Today I went back to Middle Sambo to finalize the location for my Biocube and deploy it. I found an ideal ledge at the coordinates 24° 29' 28" N and 81° 40' 17" W in around eight feet of 86.9°F water. At first I had some trouble placing the Biocube, because it was floating. To keep it down I attached dive weights to the legs of the cube. Once everything was in place I set up my GoPro to film the cube. Every half an hour I would change the positioning of the GoPro to get a different perspective of the Biocube. After several hours of diving the area and observing the Biocube, I removed the sample and brought it back to the boat. The seas were a little choppy, so we had to go into shore slowly, which could have been detrimental to the organisms. To keep them alive in the heat I made sure they were in the shade and had oxygenators. Once I got back to shore, I began sorting through all of the sediment and rubble to find organisms. I ended up working until late in the night, but I was successful in finding forty eight different species, without the GoPro footage.
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Olivia Cohen
Welcome to my blog for my senior project, An Investigation in Marine Biodiversity: Florida Keys. Over the summer I will be conducting four Biocubes (further explained in "About") in several locations in the Florida Keys. |