By Kalena, Devika, Nick and Miles

Today was a laid-back day. We lazily rolled out of bed at eight, starting our morning with a few hours of individual research. After days of emailing and planning with Derek and Anna, most of us had began or were ready to begin our projects. Leighna, Ella, Jeremy, Ezra and Orly headed to FHL around nine. The group of five met with researchers that specialized in fields related to their projects and even began setting up their experiments.

In the afternoon, we met with Sasha Seroy, a UW PhD candidate studying snails at the lab. She explained scientific communication, methods of sharing information with the public in a way that’s engaging and easy to understand. This can be through writing, art, social media, photography, outreach and games. Scientific communication is not only important because you need to get your point out to the public, it’s also a way that you can bring in sponsors and funding. With Sasha, we focused on communicating through art and drew cartoons about our projects. Our ideas included puns, interesting facts or pressing issues. Some of us went up and presented are comics to the whole group while others were reluctant to share their ideas. Sasha’s talk helped us better prepare for how to present our posters next Sunday.

While the most of the group did scientific cartooning, Devika, Nick, and Ella worked on their research projects at Friday Harbor Labs. Devika and Nick spent a couple hours in the octopus lab to observe and record the behavior of the octopuses. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to to observe since one of the octopus was hidden under a towel and the other was camouflaged in a corner. Still, it was entertaining to see one of the crabs wander into the tentacles of the octopus.

Ella worked in a nearby lab on her project about sea slugs and currents. She had been working hard for many hours to get her tank ready and when she was finally finished, her GoPro stopped working. Still she has persevered with a happy attitude and is hoping to start testing with the slugs tomorrow!

Waking up at 6:30 almost felt like sleeping in. After spending our last night on Vendovi, the tow groups got up feeling refreshed and reenergized. The previous night we had been uncertain about the sailing conditions, but that morning the weather was unexpectedly clear.

After delicious breakfast burritos, we collected small jellies and ctenophores at the dock, sang goodbye to the island caretakers and boarded the longboats once again. With our already exhausted muscles, we slowly rowed out to the sea and caught a convenient current. Moving slowly, the instructors took the opportunity to teach us triangulation, a method of locating your position on a navigational chart.

After mastering the art of triangulation (sort of), both crews raised their sails. While Townshend set up two sails, Bear rigged all three and soon the longboats were moving faster than ever before. With the wind’s help, both crews took turns napping in the sun and finding the triangulation along our course.

The only dilemma our groups faced was deciding on our destination: Boat Harbor or Saddlebag. There were pros and cons to both destinations. Boat Harbor was closer, had more space and was new and unexplored for our crews, but had no accessible bathroom and everyone would be forced to sleep on the boat. Saddlebag reminded us of traumatic memories, but there were better sleeping and bathroom conditions. The majority of us had voted for Saddlebag the night before, yet there was still a chance that space availability would force us to change courses and camp at Boat Harbor.

Luckily, Saddlebag appeared to have enough space and we were able to make new, drier memories on the island. That night, the entire camp sat around one last campfire and discussed what we appreciated and who we wanted to share the experience with. Afterwards, Ben, Camden, Nick and Miles spotted Bigfoot (Anna) in the dark. We went to sleep sad that our trip had come to an end, but satisfied with all that we had learned over the past four days.

-by Kalena DeLong and Devika Dwivedi