To Catch a Hagfish

Today was a lot more relaxed than the other days. A brief lecture on hagfish, then we went out on the Heiser to collect hagfish traps.

If you don't know what a hagfish looks like... think an eel, but more amorphous, and, when threatened, they secrete a protein that reacts with sea water to create slime. Lots of slime. I encourage you to look up pictures. So that trip took up a lot of late morning, but it was fun (for those of us that did not get sea sick).

We had another brief lecture on life tables, which I could barely keep my eyes open through, unfortunately, and then we went out to count barnacles. Tanvi and I teamed up on the exposed side of the island to measure about 700 barnacles. For science, or something like that. Of course, we decided to count barnacles on this ledge, and it was a bit more difficult to get to, and to get back to the path. There was one part where I was on this very narrow ledge, and stepped on a little puddle of algae, and almost slipped and fell 15 on to jagged rocks. Hashtag fun Shoals things!!!

After we got back, we had a bit of free time, and then Jan lectured more about invertebrates. I think he's the best lecturer I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Dinner, featuring delicious brownies, and then Jan gave an island-wide lecture on lobsters. A fun lecture on lobsters.

Everyone went to the commons after to work on our projects, and I just finished entering data, and I'm going to sleep a lot a lot a lot.

Hunger of the Pine // Alt-J