Protect your Dawgs!

 Today we woke up to another exciting morning with French toast and sausage for breakfast. The majority of the group went to Telephone Pole reef to collect data for our final proposals. A smaller group went to Graham’s Harbor for data collection (the Slippery Dicks). The water was FREEZING, calm, and the visibility was good. The most memorable fish was seen at Telephone Pole, a peacock flounder. Despite it’s pretty appearance, it took several expert eyes to distinguish it from the surrounding sand. Mike had a personal high today because he saw some jaw fish  and was able to capture them on camera. 



We all eventually returned back to the research institute and had a lunch of egg salad, tuna, and chicken noodle soup. After lunch some people did their figure analyses while others went to the beach, or procrastinated.  Unfortunately we had some minor injuries in our rest time. Jordan was casually strolling the beach when she stepped on an urchin. She was very calm about it, and Mike had to whip out his “doctor” skills and was able to pull out one of the spines. Jordan now has a piece of the beach with her forever (or at least until it decides to come out). Approximately an hour after Jordan’s incident, Sarah was strolling the beach looking for shells and then accidentally jammed her toe on a lithified rock. This resulted in half her toenail falling off (yay). Julian did not respond with helpful bedside manner, despite his promising career as a doctor. We are beginning to believe that 2023 may be a bad omen for feet…



We finished off the day with a relatively uneventful dinner of ham, fried rice, broccoli, and carrot cake. During class, Mike revealed to us that we scored the highest class average he’s ever had for our exam, so we celebrated by watching videos of silly lookin’ runner ducks. After that we proceeded with real class and presented our figure analysis which is about coral recruitment in relation to competition with sponges. We also looked at more photos of Mike with hair in his happy tropical research days. Some people stopped by the snack shack and others prepared for bed. We’re all excited because tomorrow it is Amy’s birthday.

See you tomorrow 

Greta and Amy

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