Marine Dynamics at Leigh Marine Lab


Spent the last two days at the University of Auckland's marine laboratory up at Leigh (Goat Island Marine Reserve). We arrived at Leigh, welcomed by beautiful sunny weather at 9am on Tuesday morning. We spent half the day at a computer graphing light composition versus depth. But after lunch we got to go out on the university's boat for the best part of the field course.

I'm pretty sure that one year of my tuition fees paid for the boat, and then the next semester of fees paid for all the fancy equipment on board. It was really neat to see it all up and running. We used an underwater camera to see the differences in kelp at different depths around the harbor. A diver working for the university pulled up some samples and we measured and weighed them...to be graphed this week.

We were finished for the day by 4:30, which gave us time to explore the tide pools around Goat Island and hang out with other classmates. That night we were in the onsite dorms, which were brand new and very nice. The only downside was having a snorer in my room, so I didn't get much sleep last night.

Today was all marine physics. We were taunted by the sunshine while we sat inside and worked out equations on jet streams created by tiny crabs. But it was very interesting to see more of the marine lab, which is all under construction and will be a very nice facility when it is completed.

I'll be going up again in a week for three days for fish biology work.

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