When you find yourself seeking out ways to be in a lab, including hanging out with your oldest best friend in the lab you took high school chemistry and biology in, I take it as a sign you're missing being in science.
While home with Dad, I was invited by my friend Madrona to come see the work she's doing on fish biology. It's not my specialty, but most kinds of science --- and their processes --- I find interesting. Madrona is passionate about the ecological health of the San Juans, where she was born, and about preserving the species of the Islands and surrounding Salish Sea. The Puget Sound area as a whole is beautiful and unique, and therefore its ecosystem is fragile in distinct ways.
The lab work being undertaken by Kwiaht this week (likely longer) revolves around genetics, namely those of the sand lance. This tiny fish, oft overlooked, is critical: It's right in the centre of the food chain. The health of salmon and other populations depend upon it. By studying sand lance genetics, Madrona hopes to answer key questions: Where are these fish coming from, in terms of different places in Puget Sound? Where are they breeding, and with which other groups? What are they eating? What causes their populations to crash, and when they do, who suffers? And how, based on all these data, can we best protect them --- and thus, the ecosystem?
Quite a number of long genetic terminology examples merely brushed my comprehension, I not working with those terms on a daily basis. But I enjoyed the discussion, the chance to stretch my sphere of thinking, and a demonstration of the various machines (such as a genetic sequencer) at work.
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