Day 7: Progress on Projects

Day 7 of being in Panama was spent almost entirely working on our projects. Lainie and I (the Brittle Boys) spent the morning using different methods of making agar with brittle star tissue because our first batch came out too mushy (see our failure batch in the picture below). It took a while to find a method that worked, but eventually we found that using twice the amount of agar powder would give our samples the consistency we wanted and thus, our crisis was averted! Once we had a much more solid batch, we headed out to the dock in the afternoon to see if any fish would eat the jellified brittle stars, spending almost two full hours sitting in the hot sun collecting data and getting sun burned.

The Urchinators collected data for their project by leaving out six urchins in their handmade cages and presented them with various options of coverage to see what the urchins would choose to cover themselves with. La Pez Hombres spent their project time collecting data on territory radius, depth, and coral type of damselfish before running their data through R to make a predictive model. The Funky Roots laid out chalks at different sites then collecting them after a while while taking readings on temperature and light. Similarly, Luann of the Sea also laid out chalks at various sites, but also collected coral rubble along the way. Finally, the Rhiz Lads went to four sites to collect oyster percent coverage data on mangrove roots.

Once the hard work was done, some of us went back into town in hopes a gift shop we saw yesterday would be open because we all really wanted to go on our day off, but the shop was unfortunately closed all day. The shop, The Black Cat, was definitely worth the wait. Inside were all kinds of beautiful artworks from paintings to wood carvings to painted dragon heads hung on the walls. There were also tons of really great shirts that we were all excited to look through. Then, we went out for ice cream to cool off from the hot sun. Here are some pics from our trip into town and the gift shop! We're all very excited for our all-day boat trip tomorrow after such a productive and fun day today!