Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Busy Busy

The girls from the Maritime Academy have been kept busy throughout the week.... sea turtle encounters....... beach profiling..... bird surveys and terrapin trapping were the main tasks being conducted...... here are their updates for their second week of attachment: 

Angelique's side of the story......
Making sure the Jacuzzi is a homely as possible!
Second week of attachment at MCSS has been very intriguing. We had more than one terrapin but, we had three new, one black mud and two yellow bellied. The biggest one goes by the name Kim and the other chichi. I also went patrolling on the beaches of Baie Lazare and Babarons which I didn’t even know existed. We x-rayed a bat, she was a girl. Mary gave her the name Luna even though she was dead but we didn’t get the chance to do anatomy on her ......shame, maybe next time.
Also we came across a turtle with only three flippers; she came to lay on the beach of Intendance. I found it shocking but really amazing that she could dig her chamber.
And lastly doing beach profiling , not easy at all especially when its very sunny. You have to concentrate, especially when measuring the slope degree which didn’t seem easy for my colleagues!

Aishah's review for the second week......
This week was a tough one with beach profiling. It was really hot but I actually enjoyed it .Once I was given the instruction of what to do, it was pretty easy, we made it fun and laughed throughout but managed to get all the necessary measurementsaccurate.....especially when it came to using the Abney Level.
We didn’t get much turtle encounters this week, mostly tracks because of the low tide.
We got the chance to x-ray a dead fruit bat which had been in the freezer for a week and wow did that smell, but it was really cool.

And not to forget the bird transects which is personally my favorite thing to do, not a big fan of birds but its something I look forward to do each time.

Beach profiling Anse Corail