Week 1:USFSP

This has been a great first week at USFSP.  It was great meeting and getting to know the students and TA that are in my cohort.  It was also very nice to finally meet Dr. Judkins.  These few days were a good introduction to what the rest of the course will be like.  I came in with a bunch of questions that were quickly answered the very first day.  Dr. Judkins did a wonderful job making sure everyone was on the same page and refreshing everyone on the information we will need to know.

 One thing that I really enjoyed was identifying different organisms.  This was a weak point until last semester, so by refreshing and actually seeing the hard work pay off was really good.  I learned that identifying preserved animals was actually very difficult.  You really have to follow the keys in the books and not rely on the color of the specimen but more on the major characteristics.  I also found out the difficulty of identifying corals.  Trying to identify dead corals made it hard to look at some identifying features that are only on the live corals.

A preserved Bluehead. 

  

Something else that I thought was interesting was the geological aspect of marine science.  This is something that I often leave out when I think about the marine science/oceanographic field.  By being able to look at and see the different applications in the geological aspect, it made it easier to see the importance of the studies that the geological scientists are doing.  Dr. Goddard talked about sediments and taking core samples from the sea floor.  This is something that I found to be very interesting.  I never really thought about just how much this could inform you about the past and help give a look into the future.

A core sample with very distinct layers.