Day 11: It’s sunny….What?
Today was a day like any other on Isabela…..No, scratch that, not quite like any other day.
The dogs were still barking at 2 am, the roosters still woke us all up at 5 am, but no one was awoken by the sounds of heavy rainfall on the metal roofs! Yes, it seems we have gotten past (at least temporarily) the torrential downpours that have plagued the island for the past few days. And it couldn’t have come sooner, given we have the day off tomorrow!
We got to sleep in for a bit this morning, given that we didn’t have to be at IOI until 9:30 (gasp!). Upon our arrival, it was straight to the classroom to analyze the data we collected on our second snorkel yesterday. For example, the people in my group (after discovering that none of our other ideas would work) decided to count the number of clusters of a certain type of green algae found at the site, along transects in different microenvironments of the site.
Our study organism, Caulerpa racemosa
We then compared the differences in numbers of clusters between those microenvironments using an ANOVA and a subsequent nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test (yay Prism!)
Everyone each had individual questions that they had gathered data for on our snorkel, so it was a morning full of figuring out what the heck all those things we wrote down actually meant!
Kristen writing up her results on the IOI porch
Bianca, Rosa, and Brett work on their analysis
And then we were off! This is the first time we’ve had a good chunk of free time since the trip started, and we have all of tomorrow off too. Our afternoons were full of relaxing, reading, and beach going. I myself took a nice little snooze in the hammocks outside of IOI, and then joined some fellow classmates at the beautiful beach that extends for more than a mile along the southern most part of Puerto Villamil.
Student footprints (and names) in the sand
More to come tomorrow, where we shall see what our host families have in store for us for our day off.
While we are not at home, we have all been thinking about our mothers these past few days, with Mother’s Day tomorrow. To my own mother, I love you Mommy, I miss you like crazy. I got you something awesome from the Charles Darwin Research Station. Can’t wait to see you in two just over two weeks.
For all you other mothers reading this, Happy Mother’s Day from the Galapagos Short Term class. We’re all thinking of you guys!