Field Work
Yesterday, I got up at 2:30 to go do field work. It was nice to be out so early, when no one else is awake. Call me crazy, but there's something very tranquil about walking past the lagoon at 3:40 AM. All five of us piled into an F-150 and drove to Vandenburg Air Force Base, which is a pretty nice drive. This is where it gets interesting.
Our contact, Rhys (no, not that one), sent a letter to VAFB saying that we should be allowed on the base from 0500 to 2200. He also told JA that the visitor's center was open 24 hours. Heh. So we drive up a little after 5, pretty pumped because it looked like we'd be perfectly timed to be at the site for the 5:55 low tide. The visitor's center, it turns out, opens at six. Well, JA figured the guy at the gate might let us in if we give him the letter and all our ID cards. The security guy says that's no problem, and goes inside to get everything straightened out. We're even more pumped! Then: "Sorry, but you're not allowed on base until 0600. You'll have to go to the visitor's center." Damn. Oh well, at least he was nice about it and we still have time before the tide comes in. We sit in the parking lot, crammed into a red truck, listening to random selections from Bill Bryson (and criticizing his unscientific commentary like "(insert small benthic creatures) are slow and stupid"), for about forty minutes. FINALLY, a couple people show up and open the visitor's center. It is now 5:55, and the tide is out. Time is of the essence. JA strides up to the counter, IDs and letter in hand. Woman behind desk: "We're not open until 6. You can sit in those chairs and wait." We sit with a construction crew and watch CNN, which badly needed to adjust its white balance this morning. Barack Obama should not look orange. Anyway. 0600 rolls around, and the woman tells us she will help the construction crew, and her coworker will help us. JA impatiently hands over the appropriate documents, and the guy goes to work filling out forms and cross-referencing various items. Five minutes later, the construction crew leaves and goes on their merry way, base passes in hand. TWENTY MINUTES LATER, or "six seconds before JA pulls his hair out," we finally get our passes and head out. Apparently this guy had to rewrite ours several times, find his copy of the fax from Rhys, and compose a harp concerto or something while we waited. So we pull up to the gate, and JA hands our stack of IDs and passes to Mr. Gate-Security Man, who glances at the one on top and hands them back, telling us to go about our business. JA proceeds to do a very good imitation of someone who knows he will be arrested if he strangles a security guard to death. We drive to the shore.
The actual field work went really well. JA and I just wanted to look at our limpet plots so we know what we have to work with in the coming months... years... however long we want to drag this thing out. It was a beautiful foggy morning, which is my favorite time to visit the rocky intertidal. We were lucky not to have a terribly strong wind, and the tide wasn't coming in too fast for us to keep up with it. There were thousands of whelks, mussels, and limpets, some purple urchins, hermit crabs, gooseneck barnacles, more chitons than I was expecting, and a ton of starfish of varying colors. There was also algae, but I think that goes without saying. We could see where the limpets had been grazing, and get an idea of where their territories began and ended. And the most exciting part... I finally poked a sea anemone! Claire, Elinore and Christine informed me last year that I'd missed out on the Great Childhood Experience of poking sea anemones by living in the Midwest, and they're completely right. I could have poked them all day. After that we went down to the other side of the fog bank, for some random reason, and trespassed down to this beautiful house that overlooks the shore. It's now my dream house. It was pretty cool, though, because we were essentially standing on the dividing line between central and southern California. On the way back to the car we saw some wildlife: a rattlesnake (JA's and my first), and some Air Force personnel smoking, drinking, and listening to bad music too loudly in military vehicles. I stayed awake on the drive out just long enough to admire the rocket launch pads, and then dozed back to the lab.
And no, I did not fall in a tide pool this time.
Our contact, Rhys (no, not that one), sent a letter to VAFB saying that we should be allowed on the base from 0500 to 2200. He also told JA that the visitor's center was open 24 hours. Heh. So we drive up a little after 5, pretty pumped because it looked like we'd be perfectly timed to be at the site for the 5:55 low tide. The visitor's center, it turns out, opens at six. Well, JA figured the guy at the gate might let us in if we give him the letter and all our ID cards. The security guy says that's no problem, and goes inside to get everything straightened out. We're even more pumped! Then: "Sorry, but you're not allowed on base until 0600. You'll have to go to the visitor's center." Damn. Oh well, at least he was nice about it and we still have time before the tide comes in. We sit in the parking lot, crammed into a red truck, listening to random selections from Bill Bryson (and criticizing his unscientific commentary like "(insert small benthic creatures) are slow and stupid"), for about forty minutes. FINALLY, a couple people show up and open the visitor's center. It is now 5:55, and the tide is out. Time is of the essence. JA strides up to the counter, IDs and letter in hand. Woman behind desk: "We're not open until 6. You can sit in those chairs and wait." We sit with a construction crew and watch CNN, which badly needed to adjust its white balance this morning. Barack Obama should not look orange. Anyway. 0600 rolls around, and the woman tells us she will help the construction crew, and her coworker will help us. JA impatiently hands over the appropriate documents, and the guy goes to work filling out forms and cross-referencing various items. Five minutes later, the construction crew leaves and goes on their merry way, base passes in hand. TWENTY MINUTES LATER, or "six seconds before JA pulls his hair out," we finally get our passes and head out. Apparently this guy had to rewrite ours several times, find his copy of the fax from Rhys, and compose a harp concerto or something while we waited. So we pull up to the gate, and JA hands our stack of IDs and passes to Mr. Gate-Security Man, who glances at the one on top and hands them back, telling us to go about our business. JA proceeds to do a very good imitation of someone who knows he will be arrested if he strangles a security guard to death. We drive to the shore.
The actual field work went really well. JA and I just wanted to look at our limpet plots so we know what we have to work with in the coming months... years... however long we want to drag this thing out. It was a beautiful foggy morning, which is my favorite time to visit the rocky intertidal. We were lucky not to have a terribly strong wind, and the tide wasn't coming in too fast for us to keep up with it. There were thousands of whelks, mussels, and limpets, some purple urchins, hermit crabs, gooseneck barnacles, more chitons than I was expecting, and a ton of starfish of varying colors. There was also algae, but I think that goes without saying. We could see where the limpets had been grazing, and get an idea of where their territories began and ended. And the most exciting part... I finally poked a sea anemone! Claire, Elinore and Christine informed me last year that I'd missed out on the Great Childhood Experience of poking sea anemones by living in the Midwest, and they're completely right. I could have poked them all day. After that we went down to the other side of the fog bank, for some random reason, and trespassed down to this beautiful house that overlooks the shore. It's now my dream house. It was pretty cool, though, because we were essentially standing on the dividing line between central and southern California. On the way back to the car we saw some wildlife: a rattlesnake (JA's and my first), and some Air Force personnel smoking, drinking, and listening to bad music too loudly in military vehicles. I stayed awake on the drive out just long enough to admire the rocket launch pads, and then dozed back to the lab.
And no, I did not fall in a tide pool this time.