More Pictures...

Alright, a few more pictures to make this blog more interesting. The weekend before this past weekend, Mike and I went to New Jersey (as I stated in my previous post) and the only thing we found to do was to go to the Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange. It actually turned out to be a cute little zoo and since they lacked funding you could get dangerously close to the animals - yay!

White wolf behind glass...





























A very sleepy sloth...















An even sleepier groundhog...















Brazen peacock...















Kangarooo...















Some penguins...





























And a very cute Red Panda (yes, Mike, Red Panda)...





























Today we did a little tagging, but failed to find more than 28 crabs. For Memorial Day we went to a pig roast at a restaurant in Orleans. It felt more like a family BBQ and we were definitely feeling like out-of-towners, but we had fun anyways.

Sorry for the lack of words, but I have a cold and am too tired to think of anything else, haha.

Lapse...

Sorry for the lapses in updating. I keep forgetting to take my camera into the field and the only interesting things to post are pictures.

We've tagged about 400 horseshoe crabs so far and started our second group of surveys today for the new moon. Last week we put transmitters and Star ODDI tags on about twenty large females. The transmitters ping off of buoys placed around Pleasant Bay that have equipment attached that will record every time the crab passes by. This way we can see if the crabs wander around a lot or stay in basically the same place when spawning. The Star ODDI tag records GPS data, temperature, and depth so we can see where those particular crabs are going and how deep. The only problem with those is that we have to find them when we're done! That's where the transmitters will come in. We can put a hydrophone in the water and listen for the certain series of pings associated with the crab with a Star ODDI on it.

Yesterday we went out on the boat to check the transmitters attached to the buoys, to see how far away we could get and still hear the pings. Many of the buoys lost their signals only 10 meters out, but one had a good signal all the way to 640 meters. These have transmitters so that they can be found at night or if the buoy somehow gets removed. The equipment attached to the buoy is expensive and has valuable data so we can't go losin' it in the Bay!

I went to New Jersey to see Mike for the weekend and then he came up to the Cape with me for two days to look around. Unfortunately, the crabs decided to hide for his visit and the weather decided to be fairly cold. We did go to Provincetown, though, and had a nice dinner at the Orleans Inn Restaurant.

Today it was around 80 degrees, beautiful, and sunny. After doing our AM survey, I went to the beach and layed out for a bit. Then I checked the post office to see if I'd gotten any general delivery mail and found I had two postcards from Jess and Melanie! I love those gals. I bought some postcard stamps and will finally send out the postcards I wrote them two weeks ago. Lol.

Some pictures...

Hello all, I've finally uploaded some photos so you have a better idea of what our work entails.

Walking to Marsh 2/3 on Pleasant Bay to tag some crabs...















Marsh 2/3...















The tags we use...















Nicki placing a tag after having drilled a hole in the prosoma...











































Some tagged crabs...





























That's it for now, I'll have more pictures once I get a chance to take some.

Rainy day...

We had a long safety training session yesterday and learned all about the evils of deer ticks. Also, if ever we find an unexploded ordnance, we are not to call it a bazooka over the radio.

After our training we went to Nauset Harbor to see if we couldn't tag some crabs. No crabs were found, but we did get the canoe from the BioLab and strapped it to our government vehicle.

Today we were going to help Matt (the BioTech) moor the boat at Paw Wah Pond so we could go out to Hogs Island, but there was a small craft advisory. So instead, we could only drop the canoe off and check out the high tide at Erica's Beach.

Hopefully tomorrow it will be less windy and rainy so we can go out on the boat. Also, we're going to drive to Marsh 2/3 to tag crabs since we had the best luck there.

Settling...

All settled into the house now and have a much better idea of what we'll be doing. The other girls and I were a bit puzzled as to our daily activities but we're getting the hang of it now.

On Tuesday we met with MJ in the morning to go to two of the sites we'll be surveying in Pleasant Bay. One was Erica's Beach, which is a little beach owned by a sweet old lady who's a horseshoe crab enthusiast. She does surveys during the day so we'll only be doing the night surveys at that beach. MJ taught us how to count the crabs in 5m quadrants. I'll post pictures of this when we go out and actually do a spawning survey.

The next survey site we went to was a salt marsh in Nauset Bay. MJ showed us the start and end points of the area we'll be surveying. After that we went to the BioLab to see where to wash the park service vehicle off and where we would later be measuring egg densities.

On Thursday we learned how to actually tag the crabs. What we do is spray the area with alcohol, dip a drill bit into iodine and then drill a small hole in the left posterior point of the prosoma. Then the little circular tag just snaps into that hole. We record tag number, sex, and size of the crab at the widest point of the prosoma. We did our tagging at Marsh 2/3, which was a very mucky area and required hip waders. This is a spawning survey site that we can only do during the day because it floods too much at the night high tide.

Our last survey site is an island that we'll have to get to by boat. So, we do our surveys at the high tides on the full and new moons throughout May and June. In July we'll be measuring egg densities. When we're not doing spawning surveys we'll be tagging the crabs as much as possible.

Alright, that's it for now. I keep forgetting to charge my camera battery so I'll post pictures as soon as I take my camera out in the field with me.

I'm in Connecticut for the weekend with Mike so that's all until Sunday! :)