Setting Up the Week

Published

March 9, 2026

Plan of the Week: March 9 - 15, 2026

  • Working week listed from Mon - Sun

Daily Focus

  • Monday: Mapping out the plan of attack for the week
  • Tuesday: UW-RUA & Dean’s Office Work
  • Wednesday: Lab Meeting & Prep for Thursday’s eDNA ‘think tank’ session and UW-AAF events
  • Thursday: eDNA process & literature ‘think tank’ session with Kassi P and Connor, Nanopore and UW-AAF events
  • Friday: Writing Accountability with KPJ, focus on Biomarkers
  • Saturday: NW Straits Meeting - Ecology/ Conservation/ Public Sessions
  • Sunday: Biomarker Manuscript

Plan of the Day

  • My goal for today is to plan out the deliverables I have for the week - including the steps for making progress on upcoming deliverables to mitigate the 11th hour push that is getting really old.
  • The remainder of the day will be spent prepping UW-RUA materials.

Projects Touched Today

  • Mussel Biomarkers
  • Proposal Chapters 3 & 4
  • Yellow Island
  • Lab Notebook

Progress Notes

Planning/ Lab Notebook

  • Before setting up my plan for the week, I updated my lab notebook by adding daily log posts for the weekend, archiving February and putting all of those posts into a single file, reviewing my monthly goals, and brain dumping for all projects and tasks.
  • Dean Search- ConEv
    • I caught up with the Dean candidate search by watching Candidate A’s presentation and providing feedback in the survey.
    • I virtually attended Candidate B’s presentaiton and submitted my feedback in the survey provided by the search committee.

Yellow Island

  • I sent my requested dates for Yellow Island surveys this spring/ summer. Since my schedule and priorities have shifted, I am able to batch surveys within the longer/ lower low tide series in late May and early June.

Chapter 3 & 4

  • I worked through a scaled- down version of the lab experiment for Chapters 3 & 4
    • Using the 2021-22 WDFW data, I identified the region’s highest and lowest concentrations of the potential tx chemicals:
      • Cadmium (mg/kg) - 0.226 (Arroyo Beach) - 0.416 (Penn Cove), mean= 0.310
      • Copper (mg/kg) - 0.774 (Broad Spit) - 5.18 (Chimacum Creek Delta), mean= 1.17
      • Sum of 16 PAHs (ng/g) - 3.6 (Hood Canal Holly) - 1600 (Des Moines Marina), mean= 80.74
    • Only the 74 sites included in the biomarker work are included.
    • Values listed above are the wet tissue values (blank corrected for PAH) with the Detected qualifier only.
    • I used the Sum of 16 PAHs because they are the longest defined PAHs by the EPA for their toxicity to humans. The lowest PAH concentration was at a site not included in the earlier work (Drayton Harbor).

The individual PAHs are listed in the image below - if a mixture is not feasible for experimentation, the high molecular weight PAHs are the most persistent while the low molecular weight PAHs can have higher acute toxicity; considering long- term exposure as the baseline for molecular response, we should prioritize the high weight PAHs.

  • Looking at the experimental design, there are two paths that can be taken regarding elevated water temperatures.

    • Chronic elevated water temperature at 20° C

    • Acute elevated temperature exposure through the use of resazurin assays to mimic tidal fluctuations in warmer months.

The general design without resazurin looks like the design below.

Products & Word Count

  • Yellow Plan: 50 words + 2 tables/ time schedules with personnel allocation for TNC support
  • Chapter 3 & 4 plan: 100 words + diagram/ sketch of tx options

Today’s total: 150 words

Monthly total to date: 1392 words

Annual total to date: 21,845 words

Tomorrow’s Plan

  • Tuesday is a UW-RUA day, and likely will include no personal science work.