MBFE Day 5 - More sun and more rocky shores - Sunset Bay

It's Day 5 of the 2017 BYU-I MBFE, aside from a little fog the morning dawned clear and bright. This was our sunrise over the Charleston Harbor boat basin about 30 mins before the breakfast bell rang.

Yeah, I know, it's not very picturesque here but we are struggling by. :-)

The low tide happens about half an hour to an hour later every day so by now the low tide, another great one of -1.6', happened late enough in the morning that we had a more leisurely breakfast before heading off to Sunset Bay and doing more field work.

The plan for today's field work is to give students a chance to learn how to collect data needed to generate a species diversity index.  The group divided into five teams.

Janae, Darby and Wyatt have identified their study site and are ready to start collecting data.

Harrison and Rob are hard at work counting lots and lots of barnacles, among other things.

Emily acts as data recorder as Jay and Courtney survey their site.

Bri, Caitlin and Ashley work their site as well.

After data collection is done the MBFE crew spread out and explored another new place, the rocky intertidal zone around the southern edge of Sunset Bay State Park.

Teams are wrapping up their work (Wyatt, Darby and Janae in the foreground, and Katie, Stephen and Darren in the background.  Dr. H's wife also came along to check out what the group had going. 

Harrison and Rob explore and discuss research possibilities. 

Here Ashley and Caitlin look over the rocky shore with the Cape Arago lighthouse in the background.

One new species the group found was the sea palm, Postelsia palmaeformis, one of the cutest seaweeds along the west coast.

Emily shows off a find - an intertidal crab.

Did you know that a length of the hollow stipe of the kelp Nereocystis can be played like a bugle?  Class members give it a try.  It's fun, though the mucus from the seaweed can dry out your lips.  Emily gives it a try.

Courtney tried but was too busy laughing most of the time to get much out of it.  "I'm a violinist," she explained.

Darby tried too, not getting more than a wheeze out of it at first, but redeeming herself later with a good blow.

Wyatt gave it a shot...

As did Janae and other class members.  

Marine biology is fun...and btw, I'll bet you didn't know that people also sometimes make pickles out of this species of kelp.

Once the morning's work was done and we returned to the lab the students were released, and are off the clock until Monday.  Everyone needs some down time!

More to come...stay tuned.