By Una and Millie

Hey Blog! Did you miss us?

Since the last time we chatted, we have acquired the names of many seaweed species. Cattle Point, where we traveled today with Dr. Katie Dobkowski, is home to various species, and the Salish Sea Scientists are now fit to identify them all! After an 8:30 wakeup (more of these please!), we armed ourselves with quadrats, measuring tape, chalk, and ID cards, and set out to survey the seaweeds.

After some tripping and slipping we located the transect D marker. Our brave soldier Caleb ran out the measuring tape, staying impressively upright the whole journey. Shocking! He fell later though. We laid out the quadrats and poked around in each square, determining the approximate percent coverage of each species on the rocks. We saw lots of sea lettuce (ulva!) and rockweed (fucus distichus!).

We also found some more exciting specimens such as tasty sea grapes and petrocelis, which, while looking like spots of tar (or, in my opinion, old sidewalk gum), is actually the encrusting stage of mastocarpus. The data we collected would be used to further a 10-year-long study investigating the changing populations of seaweed on Cattle Point. 

When we returned home, we were met with a cruel reality: PROJECTS! Just kidding, they don’t sound too bad. After a bit of research on those, we rewarded ourselves with a cold swim at Jackson Beach, which feels really good after the initial blast of agonizing, aching, tingling, stabbing, crippling, paralyzing pain. We warmed back up really quickly on our barefoot run back though! We were still 10 minutes late. 

That’s all for now! See ya tomorrow. <3