Week 4 USF St. Pete

This week was about the open ocean. We learned about the different ecosystems in the open ocean. We learned of pelagic species, planktonic species, and benthic species. Throughout the week we got the chance to do in class identification with squid, fish, plankton, and other invertebrates. This was a valuable experience because it gave us practice using Field identification guides. Unfortunately we did have a set back where we couldn't go on a research vessel because of a mechanical failure. The Weatherbird 2 was something that would have been valuable experience but it couldn't be helped. Instead of using our own collections from the voyage we used specimens from the previous year to identify. We also used the data from all of the previous years to conduct a presentation on a question of our choosing. It gave us experience in presenting findings and also of review a lot of data and finding a trend in it. We got to visit the Florida Aquarium and there we observed organisms to learn their behavior. This was the first ethogram that I had ever conducted and was a great lesson. We got to explore weedon island and go through some cool mangrove tunnels as we did this we got some more experience running different water quality tests. The first few days were plagued with a lot of rain and revising of the weeks schedule. Dr. Judkin's was able to skillfully adjust our schedule in a way that we were able to still learn a lot about the open ocean ecosystems despite the setbacks.