Lazy Saturday

So today was a very mellow day. Not much got done. We took salinity data and messed with the rain-outs (from day 1) a bit to make sure all was well. The grad students were all gone off island, so it was kind of a lazy day.

There was some minor cleanup, and some wandering about and hanging out and data collecting, but the highlight of the day was a minor hike through a trail that ends with Nanny Goat Beach. You end up getting taken through like, four or five different types of ecosystems. You start out in like, a wetland forest area, moving onto a path through the salt marsh, into the traditional scrub forests I'm used to from Florida, to dunes, and finally onto the beach.

Lots of coolness. There were a handful of Armases, close cousins of the previously mentioned Sesarma, which were promptly wrangled.

 

And then released, gently.

 

 Lots of bugs. Only the pretty kind get pictures in my blog though. Seriously though the mosquitos were swarming.

 

Some cool possibly invasive plants.

 

I saw (but couldn't photograph) a ground skink, and there are signs for diamondback rattlers, which we luckily saw none of. Although it'd be kinda cool just to catch a glimpse of one from a very safe distance. Lastly and possibly coolest, we found not one but three small sharks (probably dogfish) washed up on Nanny Goat.

 

Took a swim afterwards and am now chilling at the institute. The swim was somewhat unremarkable but did have a curious encounter. One of the other undergrads picked up a hermit and he responded by promptly unseating himself from his shell. Very weird! We managed to coax him back in by filling up the palm of my hand with water, because apparently he was too over-encumbered in dry air to maneuver himself and the shell into position. If you've never seen a hermit unseated from his shell, it's a really weird lesson in their morphology. Seriously cool stuff. I unfortunately got no pictures of that process.

So here is another shark.

Unfortunately, it's back to work breaking down the enclosures tomorrow, which means more working with flashing (as mentioned last post). Arg. I have some tiny, very thin cuts on my arm from that stuff. It's really a pain, but I'll enjoy a chance to get back out into the marshes, at least. I like feeling helpful to the lab group, too.

By the by, high res pictures of just about everything I post here are also available on my Flickr, I just like to break my narrative up with eye candy.