Rain, Rain, Go Away!
This morning, we woke up to the loud sound of thunderstorms. These storms began in the middle of the night, waking us up to more bugs and bright flashes of lightning. This carried on throughout the night and until after breakfast time. We walked to breakfast in our rain gear and were greeted by the delicious smell of scrambled eggs and bagels, which improved our grumpy moods caused by the bugs. As we chatted about our interesting night of sleep, Dr. Welch came over and explained to the group that we would need to neglect our original plan of snorkeling in the morning and instead have class inside the lab. Most of us arrived in the lab early and continued our coloring projects and began making friendship bracelets. Once our professors arrived, Dr. Welch taught about oceanography, specifically covering San Salvador. These topics included tides, winds, currents, and waves. These activities took up the most of our morning before lunch.
At lunch, we were all excited to see that grilled cheese was being served, along with soup and peaches. The excitement continued once we saw that the rain had stopped, and Dr. Welch announced that we would finally be able to go out and have our afternoon snorkel. After lunch, we had some free time where most of us took advantage of it to relax in our rooms to charge up for our next adventure. We prepared to meet at the truck and lathered ourselves in sunscreen鈥攁nd then even more in bug spray. We hopped into the truck once we were all ready and headed out to our next site, Bonefish Bay. This site allowed for us to explore the intertidal habitat; it was very rocky and especially shallow, as we had arrived just after low tide. Some of us immediately scanned the beach for shells after we jotted down information of the bay in our Rite in the Rain field notebooks. Once the professors gave us the go ahead, we quickly began to flip over as many rocks as we could to discover what was hiding underneath. A few of the organisms we found included several brittle stars, a medusa worm, a fire worm, bubble algae, and sea sponges.
However, the highlight of our trip was finding two king helmet snails that were nearly the size of our head! As we observed these interesting animals, we learned about their operculum, which is the trap door underneath that allows for them to hide within their shell. Additionally, we discussed how as they have growth spurts, they flip their shell and begin living in the newly formed section. We then of course had to have a photoshoot with them! Once we were satisfied with the plethora of pictures we got, some of us grabbed our snorkel gear and swam out to deeper water where we saw a variety of coral, along with an eel hiding in a hole beneath the sea floor. As we headed back toward the beach, Dr. Welch spotted a decorator crab that had very tiny pinchers and algae on its head like a crown. After returning all creatures back into the water, we loaded our gear into the truck, recorded our observations and took our scenic drive to return to the field station.
Back at the Gerace Research Centre, we rushed to shower off all the salt and sand before heading to dinner where we ate turkey, gravy, vegetables, and best of all, chocolate cake. Following dinner, some of us chose to go to the lab to either begin gathering information for our organism projects or to play cards, while others used the time to relax in our rooms. Later, we had class over the geology of San Salvador. Finally, as we sat down to begin crafting our blog post, we were interrupted by an impromptu lesson on a crab that was brought into the classroom from outside. Overall, today was a nice change of pace with the relaxing morning followed by a fun afternoon of exploration on the rocks of Bonefish Bay.
-Caroline Burns 鈥�27 and Haley Pitman 鈥�26