Week 3

A week that has included snow for the first time in New Plymouth in living memory, and high tides in the middle of the day has meant less trips to the Marine Reserve. In fact it has meant only one visit, and that was Monday afternoon (the day it did actually snow). Erin and I went tdown to the Back Beach end of the Tapuae Marine Reserve and she taught me how to conduct a transect, and a quadrat.
It might sound like a case of going down tho the beach, measuring off 50m and then dropping down your quadrat and looking in it. However each step poses any number of questions. Like why are we starting here? How and will you remember this starting point? Which direction should the transect run? Which side of the transect will your quadrats be? All of these questions, and there were plenty of others like them, need to be answered from a scientific perspective and relate back to the questions and reasons for doing the study in the first place.
Then it was time for the quadrats themselves. This posed a new range of questions, but more importantly,  more learning. With Erin's guidance I learnt how to measure and count things within a quadrat. I certainly needed her help in some species identification and scientific names. It was good to start this process because it will be my way of collecting data.

I have also met with Elise and looked at GIS maps, and have started to learn how use these. friday was taken up with meetings with John form The Royal Society of New Zealand. Talking to him has been really good to help me think about not just my programme, but also to remind me to think on the nature of science, and to consider life back at school and how to help raise the level of science teaching back at school. The questions Erin asks me help me with this process too.