Smiling person in black waders and sunglasses standing in shallow water, holding white bucket — James at the field site off Bodega Bay

My Time at BML

An SRJC-BML Internship Story

by James Rincon
September 25, 2026

My name is James Rincon and I’m a third year student transferring to Cal Poly Humboldt this fall for marine biology. My biggest interests are of course with the marine world but specifically with how animals interact with each other in the ecosystem, as well as the chemistry of the ocean and the world around us.

Calm lake, researcher near near a partially submerged net, distant hills and blue sky — The net James and Nicky used to capture the fish and isopods

I had the honor of working under Nicky Yoong this summer in the Stachowitz lab doing a multitude of studies with seagrasses. I’m so glad that through this internship I was able to gain field experience by going at the crack of dawn to specific sites in Tomales Bay, like Millerton, to collect fish and isopods for one of the undergraduate experiments in isopod grazing behavior. I participated in a lot of setup for this experiment which consisted of setting up the tanks for the fish as well as capturing them in the first place. The next experiment was collecting eelgrass and studying them in tanks to view how temp and soil types affected their growth. It was also a treat to do water filtration which was surprisingly fun and also doing data analysis using R which is complicated but it has so many real life applications for science.

I really appreciated the sense of camaraderie that our team had, especially going out in the field to collect samples but still having a great time on the adventure, especially when the leopard sharks kept bumping us while putting eelgrass in the water. I liked how chaotic Nicky’s lab was because it gave me a glimpse of how science really is in the sense that experiments aren’t always linear and that research of one topic can often lead to all of these different tangents that splinter from the main one so there’s often so much to do in order to achieve the main objective. My favorite aspect of this internship was just the fun moments and inside jokes with the team because we were able to conduct science but enjoy each other as humans at the same time which made the experience so much better. A real eye opener for me was seeing that experiments aren’t always successful because in the eelgrass experiment, isopods hijacked two of the tanks and severely grazed the plants which impacted the results of the experiment. Another instance was when the fish we had initially brought back died in processing which just really showed me the reality of science is learning from your mistakes and to keep on moving forward to improve your craft. Overall, the skills in field work and data analysis will be integral to my success in the science world and I couldn’t have done it without this internship so thank you to everyone at BML and SRJC!