Week 15

Another varied and interesting week doing science. I managed to get back down to my beach, that is how I think of Tapuae Marine Reserve, for a little look around after being away all last week. It is always nice to go back and notice changes and see what has stayed the same. The most noticeable diffeerence being the level of sand that has built up, it was up over the a rock I usually climb down on. In the rock pools themselves there weren't as many changes and I just had a bit of a look around. I did the same on Tuesday afternoon.
I had spent both mornings writing on my laptop, there are a few tasks to get done and so I thought I needed to make a start. This was also the reason I wanted to head sown to the beach to clear my head.
I met with Elise on Wednesday to talk about imputting my data from my first survey. I have spent some time imputting that data into Excel since then, not exciting work, but got to be done. The data is going to be entered onto GIS maps at some stage and in some form. We also discussed the most useful way of doing this for other visitors to the reserve, or intersted people looking on-line.

Thursday was a imputting and writing day, but Friday was more intersting.I went with Brian, a TRC monitoring scientist to set up buckets for air monitoring. It was a case of setting up buckets with water in them in the field. They are left for a number of weeks and then collected in. the water is then filterd and tested to see what particles and other things are in the air. They were set up around the waste refuge site and industrial sites in Fitzroy. Was really good to help and also to see another process to collect data being put into action. These are the different things I am learning and seeing in action, and the reason I am enjoying this Fellowship and consider myself lucky.

These are some signs we saw last week at Leigh. They are educational and emphasise the positive. maybe we need something like this at Tapuae Marine Reserve.