It's a new week and with their plans made, students dove into their research projects.
Two groups went back with me to South Cove, Cape Arago, to collect research specimens and data.
It was a cloudy morning with a hint of coastal fog, but all in all it was a great outing. The wind had been howling here for the past week or longer, but this morning the wind died down and temps were in the 50s - nice!
Here's the coast looking south from South Cove, Cape Arago, Oregon, USA.
Jessica, Arianne, and Kelly make their way across drift logs at the bottom of the trail on their way out to the rocky intertidal zone. Shannon and Isaac were already headed onto the rocks. We were joined later by Devon, Luke, and Joseph.
Here are those three teams working during low tide.
We spent three enjoyable hours working and poking around before the tide started coming in, ending our outing.
After that Rachel S, Skyler, and I went in search of the lab director to ask about access to a large outdoor tank so they could set up for their studies on small fish called the sand lance. During that chat Dr. Young gave them some heart-stopping info - OIMB is not approved to carry out or hold any live vertebrate animals of any kind. Doing so is a violation of state fish and wildlife regulations. Yikes! Luckily during that same conversation they came up with an alternative plan for their project. Instead of doing a lab study, they plan to collect data on these fish in the field. Emergency averted!
During the afternoon we spent a couple of hours on the topic of the day - non-fish marine vertebrates, i.e., mainly marine mammals with a little about sea turtles and sea snakes tossed in, The class ate that up.
Then since this was May the Fourth, it was "Star Wars Day". To commemorate that cultural icon, the crew was invited to a showing of "Star Wars IV: A New Hope". About a dozen of them joined in. That was fun.
All right, back to research!
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