10/10-10/16

On Monday 10/10 , we drove to Kenai to excavate a beluga whale. This process of shoveling a horse manure/soil combination, was pretty grueling. We were able to dig out all of the bones except for a few phalange bones. It was a long 11am-5:45 dig, but extremely rewarding. On Tuesday, I got to work with Gracie one on one bending the metal pipe for our skeletal articulation beluga. We had to bend this pipe using only a dumpster. Gracie sat on the dumpster (because it was empty) while I pulled on this 8 foot pipe in 1 inch increments to bend it into the shape we needed.

On Wednesday 10/12 Serena and I worked on matching left and right side ID photos for our HAPO catalog. I now have individual IDs for at least the 10/5 and 9/30 boat trips. On Friday we began working on our HAPO poster. We created an outline for the poster and divided up the sections that we were each going to work on and present at the symposium. On Friday, I flew to Anchorage because my family came here to visit. We spent Friday and Saturday in Anchorage, and drove down to Homer on Sunday. On our drive to Homer, we did an AKBMP session at the Kenai river, and stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. Sadly it was a no beluga day, but we still had a great time watching the harbor seals in the river.