debor042

Greetings from the confines of my office!  I have not posted in over a month but lucky for you, the other bloggers have kept you entertained with Alligator vomit , post-quals stress disorder and the joys of working with carcinogens, flammable materials and high-voltage equipment .  If those don't make you want to be a graduate student and/or scientist, then I don't know what will! So what have I been doing?  A whole lot of non-exciting blogging material like processing DIDSON videos , analyzing data, and preparing for conferences.  The good news is now I have some results to share!   One of the most interesting and surprising things I've found in my DIDSON videos is schools of small prey fish (< 12 cm).  Not just one or two on occasion, but nearly every time I go out, in all three of the canals I work in, there are schools.    Some are small (you may need to make the video full screen to even see them): Others are quite large: Some are hi...

The limousine pulls up to the opera house... The patrons step out wearing their summer fashion...   The red carpet is laid out, welcoming the guests... And the symphony begins… Hmm Hmm Buzzzz Bzzzzz Bzzzz….Slap Splat, Clap Smash…. Hmm Hmm Buzzzz Bzzzzz Bzzzz….Slap Splat, Clap Smash While conducting research in the Everglades you will inevitably come in contact with throngs of mosquitoes, especially during the dog days of summer in the mangroves along Shark River and Taylor River.  So let me back up a bit. In addition to the satellite images I use for my research (see previous post), I also collect water samples from the groundwater, surface water and pore water in the coastal mangrove ecotone. These samples serve as ground-truthed data, or in other words, a way to calibrate and validate the results from the satellite images (more to come). This requires going out in the Everglades every 2-3 months to collect samples, and that includes going d...

Here are a few short videos taken at night at my research sites.  Pardon the video quality as these were taken with my cell phone.  I'm a little rusty on my frog calls so can anybody identify these sounds?  I think I hear an alligator in the background too.  Make sure you turn the volume all the way up otherwise you may miss it.  Comment below if you can identify the sounds and bonus points to the person who can give the scientific name!  This last one is more for show.  There was an impressive lightening storm north of us that lit up the sky for most of the night.  Don't worry, we were far enough away that it posed no threat to us.

When I first tell people I don't need my eyes or a video camera or even light to see under water, you can imagine the look on their faces and the numerous questions that immediately follow.  Instead, I "look" at fish using a sonar - a Dual Frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON) to be exact. Dual Frequency Identification Sonar The black cord connects the underwater DIDSON (above) to a computer  on the boat.  This allows me to watch and record everything the DIDSON "sees." Without getting into all the technical details of the DIDSON (visit  the company's webpage  for that), the sonar emits sound-waves that "bounce" off of objects (such as fish) and then return to the unit with information on how far the wave traveled and the "intensity" of the object it hit.  The DIDSON then uses that information to create an image.  Now it's worth noting that the image it creates does not capture information on the color of the fish it hit and it may ...