First Semester

I’ve just concluded my first semester at technical university pursuing math and physics undergraduate degrees after a palm reader suggested this as a potentially more fulfilling career path for me than art.

When I graduated from high school and community college six years ago, I was certain that I would never want to return to academics. However, since starting school, I am pleasantly surprised to discover that I fit in perfectly! I’ve never felt more at ease and confident in my career direction before.

Are you as surprised as I am?

I enjoy my classes, and often seek additional learning resources outside of class. It feels like a long period of frustration and confusion is finally at a close.

Even still, this was the hardest semester I’ve ever had. The following are two projects that I worked on.

Red Tide Research Project

Much of my work this semester went to my technical writing class. The bulk of the class involved group work, organizing 1-3 group meetings a week, all awhile researching an approved topic. Our topic was red tide.

Red tide is a kind of microorganism that proliferates so rapidly that it turns seawaters red. It is a kind of harmful algae bloom that produces dangerous toxins that can affect respiratory and nervous systems.

When red tide is in bloom, the toxins it creates become airborne via sea spray. If inhaled, these toxins cause respiratory problems. If fish that have been contaminated with red tide are accidentally ingested, these toxins can cause Paralytic Shellfish Posioning, and can be fatal.

Of course, humans aren’t the only animals affected by red tide. It can cause massive fish kills, also kill marine mammals and birds, and can devastate any ecosystem in its wake.

When red tide affects an area, beaches are closed. It disrupts an area’s economy by negatively affecting tourism, fishing, and recreational industries. Red tide is a complex problem that negatively impacts public health, the ecosystem, and local economies.

My goal with this project as team leader was to create a report that would be useful: something that could even be referenced by people working on addressing red tide.

With this goal motivating us, we conducted three interviews.

First we interviewed university biology professor, Jonathan Shenker. During which, we learned that red tide is a naturally occuring phemonenon. The earliest documented sightings date back to the 1500s when Native Americans warned Spanish explores not to eat fish caught in discolored waters…

While red tide is naturally occuring, human activities make it worse. What causes red tide to proliferate out of control is nutrient pollution caused by fertilizer runoff, sewage system leakages, and general poor waste disposal practices. When red tide comes to coastal waters, the presence of these excess nutrients provide the necessary food for the algae to proliferate out of control.

Is there any ecological benefit to red tide? Like a forest fire that in the short-term is destructive, but overall is good for the longevity of the forest?

Shenker didn’t think so. Red tide appears to have neither a population-controlling benefit, nor any other direct benefit to an affected ecosystem.

As an observation, most harmful microorganisms tend to be abiotic — meaning that they thrive in oxygen-depleted conditions.

Harmful algae blooms like red tide thrive in waters deprived of oxygen. Similarly, the kinds of organisms that live in soil and produce toxins also thrive in oygen-deprived conditions: in this case, in compacted soil that lacks air flow. It is these kind of abiotic soil conditions that can lead to agricultural produce recalls.

For more on microbiology, I recommend Dr. Elaine Ingham's lectures.

Recommendations

In refraining from too drastic recommendations, like BAN ALL FERTILIZERS, we concluded our research project with the opinion that Brevard County is actually doing a good job in working to address red tide.

I was impressed with the level of research conducted by various programs funded by Brevard County’s half-cent sales tax. The sales tax was enacted by popular vote in 2016, the funds from which go to improving our local bodies of water by means of dredging (a process to remove muck), oyster restoration, and updating old sewage systems. From the first year alone, the sales tax raised almost $94 million dollars.

To gain an understanding of these solutions, we did two more interviews.

First we interviewed Walker Dawson, chief engineer of the one of these programs, the Save Our Indian River Lagoon Project. In talking with him, we learned that from decades of poor waste disposal practices and run off, 64,000 acres of Brevard’s Indian River Lagoon sea floor is smothered by muck.

Is there a thing as too many nutrients?

Yes. Caused by excess nutrient buildup, muck effectively smothers the seafloor, causing seagrass dieoffs and preventing sand-dwelling organisms from thriving. When muck is pulled up to the surface, it smells like rotten eggs. Even if you had gills, would you want to call that home…?

The presence of muck has decimated filter feeder organism populations that could filter excess nutrients out of the water naturally. Clams, for instance, are excellent filter filters that live in sand. However, in Brevard, clam populations plummeted in the 90s and since then have never fully recovered.

For our last interview, we interviewed Katy Leban of the Restore Our Shores program, who works to restore populations of filter feeding oysters.

In optimal lab conditions, a single oyster can filter through 50 gallons of water daily. Restore Our Shores has partnered with local restaurants to donate their used oyster shells. These shells are then used to make oyster cages that become the homes of developing oyster larvae. They also solicit volunteers who live dock-side to hang these oyster cages from their docks and to care for them.

Our recommendation to address red tide was to continue the two methods that Brevard has already been implementing to positive effect:

• Dredging, or the process of using hydraulic pumps to physically removing the muck that is smothering the estuary seafloor.
• Oyster restoration so that natural filter feeders may rebound, thus keeping in check the excess nutrients that harmful algae blooms thrive on.

From both methods starting to be implemented, people have been reporting improved water clarity in targeted sections of the Indian River Lagoon. For our project, we were impressed with Brevard’s thoroughness in researching red tide and applying these methods that hold promise for rehabilitating the local estuary ecosystem.

What you can do to prevent red tide by reducing nutrient pollution:

• Don’t use fertilizer, or know your county’s fertilizer ordinances. For example, in Brevard County there is a ban on Phosophorous fertilizers year-round because the land is already abundant in Phosphorus, while during the rainy summer months, there is a partial ban on Nitrogen fertilizers. Better yet, instead of using fertilizer, study and apply microbiology methods which can be more effective in the long-term.
• Don’t wash your car at home, which can lead to chemical runoff. Instead, go to a car wash, which has to follow thorough waste disposal practices.
• Volunteer at restoration programs or start an oyster garden if you live dock-side.

Lessons

While I don’t think we reached our initial goal of making something that other people would use, I would say having this goal motivated us during the project. We learned a lot more than we would have if we were simply trying to complete an assignment. While it would take much longer than a single semester, on the order of years, to research and synthesize new findings that would contribute to this complex topic, our report (at 65 pages) is still a good introduction to red tide.

You can view the table of contents here:

This project has given me an appreciation for how long it takes to contribute research to a field. It’s with good reason that it takes years to do a PhD program. I also got experience and had fun leading the team, delegating tasks, and exploring the topic together.

My leadership style seemed to be effective. I felt like my job as team leader was to ensure that each team member was happy with the delegation of work and felt like their concerns were heard. My style was a combination of applying pressure by holding people accountable to the tasks that they said they would do, while also not taking things too seriously by having fun with the work.

It seems like many teams fall apart because of poorly communicated expectations. When a person fails to meet an expectation, resentments can build, and the longer the issue isn’t discussed the more the relationship festers. This was why during the project I would send 1-3 emails to the team per week, clarifying what each member’s expectations were, and answering any questions. We were the only group in the class that didn’t seem to be suffering from interpersonal conflicts.

Also for the class, I designed a logo and icons like we were a bona fide company, and we gave a 20 minute presentation on our work.

When you start a project, embark with the goal of contributing something meaningful, and see what happens.

Data Science

This semester I also started working with a group that provides an outlet for me to learn data science and Python. The specific work is analysis of data generated to simulate that of data collected from particle collison events at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Largely, the work is over my head, but I’ve been learning a lot about machine learning techniques like neural networks, regression, and interpolation. I will likely write about these topics in the future once I gain more experience.

Particle physics is one of many fields where we have more data than we know what to do with. Machine learning is just a fancy term for outsourcing the task of data analysis to the computer (or computer clusters if you’re really getting fancy!) These programs can process large datasets faster than any human could.

More to come. In the meantime, I leave you with this snippet of a programming project I did for fun: Conway’s Game of Life. The complex structures it produces are fascinating considering that it is the result of four simple rules and each cell only has two states: alive or dead. You can follow along the tutorial here.