MBFE - A new week, and back into the field for the MBFE crew

Over the weekend the low tides during daylight hours shifted from the late afternoon to the early morning, so today the students wore their field gear to breakfast and we were on our way to the shore at 7:30am.  Today's exercise?  Plot the profile of a rocky shore, and collect information needed to see how dominant species shifts as you move from the water line to the top of the intertidal zone.

And here they go!

Here's one five-person research team: Sam and Collin (working the quadrat), Liv and Victoria (working the poles and level) and Michelle (scribe), just getting started. 

Meanwhile, the other groups are also underway.  This team features Anne and Matt on the poles, Eric and Hunter collecting data using the quadrat, and Chey as team scribe.

And team three: Jen and Emma on the poles, Caleb and Maddy on the quadrat, and Ben as scribe.  Let's see...which team member saw the camera come out?  Oh, yeah...you know it's Maddy!  :-)

The morning of field data collection comes full circle as the research team of Collin, Sam, Victoria, Liv and Michelle do their last few measurements, with a playlist of Disney movie songs going in the background and them singing in the foreground!  They know how to whistle while they work.

Some groups finished faster than others, but this doesn't mean they are bee-lining it back to the lab...they take advantage of the low tide at a new place to check things out.

Eric cruises the waterline looking for interesting finds... 

...while Matt looks at marine critters, wondering if there are bacteria in there...

And Emma, Matt, Anne and Ben discover their first sponges and are amazed at the number of sea anemones and seastars around the pier's pilings.

At the same time, Maddy and Jen find that the entire surface is covered with marine life.

After about 2.5 hours in the field, the data are collected and we head back to the lab where each group gathers, shares data and works on developing a graph showing vertical zonation of intertidal organisms along their transect lines, followed by a little down time.

In the afternoon we spent another 2.5 hours in lecture discussing rocky intertidal shores, and the challenges and opportunities of living there.

By the way, did I mention that we had a FLOOD in our lab last night?  One of the water flow tubes bringing water into our class' seawater tank flipped over the edge and proceeded to pour water all over the floor, and I mean all over almost the entire floor!!  Luckily it's not the marine station's first rodeo and they were able to bring in industrial strength shop vacs and had the lab slicked up and largely dried out by the time we got back from the field this morning.

And that's another day in the books for MBFE...don't worry, we are headed back into the field in the morning.