Coring and Kayaking at FGCU

We've had a very tiring first two days at FGCU, but I do really like it here. We are staying at Vester Research Station, and the “dorms” are very nice; more like a nice hotel! So far we have been out on the water both days, yesterday for coring the sediment, and today we split into groups and measured various factors in the water.

Preparing to work the corer farther down into the sediment.

Yesterday we rode out to two locations on the boat, and once there we got into the water – about thigh deep at location one and waist deep at location two. The corers we used were aluminium rods, at varying lengths over one meter. Once the corer was positioned on the sediment underwater, we attached handles and steadily, with an up down motion, managed to fully submerge the corer into the sediment and just under the surface of the water. Then we had to cap it and pull it carefully back up and cap the bottom. I have some sore muscles today from coring actually!  

Lifting the corer back up out of the sediment - it's tough!

 When we got back to the lab we cut open the cores and analyzed the sediment inside, dating back approximately 2 or 3 thousand years! We looked for things such as shell hash (clusters of broken shells in the sediment) to indicate productivity or storm activity depending on the duration; or color to indicate if it was potentially part of the barrier island or a beach in the past; or organic material to indicate that mangroves had once grown there. It was very interesting but also fairly tedious work!

 

The top section of core 1.

Today we learned about density gradients, stratification, and circulation for estuaries. After an hour long crash course on the subject we went out on canoes and a boat to collect data. I was in a canoe group, which meant that we used a grapefruit to collect data about the speed and friction of the current. We also had a YSI device that we used to collect temperature, dissolved oxygen, and salinity of the water in the same location in 30 minute intervals. 

The boat group towed us to our testing location! Can't say I've ever been towed in a canoe behind a boat before!

 

I found a mangrove propagule floating in the water while testing. We learned about these in the first week of class! Mangroves are viviparous meaning that they "bear live young" - their seeds germinate and begin a root system before dropping off of the parent tree.

The GPS we used for latitude and longitude data of the grapefruit.

Our grapefruit bobbing along in the current.

Once we got back to the lab we created spreadsheets of the data and did several calculations before finally writing the lab report at the end.