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IntoTheMystic

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IntoTheMystic last won the day on June 26 2023

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About IntoTheMystic

  • Birthday 07/14/1974

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    Oregon Coast

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    Newport, Oregon

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  1. Fare thee well and may the move go swiftly, smoothly and easily! 🍻
  2. Hey folks! As always, was great hosting you folks for the annual June meeting at HMSC. After discussions during and after lunch (Thanks and major props to Chef Sirena for the deluxe dog and burger bar! Top shelf fixings and preparation and a particularly tasty burger. Also thanks to everyone who contributed to the potluck!) the plans for next year's meeting are well underway. I always try to make the trip worthwhile for you folks who drive down to the coast. The seawater infrastructure monitor that Trevor spoke with you all about is a new and very welcome addition that came online last fall as part of the complete rebuild of the pump house and incoming seawater infrastructure. Those in attendance saw that the system is now fully automated and can be monitored and controlled remotely, a huge upgrade for our Facilities team and a long time coming. There are other significant facility upgrades in the works in the coming months and years, not the least of which is a complete remodel of the Aquatic Animal Teaching Lab. This will allow us to build more life support systems for our aquarium science and veterinary students to work with and learn from and add other types of animals to our collection. To those who were able to come down for Saturday's meeting, thanks much! It was a pleasure to meet and speak with you. For familiar faces from years past, please join us next year if your schedules allow. Cheers, everybody! 🍻
  3. You can! Unlike years past, there's now a cashier, so you don't have to worry about reservations, etc. We're looking very much forward to hosting you folks today. Have a relaxing, uneventful drive to the coast and I'll meet you in the Visitor's Center at noon!
  4. Hey folks! Looking very much forward to hosting you at HMSC again this year. The BoH tour will start at 12, we can linger and chat in the Teaching Lab for a while and then my colleague Trevor Erdmann will be leading a discussion about the Association of Aquatic Life Support Operators (AALSO.) If you 're into life support design, components, optimization and general LSS geekery, you'll find this discussion interesting. Trevor has taught the Life Support class for the AQS program for the last 5 years and has earned AALSO Level III LSS certification. He's also a great guy and is looking forward to meeting you folks! Pertinent stuff for your visit: Hatfield has had to start charging for admission but it's only $5 a head. To order online: https://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/visitor-center On most Saturdays, there is an octopus feeding at 2 p.m. We just moved a new Giant Pacific Octopus on exhibit a few weeks back and are not doing public feedings yet while she adjusts to her new environs. It's possible that there will be a feeding on the 24th but that'll be a game time decision. For folks bringing food and beverages for the potluck, there are a coupla fridges in the Staff Lounge we can use. Fresh sea air claimed both Webers we had on campus but it sounds like Chef Sirena has cooking contingencies planned. As in years past, we can sit at the picnic tables just outside the lounge or inside. If you have any questions, just message me or post to this thread. I'll check it regularly. Looking forward to having you folks down here again! 🍻
  5. Most definitely easier to fly to ORD and drive up from there. Otherwise, seemed like they wanted to connect through Munich. Or Tampa. Looking very much forward to this one!
  6. Sorry to hear that your tank is coming down but circumstances change and we do our best to adapt and carry on. If you have any older plastic totes unlikely to leach any nastiness into the water, stage them with with aeration and fill part way with system water as you're draining the tank. 1. Pull your live rock with prized inverts and place one rock in each tote for your fishies to hide in/on/under. They'll also provide some biological filtration to mitigate the inevitable NH3 spike from capture and acclimation stress. 2. Monitor temperatures in these totes closely, frequency depending on ambient temps in the house. 3. Have another smaller reservoir of some kind with system water so you can bail-and-replace if needed to maintain temp and proactively manage the aforementioned NH3 bounce. 4. There will be sloshes and spills, so lay down some towels on the floor and consider buying a small tarp to put over them where you're moving animals. 5. Buy some cheap battery powered bait aerators to keep your DO up when your fishies' respiration rates are jacked. 6. As the water level drops, consider using some type of partitions to shrink the capture area. I really like expandable window screens for this, as you can size them to the space quickly and easily, place them and drastically reduce the places where fish can escape to. After you've shrunk the capture area, consider placing an opaque pitcher (or similar vessel) where the fish can get to easily. They'll likely choose the large, dark space and swim in. Then place a net over the opening and voila! Fast and much less stressful for all. 6. Your instincts are spot-on about the lids. A dark place isn't nearly so scary and will help keep respiration rates and NH3 offloading lower. 7. Careful with the tubing if you're reusing the water. If it's new, it'll likely leach out critter-killing chemicals. Pre-soak it or go with older hoses. 8. Good luck with this project, man. PM me with any questions. Cheers, Sid
  7. I want to thank you all for coming and for the best turnout yet! Lots of great and insightful questions and a fantastic discussion throughout the meeting. I had a great time with you guys. See you again next year!
  8. Yup, word that there was a pod of orca in the Bay today flew around HMSC like wildfire. Not a great day to be a pinniped calf in Yaquina Bay, though. And you really do want to eat locally even though, as you all know, PNWMAS potlucks are not to be missed. Hopefully, next year we'll have more agreeable grilling conditions and we can have the potluck and fish right out of the water. 🍴! Local Ocean is on the eastern bayfront and is great. One of the best kitchens in town. Can also recommend South Beach Fish Market close to HMSC at the south end of the bridge. Tempura fresh catch and some house-smoked delicacies. I'd go for the salmon candy at this joint as a side to your entree. Rustic and coastal but very fresh catch. For linen and a higher ticket average, check out Clearwater, also on the bayfront and also a respectable kitchen. If you want to watch the wind and waves thrash the shore from your table, Georgie's is on the ocean side. Food and kitchen are decent and it's next to a hotel right on the shore if you're coming down for an overnight. High tide is right at dinnertime and this'd be a good place to order an extra round or two and watch the waves. For breakfast the next morning, you really should plan on going to La Maison, just off 101 to the east. Small green house with a double handful of tables. You really can't go wrong on this menu. Oh yeah, homemade English muffins.......... I'll see you folks at 12!
  9. So, it sounds like folks are thinking about fresh albacore, Rockfish fish and chips, oysters from just upriver and other righteously fresh and delicious seafood rather than potluck. And who can blame them? As long as you're on the coast, why not tuck into the ocean's bounty? So, should I not bring the grill, charcoal and accelerant? Up to you folks, really. I'm good either way. Just want to make sure that I cover my host responsibilities properly. Please let me know this evening so I can plan accordingly in the morning. See you soon!
  10. There is a grill in the back. Took a look at this venerable Weber today in preparation and she's listing badly to starboard. Torpedo or coastal oxidation? Hard to say, but she's done. The weather looks unforgiving for grilling but there's a sheltered area just off the staff lounge that might be out of the wind. If one of you folks would like to be the grillmaster, I'll bring my Weber and furnish the charcoal and starter, as well. For those contributing to the potluck, there is refrigeration available on site and although there are picnic tables outside, we'll likely be using the tables and chairs in the lounge. I'll come out around 12 and send word through the PA. It's been three years since I hosted a PNWMAS meeting and I'm looking very much forward to it. Holler with any questions! Sid
  11. No worries, Kim. Pretty sure that you have been to all of the meetings I've hosted at HMSC and surely, we all have professional obligations that occasionally interfere with fun things that we want to do. If asked, I'll be happy to host June meetings next year and the years following. We'll see you next year instead and Local Ocean will still be there for culinary fulfillment!
  12. Hey folks! At long last, I have finally dropped the piano and am responding to this thread. Couple things: 1. I can't tell you all how much I'm looking forward to hosting a meeting and seeing you all again. 2. Some necessary changes have taken place since the last time I hosted a meeting. Chiefly, reservations are now required to visit the Visitor's Center, primarily to control the number of people in the VC at any one time due to OSU's COVID protocols. Also, there is a modest $3 per person fee. This is something that we've been thinking about for a long time in order to staff the VC properly and implement some much-needed exhibit improvements, which are an ongoing process. Website for reservations can be found here: https://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/visitor-center Since the meeting doesn't begin until 12, please feel free to reserve your spots anytime before then and tour the VC at your leisure. Although we love dogs around HMSC, they will not be allowed on campus for the meeting. Feel free to reach out with any other questions about this meeting. I'll see you all soon!
  13. Well done, @SuncrestReef. Sadly, this will have to apply to my PNWMAS guests, as well. VC management has had to be arbitrary about this whether we're hosting a meeting or hosting 37 3rd graders from Roseburg. It occurs to me that this is likely an OSU policy that has been handed down rather than a HMSC policy. Thankfully, I'm not required to be at those meetings. Suncrest's following up on the fee to update the meeting post is commendable but should not have been necessary. I've been meaning to post a follow up to that thread and make you folks aware of it but have not made that happen yet. Sorry about that, y'all. I really am looking forward to hosting you folks again.
  14. Really, it accomplishes both. The Visitor's Center has been subsidized for years. The By Donation Only model has been just about the best deal in town for a long time but has restricted our ability to staff properly and develop the exhibits anywhere near where the staff wanted them. When we opened last August, the reservation system and modest $3 per person charge were implemented primarily to control how many people were in the VC at any one time and to help defray the considerable overhead.
  15. Hey folks, Been a long time since I posted again. First off, I'd like to apologize to @SantaMonica for completely overlooking their post on this thread back in November. Not intentional, merely oblivious. There have been a few notable changes in the Visitor's Center since we reopened last August 1. We went to a reservation system to control the number of people in the VC at any one time and began charging a modest $3 fee for admittance for the first time since the facility opened in '65. The company that ran the gift shop (sort of) since the VC was extensively remodeled in '18 bailed before we reopened and that space is now a gallery for a local photographer for a while longer. And quite recently, we swapped out a slightly undersized chiller on the Octopus exhibit for a very sexy water-cooled chiller that looks like it might chill that system down near absolute zero if we want it to. Such is the stuff from which fishhead dreams are woven.... In the Teaching Lab in the back, I completed the H/Q remodel about a year ago and it's a lot more biosecure, with more tanks and volume on the Quarantine Side and the Hospital side. The Aquaponics system is producing a steady supply of fresh basil, cilantro, gai lan (Chinese broccoli, one of my favorite vegetables,) small red peppers and pretty soon, there should be a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes. It took a while to ramp up production but it's become exactly what I wanted it to be: a model for NO3 export with very few water changes since last summer and none since October. AS of last Friday, nitrate was somewhere below 5ppm. 🌱 I acclimated a NW Pond Turtle to this system three weeks ago tomorrow and dude has settled in very nicely. He might be the Grand Champion Baskmaster of all time. Once he's parked under the UVA/UVB lamp on the haul-out, he won't move for food, fear or flatulence, a commodity often in ample supply. In some ways, we're still suffering from a bit of a pandemic hangover with short staffing during much of the last two years and a bit of a scramble to repopulate the exhibits out front last summer. However, we're emerging from the funk and will be collecting new specimens in the coming days, weeks and months. I'm going to endeavor to post more and lurk less going forward and will be much better at checking the HMSC forum. Feel free to ask any questions about HMSC, the Aquarium Science Program or anything else. Perhaps one day we'll have coral exhibits again. I sure do miss my tropical marine tanks.....
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