{"id":4710,"date":"2011-09-27T10:00:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T18:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=4710"},"modified":"2011-09-27T10:00:24","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T18:00:24","slug":"a-cold-awakening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2011\/09\/27\/a-cold-awakening\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cold Awakening"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
photo: E. Donham<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Emily<\/a>
Emily Donham<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Emily Donham, Ichthyology Lab<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat have I done!?\u201d\u00a0 This is my first thought as I plunge into the frigid waters at Stillwater Cove.\u00a0 Having just moved to Moss Landing after spending the past eight years in tropical Hawaii, this is my first chance to dive in California\u2019s temperate waters.\u00a0 My dive computer reads a mere 54\u00b0 F, but that can\u2019t be right.\u00a0 This water feels much closer to freezing.\u00a0 Once I\u2019m able to recover from the initial shock I realize that my arms just don\u2019t bend the way they used to.\u00a0 This is mostly due to the 10 mm of neoprene wrapped around my body to help keep me warm. \u00a0I used to be able to get away with just a 2mm top! \u00a0I slowly become acclimated to the temperature and limited mobility and descend to the depths for my first glimpse into the kelp forest ecosystem.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
photo: E. Donham<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unfortunately, today isn\u2019t the greatest of visibilities.\u00a0 The water has a greenish hue and I\u2019m not able to see beyond about 15-20 feet, but even so, there is still a lot to get excited about.\u00a0 Coming from the tropics where reef-building hard corals are the main attraction, it\u2019s hard to believe that macroalgae could ever be so breathtaking.\u00a0 Some of the giant kelps at our dive site are over 60 feet tall, which makes it easy to see why people refer to their ecosystems as forests. \u00a0I look closer and see small groups of juvenile rockfish intermingled within the kelp, utilizing its blades for shelter.\u00a0 The closer I look, the more I see, and I start to realize it\u2019s going to take me awhile to learn what everything is, despite the lower species abundance and diversity compared to tropical coral reefs.\u00a0 It certainly doesn\u2019t help that the muted colors here make differentiating between species tricky.\u00a0 We ascend to our safety stop and a sea lion swims in to check us out.<\/p>\n

At the end of my dive day I look back and am once again reminded of why I decided to study marine science and I can\u2019t wait to jump back in the water as soon as possible. \u00a0Luckily for me, as a student of the Ichthyology lab, my advisor has decided to make biweekly dives a part of our education. \u00a0Hopefully exploring California\u2019s coastal waters will help in my search for a thesis topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Emily Donham, Ichthyology Lab \u201cWhat have I done!?\u201d\u00a0 This is my first thought as I plunge into the frigid waters at Stillwater Cove.\u00a0 Having just moved to Moss Landing after spending the past eight years in tropical Hawaii, this is my first chance to dive in California\u2019s temperate waters.\u00a0 My dive computer reads a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92],"class_list":["post-4710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-diving"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}