7/24-7/30

Last Monday... Any who just spent the day finishing up my poster and working on writing up some methods sections for Emlyn's and Shebly's projects. I also cleaned up the last of the parasitism experiment from Emlyn's lab and threw back any extra oysters hanging around. My roommate of 1 night arrived yesterday (I was told she was arriving today) and left this afternoon so that was... fun. We also went out to try to see a turtle emergence but we only saw tracks :(.

On Tuesday I had a pretty slow morning and didn't go in until 1. I met with Emlyn for the last time :( since she's going to Europe tomorrow (lame). I finished up writing the methods from our projects. I also did some more maintenance on the flow through tank and put some more snails out in Emlyn's outdoor flow through tank. I also I kayaked out to our Lighthouse creek sites where our snail cages are to place Emlyn's permits. It was really nice out but it was also high tide so I'm not really sure if I placed the permits in the right places. I went to the beach for a little and saw a dead baby sea turtle before heading to the last seminar (devastated). Emlyn gave me a t-shirt, snail stickers, and a hug afterwards. <3 :3

On Wednesday, I pretty much chilled for awhile while I waited for Shelby to get on island. I put out the last of Emlyn's permits and continued to finish up writing the methods for all our projects. I also went to the beach for a little because no one could stop me. Once Shelby arrived we went over my poster one more time before printing it for tomorrow's symposium. Overall, pretty chill day just preparing for tomorrow's show time. 

Thursday and the day of the poster symposium. Shelby and I got to the community center early to hang up my poster, but when we got there it was empty. We ended up waiting around for like 30 minutes until the rest of the presenters (grad students from Georgia Southern) arrived. The poster session was then in full swing and it was really cool. I talked to a lot of interesting people and got to see some really neato projects. Some of my intern friends showed up so I looked really popular. After the poster session I went out with Shelby to Dean creek to do some water sampling and to collect some data for an energy flow project she is doing. It didn't take too long but we have to go out tomorrow to collect everything we left out there. This evening Shelby made dinner for me and it was really yummy :P

On this lovely Friday I went out with Shelby to Dean Creek to collect the traps we had left out the day before. We also took Spartina and nekton samples along the creek. We realized we needed to wait for high tide to pull the traps (women am I right?) so we headed back to process the water and Spartina. We used a filter pump to filter out the algae and other particulates from the water samples and collected them on filter pads. It took a really long time which sucked. At high tide we went back out to Dean Creek. We only got about 16 grass shrimp and 7 mummichogs, but it wasn't too bad of a haul. Back at the lab we prepped the tissue samples for a stable isotope analysis. This meant we were basically making tiny fish fillets and peeling minuscule shrimps. It was kind of gross tbh. 

Last day in the field :( :0 :). We went out in the morning to Bell Marsh which is about a 25 minute ride away through the WMA which meant a very bumpy ride. We also almost hit like three alligators on the way. Once there we put out the minnow and pull traps and collected Spartina and nekton samples. The marsh was extra soupy at low tide which was super awesome. Once we got back we used the pump filter again but this time with the nekton samples. At high tide we went back out to Bell Marsh to pull the traps and collect some water samples. We only got one killifish in all our traps so we put some more off of one of the docks near the marsh. The water was also much deeper and Shelby was fully swimming with an alligator to collect the water. Once back we processed the Spartina and called it a day. That night all our lab members had a little dinner together and it was a really cute send off from Sapelo. <3