Objectives: No sleep!
To wrap up our week at UNF, we conducted a 24 hour survey at Guana Tolomato Mantanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR). We chose two sites, one above and weir and the other below. This site is unique because above the weir is a lake and below the weir is typical tidal salt marsh. The lake only experiences tidal influence at very high tides. We conducted water quality testing every hour and pulled seine nets every three hours. My shift ran from 5:30 pm to 5:30 am, needless to say I was exhausted. We couldn't really tell much from our raw data in the field except for our seine pull results. We found that there were more mosquito fish above, More mature blue crabs below, more mullet below, more bay whiffs below and more shrimp below. We really got a better idea of what was going on there over a 24 hour cycle through compiling the data into visual graphs. We were able to see the patterns due to tidal cycles and the absences/presence of sunlight. We tested chlorophyll a, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and temperature. We found that chlorophyll a levels were highest following sunrise and from about 3pm-5pm. This is because the producers are photosynthetic! The following day consisted of rest and wrap up discussions. We were given a tour of the new beautiful biology building. We had a blast a UNF and want to thank the Dr. Hackney and Dr. Smith for everything!
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