Like a HOBO on a ...

Despite the phallic nature of this device, it's not a sex toy. No, this is a HOBO probe (I swear, not a sex toy), this particular one measuring water height and temperature over time, every half hour. We collect the data from it monthly (yeah, we take a laptop into the marsh. Scary, right?)

We have 2 probes collecting salinity, but those are Trolls (I'm not making these names up. Science people like weird names: see the Sonic Hedgehog gene).

Why? This is in relation to the resalinification of a freshwater marsh, the one that was cut off from the harbor in the 1920s. Since a huge storm surge a month and a half ago, the entire marsh has become tidal and salt has been creeping in, killing all the phragmites and typha (cattail), and some spartina (a salt marsh grass) has been moving in. This is what we were hoping to see!