Oops.

This post is titled "Oops" for a very good reason - I inadvertenly managed to kill all of our crabs! Ahhh! I walked into the lab this morning to feed my rotifers and check on my crabs only to find all of the crabs upside-down and floating in their incubator. It turns out I had managed to find the ONLY hose in the sea table room that has fresh water when I was changing their water on Sunday. Yes, the only hose. It was kind of one of those Homer Simpson d'oh moments, if you know what I mean.

But, life goes on. I was assured by Dr. Sulkin and Anna-Mai that these things happen and that we can always collect more, but I still feel kind of stupid. I felt better, though, when I looked at the tide chart and realized that I could probably collect some more crabs this afternoon. So I made plans to go out to the beach at 2:45 and get some more crabs!

And you know what? It was WONDERFUL! This time, the sun was shining and the rocks were dry and warm. Anna-Mai, Kailey, Crista, and I were able to chat and enjoy the weather and each other while searching for the crabs we needed. It took us less than 10 minutes to replace the 10 crabs we lost! They were everywhere. All you had to do was turn over one rock to send 6+ crabs scurrying away! It was a good test of my reflexes to try and grab the little suckers before they could escape under another rock. Just to be safe, we collected 23 crabs - more than doubling the amount we had before. Once we got them back to the lab, we found that 4 will most likely hatch their eggs late this week or early next.

If you can't tell, I am having a blast here! It is so fun to constantly be around people who are all excited about marine science. We have great hang out times either playing board games, watching movies, or just hanging out. And the work isn't bad either. It's not every day that you get to play with crabs and other interesting marine invertebrates.

Tomorrow, we are supposed to be going out on the research vessel and learning how to use the ROV (remote operated vehicle) just for fun. Pray that we will have nice weather so we can really enjoy it! The weather looks a little iffy right now, but Washington weather is never set in stone.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading my posts. I hope you enjoy them! For those of you who tried to comment previously but couldn't, I have fixed the problem so comment away!