Kayanna Turner: Week 4 Recap

This past week was a lot of fun! For Memorial Day, we all had a cookout and went to the zoo, which was a wonderful break from our normal week. I loved being able to look at and take pictures of all of the zoo exhibits. Megan’s grilling skills at the cookout were also a great addition to an already good day. I also bought a snow cone at the zoo, which is something I haven’t gotten to eat for a couple of years now, and I loved it!

Grace and I were finally able to start real sampling this week. The water quality samples we took went smoothly, but our zooplankton sampling was not as easy. Our sampling methods are working well, but identifying each zooplankton we catch down to the species-level is taking much more time than we initially thought it would. We may have to reconsider how many samples we take each week if we don’t speed up the ID process. Other than that, our project seems to be making progress, which is encouraging after hitting so many roadblocks. I hope we get a better idea of how long it will take to collect and process samples next week so we can plan out the rest of our time in the program.