USFSP Week

This week, we spent learning about the open ocean at USFSP. Monday's weather limited us to stay inside but we still learned about the open ocean and looked at some specimens under microscopes. This prepared us for Wednesday when we were tasked with identifying organisms on a 13 hour boat trip. Tuesday consisted of morning lectures and then an afternoon trip to the aquarium where we learned to observe the behavior of birds and coral reef organisms. Thursday, we had some lectures and also combined the data into an excel form from the boat trip. We concluded the week Friday by combining our data into graphs and observing specific trends. The most challenging part of this week was trying to combat the sea sickness on the boat trip but I found that I work better during the night trips. My favorite part of the boat trip was looking at the cephalopods that came on board. At the end of this week, I have concluded that I do not have a love for plankton and would love to have more experience with observing animal behavior.