Alas, we had to say farewell to our invertebrates. Now we have a new teacher and we are learning about fish for this week and next Monday and Tuesday. The first day started out with lecture, as usual. After lunch though, the real fun began. Little did we know that the first day would start off with a bang as we got to dissect fishes! Each pair had a rockfish and a flounder to dissect. The rockfishes had already been sliced up and had no skin or muscles left, 
but the flounders were whole. We started with the rockfish and cut it up, recording everything in our notebooks of course.
We had to cut the lens out of the eye and identify internal organs. And then the real fun began because we had to cut through the head to find the otoliths. Otoliths are little bony structures inside the head of the fish, like our ear bones, and they collect calcium carbonate as the fish grows, so you can use them to age the fish. It took forever for us to find our fish’s otoliths but eventually we managed. Those were for later.
Next we diced up the flounder. They were English Sole and even though they didn’t have toxic spines like the rockfish they were a pain in the butt because they were so darn slippery and slimy! They didn’t want to stay in one place so we could dissect them. We couldn’t find the otoliths in that fish, but that isn’t surprising because they are very small in small fishes.
The next day started early, at 6:30. It was supposed to start at 5:30 but unfortunately it seems that you need a special permit to collect vertebrates and our teacher’s is going to come in late. Sadly this means we can’t even go to the tide pools and the places we went before and do catch and release because our prof would get in trouble. Which is kind of lame. We could go as “private citizens” and play with the fish all we want but we can’t go as a marine science class. *Sigh* Oh well. Anyway, the day started at 6:30 and we went down to the beach to test out our beach seine net *wink*. A seine net has a weighted line on the bottom and floats attached to the top. The idea is to pull it through the water with the lead line on the sea floor and the floats at the top and herd fishes.
The tallest guy in our class took one end into the water so that it stretched from the shore into the bay. Then he and the guy on the shore end walked parallel to herd some fishes. Then the guy in the water started to bring his end in, in a sort of loop so the fishes were herded and the net stayed vertical so no fishes could escape. Eventually the net was pulled onto shore and we collected our little fish and put them in buckets so we could look at them before we released them again.
We caught several different species. There was a Eulachon (a type of smelt), some greenlings, a little pipefish, some sculpins, and even a little baby Chum salmon. We also caught a big sculpin, a Staghorn Sculpin.
The next day we didn’t get to go on our field trip, due to the aforementioned permit issues. We did get another trip to the aquarium, which is always fun. We drew some more fishes there. On Friday there was a boat trip around Yaquina Bay but I didn’t go because sea sickness is not fun. Ah well.
Monday was interesting because we had a little project where we worked with a group and proposed marine reserves along the Oregon coast. Lots of groups chose places that have already been proposed in reality, and others picked totally new sites. Our group focused on a particular fish species, the ling cod, as our specific fish of choice to protect, and other groups just did areas. It was a lot of fun because when we weren’t presenting we all had roles. Some people were scientists, others were fishermen, or environmentalists, etc. I was the local community wacko. It was fun.
Tuesday we had our tests, and that ended the fish section.. Next we do algae. Let the adventures continue. 
