Totally was mostly productive. I awake at approximately 7:00 AM, with my routine alarm blaring outside the windows (yes, the birds act as my new alarm). Little is more sanguine in the morning than multiple angry seagulls ripping their vocals out at each other at precisely the same time every morning. Breakfast was routine with me, having eaten my portion of toast, milk, and so forth. As many of the students required high tide to perform their experiments, many of us took as much of the morning off as we could. Many of us lounged outside talking. We do have lecture, though only for one hour. Lunch begins, and the line to get through the door to the cafeteria is worse than New York Traffic at rush hour. As with many of the days here on the island, I do not eat lunch. I sit with the other students for a few minutes and have a drink of water or two, but then leave to seat myself in someplace more quiet. The island has many great places to sit to myself, and I take advantage of them to think when I need to. I play a game on my laptop for a little bit, then prepare myself for the high tide data collection. I was uncertain as to how many schools of Parrotfish we would find, but was surprised when I entered the water. I suppose I never looked hard enough for parrotfish the days prior to today for parrotfish, but we found more schools than we needed. Unfortunately, there was a catch. Today was very stormy, with rain, dark skies, and hefty wind and currents. Being in the water was very difficult, especially when attempting to record data on moving fishes for several minutes per school. My partner and I were fortunate enough not to be rained on while we were in the water, however, and we saw no lightning or thunder, and we therefore stayed in the water for approximately two hours, until which high tide was beginning to recede. Due to the adverse weather conditions, we only collected the data on ten schools of parrotfish that day, with the currents propelling us very quickly among the perimeter of the island (and fortunately not away from it). As we leave the water, we debate as to whether we should attempt to collect more samples tomorrow. We ask this because the weather is presumably going to get exponentially worse every day up until Saturday, which would leave us no time to finish our analysis or to practice our presentation on our data. We input our data into a spreadsheet, write a few sentences of our introduction, and lounge for the remainder of the day. Supper, after all, was only minutes away from our return time. After dinner, I speak with some of my friends back home, and play some cards with the other students here until I head to bed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorMy name is Serafin Cardeli. I am Twenty years old and studying to become a Conservation & Restoration Ecologist. I wish to combine education, outreach, and legitimate scientific research to better environmental health and increase public awareness through applicable and relatable methodology. I attempt to specialize in all Canids. Categories |