Waiting for the Next Step

As of late, things have been a bit slow around here.  Our fish arrived safe and sound.  I took both of my exams yesterday.  Today we're just hanging around until we can get together as a group to talk about the next fishing trip.

The exams were okay.  My physics exam was certainly no walk in the park, but that was to be expected.  I'm pretty sure that I just made up an integration rule to force one of my equations to work.  Lots of proportions/ratios too.  Ecology was kinder, albeit a bit short.  Luckily my professor isn't going to count one of the questions that I completely messed up since I wasn't there for the lecture.

The LMG went out again for the other research group.  They had to try to catch some tetrapods to do their work.  Unfortunately, it appears that they were unable to catch any.  Since Dr. Detrich and Thomas are living on the ship, they had to leave too.  We need them on station though to discuss our own plans, i.e. fishing plans.  I think that I'll be going out on the next fishing trip, but until I receive confirmation it's unknown.

Today I've just been doing some organizing and stuff.  I had to help our science administrator/advisor on station to move all of our extra lab equipment out of our lab.  When we got here, she just pulled every box that had our name on it and placed it into the lab.  We needed maybe in total one box of supplies.  Apparently there's no room for all of our boxes.  I'm not sure where she found them all, but I'm under the assumption that it's not where we put them back.  They just don't all fit in our one little cubby.  Just before that, I made a log to track our fish.  We want to record the temperature of the water, the oxygen saturation, and the photoperiod.  Our goal is to reduce all noise in the aquarium as much as possible and to have the lights off too.  If we do have to turn on the lights for whatever reason, we prefer it happens when there is natural daylight.  We just began doing this today, but I'm already noticing a difference.  If you peer into the open tanks, you can see the fish swimming around a bit.  Before we began following the natural photoperiod, they would just sit at the bottom of the tank.  Essentially, we were screwing up what they perceived to be day and night and as a result, we messed up their biological clocks.  Nathalie has some publications that she wrote that actually document why noise and light reduction is so important when holding fish in captivity.  They're less aggressive and overall healthier.  Hopefully now we can get the other group in the aquarium to try their best to follow the photoperiod we requested.

The LMG just pulled up to the dock, so I'm going to finish my coffee and head downstairs.  Lunch is in about a half hour too.  I have to take a boating class later today since I'll be here all winter.  It's really the only way to gain at least a little bit of independence and freedom around here.