For the last 7 years, I have wanted to be a small animal veterinarian. I had never been interested in large animals, wildlife or the research aspect of veterinary medicine until recently. This week, I observed a class at the lab as they were dissecting a hammer head shark. This was a really unique and interesting experience that allowed me to learn the process behind preserving a shark skull, like many that I have seen in museums in the past. As I have spent more time participating in research and assisting on different projects, I have become increasingly interested in pursing research at some point in the future, whether that be with marine life or not.
This week, I have continued to work on the salinity experiment in the hatchery at the lab. I have also processed more intertidal data samples, this time with oysters taken from the Indian Lagoon location. This is also something that I have been becoming more and more interested in as I start to learn the intricacies and goals of the various research experiments I am assisting with. I have also entered more data into an excel sheet that was collected from the subtidal spat traps for ABSI’s restoration experiment. This data represents which shell, peanut ridge or dry bar in this case, oysters prefer to settle on. Despite data entry being a bit tedious, I have enjoyed contributing to this project.
In the photo: It’s a picture of a Decorator Crab that was scooped up with our oysters.
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