Field Lectures are awesome!!!!

The other day we had a field lecture on the ecology of Magdelana Bay. For this we set up our camping chairs on the dunes that separate the bay and the Pacific Ocean and after class we spent several hours playing at the beach, gathering sand dollars and shells (which we were then told we were not allowed to keep), body surfing (one of our professors was actually surfing), jumping off the dunes, and sunbathing. Best day of class ever :) Also my first time swimming in the Pacific Ocean!!!!

The following day we had a lecture on Rhodolith beds (a marine algae that looks like coral) and went snokeling in the bay to collect data. The rhodoliths weren´t very interesting but while I was snoking I also found a starfish, and a seahorse. Very fun except when our boat got stuck on the sand for 20 mins and my feet went numb from the cold.

For both of these lectures we had boat rides and got to see lots of the surrounding marine wildlife stingrays whales, sea lions, and dolphins.

The boat trip to the dunes felt like I was in a disney movie. On the right side a sea lion was waving to us with both flippers while a pod of dophins swam on the left. In the distance you could see 4 or 5 gray whales putting on a watershow through their blowholes.