A Weally Wonderful Wednesday


 Our 5 day countdown has begun! We officially have spent a lot of time here (although some would argue that we hit that point sometime last week). Breakfast today consisted of some squishy fried eggs with toast, cereal, and grits. We enjoyed the peace and quiet in the morning as one of the other schools left just before breakfast! We agreed meet on Truck B at 8:45, which gave us plenty of time to explore the layout of the other rooms on campus. 

Our plan today included venturing to SnapShot (or as Mike would say, Snapchat) reef, in order to have fun and test our driving skills for the big boat ride tomorrow morning. Mike also took some fluorescent dye with him which we placed right next to tube sponges to see how they cycle water in and out. Mike hyped it up a lot, it wasn’t as cool as seeing a tiger shark but we all still really enjoyed the display. Some of our favorite things spotted as snapshot were giant crabs, some terminal Slippery Dicks, and an abundance of sand-dollars and sea biscuits! The greatest thing to come out of our trip to the reef is that Amy didn’t break her toe again, she faced her fear of SnapShot and we couldn’t be more proud. 

Lunch today was our favorite: Chicken Sandwiches! The were gone within seconds as it’s one of the foods that we can still stomach here at Gerace. Helena even sweet-talked the kitchen workers to give her an extra patty (actually she is just a really nice person, and anyone would be compelled to give her another patty). 

The afternoon was beautiful! A lot of us retreated to our daily afternoon habit of pretending to be lizards on the beach and so along up the sun! The water was crystal clear and blue today, we had lots of fun wading around. We have figures and groups assigned for our last three figure analyses (which is both a blessing and a wicked curse). We are making waves (haha, literally) in our group proposal projects- with some even claiming they are completely done with writing! 

Dinner tonight consisted of roast beef, wedged potatoes, corn, salad/slaw, and a fabulous white cake (which gives our tastebuds great hope)! We spent the meal chatting, laughing, and zoning out. We met for class at a pleasant 7:20 pm (as Mike said he just needed an extra 20 minutes, he might be getting tired of us). During class we discussed our figure analyses, that were on a paper that most of us actually understood this time (yes, some of us will be going to med school soon- you’ve been warned). 

The evening consisted of stopping by the snack shack, while some of us decided to sit on the beach and stargaze! We will see you right back here tomorrow, we can’t wait to tell you all about our adventure to the end of the reef- where we get to dive in supposedly the same place Columbus first landed. 

Best fishes,

Kayla and Jordan 



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

Into the Deep End

Image
Today started out earlier than most because we were going on the Club Med snorkeling boat again!! This was our last day of structured snorkeling so we were going to make the most of it. Waking up bright and early so we could get to the truck at 7:15am, groggy eyes soon were filled with excitement as we drove to the Club Med boat. As we stepped on the boat we were greeted by our friend David which you may remember from our first Club Med boat excursion. A quick boat ride brought us out to our first destination, A SHIPWRECK! This old ship wrecked in the early 1900s and still has some large parts that make good structure for fish and corals. After about 20 minutes we got back in the boat and headed to our second snorkeling spot called “the wall”. This spot was at the edge of the reef when the water depth dropped from 40 feet to 200+ feet. There was also an opportunity for a group photo opp, As well as, a monument dedicated to the landing of Columbus in the new world (San Salvador was his
Read more