With a four day week instead of the usual five, we had a very jam packed week at University of South Florida at St. Petersburg. With the week being so short and including a 13 hour boat ride on the RV Weatherbird II, this week went by so fast!!! This open ocean week with Dr. Judkins, was fantastic and I feel like I learned so much. One thing that I thought was interesting was comparing what organisms were found in the pelagic region (the water column) and the benthic region (the bottom). I never knew how long it takes to actually collect this data and then sort it to then be identified. The challenging part to this was identifying for me. I know my basic fish and sand dollars, but knowing the specific species or to tell the difference between two crabs or identifying shells was very difficult. But now I feel like I have come out knowing so many species! I am definitely annoying my friends and family with everything I point out and identify at the beach! My favorite part this week was definitely going out on the RV Weatherbird II. It was a long 13 hours, and we were all super tired coming back to campus around 2 am, but it was so worth it. The organisms were so cool, I learned so much, we saw so many dolphin, and the crew was amazing! Also the food was so delicious!! I wish we could have done more on the boat and the week lasted longer, but I am looking forward to our next stop to University of West Florida in Pensacola!
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| Spending the wee hours of the night sorting the organisms |
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| The Dredge Team putting the sample in water buckets |
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| Me at 1:00 am |
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| The pod of dolphins swam with us for a while!!!! |
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