07 Jul My first few weeks at Cabrillo National Monument – Alisa Hernandez

During my first few weeks interning at Cabrillo National Monument, I learned a lot about what life is like working at a national monument as a biologist and researcher. During this time, I attended team meetings, participated in fieldwork, and began my summer research project.

Being introduced to the Cabrillo National Monument team, I met many people and learned how everyone works together to keep the park running.

I have been working from home or commute to San Diego to work in the natural resources division office. I love being at the park, one of the benefits being a fantastic lunchtime view (as pictured below).

I dedicated much of my time spent developing my project was used to read primary literature and code in RStudio. This time has allowed me to learn so much about the herpetofauna community within Cabrillo National Monument and learn many new data analysis skills. Such as taking this chunk of code on the left and creating the figure seen on the right of the picture below.

I am eager to learn even more and develop my project to share my findings with everyone!