bitsyblatt's Journal

Two nights ago I went night lighting off the dock of Friday Harbor Labs. We put a small, bright light in the water. Unfortunately, the water was too murky from an earlier storm to see all the way to the bottom. But we still saw lots of interesting fish. There was a school of some type of fish, but they were too deep to be identified. We thought maybe they were sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) but they seems a bit too large. Maybe some kind of smelt or herring? Some interesting fish species that we saw were the three spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus),tadpole sculpin (Psychrolutes paradoxus) and the crescent gunnel (Pholis laeta). We also saw crab larvae, what we thought to be fish larvae, amphipods of many kinds and some sort of worm swimming on the surface.

When our final project presentations ended on Wednesday, we decided to go on a nature walk to celebrate. We went on a trail through the forest which I hadn't been on before. It was interesting to walk through the forest as the sky grew dark and the colors became dull. The presentation was the culmination of the research section of our quarter, and thinking about this fact made the walk very contemplative. It is going to be strange to live somewhere where I can't go on walks such as this through the forest whenever I want. Hopefully I can come back here or do research somewhere similar.

Today was the last full day of the quarter, and we explored the island a bit. We went to cattle point, a scenic point on the southern tip of the island. It's interesting because the scenery on this part of the island is a lot more bare than the rest of the island, which is pretty forested. We didn't really see any marine life, but it was interesting to watch the unusually turbulent water. We also went to Roche Harbor, a very small town on the island. We walked on a short forested path to a historical landmark on the island called the mausoleum. There was also an old graveyard in the forest that was becoming overgrown. It is interesting to see nature and man made objects interact in such a way.