The first day out we went to Blackwater River State Forest with park ranger Ian. We learned about the life cycle of longleaf pines, saw Red Cockaded Woodpecker (which are endangered), and then headed down a steep incline to discover a beautiful carnivorous pitcher plant bog. Some of the group explored a dense swamp below the pitcher bog, while everyone else (including me) chilled with the carnivorous plants.
At Krul Lake we chilled and ate lunch, then went on a mini-"hike" on the board walk and pointed out the similar plants that were in the State Park. We all piled into the van and stopped at a few locations controlled by the North West Florida Water Management District at Garcon Point. The first area was prescribe burned two years ago and the second area was burned two months ago. It was amazing at how quickly the plant-life grew back! At out last stop of the day, we went to Gulf Islands National Seashore. There we learned about the preservation efforts and had a shrimp boil with all of our professors!
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Day two was beach day! Everyone piled into two vans and headed out to Gulf Islands National Seashore again, but at a different location, where we met with new park rangers to learn about the endangered Snowy Plovers and threatened Least Turns.
Then we headed to a part of the barrier island that is owned by UWF where Dr. Snyder told us about how "the plants make the dunes, the dunes make the plants." On the gulf side of the island, we seine netted but didn't catch much of anything. However, on the sound side, we caught lots of fish!
We gathered data from light, salinity, and dissolved oxygen sensors placed in the sound to analyze later in the week. Dana called dibs on plankton netting in the gulf and sound, too! While everyone else was soaking up the sun and getting tans, I was burning like a lobster. :( It was still a pretty cool day though.
The third day we spent on pontoon boats in Perdido Bay. Suffering from sunburn, I chilled under the canopy while the others took regular swim breaks. We stopped at six locations in the bay, from just out of the mouth of the river to the boating channel near the gulf. The professors were interested in how the data analysis would turn out because they'd gotten a lot of rain, which caused phytoplankton blooms. The equipment we used did everything from collecting light levels to sediment and water samples to plankton samples. My favorite was the Van Dorn Bottle, which is a big tube with suction cups on the end to capture water!
On day number four, all of us gathered in the lab classroom to look at our water samples in microscopes. We found some pretty amazing stuff from dinoflagellates and foraminifera to fish larvae and algae. One of the organisms looked like a spaceship taking off! We all wanted to spend the day looking at more and more samples.
Our last day, we conducted experiments on prepared water samples, using an spectrophotometer, that would use light to tell us how much "stuff" is in the water by measuring the amount of light being reflected back. We also were taken in groups to view images of the microscopic organisms highlighted in blue and purple lights. This was used to calculate the biomass concentration in our water samples. After that we graphed how many different species of plants each of us found at Blackwater to show how much biodiversity is in the forest. We then wrapped everything up with a mass discussion of how everything went during the week and said our goodbyes to the professors.
Day two was beach day! Everyone piled into two vans and headed out to Gulf Islands National Seashore again, but at a different location, where we met with new park rangers to learn about the endangered Snowy Plovers and threatened Least Turns.
The third day we spent on pontoon boats in Perdido Bay. Suffering from sunburn, I chilled under the canopy while the others took regular swim breaks. We stopped at six locations in the bay, from just out of the mouth of the river to the boating channel near the gulf. The professors were interested in how the data analysis would turn out because they'd gotten a lot of rain, which caused phytoplankton blooms. The equipment we used did everything from collecting light levels to sediment and water samples to plankton samples. My favorite was the Van Dorn Bottle, which is a big tube with suction cups on the end to capture water!
On day number four, all of us gathered in the lab classroom to look at our water samples in microscopes. We found some pretty amazing stuff from dinoflagellates and foraminifera to fish larvae and algae. One of the organisms looked like a spaceship taking off! We all wanted to spend the day looking at more and more samples.
Our last day, we conducted experiments on prepared water samples, using an spectrophotometer, that would use light to tell us how much "stuff" is in the water by measuring the amount of light being reflected back. We also were taken in groups to view images of the microscopic organisms highlighted in blue and purple lights. This was used to calculate the biomass concentration in our water samples. After that we graphed how many different species of plants each of us found at Blackwater to show how much biodiversity is in the forest. We then wrapped everything up with a mass discussion of how everything went during the week and said our goodbyes to the professors.
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