Mangroves, Seagrasses, and Oyster Beds - Oh my!

The last three days at FGCU were spent working with mangroves, seagrass, and bivalves. On Wednesday we learned about mangroves and went canoeing for leaves, and sediment samples. We brought them back and organized them by levels of degradation, and looked at the sediment under the microscope. We found some cool organisms!

On Thursday we learned about seagrass. We went out to two locations and groups of two used different things for data collecting. There was a Virstein, quadrats, and nets. The Virstein was used to scoop up seagrass at the sediment level and everything living there (microorganisms generally - though we did get a fighting conch!). We used the quadrats to find the percent coverage of seagrass. The nets picked up fish, crabs, etc, and they were measured, identified and released. We then spent the rest of the long day in the lab, identifying microorganisms in the samples we collected; while another group input the data. These are blue crab larvae on the right.
 

On Friday we learned about oysters, and boated out to an oyster bed. We had to be very careful walking on and around the bed, as they are all very sharp. We found tons of crabs there, and several fish around the bed. Then we rode to another location and I found a cool type of algae, and soon after we found a nudibranch - it is a very cool creature!

It was an exhausting week, but I learned so much and I am excited for what is in store at Keys Marine Lab this next week! This is a video of a creature we found at the second location on Friday - he was very active...probably mad at us for holding it out of the water.