Cutting wire mesh and wrapping it around four sides of the cages: 10 hours
Attaching dive weights to the bottom: 15 minutes
Drilling holes into ceramic tiles to put in the cages: 1 hour
Walking the cages out to the study site on the sand flat: 2 hours
Finding 10 pieces of rubble with Ramicrusta and 10 pieces without: 30 minutes
Moving 5 Diadema (long-spined urchins) to place in the cages: 30 minutes
Letting the Diadema go due to not properly covered cages: 10 minutes
Cutting off the dive weights to place in the cages and move them to a rubble patch: 20 minutes
Cutting more wire mesh to cover the top of the cages to keep the Diadema from being preyed upon: 2 hours
Tweaking the experiment: 10 seconds
Removing the 10 pieces of non-Ramicrusta rubble to be replaced with 10 more pieces of Ramicrusta rubble: 20 minutes
Measuring the Ramicrusta on all of the 20 rubble pieces: 40 minutes
Catching Diadema while simultaneously zip tying the tops of the cages: 1 hour
Doing this while a storm with thunder and lightning is about to sweep over: 10 minutes
Checking on the cages the Wednesday after the storm has hit to find that they are in disarray and one of the Diadema has escaped: 10 minutes
Learning that weather that could turn into a tropical storm is going to affect the island: 2 minutes
Removing the cages from the study site and releasing the Diadema to make sure they aren't killed from the cages rolling with the help of 9 other people: 1 hour and 45 minutes
Spending this much time on getting the cages ready only to have them removed and realizing that the time you spent collecting data to make the experiment work only to have the entire idea completely scrapped and knowing that you have to disassemble stinky, pokey the cages later: Priceless
Ahh...the trials and tribulations of scientific experimentation.
Omigod, I feel sick. . . patience is a necessary character trait in a scientist, I guess. God, what a drag!
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome blog!! I felt like I did the work right along side of you. I loved the creativity too. Girl, you have a great future!
ReplyDeleteLove you.
J-fer
Yes, my reaction is nausea as well. I hate detail, much less detail that gets washed away. But your mom's right - science requires lots of patience. Just think of how many cultures are grown before something grows and a new vaccine/antibiotic is discovered.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that account - it made me totally understand what you are doing. I wondered whether that hurricane would touch you. Will be so glad to give you a hug in December. Love, Grams