Day 2

So today since I was lax on pictures yesterday you get two posts for the price of one! Unfortunately this one probably won't have any pictures... maybe later! I do have some pictures, but they'll have to wait til the next time I'm at the Marine Institute. Trailer wi-fi is waaay bad.

So about the island itself, and the marshes. Today was basically my day just to learn the systems and the ropes, so to speak. Spent basically the whole day just wandering the marshes observing. This is easier said than done. Remember the mud from yesterday? Some of it is much... squishier than the rest. I was up to me knee at one point. Nonetheless, very cool. We hit several marshes - Airport (so named due to its proximity to a small, overgrown airstrip), Dean's Creek, and Lighthouse (see Airport). Yesterday was mainly a marsh called Oakdale.

The marshes are made up mostly of one particular grass type with other species interspersed. The main plant is marsh cordgrass, Spartina alternaflorens. Most of the research being done focuses in some roundabout (but usually fascinating) way on how we can keep this particular plant thriving. The marsh itself has short, intermediate, and taller Spartina zones. These zones in terms of elevation are backwards - high, medium, and low. The low marsh, where the tall Spartina is, tends to be at or around creekbeds, which I would have loved to explore more but the mud gets very soft and almost untreadable due to the water around them.

Our crabbies, from our last post, are spread out amongst these zones. Marsh fiddlers tend to be everywhere, munching goodies straight from the soil. Sand fiddlers are similar but seem to be associated with the dryer, flatter, less vegetated areas. Purple marsh crabs tend to prefer certain soil types, and the two mud crabs prefer tall Spartina and to some extent mussel mounds, another feature of these marshes. There are also marsh periwinkles, Littoraria irrorata, a very important grazer of the grasses.

I got to try my hand at catching some of these guys, with reasonable success (as seen in the previous post). A few pinches, though. Was fun.

The island itself is a bizarre but fascinating place. It's mostly uninhabited - the only route in or out is by ferry. There are some residents - the descendents of slaves that originally resided here - that live in a historic area called Hog Hammock. There's also the University of Georgia Marine Institute, who the lab I'm working with is associated with. And then there are oddities.

The R.J Reynolds Mansion, for instance. Originally owned by the head of Camel as well as a number of other tobacco companies. This is in contrast to the myriad of dilapidated, abandoned structures dispersed throughout the island, including but not limited to: a greenhouse (I'd love to explore), some sort of animal enclosure (possibly chicken), etc. I will post pics when I have them. They're delightfully overgrown and urban-decay-ish, for lack of a better term (since this island has nothing one could consider "urban")

And myself? I live in a trailer, with a pair of fellow undergrads. Every aspect of the trailer seems to point to it being a relic of the '70s. It is truly ancient. But cozy.

...I should really get back to researching a topic for my project.

Crabasaurus

So, some supplementary pictures for yesterday's post.

Black-clawed mud crab (Panopeus herbstii), an ambush predator:

A very muddy white-clawed mud crab (Eurytium limosum); these look similar to black claws but behave a little differently and tend to be much feistier:

Purple marsh crab (Sesarma reticulatum), which are herbivores and pack quite a pinch:

Marsh fiddlers (Uca pugnax), which are EVERYWHERE:

And sand fiddlers, which are not:

So there you have it. Too many crabbies!

First Field Day

So, essentially, this blog is going to be the receptacle for all of my experiences, musings, et cetera during my summer internship working in the muddy, boggy, hot Georgia salt marshes at Sapelo Island. Today was my first day of serious field work, having just arrived yesterday.

As a brief overview of what we did today, we were basically setting up fancy tents with tarps over them for an experiment trying to simulate drought conditions. The idea is that mussel mounds in the marsh manage to keep the marsh grasses from being totally obliterated by die-off during droughts (which is an interesting aside in itself). It's been observed in the past, but the project's trying to quantify and experimentally prove its occurrence while looking into why it happens. There are some interesting ideas abound - the mussels reduce salinity which kills the grasses, or it could be the result of some of the species on the mounds.

It boiled down to a lot of long, somewhat grueling work though, piecing together PVC and putting grommets into the tarps and whatnot. I got to operate a dremel and a drill press to put holes into the PVC to basically tie it all down like a rain fly. Yay power tools? Dad would probably be proud, due to his extensive hobby of woodworking in his free time. A lot of ecology is fun, free-form DIY. These projects get a little bit ridiculous in my limited experience with people coming up with really oddball solutions to making experiments work. It's a side of ecology most people don't ever think about - the power tools, the crafty solutions, the manual labor.

Back to the marshes, though. They're fun, but they get ludicrously hot around mid-day. I am literally already minorly sunburnt. And the mud. Mud essentially manages to get everywhere you can possibly imagine, and once it's there it's hard to rid yourself of. I feel like we belong on an episode of Dirty Jobs. But in a good way!

The marsh itself is jam-packed with crabs. There are Sesarma, or purple marsh crabs, which are mainly herbivores and have a wicked cool neon purple coloration on their bellies; Panopeus and Eurytium, both mud crabs (black clawed and white clawed, respectively); and fiddlers literally everywhere you step. Standing still and quiet, the marsh literally crackles with their motion as they sift through the mud for food. Pretty cool. Birds, too. Osprey, and wood storks, which are cool and kind of rare, from what I hear. Vultures are practically ubiquitous.

Tomorrow we're due to go out and just hike around and think and get a feel for the area. I'm supposed to have my project at least conceptualized by the end of the next week. Should be fun. Bit nerve-wracking though. I have an idea going but I'm not sure if it'll work. We'll see!

P.S - I'll be doing a follow up post when I get a chance to go over some of how the island itself is beyond the marshes. Also, eventually there will be pictures, but the internet here is too shoddy for even basic uploads.