Research Begins

May 30, 2010

Location: Stradebroke Island

Another early rise for us today. This time it was essential so that we could catch low tide. We were trying out a technique called seining. Basically you take a long net (20 meters or so) and sweep it in a semi circle fashion in a water area of choice. This is an effective technique, when done properly, to catch and collect a representative sample of the diversity and abundance of species in the area. I had a ton of fun learning all the new species but I am still having a little difficulty distinguishing between a whiting and a flathead. I am sure I will pick it up. For now I am just pleased to see and learn all new fish that I have either never seen before or have only seen on TV. After having a blast out in the field we got to have a little breaky and discuss what we want to do our research projects on. During the program we are going to spend time at three different islands. At each island we are given an opportunity to work in teams and collect our own field data for our projects of choice. My group decided on working on the differences in diversity and abundance during daylight and night, in three different areas along the mudflat. I am excited to be working with fish in comparison to the other projects because we actually get to get into the water for collection rather just walking around and hoping to spot organisms. The down side is that it is very labor intensive with only 4 people and it gets pretty cold at night. I do think we will get some good data and hopefully have some significant results. We only have four days to work on the project so we won’t get too much reliable information, but getting the experience is priceless. After coming up with our methodology and our main purpose of our project we had our first lecture. Again, I learned a lot. It was titled: Oceans. We mainly talked about what influences tides and currents and stuff like that (yes we even talked about the East Australian Current). We got the afternoon to start are field work (more seining!!!) and then we went out as a class to do a night time seine. In the afternoon as we were walking out to our research site, a couple of the local kids were playing on the sand flats and decided that they wanted to help us out. It was awesome (not only because we could use extra pairs of hands). They were asking us all kinds of questions about the kinds of fish we were catching and why we were catching them. It tested my knowledge but also helped reinforce what I just learned. Overall today was a beautiful day filled with wonderful adventures. Besides the chills from the wind it was a gorgeous day with bright blue water. I walked along the beach and took some pictures with some of my mates. We even found an awesome rope swing (wasn’t too stable but still a lot of fun). Once again I can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring. ‘till then.

Notables:
Breaky: Breakfast

Low tide was at 5:48 am (we went out at 6)