We're now in Moreton Bay at the University of Queensland Moreton Bay Research Center (MBRC), which has been an incredible experience. We took a ferry to the island on Saturday morning, sat through a couple lectures and went out and looked at the rocky shoreline. The shoreline was covered in oysters, clams, hermit crabs, sponges, anemone, snails, etc. We even saw some poisonous stuff, such as the blue ringed octupus (above). When the octopus flashes, it is going to bite you. The bite is extremely painful and if I remember right, it requires anti-venom. Cool stuff. That first day we also tried our hand at Seine netting; one team pulls one side of a net out into the surf, while another team holds the other side anchor and then both teams pull the net into shore. This is a way of looking at the type of fish in the area and some local aborignal kids helped us out some. Well, mostly they were destructive and played with the fish, but they could atleast work without gloves on. We were not trusted (for good reason) to identify the dangerous critters.
WARNING: This section is extremely boring and should be skipped unless you like graphs and or biology. Less boring stuff is continued below (labeled "slightly less boring" and is after the graph.)
The next day we dreamt up and carried out an experiment that we were interested in. My group decided to look at how the thickness of the oxygenated layer of sand affects marine population. Ofcourse, we couldn't look at all the marine species, because they run away, so we actually looked at the number of holes (from marine organisms) versus the depth of the oxygenated soil. There is a clear distinction between the oxygenated sand and the unoxygenated sand - the oxygenated sand is light colored and the oxygen deprived sand is dark and smells terrible. Picture at above-right is embarassing enough, so I will save Amanda the trouble of trying to steal it from me to post (right). The picture shows me counting off a five meter increment. The way we actually carried this out is we started at low tide and walked toward shore, taking a sample every five meters. We ended up going a little under 1/4 mile or 355 metres (meters in the U.S.). At each 1/2 meter-squared sample site we counted the number of holes and measured the depth of the oxygenated layer. Pictures below.
The data turned out all right. Amanda's group did the same thing, except with seagrass (they looked at seagrass density versus oxygen depth and we looked at the density of holes from marine organisms). Unfortunately, Amanda's groups saw no trends. As expected, we found that as the amount of oxygen increases the number of marine organisms increases. The graph below is a transect line. Basically it is a line stretched out from the sea shore to low tide and one series tells you how much oxygen and the other tells you how many organisms. They fit together well - as O2 goes up, the number of holes goes up. They O2 varies because there was a big channel going through the center, which is why we had to look under water sometimes. The data is below.
*The x-axis actually ranges from 0 - 355 metres, I messed up the scale somehow.
SLIGHTLY LESS BORING
After doing all that science stuff (sparing the written report due in a couple weeks), we had kind of a fun day today. We have spent the last week and a half almost exclusively in six hour classes, so this was a welcome change. Today we hiked along a gorge, saw some volcanic rocks, and then were able to swim, hang out, and play some cricket. I don't have pictures now, but it was incredible. The water was the bluest blue and the waves were massive. Basically we had a solid three hours to play at the beach after a really cool walk with whales, dolphins, and sea turtles visible from the gorge.
Tomorrow we'll be back in the fray of classes at the research station, with an emphasis on terrestrial ecology, rather than marine ecology...
A couple weird things: Thongs are sandals (the kind that have a strap between two toes), bathing suits are togs, tea time happens three times a day, sunnies are sun glasses, boardies are boarding shorts, and cricket is a hell of a lot of fun.
2 comments:
Steve- What is a Udall scholar? And when are you going to show Amanda how to do a cool write-up like you have about yourself. Or, better yet, why don't you fill it in FOR Amanda. She would love that!! Tell Panda her mother says hello!!
Laura - I had originally started a different blog based on environmental stuff mixed with physics, but I scrapped it because I didn't have time. It was going to be associated with other Udall Scholars, which is a scholarship awarded to sophomores or juniors for environmental leadership. Panda looks at all the comments, so she actually saw this before me. I think she did her profile, too.
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