Staff stuff  General responsibilities Specific sampling/lab responsibilities Bamfield contacts Trip plan Class details Science Equipment List Bamfield computer resources Pictures of Bamfield boats Student stuff Course Syllabus [PDF] Some charts Canadian Tide tables (Bamfield) River flows at Carnation Creek (and other gauged rivers) Offshore buoy data Weather forecasts (Tofino) Marine Forecasts Barkley Sound Time Series (BSTS) - monthly CTD time series NEPTUNE - the cabled underwater observatory (Barkley data at FOLGER NODE) Oceanography of the BC Coast a useful reference book by R. Thomson (1981), now available online. There is not much on Barkley Sound itself, but plenty on the physical oceanographic processes important in this area. Student equipment list Student exercise writeup details SAFETY AT SEA Research proposal guidelines Conference talk guidelines CONFERENCE SCHEDULE ( .pdf version) Final Report guidelines The DATA ARCHIVE Bamfield Web Site

If you are interested, here's last year's web page.

Bamfield Contacts:

The Bamfield Marine station also has a web site which is worth looking at.

Plan:

  Rest of class drive SUNDAY (Van fleet) , arriving mid-afternoon.
   - meet at loading bay entrance to EOS-MAIN BUILDING at 7 am, leaving
       to catch the 8:30am ferry at Horseshoe Bay.
   - at arrival in Bamfield there will be an (1) orientation tour by Bamfield staff, (2) course planning
       meeting (UBC staff), (3) Boat safety  orientation  (UBC staff), (4) GPS exercise (students).

  MONDAY-WEDNESDAY - sampling exercises
  Class split into 3 groups, and will rotate through the different
  exercises, given below. The general idea is that field sampling will
  occur in the first part of the day (say, 8-lunch). The afternoon will
  be spent doing lab analysis, with writeups done in the evening.  Around
  8pm or so there will be a group meeting in which each group will do a short
  presentation (10 minutes or so) to the others about what happened that day,
  passing on any useful hints!

    Physics: Rich
        - CTD analysis and plotting of data

   Chemistry: Lora/David
      -  Winkler O2, nutrients, Chlorophyll

   Biology:Desiree
       - plankton tows, Light

  Wednesday evening your research proposal will be finalized and  we will have a coordination
  meeting to set up the field plan for the next two days.

  THURSDAY/FRIDAY - sampling TBD (for proposals)

  return SATURDAY (if we leave exactly at 8am and conditions are good and you drive really fast you can *just* make
  the 10:30 ferry, but usually we leave at 8:30-9 and we can make the 12:30, arriving between 11:30 and 12:15, if we don't stop anywhere). All return to UBC to help unload vehicles, and return rentals.
 

Class Details

Bamfield computer resources

There are a bunch of PCs available for general use in the computer room.  I install the Seabird CTD processing/display software, and they have Word and some other software (a grab-bag that varies from year to year). No Matlab. Bamfield is on the net, but it is sometimes very slooooowwwww to get to the outside world.   Bamfield now has WiFi most places.

 Some Charts

This is a  map of the eastern part of Barkley Sound. Bamfield is along the eastern side of the inlet, near the mouth.  You can see a few beachs nearby - in particular Pachena Bay directly to the south has a very shallow and sandy beach.
 
 
 
 

The following are actual pdfs derived from the chart info without scanning, and are probably more useful:

•  A chart of Barkley sound in postscript and pdf format
• A chart of Bamfield/Grappler inlets in postscript and pdf format
• A color version of the Inlets chart (postscript and pdf) 

If you want to use MATLAB to make a nice figure, this .mat file contains a super-high resolution coastline on the NAD83 datum. This code fragment shows how it can be used:

  load BMS_coastline
plot(BC(:,1),BC(:,2)); % For a line coastline

or

clf; % For a filled coastline
load BMS_coastline
ii=find(isnan(BC(:,1)));
for k=1:length(ii)-1,
 patch(BC(ii(k)+1:ii(k+1)-1,1),BC(ii(k)+1:ii(k+1)-1,2),[.8 .8 .8]);
end;

Student Equipment List

Raingear (be prepared to be outside in bad weather)

Student exercise writeup details

 
3) A Summary of the results of the days observations (do some science!).
   For example, describe the variation of temperature with depth and
   location for CTD data, or the species observed in net tows.  Plot your profiles, describe your  
   species...and then write a few paragraphs explaining what is there.

Exercises can be written up singly or in groups (Group writeups should be correspondingly longer and some note should be made of each person's contribution).

Please hand in a HARD COPY which will be marked, and email in a PDF which will be archived.

Research proposal guidelines

Who: are the personnel (later, who will be doing what)?

What: is the question you want to address?

Why: do you (or indeed would anyone) care about this problem?

When: do you want to take your data? Also you should estimate how long it will take to take the required data,  e.g. in terms of available ship resources, time on station, lab time, etc. DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH DATA TO ANSWER THE QUESTION?


Where: do you want to take data from (a map of stations is helpful here), and where will the analysis be done (relevant if you are doing things in a particular lab at UBC).

How: Unless you are doing some strange and bizarre form of sampling, you can assume that the people reading your proposal know how data is collected. On the other hand, you may want to give specific non-standard details - for example, you may want CTD data only from the first 10m, are cores to be sampled every 1cm or every 10cm? Similarly you should have some idea about how the data is going to be analyzed - what kind of tools (physical or mathematical) are you going to use?
 

• Think about the audience. Typically only one (or maybe no) members of a granting committee are experts in your field, although they are trained scientists. A proposal full of dense jargon is usually not a good idea.

Conference Guidelines  

1. A "call for papers" is issued.

1. Before the session deadline each participant submits the title and author(s) of their talk, as well as their preferred scheduling (date in this case).  

1. Session organizers (instructors here) then organize the abstracts in some fashion that makes sense, and publish a schedule. You may get your preferred scheduling, or you may not. 

1. At the appointed time, you stand up and give your presentation. You will have 10 minutes and will be cut off if you go over. MAKE SURE YOU DON'T GO OVER YOUR ALLOTTED TIME - it is a shame to have to leave off the conclusions...
   

Here is what you need to know:

 - for a 10 minute talk plan on talking for only 8 minutes, leaving time for questions at the end. The only way to know how to do this is....practise...practise...practise. If you are lying in bed awake, go over your talk. If you are on the bus...practise your talk (to yourself). Roughly speaking about 1 overhead or data slide per minute is about right, but complicated slides can take more time to explain.

- A talk should contain the following parts (and you will be marked accordingly).

1. a title slide
2. a statement of the problem and a discussion of the rationale for studying this problem
3. a brief summary of the methods
4. a discussion of the results
5. some conclusions and (possibly) ideas about future work.

1. Should be legible (especially graph axes). Use pretty large font sizes - larger than you would use for a figure in a paper.  When showing a figure, explain what the axes represent (nothing worse that seeing a plot flash by in 10 seconds accompanied by "this figures shows XXX"). Overheads and powerpoint presentations are both possible - but you should show up early to make sure your powerpoint presentations work; otherwise you are cutting into your 10 minutes....
2. Should be easily understood - if you have to use legends, make them BIG. Colour is also good.
3. Should illustrate the points being made. Don't be afraid to redraw a figure to emphasize the points you want.

1. Timing of the talk (not too long or too short)
2. Completeness (does it contain all the parts listed above)
3. Quality of the figures (legibility, ease of understanding, do they illustrate the points being made?)
4. Quality of the presentation (was the speaker articulate, could we hear them?)

Final Report Guidelines

•   SI units should be used.
• The length of the paper is up to you. Be concise but thorough. Its unlikely you will need to have more than 8 figures at most.
•  The paper must be typed and double spaced.
•  The Title Page should have a title, author's name and student number, and a date.
• The Abstract should be concise and complete in itself without reference to the body. It should NOT repeat anything that is stated in the title, since these two sections always appear together and are consequently considered a unit. It should summarize the observations and conclusions of the paper.
• The paper should have the following sections, each with its own section heading:  Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion or Conclusions, and References. Sometimes these are broken up into other sections; check "your'' journal to see how people do this. Subheadings sometimes help. 
•  Avoid the use of "I'', e.g. use "It was found that...'' rather than "I found...''
• Always include a map of the study site and the sampling locations used.  
• The Introduction should include a description of the problem and the hypothesis you are testing. In other words, do not assume your reader has seen the research proposal. This section should also include a literature search and a brief review of your topic.
• If appropriate, include tables giving the raw data collected (this applies primarily to  results of bottle, net, and bottom samples). However, be aware that presenting tables is a mind-numbingly dull way of showing data, and it is unlikely your audience will spend more than a minimal time assimilating info in a table - MAKE A FIGURE.
• Figures should be "publication quality'' - avoid freehand drawing. You should spend a lot of time on your figures - indeed, one way of writing a paper is to first get the figures together, and then describe them.
• In general, marks will be assigned partly on form, that is, how well can you adhere to a ``scientific'' style, and partly on  content, that is, do the words make scientific sense.
• References must be referred to in the text!
  

Methods Cruise '02 (Fun with sea cucumbers)

Methods Cruise '04 (Brady's Beach)

Methods Cruise '06 (Sampling Bamfield Inlet)

Methods Cruise '11 (The Year of Snow and Storms)