Looking for modern foraminifera for the fieldwork

When the introduction day was done it was time to get real and collect some samples! And in itself that was not much of a problem, but there was a complication: the tide. I have to do that during low tide, and the week of the fieldtrip had one low tide really early in the morning, and one in the early evening. Neither is ideal! And given that I take the students into the lab to process the samples afterwards, I decided I should go in the morning. But that meant an early start. I would pick up the students at 6:15 in the morning every day, from the main campus. And that meant getting up at 5. I wanted to have time to have proper breakfast! Otherwise I would struggle in the field. And it was quite early. When I woke up that first morning I got to my south-facing window and got blasted in the face by a full moon. I decided to just have breakfast in the moonlight! And when I picked up the students, the sky was beautifully orange. When we got to the field, the morning light was amazing. Things were starting well!

Breakfast moon

Morning in the estuary 

After some problems with handheld GPSs last year, I had this time booked the fancier GPS. So I started that up and took the students onto the sandflat. As the tide was coming in, I wanted to do the lowest samples first! And then work my way to higher ground. And we properly surveyed them in. It was a gorgeous morning but then we had to leave the field and go into the lab to process the samples. We were done before noon! And then I brought the students back to the main campus. My first field day was done! But I was quite tired.

The next day I had more students, and more clouds. The field was still beautiful, but in a different way. More Wuthering Heights than Heidi! And we didn't manage to make the fancy GPS work. But we had the handheld ones for backup, and that did the job too. 

The people who were targeting the late low tide that day got rained on quite a lot! So what we did had its advantages. And I think the day after that was similar; we were dry in the morning, and the afternoon crew got rained on. We also had company in the field; Jaco was doing his thing at roughly the same time and place as us. That was nice!

Dramatic skies on day three

The last day was a bit chilly, and on top of that, the midges were out. It was the least comfortable day, but we filled some gaps in the sampling transect. It was a success after all. And then I had all my samples! I brought the students back to main campus after the sample processing, but given that this aspect of the fieldwork was now done, I didn't need the big Ford Tourneo any more, so I brought it back to Ocean sciences, and spent a bit of time in my office. I made sure to plot up all sample locations. It looked good to me! But then I was very tired, and took my trusted bike that had been waiting for me in the office since Saturday, back home. The fieldwork wasn't over for me now, but the first part was done and dusted!

A foram! With algae symbionts! In the middle.

Last year we had chosen one evening of the fieldtrip to go have fish and chips on the beach. I think that is now a tradition, so after coming home I had a shower, did some things that needed doing, and then was picked up by Sue and Dean to go straight back to where I had been in the morning. We met up with Martin, and we had a very pleasant evening on the beach! For me it was a celebration of four days of sampling for more than foraminifera having come to an end. And the next day I didn't have to get up early at all. Excellent timing!

Dinner on deserted beach