Green and Gooey

I’m glad I got somewhat of a second wind that has enabled me to type up today’s summary. I hope I can get myself adjusted to the work pace soon! Today started off great around the house. I rolled into work at 8 again….which is early for most of the gang there. MJ (my fellow intern from here on out) was around too so we got to work on his stuff.

1. Prepare pods for shipment

We had to collect amphipods from the sargassum seaweed. The process involved “thwacking” seaweed and trying to pick up the creatures – w

hich are less than a cm in length. Not to mention there are different species of pods that live in the seaweed. – without killing them. Thankfully, the kind we were trying to catch (oh and they jump) are green! An easy spot. For tho

se of you who thought that seaweed was just a plant….wrong. They are like mirco habitats for some of the most unusual sea critters I have seen…….slugs, worms that looked like neurons, and who knows what else….keep in mind that everything was microscopic. I still feel like they are crawling on my hands! After capturing enough of our pods we had to cleverly find a way to store them and package them for shipment. Thanks to nalgenes, paper towels, Styrofoam, and ice we sent off our little friends to Charleston, SC.

Rachel my “mentor”/boss appeared and helped us get things a bit more organized around the lab. Our research team is almost complete now. Still waiting on one more girl. Another quiet day down at the lab though.

Lunch break on the IMS dorm porch….l

eftover pizza from last night’s dinner with MJ. Storms a brewing – as about every afternoon down here.

2. Seine for shrimp at Loophole marsh ( and beat the weather)

After a safari ride to get out to the marsh, we ventured to the waterfront. It was close to high tide which wasn’t ideal for collecting crabs. MJ and I went seining. It was quite a task since every time you step eith

er 1. You sink 2. You step in a hole 3. You step on oysters. We caught some species though

o pinfish

o spot

o silversides

o mummichong

o blue crab

o flounder

We called in quits after that and made a dash to the van to avoid the horse flies who were eagerly waiting our return

3. Designated species photographer

I am now in charge of cataloging all of the marsh species we find

4. Remove the toadfish

No big deal. FALSE. Toadsfish are hideous and terrifying fish. They are very aggressive and poisonous if they bite you.

They love to hide out in dark

places. Our random tank of species somehow ended up with 3 of them

inside. So we had to outsmart them into buckets and dump them off the dock

5. Clean the outdoor water tables

In order to accommodate our expected collection of new species in the next few weeks, I was assigned the task of cleaning out water tables. They are basically holding tanks that are 3 feet x 10 feet and ½ foot deep. Somebody decided to do algal experiments in the tanks which resulted in a gooey, slimy eruption of algae. YUM!!! So I had to go in and remove the slime, scrub the tanks, while managing water flow in and out. That took care of my afternoon and the rest of my energy.