Week one of our field studies course is over now and it was great.  The ocean winds/currents lab was really interesting.  To see visually how all the layers of temperature, density and salinity separate through the water column was very helpful in understanding how upwelling and downwelling events occur throughout our worlds ocean.  Also seeing the effects of the varying wind conditions on the clay model, helped to display the importance of wind on surface currents.  I really enjoyed the remote sensing class.  It was great to hear from the graduate students about how the passive satellites gather all of the data to be stored and processed.  Also, very interesting to learn that some of the mapping data has been intact without gaps for over 40 years.  I love fish so my favorite part of this weeks class was examining our fish samples and identifying their predation tactics and specialized structures.  I was fortunate enough to have the two coolest fish.  The spotted moray eel and the frogfish.  The moray is a benthic highly predatory fish that swims through undulation and eats anything it can attack.  The frogfish is a benthic fish that conserves its energy by pumping water through the mouth and filtering it through to the excurrent pores under the pelvic fins.  The pelvic fins are also modified so that the frogfish is able to walk around on the ocean floor.  Its mouth uses suction to filter prey through after luring them close with a bacterial bioluminescent lure.  Overall it's been a great week and I'm looking forward to seeing you all out in the field in Pensacola!