Day 3: Hermit Crabs, Rock Climbing and Rain

Day 3 and things are going… interestingly! The morning started off well, we all woke up and walked down the hill to be greeted at the picnic tables by oatmeal, fresh fruit, and rye bread. Once we were a bit more energized, we headed off to our research sites in the tide pools and enjoyed the warm(ish) weather with a slight cool breeze. Leyla, my project partner, and I made our way through huge rocks covered in sea weed, to find a plethora of tiny tide pool crevices inhabited by a glut of hermit crabs. For our project we are calculating the time it takes for hermit crabs to emerge out of their shells in a moment of stress, based on cluster size, weight, and shell type. Today was our first day truly beginning our experiment so we found ourselves at the intersection of excitement and obstacle. We collected two buckets of hermit crabs and found a flat area of shell hash that we thought would be ideal to put our container on, enclosing the hermit crabs while we flipped them over. We got out the scale to weigh them, and found that the hermit crabs with the larger dog whelk shells weigh much more than the periwinkle shelled crabs do. We weighed five dog whelk shell crabs individually then placed them on their backs in the shell hash and waited… and waited.. and waited. We came to the conclusion that the hash was far too stressful, causing them to freeze on t  heir backs. So, to fix our problem we found a small, flat, shallow tide pool with no seaweed and decided to move our bottomless container there. This created a less stressful environment for the crabs, causing them to emerge more quickly. We found that it took 34 seconds for the five dog whelk crabs to emerge, and 12 seconds for the five periwinkle crabs to emerge. We think the hermit crabs with the periwinkle shells emerge faster because their shells are more rounded, making it easier for them to flip themselves over and escape. Once we collected the data from the two clusters of hermit crabs, we all made our way back to the lab to enjoy some coffee and hot coco while we talked about our findings as a group. 

Following a long morning, I found myself tucked in my sleeping bag absolutely knocked out asleep and was awoken by Leyla yelling at me to get up. Classic. We all enjoyed some tuna, chicken, or regular salads, and enjoyed the foggy, misty, afternoon. 

We made our way through the trails to the quarries, where we were met by our lovely rock climbing instructor, Noah. He taught us to climb and belay and we had a blast up on the rocks. Now, it has been a free period and I am writing this blog!  It is truly beautiful here, and I feel so gracious to have gotten to experience this place. 

Highlights of the day!!!: 

-Finding and catching what we thought was a baby eel in the tide pool, and turned out to be something called a rock gunnel fish (still super cool). 

-Climbing to the top of the rock and swaying down

-The pouring rain right now!!!