Thursday, March 28, 2013

Filtering in the Sun

One of the most beautiful of days I have seen at the fishpond, March 19 was a great day to be filtering at the fishpond. The day started off like many of the usual water filtration days. We all emptied out the CRV and set up the filtration devices and the chlorophyll filtration device. Upon completion of this we were split up into groups. One group was to wait for the boat to return from crab trapping to then go out and collect samples from various sites and test the water quality (my group), and the rest were to stay behind to do the various filtrations from the samples that were previously prepared, thanks to Danielle.


This was my first time getting to ride the boat, and it was a bumpy start. The tide was going out, thus the water level was extremely low and we had to struggle to get the boat off the dock. Upon reaching our first site, Danielle realized that we forgot to bring a sheet to mark which spots we stopped at and in which order. But with quick wits it was decided to use the camera to take pictures of each site in order. It was a very beautiful day to be working at He'eia fishpond, and probably the best day yet on the Windward side during the internship. I was very fortunate and blessed to be able to do research on such a beautiful day, and not be stuck in doors wishing to be outside.

The best part about this experience was on our way back to site 11. While the boat was driving, I was scanning the water with my polarized glasses on for any site of marine life. Before reaching the site I saw something in the water, and to my amazement it was a white eel with black spots on it, with a more pointy nose and a slight yellow tinge to it. It wasn't a very big eel, only about 2.5-3 feet in length, but was definitely one of the more interesting creatures I have seen in the pond. Unfortunately, out of my excitement and trying to get the other two to see the eel, I forgot to

take a picture. After finishing the last two sites (site 11 and 13) we headed back in to turn more samples in for data collection. From here we cleaned up and then helped with the usual filtrating. Like the last filtering session we faced unforeseen problems. The TSS filtration papers we used were faulty and wouldn't show a clear distribution of sediment on filters. It will definitely be forever known as one of the most beautiful days at the fishpond, for me at least.

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