Surveying

After all the surface sampling was done, there were two days scheduled for surveying beach transects. We survey the same lines each year to see if the beaches have lost or gained sand, and by approximately how much. On the first day, I was needed for this. And low tide wasn’t so frightfully early anymore, so Stef (the technician) and me picked up the students at 7:00. We drove them to HQ, where Martin divided the students into three groups (we would do three transects) and we loaded up the kit. 

Once parked we each headed to our transects. I thought I knew where the start of ours was, marked by a wooden post. Without problems we walked to where I thought it was. I didn't see a post. I must have been mistaken. We kept walking, but it soon looked like we had overshot it. We then looked at the GPS; we knew its coordinates. We found the GPS a bit clunky to work with. While we were struggling, I sent one student north and one south, to see if they could just spot it by eye. No success! But then we managed to get the GPS to do what we wanted, and could, with its help, just walk towards it. And it brought us straight back to where I thought it would be in the first place. And then I suddenly saw it. It was the most obvious wooden post in the world! How could we all have missed that? And some of us several times?

We had lost some time this way, so now we needed to get moving. The beginning of a transect like that is always slow, because the temporary benchmark is placed out of reach of the incoming waves, so in the dunes, quite high up. That means you have to move your tripod a few times to get it into a position from where you can survey large parts of the beach. 

Even though all the students had been complaining they had learned to survey a million times, the start was a bit slow. The students were trying to get their head around what exactly it was they needed to note down, and where. But in the end they got it, and then I figured we would speed up. And we did.

Surveying on a sunny and windy beach

With the students being more confident we got to the waterline; here we obviously had to turn around. With big steps we headed back to our benchmark. From WhatsApp I found out that the other groups were already done.

We made big strides back. Soon we were close to the benchmark again. I eyeballed it and figured it was about a meter above instrument height. Our documentation suggested otherwise. Hmm. Had something gone wrong? We looked back at all the numbers that had been written down. Was something miscalculated? 

By then we were tired and windswept and brains were not firing at full speed. When the students were certain they had all the necessary numbers to be able to recalculate we packed up and went back to the vehicle. 

Once back at HQ the students could bring the paperwork in order in comfort. I had a drink and a sandwich. After a while the other students got impatient as they had finished well before my group. And we were in several vehicles so they left. My group got it sorted, and then we could leave as well. Another part of the field trip done and dusted!