6/23/09 Saint Catherine's Island, GA
Today is day five of the invert section; just started my project today, which I'll get to shortly. Invert has been incredibly fun, especially the aquatic and marine labs. Among the amazing diversity I've seen so far are (roughly by taxa) bryozoa (encrusting and dead mens fingers), assorted sponges, sea pansies, sea whips, anemones, some hydroids, ctenaphores, all sorts of oligatchaetes, a host of bivalves and gastropods, squid, sea cucumbers, star fish, brittle stars, sand dollars, blue, hermit, lady, speckled, mud, mud fiddler, sand fiddler, and spider crabs, white, grass, and ghost shrimp, amphipods, copapods, and isopods galore, various coleopterans and thier larvae including toe biters and water tigers, at least six different dragon fly varieties, golden silk spiders and all sorts of other arachnids (including of course plenty of mites and ticks), tunicates (yea, their cordates but not part of subphylum vertabrata so still inverts, right?), and I'm sure plenty that I'm leaving off. We also did marine vertabrates in this section just because we were allready trawling and seining for inverts, so we've seen spot, croakers, silver perch, whiting, atlantic herring, silver anchovies, florida pompano, file fish, lookdowns, hogchokers, flounder, a bur fish, toadfish, sea robins, a southern stingray, and I'm sure more I'm forgetting. I also saw the second sea turtle of my life, thankfully not in the trawl but rather out in the open ocean from the Sewanee boat. We were jetting from the north to south somewhere near McQueen's inlet when he stuck his head up just off the bow, looked around, realized there was a boat incoming at a unnatural speed, and shot back underwater. Even though it was just a brief glance it was awesome. We also got to hang out with some gopher tortoises, which are niether inverts or other marine things but the envirovet program happened to be on the island and they were catching the tortoises to practice taking blood, etc. We got to learn about them and return them to their burrows after the envirovets were done with them. The gopher tortoises are not native to the island but relocated here by the New York Zoological society, which operates some research and breeding programs on the island. Awesome creatures, glad I got to see them. Coming up on the animal behavior section in a few days, will write more.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Birds o' St. Cat's
6/18/09 Saint Catherine's Island
Bird day today on St. Cat's! Morning was spent on land looking mostly at pond breeding birds. First stop was Greenseed pond where we saw woodstorks, little blue herons, tricolor herons, black headed night herons, great egrets, and snowy egrets, plus the occasional boat tailed grakle and red winged blackbird. Even saw a flock of white ibises briefly flying over head. All the birds but the ibises were nesting and we saw tons of juvenille tricolors and tricolor eggs. After this we poped (as in travelled in the pope mobile, our sawed off 60's model chevy bus-convertable, will include picture soon) to Wamassee pond were mostly the same set of birds were observed. We swung by several bird habitats on the way back, but nothing much notable except for seeing the painted bunting at king new ground dock. This thing was amazing! Possibly the most awesome north american bird I've ever seen. After taking an after-lunch snooze on the porch of Bradford Hall (our eating establishment), I shipped out with the group on the sewanee boat to grass island, which I believe is a slight misnomer as as it must go completely underwater at spring tide. Anyway, there we saw a couple of american oystercatchers, tons of black skimmers, a couple of royal terns, some ringbilled and laughing gulls, a brief glimpse of a stoneturner, and some stray shorebirds whose names I'm not remembering. Another of the most awesome sights of the day, however, was in the early evening when we went looking for rails. First of all, we did see a rail (clapping rail, to be specific), but what really rocked was an alagator fight. A smallish (1.5-2 meter) alligator was hanging around seaside dock when a masive old guy, had to be more than 2.5m, came swimming down the tidal creek. The small guy hurried (relatively speaking, these are ectotherms) to the bank and removed himself from the creek. This wasn't enough for the big guy, though. He (or she) slowely floated down until his head was almost on top of the tail which the smaller one had left dangling in the water. The big guy waits, doesn't move. Were watching in suspense, when almost to fast for the eye to catch the big one shoots out of the water, snapping at (and possibly into, we couldn't really tell at the speed it was happening) the little guy, who flings himself (or herself) into the creek and submerges, not to be seen by us again. The big one sits triumphantly on the bank, maw wide open letting all around know he won and not to mess with him or enter his territory again, then lightly slides back into the creek, leaving us amazed.
We start inverts tomorrow, I should have lots more to write soon.
Bird day today on St. Cat's! Morning was spent on land looking mostly at pond breeding birds. First stop was Greenseed pond where we saw woodstorks, little blue herons, tricolor herons, black headed night herons, great egrets, and snowy egrets, plus the occasional boat tailed grakle and red winged blackbird. Even saw a flock of white ibises briefly flying over head. All the birds but the ibises were nesting and we saw tons of juvenille tricolors and tricolor eggs. After this we poped (as in travelled in the pope mobile, our sawed off 60's model chevy bus-convertable, will include picture soon) to Wamassee pond were mostly the same set of birds were observed. We swung by several bird habitats on the way back, but nothing much notable except for seeing the painted bunting at king new ground dock. This thing was amazing! Possibly the most awesome north american bird I've ever seen. After taking an after-lunch snooze on the porch of Bradford Hall (our eating establishment), I shipped out with the group on the sewanee boat to grass island, which I believe is a slight misnomer as as it must go completely underwater at spring tide. Anyway, there we saw a couple of american oystercatchers, tons of black skimmers, a couple of royal terns, some ringbilled and laughing gulls, a brief glimpse of a stoneturner, and some stray shorebirds whose names I'm not remembering. Another of the most awesome sights of the day, however, was in the early evening when we went looking for rails. First of all, we did see a rail (clapping rail, to be specific), but what really rocked was an alagator fight. A smallish (1.5-2 meter) alligator was hanging around seaside dock when a masive old guy, had to be more than 2.5m, came swimming down the tidal creek. The small guy hurried (relatively speaking, these are ectotherms) to the bank and removed himself from the creek. This wasn't enough for the big guy, though. He (or she) slowely floated down until his head was almost on top of the tail which the smaller one had left dangling in the water. The big guy waits, doesn't move. Were watching in suspense, when almost to fast for the eye to catch the big one shoots out of the water, snapping at (and possibly into, we couldn't really tell at the speed it was happening) the little guy, who flings himself (or herself) into the creek and submerges, not to be seen by us again. The big one sits triumphantly on the bank, maw wide open letting all around know he won and not to mess with him or enter his territory again, then lightly slides back into the creek, leaving us amazed.
We start inverts tomorrow, I should have lots more to write soon.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
6/9/09 Saint Catherine's Island
Good day today, learned lots but nothing particularly blogworthy. I did, however, want to write down for future memory the fact that I actually saw a horshoe crab orgy. Apparantly they come to shore to breed in the late spring (or obviously the early summer), and they were at the shore in droves on the N. beach of the S. side of McQueen's inlet. There are plenty of dead crabs washed up all over the island, but this was the only time I (and apparently Dr. Potter, the geologist who has been running the first nine days of the program since its comensal, some 30ish years ago) have ever seen live horshoe crabs all congragated together, especially in the quantities that were there. It just struck me as neat.
Good day today, learned lots but nothing particularly blogworthy. I did, however, want to write down for future memory the fact that I actually saw a horshoe crab orgy. Apparantly they come to shore to breed in the late spring (or obviously the early summer), and they were at the shore in droves on the N. beach of the S. side of McQueen's inlet. There are plenty of dead crabs washed up all over the island, but this was the only time I (and apparently Dr. Potter, the geologist who has been running the first nine days of the program since its comensal, some 30ish years ago) have ever seen live horshoe crabs all congragated together, especially in the quantities that were there. It just struck me as neat.
Monday, June 8, 2009
6/8/09 Saint Catherine's Island, GA, USA
Free day today and I went canoing out of King's New Ground Dock, taking the falling tide out to McQueen's Inlet and then catching the newly rising tide back in. This in worth mentioning because I made a series of cool finds on this trip. First was a polychaete found on the north side of McQueen's inlet, on the upper beach, inside some pig fecal matter. Roughle 2cm long, I'm curious whether this worm was a parasite inside the pig (parasitical polychaetes are fairly rare) or simply wondered along and found the feces after it was excreted by the pig. What was really amazing, however, was that on the way back Jia Pan, by canoe partner, and I spotted a couple of dolphins entering a small side tidal creek and decided to follow. We canoed with the dolphins for a couple hundred meter, and it was awesome. They were breaching within 2m of our gunnels, and we got to watch them working in pairs herding fish. It would have been awesome to see them all get together and shoal some fish, but no such luck. Honestly I was redicullously awed and excited. This is were I've been hoping I'd end up: canoeing up a marsh with dolphins in the course of my profesion. OK, honest the original plan was to be in a marsh with manatees and swimming with dolphins in the open ocean, but I can compromise. Katie Qualls also brought back a colony of obelia from south beach which I just got to look at under the disection microscope, along with some barnicles that I was actually able to see filter feeding. I believe that I'm in love with the disection microscope, and am going to run away with it. Though I'll need to move to a country where bigamy is allowed so I can be married to the Sewanee boat, too, because I'm also in love with it.
Free day today and I went canoing out of King's New Ground Dock, taking the falling tide out to McQueen's Inlet and then catching the newly rising tide back in. This in worth mentioning because I made a series of cool finds on this trip. First was a polychaete found on the north side of McQueen's inlet, on the upper beach, inside some pig fecal matter. Roughle 2cm long, I'm curious whether this worm was a parasite inside the pig (parasitical polychaetes are fairly rare) or simply wondered along and found the feces after it was excreted by the pig. What was really amazing, however, was that on the way back Jia Pan, by canoe partner, and I spotted a couple of dolphins entering a small side tidal creek and decided to follow. We canoed with the dolphins for a couple hundred meter, and it was awesome. They were breaching within 2m of our gunnels, and we got to watch them working in pairs herding fish. It would have been awesome to see them all get together and shoal some fish, but no such luck. Honestly I was redicullously awed and excited. This is were I've been hoping I'd end up: canoeing up a marsh with dolphins in the course of my profesion. OK, honest the original plan was to be in a marsh with manatees and swimming with dolphins in the open ocean, but I can compromise. Katie Qualls also brought back a colony of obelia from south beach which I just got to look at under the disection microscope, along with some barnicles that I was actually able to see filter feeding. I believe that I'm in love with the disection microscope, and am going to run away with it. Though I'll need to move to a country where bigamy is allowed so I can be married to the Sewanee boat, too, because I'm also in love with it.
6/8/09 Saint Catherine's Island, GA
On Saint Catherine's Island in Georgia. I'll be here for a while studying geology, botany, invert bio and finally vertabrate ecology. I'm including a map so that later posts may make some sense in later years when I look back over this thing. Been here nine days so far and it's awesome!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
