Blog by: Maxene, Olivia, Silas, Kashi

We started our day at American Camp! It was a pleasure being shown around by Emilio Santiago, who works for the National Park Service and was one of our dinner guests last week. At a seemingly uninteresting expanse of grass, we were flabbergasted to learn that we were standing at the remains of an old graveyard!

After American Camp, we headed off to Eagle Cove for lunch and swimming in the freezing, salty water. We reconnected with our inner mermaids as we explored the sandy beach and tested our cold-water tolerance.

We headed back to the dorms for a quick rinse and to begin project time. However, some of us were quickly derailed as we learned the devastating news that half of our precious aquarium water had mysteriously emptied overnight! Only one inch of lukewarm water remained. A couple of us went to the rescue by laboriously filling buckets with water to rejuvenate the tank. Others were lured to the heating kettle and enjoyed hot chocolate, ice cream, and iced coffee.

Recovering from the tank fiasco, we quickly settled in to finalize our research questions and hypotheses. Later tonight, we will attend the “Keystone molecules and kleptoplasty: new insights from sea slugs” lecture at Friday Harbor Labs by Dr. Patrick Krug. We are overjoyed and intrigued to hear this talk that turned our evening schedule upside down!