THE FINAL WORD

Hey all,

My apologies for not posting the last couple of days but we all were too busy finishing our research. The last couple of days were a lot of fun but also fairly sad. For our last day of research we went to a new site, Wise Point which turned out to be a bit of a let down because it was almost entirely artificially constructed and therefore could lead to no good coring. Instead we took modern transect and leveled into the nearest benchmark in an old underground very bizarre bunker. We also took geochemical and foraminifera samples the latter for Chris and the subsequent for Candace. At which point most of our group returned to Brownsville marsh while the fraction of us went to take a pollutant sample from the very tip of the Eastern Virginian coast. This attempt proved futile because someone had built a mansion on the marsh there and posted no trespassing signs everywhere. We decided to leave without our sample. When we got back, to the house, equipment washing of monumental proportions was undertaken and all the corers, both Vladmirs and Demetri were thoroughly scrubbed and all the Jeans le measureas were measured out to their full 30 m and cleaned. We tied off all the other sampling that needed to be done and added the Rose Bengal to our forams. Our whole group watched our last episode of tribe this one on the Dessanech people in the southern most tip of the Momo valley in Ethiopia.
Yesterday we had “a bit of a lie in” as Simon says and were up cleaning by 9:00AM. We finally discovered that we had an espresso/cappuccino maker, which became an indispensable tool in our final hours for some. We packed up and cleaned the house and cars from top to bottom. In keeping with time-old tradition the car, washing was half water fight half work but that seems to be the point. We were thoroughly finished by 1:00PM and did not need to leave until 4:00PM so we swam and skim-boarded with various degrees of success. After washing up, we headed out to the movies, Wall-E or Get Smart depending on your preference. Before the theatre, we stopped for dinner at the California Pizza in Norfolk, which seems to boast some of the more bizarre pizza combinations on this side of the Atlantic we made short order of a good eight pizzas and were off to the movies.
After getting home everyone spent the rest of the evening out on the porch going over the experience and talking about what expectations we had had and how those were fulfilled and exceeded. The last of us chipped in late at night and for the last time resided in our Italian villa.
Thank you to our leaders, Candace, Simon, Chris, Andrea, and Kate. The opportunity that you gave to us will be remembered by all. You are an inspiring presence and we greatly appreciate your dedication and poise. Thank you to EarthWatch for providing the context for this trip and deciding that young students are a priority for your organization. Thank you to the Durfee foundation without your funding this opportunity would not have been possible. Thank you to the University of Pennsylvania for taking on this project. Thank you the owners of our house for having the audacity to rent their house to a group of scientists and teenagers. Lastly thank you to all the parks and areas that we visited in our trip and to the various organizations that gave us permission to do our work.

Thank you
-The EarthWatch Virginia 2008 SCAP Team

Today we had a representative of our sponsor organization visit us named Daniel. We are sponsored by the Durfee Foundation, which was started by the fellow who invented the Avery label. We showed him how to take cores and explained the research we are doing. We hit basal peat today! We even got a full 50 cm in one core! This left most of us ecstatic, which possibly attests to having been the marsh too long. The temperatures are rising in the low 90s today and the middle to high 90s tomorrow with no wind that gets harsh.
After finishing at Magothy, we went to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to ascertain our permit for tomorrow. The man that works there was the picture of a park ranger in his baggy slacks. He had the look of a man who has spent too long immersed in marsh muck. The site looks idealist, as far as marshes go, with many little streams and some beautiful marsh grass.
Simon gave his sea level talk tonight and elucidated and elaborated upon our previous knowledge greatly. Sea level rise and fall is now a much more complicated scenario. Some of the funnier tactics used in the presentation were a head and a soccer ball to illustrate the earth and sun. We returned to the food lion to complete a record reconnaissance mission for all our food except that we forgot the butter and Simon and Candace had to make a quick second run. We are all beginning to dread the end of our trip and that feeling is starting to hang in the air.

Cheers,
-The Team

Good day all,

We returned to the infamous “death marsh” today, named as such due to the deep deep muck that it is comprised of. We leveled into the official benchmark near by left from 1942 and then leveled out all the stations. On the way, back we nearly lost Cat to the mud when she began to sink in but readily recovered herself and on we went in the name of research. We also broke a record for this group’s longest leveling measure, 560 meters a real accomplishment. While one group was hitting record leveling levels the other was finding record amounts of foraminifera under the scope. Sky found 23 alone.
Before returning from death marsh, Simon and Giles practiced their “blue-steel” look. Hey are now ready for New York’s finest run ways. Another condition along with “marsh madness” has appeared; “foram frenzy” has set in amongst some of our group after sitting for three straight hours today looking for the little buggers.
Tomorrow a fellow from our sponsor group will be joining us in the field to get a taste of the research. We are enthusiastic to share our acquired knowledge with him and to keep him safe from the ominous marsh cat.


Cheers,
The Team

Hey,

We just played the best practical joke yet this trip. Sky fell asleep during Tribe and did not arise until everyone else was leaving, at which point we told him that it was five in the morning (really ten thirty) and he bought in under the guise that we were to do an early day to avoid the heat. The gullibility factor involved had to be off the charts. We all got a good laugh out of that.
Today we returned to Oyster Bay probably for the last time and took core samples that will be carbon dated based on the peat. We also took a set for Chris to analyze back in England. We also leveled it all into a real USGS (United States Geological Survey) benchmark left from the University of Virginia. This required a team to walk a good three miles down the road to an abandoned house that looked like it could be left over from days of shoot outs and a slow pace of life. We found another spanner in the marsh, a plus due to our low supply. Sky and Giles boasted a core of 250 cm in some hard sand.
This afternoon was the all-scholastic beach-soccer game. One team emerged victorious with a margin of two yet all the players showed their true colors with a killer goal keeping strategy from Kathleen.
The eminent Andrea gave her lecture on tsunamis and earthquakes, and the consensus is that she does some really cool research. We were enlightened on the finer points of subduction and fault lines. It was also very interesting to hear how her research is done with similar techniques, at times, to the ones that we are using. Besides, that some of the combinations of data that she uses are inconceivable and we were blow away with the connections that her research requires.

Core well and good night.
The Team

Cheers,

This morning we were planning on traveling to Mockhorn GATR marsh, Named after the rare semi-fantastical “Mock Horn gator” that is only rivaled by the ferocious “marsh cat.” Unfortunately Mock horn Marsh was unreachable and we ended up having to back out a good half mile. Our caravan finally found its home at the Brownsville Marsh, an interesting site that was revamped in the 40s. It had previously been used for pasture until the Second World War at which point the levee between the sea and the pasture fell into disrepair and the marsh took over.
We ran the usual transects and cores although the cores turned out to be fairly difficult as the youth of the marsh made the top very sandy and hard to core. The cuisine continues to change. The marshes that we visit have become to be graved of their salicornia, a small stalk like salty marsh plant. Sky has led the front in this regard and downs more of the stuff than the rest of us put together; we are surprised this green in such quantities has not made him sick. We went crab hunting in the bay on our return under the wary eye of our lifeguard. Alas no crabs today. Taylor and I constructed a dragon out of the debris left on the beach; he is named Cranach and is majestically keeping watch from his bed in the sand.
We had a lovely bean, rice and vegetable dinner made by Kate. Biscuits were also made to the enthusiasm of all. Our cooking has become an opportunity for kitchen dancing and fun. We seem to be on the cusp of a storm that has been blowing in. we said our good byes to Taylor today as she returned to Richmond in her dashingly retro white Volvo sedan.

Ciao,
The Team

P.S. it turns out that snails are in tune with the sound AUM and when hummed to come out of their shells.

Good day all,

Today we returned to the field! We went back to Magothy Bay to improve on our past visit. We took cores to determine the stratigraphy and decide where the best sample could be taken. Interestingly we hit peat in a small strip running south to north through the marsh, which can tell us where sea level was dating back into days far gone by. We also retook the tidal elevation as our last measures had large gaps. The day was hot and we got a bit of a late start so mud fights and painting abounded as well as some friendly rivalry between coring teams looking for peat.
Our late exit this morning was partially due to the arrival of Taylor, an EarthWatch SCAP participant from last year. Her sense of humor and rapport with Candace and Simon has thrown her into the group with ease. It has been fun to hear more about last year’s team and the work that they did. Taylor will stay with us until tomorrow afternoon. Our group has really started to fall into step as we all get to know each other more and continue to work together. This has led to more joking around while cementing a stronger community.
After departing to the sage advice of “top-cat,” some questionable fellow who wondered by this morning, our intrepid leaders continued to lead with poise. Simon has begun to share more of his vast music collection while Candace continues to lead as the hardest hardcore corer. We got muddy today and were desperately in need of a hose down upon return.
We had a wonderful Thai creation for dinner and complemented this dish with a geographically opposite drink, Horchata, a choice rice drink from Central America. Our group has become devoted to international soccer and today’s Russia Netherlands game was no disappointment. Tonight we sampled one of America’s cinematographic classics “Zoolander” a wacky spoof of sorts on the fashion industry. By tomorrow we will all have our blue steel down to a T.
Simon, Taylor, and I took a trip to the Food Lion today. Yet, upon our return it seemed as though we had never gone as most of the groceries were consumed within minutes, I guess that is what fieldwork does to you.

Cheers,
The Team

Hello all,

Today was our day off. We traveled to Virginia Beach and took a day off from our research. We were planning to go surfing but it turned out that there were no waves so that plan was abandoned for swimming. We said goodbye to Chris, with regret and wishes. The shops in Virginia Beach are filled with some of the world’s wackiest t-shirts. Other bizarre gifts range from anything you could find in a chotsky shop to the tackiest of stores.
Lunch proved harder to find than one would imagine as it seems that Virginia beach has a siesta at about 1:00pm, we think that all the restaurant owners want to take a beach day every once in awhile. Finally after a long search past the California pizza whose dishes seemed to have been made n their name state and later shipped here we found Harpoon Larry’s Oyster Bar which turned out to have some killer seafood. Candace and Kate took advantage of large crab arms and crawfish.
Later we setup some fantastic rainbow beach umbrellas and read David Sedaris. Our adventures continued to the Virginia Beach aquarium, which is advertise on BOB FM (the local radio station) to make you dance. While the dancing was minimal, the marine life was interestingly and mostly local providing yet another opportunity to learn about the local ocean environments. Finally, we returned to another episode of Tribe, an awesome series on the world’s last remaining true tribes, in which Bruce Perry lives with the local people and immerses himself in their culture.

-The Team

First Lab Day

Hey all,

Today was half of our group’s first day in the laboratory. Those who stayed in the laboratory learned to identify Foraminifera, which are tiny single celled organisms that live in reticular salinity levels. By looking at where various types of them live one can then take the level of the water at the time that they were alive. Although single-celled they are the ultimate predators and can take down other small organisms with surprising tactics. Interestingly some of them gather little sand particulars and construct decorated shells sometimes with the shells of their victims. We primarily found Elphidium excavatum, which are found at many depths. The other half of the group went to Box Tree Farm to collect core samples.
We had a bit of a quieter at the house today and cleaned up a bit. We were able to go down to the beach and collect samples and sand dollars to look at under the microscope. We also found out the startling way that there are big crabs in the bay a couple of us nearly got pinched, which does not really hurt but is very startling.
After dinner, we attended a lecture at the local research and sanctuary station on ecology in salt marshes. The good new is that a lot of the marshes are keeping up with sea level rise. The bad news is that this will take out the trees near the water and that they can’t keep going on. The lecture provided yet another opportunity to correlate the research that we are doing with other measures.
Sadly, Chris will be leaving to return to England tomorrow and we will no longer be graced with his presence and unending knowledge. The Russian core has been named Vladimir today so as to avoid confusion. Those of us who were at the marsh got very mucky, returning with previously white now brown shirts. Some of them even sank up to their waists and had to rescue by the others. Simon had a bit of a fright over some bubbles and an unknown marine creature.

-The Team

The Photos on the Post have so far been taken by Scott and Giles and the Posts written by Giles

Hey All,
Today we switched sites to the nearby Magothy Bay and learned to level with a laser and prism this method is much more efficient in covering broad areas as it is more accurate and therefore can read to a farther distance. Chris and Simon then left with Cat and Scott to cover a variety of sites over the day to gather sample and measure pollution levels along the coast. This took a lot of driving, as they had to visit 15 sites in total some up to and hour away. Back at Magothy Bay, we took Modern Transect Samples with Candace and again recorded the tide.
There was sighting of the rare marsh cat today by Simon, Chris, Cat, and Scott. Apparently, they are about as large as a medium sized dog and very muscular. Unfortunately, the cat bolted conveniently just before Scott could snap a photo this has thrown some doubt on the report but they are out there. Simon reports that they “had lots of fun pollution studies,” we will see what comes out in the lab that we plan to set up tomorrow.
Magothy Bay has the most crabs that any of us have ever seen we are estimating some number larger then the population of the continental United States (300 million). As you walk through the marsh they part like the red sea before you and if you stop for a moment, you can hear a constant whirring and chattering of their claws and mouths. It is something else. There were a multitude of small black beetles like bugs that seemed to be attracted to white, a down for some a plus for others, nevertheless they were out en masse.
Our last level was the longest yet and must have been about a half-mile or so. The prism was nothing but a blur and it took a good twenty tries to get the numbers down but in the end science prevailed. The Sokkia (laser measure) is really something else.
Tonight was “create your own pizza night” and options varied from the “Model United Nations Pizza,” which was something of an international gastronomic mix, to the “Meat Lovers Pizza” complete with last night’s hamburger.



-The Team

Hey all,
Today was the first full day of research. We returned to Oyster Bay for a second time, to learn to take both geochemical and transect samples. These can later be analyzed for particular organisms that vary depending on the salinity of the water in which they live. This data can later be used to figure out where the sea was in the past. Chris also took some samples for his geochemistry, which he will later analyze in his research. Candace took samples from the surface with one group to analyze the current organisms levels these will also be compared to a marsh survey transect. We also recorded the tide every six minutes to be able to plot that along the other levels that we come up with, in the end this multi-measuring system should complement each other and strengthen our data.
Our illustrious lifeguard arrived last night, Kate. We are now able to go swimming in the Chesapeake, which has many lovely living sand dollars. The water is very warm and quite pleasant unfortunately sunburns are beginning to crop up among our group. Foosball continues at the usual cutthroat speed and our leaders Chris and Simon jumped into the mix with varying results.
Chris gave a talk about his work last night, which varies from figuring out how to bury nuclear waste properly to cracking forged Egyptian artifacts. He uses a variety of equipment and heads up a team of five scientists at the British Geological Survey.
Our team has become seriously hardcore and ritual is come to be common practice. One group painted their faces with marsh muck and now goes be the name “marsh cats.” If you see a real marsh cat in the wild, it will be the last thing you see so beware. Candace and I took the most intense core yet . One could say it was a hardcore core. We crashed into the muck with such vigor that we got to 206 cm just about a record. Hatorade has become a great taboo as some people have come up with a couple negatives here and there.

The Team

Cathryn: represents our Ohio contingent. She is clearly a runner, a self-identified if begrudged position as she carries herself with the sort of stalking lope often found in the likes. Her right eye is nicely adorned with a progressively yellowing bruise that was merited before she arrived by a quick drop down the apples and pears as they are called in Britain.

Giles: The tallest of our group, we have yet to discover a talent he does not possess. Although soft-spoken, Giles has a hidden competitive side that comes out in the field during our “challenges”. While others are reluctant to step up, he is often the first to volunteer for some new adventure. Although talented with a spanner, he is not as savvy with mathematical calculations.

Daniela: hails from the fair city of Boston. The second shortest in the group she has an energy beyond her stature. While a catholic, she has already managed to bump one of the angels on the house grounds.

Kathleen: traveled the farthest from Arizona. She has a knack for sketches and an avid interest in marine biology. One of the quieter of our group she resides serenely behind her dark rectangular glasses.

Viy: harks from Charlotte North Carolina. As the shortest in our group, she often has to stretch to operate some of the equipment. She adorns her neck with a serpent necklace modeled after ancient Greek doctor’s associated healing powers.

Scott: graces our group with a slow darling southern accent. An Alabama native he is perhaps the best at foosball, he has a table at home. His mom, a devout NASCAR fan, gave him some fantastic golden eyebrows.

Sky: is always quick with a laugh, which bares his vampire-like teeth. He has a bit of a Maine drawl and is perhaps the loudest in our group and bangs about quite gloriously in the basement.

Stephanie: is the one most likely to be awarded most proud of her school. Her mascot the rabbit is constantly drawn into conversation. Her early morning romps have led her to a fear of the statutes in the yard.

THE FINAL WORD

Hey all,

My apologies for not posting the last couple of days but we all were too busy finishing our research. The last couple of days were a lot of fun but also fairly sad. For our last day of research we went to a new site, Wise Point which turned out to be a bit of a let down because it was almost entirely artificially constructed and therefore could lead to no good coring. Instead we took modern transect and leveled into the nearest benchmark in an old underground very bizarre bunker. We also took geochemical and foraminifera samples the latter for Chris and the subsequent for Candace. At which point most of our group returned to Brownsville marsh while the fraction of us went to take a pollutant sample from the very tip of the Eastern Virginian coast. This attempt proved futile because someone had built a mansion on the marsh there and posted no trespassing signs everywhere. We decided to leave without our sample. When we got back, to the house, equipment washing of monumental proportions was undertaken and all the corers, both Vladmirs and Demetri were thoroughly scrubbed and all the Jeans le measureas were measured out to their full 30 m and cleaned. We tied off all the other sampling that needed to be done and added the Rose Bengal to our forams. Our whole group watched our last episode of tribe this one on the Dessanech people in the southern most tip of the Momo valley in Ethiopia.
Yesterday we had “a bit of a lie in” as Simon says and were up cleaning by 9:00AM. We finally discovered that we had an espresso/cappuccino maker, which became an indispensable tool in our final hours for some. We packed up and cleaned the house and cars from top to bottom. In keeping with time-old tradition the car, washing was half water fight half work but that seems to be the point. We were thoroughly finished by 1:00PM and did not need to leave until 4:00PM so we swam and skim-boarded with various degrees of success. After washing up, we headed out to the movies, Wall-E or Get Smart depending on your preference. Before the theatre, we stopped for dinner at the California Pizza in Norfolk, which seems to boast some of the more bizarre pizza combinations on this side of the Atlantic we made short order of a good eight pizzas and were off to the movies.
After getting home everyone spent the rest of the evening out on the porch going over the experience and talking about what expectations we had had and how those were fulfilled and exceeded. The last of us chipped in late at night and for the last time resided in our Italian villa.
Thank you to our leaders, Candace, Simon, Chris, Andrea, and Kate. The opportunity that you gave to us will be remembered by all. You are an inspiring presence and we greatly appreciate your dedication and poise. Thank you to EarthWatch for providing the context for this trip and deciding that young students are a priority for your organization. Thank you to the Durfee foundation without your funding this opportunity would not have been possible. Thank you to the University of Pennsylvania for taking on this project. Thank you the owners of our house for having the audacity to rent their house to a group of scientists and teenagers. Lastly thank you to all the parks and areas that we visited in our trip and to the various organizations that gave us permission to do our work.

Thank you
-The EarthWatch Virginia 2008 SCAP Team

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