SciGirls 2 2014: Day 9-Gulf Specimen Marine Lab

Today was a wet and exciting day! Today our girls went to the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab, and had a great leader, Ms. Katie. Ms. Katie is finishing up her undergraduate degree in marine science at FSU (Go NOLES!), and was a great role-model lady of science today :) We started the day on the dock and collected many different species! For example, we collected sea walnuts, nudibranches, a teeny-tiny flounder, barnacles, sea squirts, and so many more. From the dock we moved onto the touch tanks and a few 'look' tanks. In the touch tanks we looked at many different species of crabs, star fish, sand dollars, mollusks, and sea urchins. In the 'looking' tanks, we looked at the poisonous lionfish, triggerfish, flounder, stingrays, sharks, goliath group, loggerhead turtles, blue crabs, and so much more! The girls especially liked 'finding Nemo' :) Next up, was looking and holding (!!!!) horseshoe crabs. All, yes you read that correctly, picked up a fully grown horseshoe crab. At this point in the day our girls needed more energy, so we took a lunch break to fuel up for seining. We girls seined, which involved walking out in the gulf with a large, long net to collect more specimens. The fan favorite specimen was a lizard fish, and even though technically we didn't collect, we just spotted it, was a shark!

Overall, today was a great day! We can't believe tomorrow is the last day of camp :( We can't wait to see everyone's families at the reception tomorrow night; 5:30 pm at WFSU, be there or be square!