Kayanna Turner: Week 3 Recap

This week we ran into a lot of hiccups with our project. We initially wanted to start real sampling this week, but our water samplers were leaking and our preservation solution destroyed the zooplankton samples we had collected. Basically, we had to create new water samplers and determine a new way to preserve samples so we could accurately ID the zooplankton under a microscope. We spent the first two days last week creating our new samplers, and the last few days consisted of us finding and testing new preservation methods. We also learned how to bail out our mesocosms to avoid overfill and were able to collect some test samples from our control tanks. Almost all day Friday we practiced ID’ing the zooplankton from these samples. All of these setbacks taught us that research doesn’t always go the way you think it will and you have to be able to adapt to issues that may arise.

On Saturday, Megan took us to Turkey Run State Park. We hiked in the morning and afternoon with a short break for lunch in-between. I’d never been to Turkey Run before and I loved getting to explore and see the main trails during the hike. There were a ton of cicadas and their husks lying around too. I even got to hold one for a portion of our hike. It was pretty busy though with it being Memorial Day weekend, so we tried to avoid the more popular trails. It was a great way to finish out a stressful week. Next week I’m hopeful and cautiously excited that we will be able to start real sampling on all of our tanks.