After 11 hours of (much needed) sleep Im ready to write about my day yesterday!
We spent the morning diving at snap shot reef using the new quadrats the students built. They took their regular transects and then took meter by meter images using their quadrats along the transect line. Even though the quadrats are a bit unweildy due to their size, all the students were able to execute the dive and get all their images!
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| Photo credit: Ashley Barnett A student enjoying a swim around after their transect was complete |
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| Photo credit Jessica Waites A lionfish searching for prey |
After lunch we let the students loose for an afternoon off (it was Friday!). Once they returned we held a short class on how to use coral point count, a saftware package that takes the quadrat images and lays random points on it. We determine what is under every point and the software tells us the distribution of organisms in each image. So cool! We will be using this software for the duration of the course to build accurate data sets of the reef over at each place we dive.
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| Dr. Mark Warner instructing the class |
Its a beautiful, calm day today and we are getting ready to do two more dives! Woohoo!
- J
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| Photo credit: Ricky Rosas Peering into a crevice along the reef |
Boy, that last photo is magical! That must have been so satisfying for the students to be able to put their quadrats to real, scientific, use. and the software you're using sounds really interseting. does it use graphs only, or line drawings as well?
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