The first week at UWF was a great start to this course and it helped me to get an understanding on how this course is going to continue. We also got to meet the other cohort that is participating in this course and doing the same things in a different rotation. In Pensacola, it was interesting to learn about the human impacts on the local streams, how residential and commercial developments affected run-off of harmful sediments and proper drainage to the streams,bays and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. The places we went to such as the Escambia River where we first went to was a prime example of the impacts of human activities and how it effects the organisms that live downstream.

Another interesting experience I encountered was the sea turtle management segment that we had on Wednesday. We sat through a presentation called Turtle T.H.i.S which stands for Teens Helping in the Seashore where the presenter and his son explained how to assemble the equipment used for effects of light on sea turtle nesting. We also learned about predation on the nesting sites from birds, raccoon's, ghost crabs and human impacts. After the meeting at Fort Pickens, we drove out to a recent loggerhead sea turtle nest at night where we examined the light readings over the nest and tabulated the data. Each place so far has been an amazing experience and I can't wait to see what more lies ahead.