Week 2: USF St. Pete

This week at USF St. Pete was spent learning about biodiversity and the open ocean. We spent most days in the classroom doing lectures and dissections and one day on the Weatherbird, a research vessel. The day on the boat was obviously my favorite day because all we did was field work. We took plankton samples, did an otter trawl and dredge and took some water quality measurements.  The best and worst part was sorting all of the organisms. It was so stressful to try to identify everything before the organisms died, but so cool to see new animals and algaes that I would never get to see on a normal day at the beach. We saw differences between day and night and surface and bottom waters at our two sampling stations. It was a great experience and kind of a rare one because research vessels are so expensive to use.

This is a picture of a teeny tiny red rock urchin that was scooped up in the offshore dredge pull. Everything tiny is adorable. 

This trip has been so much fun so far and I really couldn't be more thankful to be able to get all of these experiences packed into 5 weeks. I'm so excited to see what FGCU and Vester Field Station have in store this week!