By Sara, Jaimie, Arielle, and Jake —

Today we woke up at 8:00am and got ready for the day. We started with breakfast which consisted of the normal: bagels, muffins, and cereal. After breakfast we went to the Spring Street International School’s science lab and learned about the invasive rabbits on the island from Beatrice Grauman-Boss.

Photo by Tom Grauman

Photo by Seth Grant

After learning about the rabbits, we got in the van and went to American Camp to survey the warrens and the number of active entrances.

Photos by Tom Grauman

We learned that there is about 1 rabbit for every sq. ft in American Camp.

Photos by Seth Grant

Photo by Tom Grauman — fenced area is (mostly) rabbit-free

We spent about 2 hours surveying the area and then returned to the dorms for lunch.

The survey with Beatrice was part of a longitudinal study on behalf of the US National Historical Parks Service.

After lunch, we resumed our earwig trials in the science lab.

The focus of our trials today, was to see how much time it takes for the earwigs to acclimatize to sample arenas (Tupperware filled with sand).

Once we finished with our trials, some of us went to return earwigs, while others began to work on dinner prep and blogs.

    Soon it was dinner time and we were joined by Jen Olson, the coordinator for the San Juan County Marine Stranding Network associated with the Whale Museum here in Friday Harbor as well as NOAA and the SeaDoc Society.

Photo by Seth Grant

The Stranding Network is a non-profit organization that researches and helps stranded marine mammals. After dinner, Jen gave a presentation about her work and informed us about the necropsy (animal autopsy) we are going to see tomorrow morning.