Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Research Extravaganza!

Hello 450 faithfuls!

If you've been reading our blog up until now, it's fairly apparent that our schedule is pretty rigorous. This week, however, we've been set loose on the intertidal! That's right: we get to conduct our very own research! Basically, the last three weeks of the course are set aside (well, mostly) for these over-arching projects. The best part is, we can look into whatever we want! Let the evil plans commence! Bwahahahaha!

The project subjects range from work with crabs to work with urchins, limpets, chitons, sea stars, snailfish, sculpin and tidepools! There are many interesting ideas and setups. The creative jucies are definitely flowing! Things are just underway though, so more is definitely to come. We should be looking forward to some very interesting data and presentations come Week 10!

Oh, it's not all fun-and-games, though...waking up at 5 AM to scour the rocky intertidal can be pretty trying, not to mention tiring! We split some of the class into two groups (SH and BB) to get the projects underway. Other groups took their own initiative and worked on their own elsewhere. We all know that Strawberry Hill is usually a blast, but not at 6 in the morning. Boiler Bay wasn't much better. Thankfully to save some of us from getting even sicker the weather held up fairly nicely and the rain subsided. Still, with these comprising 25% of our total grade for the course, we think that it's worth it (rain or shine!).

A photo of the Strawberry Hill crew:


Various research project photos:
Calista and Ashley hard at work in the lab:





Their setup:

Megan Poole's setup:

Sean, Alissa and Shiane's setup:

More photos to come later in the week! ;)

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