Day 1 of Field Trips

February 24, 2014

Today started by getting ready to go out in the field for my marine biology class.

Here is where our field trip took place... tough life right? ;)

For our field trip we set up pitfall traps to catch organisms that are active on the sandy beach between night and day. We used plastic cups and buried them in the sand. We put a small amount of ethanol in the bottom of the cup to kill the organisms that fall in. This will allow us to identify them later in the week. You can see the little red flags that are marking the cups. Afterwards we got a lollies! (suckers)   

The next part of the day we took measurements of ploychaeta (worms), mussels, and crabs collected from the river. We tested two different parts of the river. One part was at the mouth and further up river. We are comparing the differences we find and seeing if there is a correlation to the salinity. 

For dinner we got our first try of Australian pizza. It was really good! We went back later to check our traps and collected the contents within. On the way there I found a cuddle fish bone washed up on shore. I was really excited! They wash up on shore all the time here.  

It was really great to get back out in the field especially since it was on the beach! The rest of the night we got together and worked on our species guides and hung out.