Week 5: UWF

Wow, it’s the last week of the FIO course! This has been an incredible, but exhausting, five weeks. I am so glad that I took this course. My goal for this class was to get a better idea of what can be done with a degree in coastal biology and explore what does or doesn’t interest me in this field. I have certainly fulfilled that goal! I learned about so many aspects of marine biology, and I discovered what topics I don’t want to study, and what topics I am really interested in. All in all, this has been a wonderful and informative five weeks and a truly incredible experience.

This week we focused on watersheds in the Pensacola area. The first two days were spent driving around the area, stopping at various points within the watershed – such as the headwaters of creeks and the mouths of bayous. We took water quality at each location then analyzed the samples later in the week, so we were able to see how the water changed as it moved through the watershed, which was really interesting. Monday night we had a low country shrimp boil, which was delicious! We also got to tour the EPA Gulf Ecology Division Laboratory on Monday. This was a really neat opportunity and I’m glad that we were able to go and hear about all of the research that goes on at the facility. Tuesday afternoon we filtered the water samples that we had taken around the state and began analyzing them under a microscope for microplastics. On Wednesday, we snorkeled around a seagrass bed and did a seagrass monitoring transect, exactly the same thing that we did previously on the trip, at Vester. That afternoon, we began laboratory analyses of the water samples, examining chlorophyll, nitrite, and nitrate levels. We went to the beach on Thursday to do a shorebird nesting survey, similar to what we did during the rookery survey at Vester. The last day of the course, Friday, we presented our final water quality project presentations at a symposium for the class. My group’s project was on how temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and pH relate to each other across coastal Florida waters. It was good to be able to tie together the water quality project that we’ve been working on for the past five weeks.

I want to thank the Florida Institute of Oceanography for supporting this course and I also want to thank all the universities and professors that made it such an incredible learning experience!

Sincerely,
Megan Novak

Welcome sign at the EPA 

Photo credit: Me

Measuring depth with a Secchi disk 

Photo credit: Amanda Schaaf