Back to work! - February 17, 2014

   Taylor is back from Mexico, and we finally had the chance to go do the monthly survey in Bodega. As mentioned previously, the first survey we did in December was pretty conservative, due to the high tides and the dangerous outcomes that tagged along. This time coming we expected the tides to be almost the same as last time, once we arrived I noticed that the weather was perfect, sunny and a nice breeze. As soon as we hit the beach Taylor said the tides looked a lot better but not as much as we'd like them to be. Meaning, we could cover more of the beach than we did the previous time, not by much but it definitely makes a difference. As usual I was the one in charge of the clip board and writing down the different codes and number of invertebrates she would call out, this being my second time I felt pretty confident, I was much more aware of my surroundings and a lot more comfortable with the beach itself. Other than that everything was pretty much the same, expect this time we saw one Sea Lion! After the survey ended and since we finished early, we decided to go up to bodega head which is about 10 minutes away from the beach. Reasoning behind that is because we really wanted to see a Humpback Whales! Unfortunately after 30 minutes of walking around and trying to spot them, we saw nothing, the view was amazing though. Although this survey wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be, I still felt good about getting the work done and being rewarded by having the opportunity to see a Whale for the first time, but maybe next time! Taylor had also mentioned to me that I had the choice of doing the March survey with her, or doing a different event that was similar to the beach survey we do in Bodega, just a lot more detailed and a shorter process from what I understood, I'll have more information later. It is a tough call for me because if the tides clear up by the next survey I'd love to go there one more time to see if this will be the best survey yet, or try something new and leave this journey with trying two different things. Hopefully Taylor can lead me in the right direction because right now I cannot decide!

Time logged for this session: 5 Hours
Total time logged: 18 Hours