Our week at UWF in Pensacola has been packed chock full of learning about environmental factors and researching the impacts of various environmental conditions on aquatic organisms. We first went to the headwaters of the Escambia River, where a construction project using clay to underlay the pavement is impacting the watershed. This clay, when mixed into the water, lowers the penetration of sunlight into the water, reducing the ability of plants to produce sugar and release oxygen into the water.

Inappropriate construction techniques not only damage the environment, but make human facilities more vulnerable to damage. Dr. Eble explains here how the use of culverts instead of bridges to build roadways across streams can lead to the washing out of roads during a flood, as happened to this road. The stream is actually still flowing, but the sediment washed in from the banks covered the water over.

 This stream which should be clear runs red due to fill clay from construction. The land here is actually 600 feet of gravel on top of a limestone bed. The natural river life here is not well adapted to this murky water.

 Collections on the Escambia yielded only pollution-tolerant organisms.

Fertilizer from the golf course causes an over-abundance of plant growth including these stands of invasive elephant-ears.

We performed water quality analysis in the Perdido River. Here's Dr. Eble explaining some of the parameters we would be testing:

Water quality testing and evaluations of seagrass photosynthesis, coverage, and animal diversity in the seagrass habitat was also performed, but unfortunately the water was too turbid to get good photos or video.

We did lots of seine pulling, which enabled us to sample species diversity in several different habitats. Here's Dr. Janosik guiding us on our first Gulf of Mexico pull:

Wednesday night we collected sky light intensity data from beaches where sea turtles, including the first leatherback to nest on Pensacola Beach in 15 years, had nested. Our data was added to an EPA project which studied night sky illumination maps and sea turtle nesting and hatching behaviors.

On Thursday we worked on presentations which were given on Friday, the last day of our UWF section of the course. After working on our presentations we enjoyed a Blue Wahoos minor league baseball game.

Friday we finished our presentations and delivered them. I was in a group which presented information on the water quality and fish species diversity of the areas in which we pulled seines. We all evaluated the presentations given by other groups, and I think our fish data group did an excellent job. Hopefully our peer reviewers felt the same way!

This week had so many wonderful learning opportunities, and kept us busy and exhausted through the entire week. Finally, Saturday! A chance to sleep in! I used the free day to visit the Naval Aviation Museum, which was really cool to see but that is a topic for a different forum.  Now I'm just looking forward to what awaits us at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville!