BIOSCI 330: Freshwater and Estuarine Ecology: Field Trip

Saturday - headed to campus to learn about some inveterate identification. 10% of the grade was turning in 8 annotated drawings of different insects. A good lab - I really enjoyed drawing pictures, but by the 4th or 5th it all got pretty old. Still it was a pretty easy lab for that much of our grade.
Sunday - got up early and headed out to the Waiwera estuary to take some samples and determine any faunal trends that exist along the halocline up the estuary. Each group did two transects, our first was on the shore, found a couple of sand hopper isopod things and some beetles that looked like ladybugs except they were brownish white and black instead of red and black and they were buried about 20cm down in the sand. The second transect was quite a ways up the estuary and it was ridiculously muddy. It started only about ankle deep, but standing there sifting muddy clay and before long the mud was mid thigh deep. It has been ages since I've gotten to play in the mud like that - it was great fun. Found a bunch of crabs some shrimp and a bunch of oligocheate worms. For day trip it was pretty fun.