A Summer At Grove

 Iding Time! So for the next 3 weeks, I am going to be iding 48 slides. I can do 2 slides in an hour if the slide isn't super diverse. It used to take me a lot longer but now that I know where everything is in my id books, it makes finding things a lot easier.  The next 3 weeks will be a lot of pictures of plankton and some information about it.  This is an unknown one, it is some sort of diatom, possibly a genus of Acanthocystis.

 Second Round Of Sampling!!! We started on my second round of sampling this week, I went out with my family and my boyfriend and collected half of my needed samples. This took about 8 hours to just get half due to the amount of traffic on the lake from the fourth of July. 

Continuing to identify: This entire week I spent iding in the lab. This is the longest part of my project and at this point, I am halfway done with my first sample.  The hardest part about having two internships is having to prioritize one over the other. I have had to put this project on the back burner because, on holidays, I work 6-7 days a week. Doing lab work in the evenings after work gets me by, but I am exhausted and when you've worked all day staring into a microscope for 5 hours makes you go cross-eyed. Despite this, I am very proud of myself for continuing to work through this and have made steady progress! Here are some honorable mentions: Diatom - there are multiple different shapes and sizes of diatoms, if there isn't a common name for it anywhere on the internet, I usually call it diatom 1 or diatom 2 so I can identify later when I have more time.  This is an unknown one,  It might be a zooplankton it might be a really rare phytoplankton. So I took a picture of i

A Change In Methods I decided to change some of my methods within my project. Instead of doing phytoplankton as well as chlorophyll a, I am now just doing phytoplankton. I quickly realized that it takes over two hours to run only half of my chlorophyll a  samples. It also takes me an hour to identify one sample of phytoplankton (of which I have 19 samples). So I decided to scrap the chlorophyll a  part of my project and really focus all of my time on identification.  Upon more research on the limnology and properties of the lake, it is very easy to detect what the range of chl a concentrations will be by using temperature and D.O profiles.  I recruited my boyfriend to help me with identification Here are some honorable mentions from my identifications so far: Navicula - very common type of plankton, not often seen as much in my samples but really cool to look at Tabellaria -  frequent in unpolluted, circumneutral to slightly acidic, and poorly mineralized lakes, lots of these and in lo

Raystown Wildlife  Northern Box Turtle: Currently In Nesting Season, super active on roads and in nesting areas Black Rat Snake: Super Chill, Eats Dead animals, keeps copperheads away Walleye: lots of eggs found in the project that Autumn and Andrew Garman did on fish structures recently put in by the Corps Due to the drought that lasted about 2 weeks long, there has been an increase in snake sightings as well as other wildlife being spotted around campsites. There have been a lot of campers and visitors that call in saying that there is a copperhead at their site and they try to kill it. All of the snake calls we have responded to have been black rat snakes, and Northern water snakes. Both are harmless and non venomous. I want to take a second to educate those on the difference between copperheads and Northern water snakes.  Water snakes light patches have a slight Hershey kiss shaped skin. Fully grown water snakes are bigger/thicker than a fully grown copperhead. Pictured Above: This

Water Safety Training During this week, I continued to identify phytoplankton, my chlorophyll a concentrations did not come out how I wanted them to, so now I have to go back out and recollect. It has been quite difficult to find someone to come out on the boat with me since I am not allowed to go out by myself. Now we are allowed to patrol by ourselves now and I was put on Tatman Run and Nancy's Camp for the week days. I took that opportunity to teach some of the beach users about water safety. It is really important that we educate the younger generation and have these constructive conversations. Not only does it teach them how important being safe while swimming, but it teaches them to have a good relationship with law enforcement officers.  After sampling on Tuesday with Autumn, we went to find a black snake for the Fish and Boat Commission education programs.