Field experiment finished!

After 40 weeks, my field experiment examining how dogwhelk predation affects mussel bed communities is finished! I collected the experimental mussel beds and cleaned up the equipment in the beginning of August.

Before:

During:

   

This is a video of the tide washing over my experimental cages.

    


After:

   

After August, low tides are during the night, which is why I decided to end it then. It's a very good thing I did, because two weeks later during the next spring tide, this washed up!

This is a spotter boat—one that locates schools of squid at night so other fishermen can catch them—that has run aground on the reef.

It was about 100 ft. away from where my experiment was and probably would have ruined the whole thing, which would have been a HUGE loss for me; I honestly might not have been able to graduate this year if my experiment was still out there when this happened.

Over the course of a few days, the waves tore up the boat and left it in pieces. A salvage crew eventually came down and lifted up the pieces with a crane.

Now that that's all cleaned up and done, I have started measuring the mussel samples and I'm eager to get results!