Miscellaneous Monday

First, for all those in or around Seattle, a public announcement:

Eastern Bering Sea Snow Crab Symposium:

Identifying best approaches for advancing understanding of EBS snow crab biology and incorporating research into fisheries management

This symposium will be held February 22 – 23, 2011 at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle. The agenda includes presentations from invited speakers (including many of the snow crab biology all-stars!) who will provide an overview of the current knowledge and management strategies applied to the snow crab stock in the eastern Bering Sea. Interested members of the scientific and fisheries communities are encouraged to attend. (I can't be there, but I'm excited for this symposium nonetheless!)

Contacts: Laura Slater (laura.slater@alaska.gov) and Doug Pengilly (doug.pengilly@alaska.gov). Sponsored by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Commercial Fisheries Division, Kodiak, Alaska

Second, this weekend I had a great opportunity to participate in the Girl Scouts of Alaska Women of Science and Technology Day! This is a signature Alaskan event, and I had a lot of fun. I was there to help Sherry Tamone and Ginny Eckert with their section (there were lots of interesting women there!). Sherry and I led urchin races, where the girls flipped urchins on their backs and timed how long it took the little echinoderms to right themselves, and we demonstrated squid dissections. The girls also saw barnacles feeding under microscopes and video of Sherry's octopus project with her (now graduated!) student Pat Barry. Lots of fun and lots of little future scientists out there!

Third, my husband Adam and I got to help with a beach red king crab survey! We went out with Melissa Rhodes-Reece to count and measure as many baby red kings as we could find during LOW tide (I mean, really low tide!). I'll have Melissa and Miranda Westphal explain this project more a bit later, but overall we found 4 or 5 tiny guys less than 10 mm carapace length! So to finish off this random post, here's a king crab baby:

a sweet little baby