Today’s blog post is from first year Delphin Monga, a molecular biology/biochemistry major.
5/8/17
Dolphins for Delphin! Today was an amazing day, maybe even the best day yet! We began with an interesting and fun lecture presented by Professor Jody Saylor. The lecture was about positive interactions. In this lecture we learned more about the interactions that improve individual or population fitness of at least one of the participants. Later Natalie and Molly explained more about the types of interactions by introducing a fun activity that made everyone excited.
The activity was done in groups of two students, where students had to come up with examples of positive interactions along with explaining what type of interaction they referred to. Students had to act their ideas and explain what they demonstrated by explaining what type of interaction they used and under which stressor category. for example, one group acted a positive interspecific interaction about the sea anemone protecting a clown fish from the predator. This was exciting watching every group performing and being graded based on their ideology, creativeness, and presenting good educated examples that related to the lecture. The weather, environment, snorkeling, and just being able to identify species taxonomically has been a great experience while learning more about the aquatic species.
The most fun is yet to come! Today, Jody Saylor, assigned 3 students in each group independent research project. All the groups were extremely excited and looking forward to present their ideas about what they are interested in researching. The assigned groups had an opportunity to work together on a different research project which introduced them to the main idea and the big picture of what to expect.
The assigned groups conducted the research at the Old Dan Bank. My assigned group, consisting of myself, Martin Gerig, and Luke Geiser, decided to research how the diversity of sponges correlated with water depths. We were able to determine the difference of sponges in both shallow water and the deep sides of the sea. At the site, Jacob Penner our TA caught an amazing octopus, and other students collected animals such as star fish, brittle stars, puffer fish, and several microscopic plankton species. However, on the way back to the site, there were new interesting species unexpectedly swimming around while heading back. The new identified species were dolphins!
Five dolphins were observed swimming in the shallow area of the sea near the Old Dan Bank. The only think I could say was “dreams do come true!” I had never seen dolphins so close, so today was the most memorable and exciting day for everyone, especially me. They were majestic, graceful, and beautiful. Everyone was happy to watch the dolphins swimming around.
