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