the streams where they were first hatched, salmon spawn and die having completed their journey. Their decaying bodies then become a key source of nutrients to the entire ecosystem delivering nutrients from the ocean that the forests habitat alone can not provide thus ensuring that the next generation of salmon will be able to grow up in the stream and continue the cycle. In theory the salmon life cycle is quite interesting and beautiful in a "circle of life" kind of way. In reality it stinks. Literally.
When you build a weir to monitor salmon going up stream, it is important to build it in such a way that once the fish go through the counter they can't get back down stream and counted twice. Our weirs work great at keeping the fish up stream which is great until the salmon start to come back down. Yesterday I spent way more time than I would have liked (which would have been none) cleaning fish carcasses off one of our remote weirs. It doesn't get visited often which gave the fish a lot of time to pile up and get really nasty.
Even though it smelled really really bad, and was not the most fun thing I've done here, I am not complaining too much. It was still better to be out on the lake than back in the office.
Here is a cool looking mushroom I found in my yard. I don't have much to say about it other than I like the way it looks and apparently it is poisonous, so I am not going to eat it.
