I officially woke up at 6:30 today and just sort of lounged around until breakfast time. Today the Mother Kitty came out begging for breakfast from us. Her two kittens are about 3 weeks old now. We shared some bread and then Kala set her cereal bowl down. Mother Kitty is my name for her, I don't believe she has a real name here. She is just a kitten herself. The station also has two dogs; Trig is old and has cataracts, while Matt is just a few months old and is going to be neutered on Saturday.
Our plan for today was to see the Texas A&M people off and then begin our research. After we cleaned two fish tanks for storing the snails, we headed down to the city to run some quick errands before collecting our specimens. I continue to forget their scientific name; unless I see it written, I don't think I will ever remember it. Regardless, we went to a hardware store and I finally decided to purchase a cutlass; the blade is made in England so it is good steel. Roger also needed some new sunglasses; his went missing somewhere at the hot springs at Trafalgar Falls yesterday. Then we went to mouth of Canefield River, where we have been numerous times to try to see the Green Flash and whatnot. Together, we collected over 100 snails from the north side of the river mouth; plus 11 larger ones from the south side, where we will be calculating the population density.
When we returned back to the station, we deposited our snails in one of the aquariums and assured that each one was facing downward so it could get a hold of the tank glass. Transferring the snails from the estuary mix of salt and fresh water into pure freshwater, we were to find out later that this put the animals into shock. Meanwhile, we waved goodbye to the Texas A&M crew, leaving just three other researchers, a geologist couple and their high school son, here until Friday. A nice girl named Juliet, who had given us tips earlier in the week and sat with us at dinner one night, left us extra sunscreen and bug spray.
We took an early lunch and discussed our plans for carrying out our study. We needed to determine if the snails could transplant effectively from salt to fresh water, how fast they could move in correlation with their mass, and if nail polish had any effect on their racing abilities when it was applied appropriately to the shell as a marker. Before testing these, we had to find/create small, narrow racing tubes, perfect our polishing methods (because the last group did not let the polish dry enough before returning the snails to water), and divide the snails into groups based on size. We measured the longest part of their shell by millimeters and used an ulta-sensitive scale for their mass. Lengths measured from 3.5mm of the smallest snails to 14mm of the largest one in our sample group. Masses ranged from .03grams to about .89g; with our small group categorized as .03-.13g, the medium group as .14-.48g, and the large group from .49-.89g. We tried various positions of the tubes to see which one the snails preferred best to do our races: flat, open-ended; flat, closed-end; upright, open-ended; upright, closed-end; and upright with water. We observed the most movement from the flat, closed-end model, so we decided to use that for our races.
Dr. Hains discussed with us about the Russian-proven model for observations; 60 comes up time and time again as the magic number, but it has since been cut down to 30 observations necessary to compare data and confirm research. Thus, we had to come up with a way to get 30 observations from each size group before and 30 after we add "snail polish". For the small and medium groups, this was easy because there were many more than 30 snails for those. For the large ones, we only had 11 snails. So we decided to use 10 of them and race them 3 times before and after. We measured and weighed the large snails, put them in order, then set them up for racing. They didn't move so we started setting up a set of 6 medium snails to race. They didn't move either. We squirted water in the tubes. Still barely any movement. We put the tubes in a tray with water, so the snails would constantly be in water. Still no movement. They were shaken up and disoriented, and more importantly in shock from too much fresh water at once. I hope we didn't kill the little guys, but they all seemed to go into a comatose state.
Later we found out that Dr. Hains led us on that path on purpose; the group before had better success because they used salt water. We cleaned up for the day and went to Emerald Pool for a relaxing swim. Dr. Hains stayed behind at the rest shelter, his leg & knee sore from sliding on a slippery boulder on the way to the hot springs. Diane and Kala would not get near the water, so it was just Roger and I swimming. I explored a bit on the surrounding rocks and encountered probably a dozen lizards and a few river crabs. We were soon joined by a couple afraid of the chilly water. As we were packing up, another couple came in...it just wasn't as nice as when we first went there with the sun shining down on the crystal-jade water and not a soul in earshot.
On the way back, we stopped at a roadside cafe named Miranda's for some real Dominican food and a "Pre-dinner Dinner". We had some fish cakes, basically extra large hushpuppies, and Kala and Diane split a...wait for it...chicken salami sandwich that tasted neither like chicken nor salami. Miranda did make some incredible hot sauce, though. Made from local peppers, it put the store-bought hot sauce to shame. I had to dilute it with a lot of ketchup. We bought a bottle of it before we left for only $2 US ($5 EC).
At real dinner, there were just eight of us, compared to the nearly full dining room last night. Then we had a lecture on water and the energy in the atmosphere.
Our plan for today was to see the Texas A&M people off and then begin our research. After we cleaned two fish tanks for storing the snails, we headed down to the city to run some quick errands before collecting our specimens. I continue to forget their scientific name; unless I see it written, I don't think I will ever remember it. Regardless, we went to a hardware store and I finally decided to purchase a cutlass; the blade is made in England so it is good steel. Roger also needed some new sunglasses; his went missing somewhere at the hot springs at Trafalgar Falls yesterday. Then we went to mouth of Canefield River, where we have been numerous times to try to see the Green Flash and whatnot. Together, we collected over 100 snails from the north side of the river mouth; plus 11 larger ones from the south side, where we will be calculating the population density.
When we returned back to the station, we deposited our snails in one of the aquariums and assured that each one was facing downward so it could get a hold of the tank glass. Transferring the snails from the estuary mix of salt and fresh water into pure freshwater, we were to find out later that this put the animals into shock. Meanwhile, we waved goodbye to the Texas A&M crew, leaving just three other researchers, a geologist couple and their high school son, here until Friday. A nice girl named Juliet, who had given us tips earlier in the week and sat with us at dinner one night, left us extra sunscreen and bug spray.
We took an early lunch and discussed our plans for carrying out our study. We needed to determine if the snails could transplant effectively from salt to fresh water, how fast they could move in correlation with their mass, and if nail polish had any effect on their racing abilities when it was applied appropriately to the shell as a marker. Before testing these, we had to find/create small, narrow racing tubes, perfect our polishing methods (because the last group did not let the polish dry enough before returning the snails to water), and divide the snails into groups based on size. We measured the longest part of their shell by millimeters and used an ulta-sensitive scale for their mass. Lengths measured from 3.5mm of the smallest snails to 14mm of the largest one in our sample group. Masses ranged from .03grams to about .89g; with our small group categorized as .03-.13g, the medium group as .14-.48g, and the large group from .49-.89g. We tried various positions of the tubes to see which one the snails preferred best to do our races: flat, open-ended; flat, closed-end; upright, open-ended; upright, closed-end; and upright with water. We observed the most movement from the flat, closed-end model, so we decided to use that for our races.
Dr. Hains discussed with us about the Russian-proven model for observations; 60 comes up time and time again as the magic number, but it has since been cut down to 30 observations necessary to compare data and confirm research. Thus, we had to come up with a way to get 30 observations from each size group before and 30 after we add "snail polish". For the small and medium groups, this was easy because there were many more than 30 snails for those. For the large ones, we only had 11 snails. So we decided to use 10 of them and race them 3 times before and after. We measured and weighed the large snails, put them in order, then set them up for racing. They didn't move so we started setting up a set of 6 medium snails to race. They didn't move either. We squirted water in the tubes. Still barely any movement. We put the tubes in a tray with water, so the snails would constantly be in water. Still no movement. They were shaken up and disoriented, and more importantly in shock from too much fresh water at once. I hope we didn't kill the little guys, but they all seemed to go into a comatose state.
Later we found out that Dr. Hains led us on that path on purpose; the group before had better success because they used salt water. We cleaned up for the day and went to Emerald Pool for a relaxing swim. Dr. Hains stayed behind at the rest shelter, his leg & knee sore from sliding on a slippery boulder on the way to the hot springs. Diane and Kala would not get near the water, so it was just Roger and I swimming. I explored a bit on the surrounding rocks and encountered probably a dozen lizards and a few river crabs. We were soon joined by a couple afraid of the chilly water. As we were packing up, another couple came in...it just wasn't as nice as when we first went there with the sun shining down on the crystal-jade water and not a soul in earshot.
On the way back, we stopped at a roadside cafe named Miranda's for some real Dominican food and a "Pre-dinner Dinner". We had some fish cakes, basically extra large hushpuppies, and Kala and Diane split a...wait for it...chicken salami sandwich that tasted neither like chicken nor salami. Miranda did make some incredible hot sauce, though. Made from local peppers, it put the store-bought hot sauce to shame. I had to dilute it with a lot of ketchup. We bought a bottle of it before we left for only $2 US ($5 EC).
At real dinner, there were just eight of us, compared to the nearly full dining room last night. Then we had a lecture on water and the energy in the atmosphere.
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