The first day of the field trip started out very badly. Bonnie, Alysha, and I waited on the docks for hours before we were deemed a high priority to get onto the island. The boat trip over was fine, even if I did get wet.
Then we had to put up our tents quickly so we could begin work. I got the tent out of the bag and found that it had two (out of three) broken poles and about half the compliment of tent pegs. When I had almost got my tent up the weather turned- it started raining and was windier than you can imagine. My tent was flattened by the wind, but some friends helped me move it into a much more shelter position and get it up and all my gear inside out of the rain.
Then we had to rush over to meet our tutor for the week, J.S, and his partner, Tera. We met up and hiked the 1/2 hour walk over the hill and down the cliffs to the rocky platform below fossil cliffs. This was our study site for the next six days. Our project was to survey the rockpools to find relationships between the volume, depth, surface area, and rugosity (roughness of the bottom) of the rockpools and the number of species they contain. That first day we didn't get a lot of rockpools done because we were only just figuring out exactly how to do things.
On the walk back to camp we all got windburnt and ended up with ear-ache from the wind howling past.
Dinner was enjoyable, though, as Bonnie, Alysha, and I set up our cooking on the picnic table together and ate together.
Then we had to go to the evening lectures held at the convict built mess hall. Every evening except for Monday there were two compulsory lectures on Marine biology.
The next day was a far better day. I woke up early and had the chance to enjoy the beauty of the island- here are the photos I took.
The rest of the days passed in a blur of getting up, getting to the study site, sampling rock pools, going back to camp, having dinner, and going to lectures. Bonnie, Alysha, and I were seperated for less than ten minutes the entire week- we did everything together.
The highlights that you should know about were sampling the large rock pool (big and deep enough that it required wetsuits and snorkels to sample), going snorkelling around the jetty (which was awesome- I took some photos on Ayden's underwater camera, but they have to be developed), and the bbq on Monday night (where all of the lectures and most of the students got extremely intoxicated except for a small group of us who only had a glass or two of wine).
The rest I will tell you in pictures so I don't bore you sensless with the details.
The Study Site...
The wildlife...
The snorkelling site...
4 comments:
Cool Loopy. Glad to hear you accidentally had fun when you werent originaly planning to.
And sounds like you should have borrowed my tent after all.
Rob
Hmm, doesn't look like Maria has changed much in the 4 years since I was there... And yes, always camp near the trees, they provide excellent shelter.
Good to hear you're back too.
So, did you find out a relationship, or is there still a whole heap of analysing to be done?
HEAPS of analysing to do, but the preliminary data look like depth and rugosity play a role.
At least your trip wasn't a complete waste of time, however I would be suspicious you could have figured the same thing out from a textbook, but nothing beats experience, does it?
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