Okay, so comparatively, today was pretty chill for all of
us. The weather wasn’t great, with large billows of wind constantly hitting us
in the face. Since there was so much wind, we couldn’t really do much in the water.
So when it came time for the morning snorkel I decided to opt out, but still
head down to the beach with the group. I waited on a rock for them to come back,
which didn’t take long. Apparently visibility was basically zero and Russ even
got chest bumped by a turtle (I’m totally jealous even though he thinks it will
bruise). That was pretty funny, and we’ve all been bringing it up throughout
the day.
Quick and random tangent, I wanted to introduce you to our lovely neighbors, the lovely orb spiders that live outside of our dorm doors.
Breakfast
was great as usual, and I had an egg sandwich with a great muffin. I’m not a
huge fan of mushrooms, which was the side for the meal, so that’s what I stuck
with eating. After that we headed into the lab for our lecture on invertebrates.
Originally today was supposed to be spent on our fish lab, but, once again, due
to the weather, we rescheduled it to be about invertebrates. The lecture was
fascinating, but a bit redundant. I’ve learned about all the phylogenies before
in my Biology 2 class at CWI, which was before I started attending USU. We learned
about stuff with a fair amount of depth, so I wasn’t really learning much, but
it was great for review. Though it did leave me with some questions about sea
cucumbers. I started to wonder about how they reproduced, since a fair amount
of invertebrates reproduce asexually or using the water to spread their egg and
sperm. When I looked it up, because I am a huge nerd who doesn’t mind learning
about this but is too prudish when it comes to humans, I found it was through
the water. I was surprised, but at the same time not. Sea cucumbers are
basically just a mouth and an anus so, as much as we love Loaf (a poppy seed like
patterned sea cucumber in the touch tanks that we named on our first day).
After
that lesson it was time to get to work. We went out to Shark Bay (in which we
saw no sharks despite the name), and started to collect sediment samples to
study in the lab. It was hard work since the wind was a nightmare. Edd was mean
and videoed my partner (Zach for this lab) and I as we butted heads a few times
because the water kept pushing us into each other. It was hard to get the
samples since you have to plunge it into the earth, get enough of a sample, put
the stopper in, then gently pull out the plunger so that you don’t lose
anything and turn it over and pour it into a bag. It sounds super easy but it
isn’t when there is low visibility and waves buffeting you at every turn. But, we
didn’t take too long to do it regardless. I had the magic touch when it came to
pushing the plunger in to take the sample so we worked quickly once we found a
good reef patch to start with.
Once we
were changed into our clothes and back in the lab, we were putting those
samples under microscopes to look at all the small invertebrates under the
microscope. It was amazing!!!! There were small annelids (worms for you non-sciencey
people) squirming all over and arthropods (“insects” sort of but not really)
skittering all over the petri dishes. We
had such large samples that it took a while to work through. We all had to be
reminded about lunch. It was a good thing too, since we had these awesome
sandwiches today (like pulled pork with parmesan on sub sandwich style bread)
and some really great banana muffins (sorry Mom, he’s still your rival). We
were joking and laughing all throughout lunch and these guys are really starting
to grow on me. Zach and I even talked about anime for a little while. It was so
much fun.
Anyways,
we were soon back in the lab and finishing up our samples (I so loved doing this,
it got my inner microbiologist ramping up since these creatures can be as small
as a millimeter long. We had to pick them out with tweezers and pipettes)
before creating data spreadsheets and our lab reports. I’ll spare you the
details since they would probably bore you unlike me who was happily singing
along to Hailey’s 90’s-80’s classic rock mix which we all put on. We were
singing while working and making jokes, and honestly I couldn’t ask for more
when it comes to these guys.
After we
were finally done, which was around 4:30 or so, some of the group went to try
and snorkel again. I didn’t go with them, but there apparently wasn’t much to
see since visibility was so low again. I could see more stuff from the jetty
than they were seeing in the water. There were so many sting rays out today. And
there were these tiny baby sharks that were so freaking cute!!!!! I wanted to
cuddle them even though they could bite my finger off. We even saw another
turtle!!! It was super cloudy, which didn’t make for a great sunset, but here
are some pictures anyway.
After
that, we had food again, this time it was this weird beef stew like thing, with
some heavenly (and I mean heavenly) garlic potatoes. The dessert (ha! I spelled
it right this time Mom!) was chocolate mousse, which I tried a bit, and didn’t
like. So guess what I did? I went over to the boy’s table and more or less
said: “I didn’t really like it, it’s a free for all boys. Now fight!” And they
actually fought over it a bit! It was so funny because (Shaun I think his name
is???) actually dove towards it and carted it away before Zach snatched it from
him and took a bite, claiming it as his. It was so funny and everyone was
laughing by the end of it.
And now
we’re just hanging out and blogging like we are supposed to, so yeah. We’ll
probably just chill afterward, so not much else to report. Talk to you tomorrow!!!!
P.S. This is Eddie, he's the resident egret that has this perch above a part of the research station. We named him after Edd. Edd laughed at us. Eddie's also kind of a jerk, but we love him.
No comments:
Post a Comment