I've decided to remove superfluous and unnecessary information from my blog posts from now on. It has occurred to me that when I wake up and what I eat is highly irrelevant, so I will attempt to provide a briefer summary of my day. Yesterday was fairly solid. The food, lectures, and swims were as fun as the previous, but with little more to say than what I already have. The weather was beautiful, and I enjoyed working in the windy heat in the shade when I could. The one catch for yesterday, however, was when the students were required to speak with the professors regarding the final project they wanted to complete by the end of the trip. The students are required to collect short-term legitimate data on fishes, fauna, ecological relations, or something of similar nature. Each student may work either alone with up to two other individuals, maxing at three individuals per project. Personally, I wanted to work with sediment data and expand upon a project we had to work on previously, where we would take underwater sand samples at several meter intervals at random coral patches in the inner reef during low tide. Our objective was to calculate if organisms would become more or less abundant closer or farther from coral patches, given that many of the underwater organisms are important for carbon sequestration in the sand, typically resulting coarser sand and providing oxygenated patches under the surface of the sand that may benefit corals or other sand-dwellers. However, with the complexity that I was attempting to expand this project, it was evident I would not have conclusive evidence in the few remaining days I have here. Even so, I would have preferred a partner to work with, given we are not allowed in or near water without having at least one partner, and it would inconvenience other people if I were to continuously ask for them to sacrifice their time to work with me on my own project. Fortunately, there was another student who similarly was unable to find a group with which to situate himself with, and so we decided to come up with a project on our own. After speaking for a few minutes, we had decided that we wanted to work with salps, which are small planktonic organisms that merely drift with the sea and are unable to propel themselves at all. We did not have any further ideas, so we confronted our professor to see if he had any suggestions as to what we could do. Our professor admitted that the amount of salps during his time in this trip is much higher than what he has ever previously recalled, and that having a project regarding them could be interesting. After speaking for at least half an hour, we had a goal for our project. Our goal was to determine whether or not dredging sites drastically effect pelagic organisms, where we would focus our efforts on watching salps on varying low-tides: receding and rising borders. We are to compare salp densities inside and outside dredge sites by taking images at 30 second itervals for ten minutes in random parts of each site. By taking 30 second intervals, we can reduce the risk of recounting the same organism. At this time, it was already 10:00 PM, and we go to bed content that we have a project, but we are very tired.
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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 |