Alumni Spotlight

Trina Litchendorf, BS, UW 2006

 

 

 

Why did you choose to come to the UW?

When I made the decision to major in Oceanography I looked at other colleges but realized that I could get a quality undergraduate education right here in Seattle. Since I was paying for college myself, I opted to start at Seattle Central Community College where I obtained an Associate of Science degree and a solid foundation in calculus, chemistry and physics. I received a NASA OUR Earth internship after this and spent a summer at the Applied Physics Laboratory working for an Oceanographer. I ended up working there for four more years before enrolling in the UW's Oceanography program and completing my Bachelor's Degree in 2006.

 

Why did you decide to major and graduate in Oceanography?

When I was a child my family would spend summer vacations on the Jersey shore, so I grew up fascinated with the ocean. When I was a teenager I went on a whale-watching trip off the Cape Cod coast and saw a humpback whale make a bubble net to trap krill and then swim up the middle of it, mouth open, right next to the boat. In that moment I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist. I ended up not going to college right away but rather moving across the country on my own to Seattle where I ended up working a retail job while my dreams of being a marine biologist faded away. A good friend of mine, Ian, knew of this deep desire and for my twenty-fourth birthday gave me a copy of Rachael Carson's “The Sea Around Us”. (I highly recommend this book to all Oceanography students). Her beautiful, poetic descriptions of the oceans re-ignited my passion for the sea and the following year I enrolled in college classes with the expressed goal of obtaining a degree in Oceanography. Along the way I discovered that I really enjoyed chemistry so I ended up majoring in chemical oceanography and now I work in physical oceanography. I didn't end up becoming a marine biologist but I satisfy that desire by volunteering as a beach naturalist for the Seattle Aquarium where I spend summers at local tide pools interacting and educating the public about Puget Sound's marine life.

 

Describe your research and field experiences while at the UW

As a junior, our class had the opportunity to go to the Friday Harbor Labs to plan our group research projects. My group was looking at chlorophyll-a and for this project we went out on an overnight trip on the R/V Clifford Barnes to collect water samples for our individual research projects. My research looked at the effect circulation in the Puget Sound main basin had on the spring phytoplankton bloom.

During my senior year, our class had the opportunity to go to the Galapagos Islands to conduct our capstone research projects onboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson. My research focused on the effect of pH on phytoplankton growth. The opportunity to conduct research in the Galapagos Archipelago and to briefly visit these unique islands is something I will always cherish.

 

Where did you work after graduating? And now?

After graduating, I continued to work at the Applied Physics Laboratory. My work there has given me many interesting opportunities- from studying heat and gas transfer using a powerful CO2 laser and an infrared imager mounted onboard a research vessel to flying through hurricanes Frances and Jeanne using a phase Doppler particle analyzer to measure sea spray within the storms to studying breaking waves in a huge wave-generating pool.

Currently I am still at the Applied Physics Lab working with two different types of AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles).

The first is the Seaglider (www.apl.washington.edu/projects/seaglider/summary), a buoyancy-driven vehicle that was developed over ten years ago by the UW's School of Oceanography and the Applied Physics Lab. These vehicles were designed to carry a suite of oceanographic sensors to measure conductivity, temperature, oxygen and chlorophyll. They can be deployed in the open ocean for months at a time and dive to 1000 meters. I build, repair, deploy and pilot these vehicles.

The group I work with, the Acoustic Seaglider Group (ASG), has outfitted our fleet of Seagliders with hydrophones and acoustic micro-modems that enable the vehicles to record underwater sounds and also to acoustically send and receive data packets underwater. One of our current projects is a marine mammal study for the Navy. We are using software developed by scientists at Oregon State University (OSU) to detect and record the clicks made by Blainesville's and Cuvier's beaked whales. In the past these whales in particular have been harmed by Navy SONAR testing. We are developing a method that would enable the Navy to deploy a fleet of Seagliders prior to testing to determine whether or not whales are in the area, thus preventing these animals from being endangered by the SONAR tests.

The other AUV I work with is called a REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS). These vehicles are propeller driven and use acoustic transponders to navigate very precise, pre-programmed track lines. We are operating these vehicles as part of the CMOP (Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction) project in conjunction with the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). We are using the REMUS vehicles in the Columbia River Estuary to study the many complex processes there. Offshore in “the Plume”, where the river discharges into the ocean, we look for internal waves. Inside the mouth of the Columbia, we fly these vehicles into the incoming flood tide to study the Estuary Turbidity Maximum (ETM) as the salt wedge moves up into the river. You can view a video of a deployment at AUV Mission in Columbia River Estuary.

I really enjoy my work at APL because it has given me so many interesting and exciting opportunities and has allowed me to continue to expand my oceanographic knowledge and technical skills.

 

Read more about Trina in "the Stranger".