This past week has been amazing! Our last couple of days we got rained out by tropical storm Andrea and rather than battling the formidable water we went to the Florida Aquarium. There we learned about some new species, or perhaps reinforced the knowledge we had already gained through the course, and got to perform an ethogram (a new term I learned), which is a behavioral study of an individual animal through observation and intent note-taking. It was exciting to be able to name fish in the aquarium and say that we caught that species two days before! Also, the aquarium held species we could see in future weeks.
Sadly, we won't be seeing this guy, as his distribution is largely throughout southern Australia coasts, however, the Leafy seadragon, Phycodurus eques, is one of my favorite fish.
Friday we compiled most of our species data relating to Tuesday's cruise to compare Station 1 (out in the gulf) versus Station 2 (close to the bay) for both the dredge and the otter trawl catches.
Our finished compilations spanned three entire white boards!
We spent time after that discussing how we could use the data we recorded to support scientific hypotheses. For example, we might be able to use the comparison of species diversity between Station 1 and Station 2 to suggest how diversity differs in locations. There were so many possibilities, I honestly wanted to start statistically comparing the data to see all that one could conclude from that 15 hour trip on Tuesday! I'll miss USFSP because the subject of open oceans really intrigues me (so much so that I've almost entirely forgotten my seasickness and am ready to go out again, just for the sake of more knowledge!). Dr. Judkins taught us a lot here and made it a fun experience! But I'm also looking forward to learning more this next week at FGCU!
Glad to hear you had a rewarding time at sea even with sea-sickness.
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