Week 2: Vester

Week 2 held many new concepts for me. To start of the week, we boated out into Estero Bay in order to take a geological core. By twisting a pipe through the ground, we were able to pull up roughly 4000 years of history! Tuesday held another new activity for me, bird watching. I had never really knew too much about "birding", but looking through the binoculars at an island rookery was a lot of fun! Progressing through the week, Wednesday held plankton tows. By using mesh nests, we were able to collect 5 different samples of both zooplankton and phytoplankton. I am not too fond of microscopes, but these microscopic creatures really caught my interest. To finally end out the week, we conducted a sea grass day. As a young student trying to get into the sea turtle field, it was interesting to learn about the grasses since that is some species of turtle's main source of food. By using quads, we were able to survey 5 different sites and check out sea grass levels. I even saw star grass, or Halophila engelmannii, for the first time. This is a sea grass I learned about just this week. Overall, each day of this week held something new for me and I really enjoyed my stay at Vester Marine Lab!