by 7-17-16
With all the activities that was planned out for us to do during the day, we still manage to get time to relax and “reflect” and enjoy the view.
The day started pretty much standard, however, some teammates got to see the sunrise- bummer I didn’t get to see it….oh well, we have three more mornings to go, so it ALL GOOD. We continued working on cores like we did the previous day, however, stepped it up a notch- by taking samples and washing them in a 63 micron sieve to remove all the fine sediments leaving only those larger than the sieve pores (typically forams, radiolarians, and shell fragments). The fun part about this is that once washed and dried in an oven (not your typical oven at home), we got to see different species of forams, radiolarians, and other tiny shelled organisms, that didn’t seem to be present in the core or sample it self….that was AWESOME- oh yeah, we identified some of the species….SWEEEET!!
Later in the day, we did another exercise by dividing into teams (2-3 persons) that dealt with density. We identified two factors that affects the density of water; temperature, and salinity. We then extrapolate our findings to make predictions about air masses across the globe, that was a fun exercise- NICE.
I stepped out on the deck after completing the exercise and I was like OH MY GOD- is that Florida (in my head of course, lol). I knew we would be travelling close, but not that close….. I have never been to Florida except in transit through Orlando on connecting flights, so, seeing it in all its ‘glory’ was an awesome sight- i’m sure not many people can say…. ‘I saw Florida from the the sea’, but I can.
Again, Thank you STEM-SEAS.
Tomorrow is project time….stay tuned.
Layton Neil- Queens College, NY. STEM-SEAS
