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.