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Hey everyone! My name is Josue Yepez. I am a sophomore attending CSU Chico majoring in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. Once I heard I was accepted into the STEMSEAS program I was both excited and nervous. I then spent a few days researching what it takes to be a Marine Technician due to me lacking experience within the study. After a few days I got a little worried that I was going to slow the team down or cause errors when it came to transferring data. Then came the day when we all introduced ourselves and noticed that we all come from different backgrounds, both academically and sea-going experience levels. When it came to using the equipment and analyzing the data collected, there was tons of support that allowed me to ask endless questions until I understood the concepts.
Over the span of the trip, we completed several tests to analyze the conditions of the sea in different areas, but my favorite part of the trip was when we were analyzing the microfossils. Coming from an engineering perspective, we don’t get many chances to use microscopes when it comes to analyzing different pieces of nature. I was really surprised to hear that there are different categories of different types of microfossils, but the ones we looked at were the foraminifera. We also visited a professor at University of Hawaii, Manoa where we got to look at different types of microfossils and learned the ways they sort and store them.
Overall, the trip was an incredible experience where I learned so much about what it takes to run a research vessel from a span of people that all come from different backgrounds. I initially wanted to be part of the program to see what components of the vessel work with automated features because eventually I want to go into a field of automated systems. My wish was fulfilled and now I have an even harder decision to make when it comes to what engineering field of work I want to go into, either something to do with automation or a marine technician!
