Usually you can tell how long a group of students has been here by the number of bug bites on their legs. However, yesterday’s rain brought a swarm of mosquitos and after today you would probably think that we’ve been here for months. With the application of extra bug spray and some Benadryl gel, today started out with a pancake and bacon (yes, BACON!) breakfast. Afterwards, the group broke up into their various research groups and headed out to different sites to continue collecting data for their projects. One group headed to North Point to collect sand samples for sifting while another group went back to Pigeon Creek to collect along a salinity gradient. A couple of other groups ventured to Snapshot, Cut Cay, and Monument to complete various transects that were analyzing several different aspects of their projects.
Lunch consisted of pasta, Caesar salad, and fruit at the GRC and many students followed that up with a quick power nap. We survive on power naps here: any time of the day, any break we get, any time we are laying horizontally…zZzZz. We have begun keeping track of who has the record of falling asleep the fastest. Nonetheless, getting the chance to work out in the field and experience the island is worth the exhaustion and back to work we went shortly after lunch. Some students went back into the field to collect data and others stayed at the research center to analyze data that they had previously collected.
After dinner, we made our way over to the lab for class. We were all overjoyed when we heard that we were going to be watching Blue Planet: Coral Seas off of the Discovery Channel. After the flick, we were given back our exams to see what our grades were and were also given a run-down of what we would be doing the remaining seven days here (even though most of us are boycotting leaving and have plans to swim to the nearest cay, create huts, and continue living here as island savages). It’s hard to believe how fast the time has flown by while we’ve been here but at the same time seems like we’ve been here forever. This last week will be bittersweet as we wrap up research projects and every minute will be cherished.
Rebecah Delp ’16, Jenny Lehman ‘17