A Snap Shot of our Saturday



Our class began the day by dividing and conquering, as some groups still had data to collect. So a small group, along with Mike, went to Rocky Point to measure sea fans, while the rest of us caught up on some (much needed) sleep. Rocky Point was finally ideal of collecting sea fan data and waves were no longer crashing on top of our data collection site. Unfortunately for those that stayed on base, the group that went to Rocky point was lucky enough to encounter another pod of dolphins. This time around there was a pod of three, which Mike thought was a mating pair and a baby. They didn't stay as long as the first group, but they were very playful and made funky noises underwater. Good ole Derek, however, decided to forget his camera, and therefore we have no footage of the event!

After some delicious tuna and egg salad sandwiches, t
he whole group headed to Snapshot Reef for a site-seeing snorkeling trip. This reef was relatively far off shore, but the conditions made it an easy swim. This reef was definitely one of our favorites! It consisted of several tall reef systems surrounded by small patch reefs. We spotted a couple southern stingrays on our way out, and even some yellow stingrays. We also saw two flying gurnards, which were some of the coolest fish we've seen so far! A big puffer fish was spotted under a patch reef as well.

After our day out, we had dinner and worked on our research projects, and then presented our data and results to the class. Mid-presentation by the Dam-Urchins research group, we were rudely interrupted by a massive rat running across the classroom floor. Mary quickly jumped up on her chair to get out of the way! Overall, the marine animals were much prettier than the land animals today!

Luke & Kate <3 2k19


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1, 2, 3, Seagrass Yippee.

Image
 Our morning started off with delicious pancakes and bacon to fuel us for a morning of counting seagrass. After breakfast we made our way to Graham's Harbor before stingray shuffling our way into the water just to find out that the tide was too high for counting seagrass in the shallow waters. We made our way to the deeper waters where Mike setup a transect line separated in 7 meter segments and at each segment we laid our quadrant. We then proceeded to take estimates of Manatee and Turtle seagrass coverage where visually, point intersect, and individual blade counts of the 2 different grasses were performed.   To help Liz count the seagrass Breana stood on her back to hold her down while she counted... very scientific.  Altogether we counted roughly 4000 blades of seagrass this morning... thanks Michael. When we plotted and viewed our data trends during lecture we noticed significant standard error. This trend exposed how amateur we were at counting sea grass. After escaping the n
Read more

What Happens in the Cave Stays in the Cave

Image
Bright and early, our alarms went off at 5:45 am to walk the half mile to Grahams’ Harbor to watch the sunrise. The view was fantastic, and a great way to start our day. After a delicious breakfast of French toast, bacon, and oatmeal, we loaded into the back of the truck for our daily adventure. Our first stop was at Dixon Hill Lighthouse where we climbed up a steep spiral staircase to reach the top, about 160 feet up in the air. We were given a short lesson on the historic oil mechanisms and weights that helped the lighthouse function. After all of us had a turn admiring the view from the top, we came down to inspect the millipedes that were crawling on the stairs and sign the guest book. While hanging out at the base of the lighthouse, a friendly dog approached us and was excited for pets and playtime. We decided to name the dog Mikey Junior, after our fearless leader Mike. In the process of playing with Mikey J, he ended up stealing the human Mike's hat!  Following our stop at t
Read more

Exam Day Fun

Image
1/9/23 We all woke up bright and early and after looking at the new bug bites we got overnight, we walked over for a 7:30 AM breakfast of French toast and sausages. Right after breakfast we got in the truck and drove to Rocky Point - our snorkeling location for the day. Rocky Point was a reflective beach located about 200 feet off the road from where the truck was parked. The weather was sunny and the air temperature was approximately 76 F and the water was right above 80 degrees.  With slates in hand we entered the after, ready to write down any observations or questions that came up.  The water around this patch reef was very clear and we were able to see lots of different species of coral, sponges, and fish. The reef was dominated by sea fans in bright colors, and lots of the fish that lived in close association with this reef were parrotfish, such as the rainbow parrotfish.  With high energy waves crashing onshore, we were able to feel the water movement even farther from shore lea
Read more