On Saturday September 14th, 2013, after around three hours of
driving and excited about sampling my first beaches for plastic debris, I
quickly remembered why I'm so eager to move northwest. Anything above 80°F feels
like scorching heat to me, so at 89°F on a cloudless Caspersen(FL) beach, my
excitement quickly vanished and turned into misery.
I hate to admit this, but after about 3 minutes on the beach
I was ready to head back home. I just wanted to collect my quart of sediment as
quickly as possible, but my husband talked some sense into me and we spent over
an hour going up and down the beach making sure to write down the latitude and
longitude of every scoop of sediment I collected. Needless to say I did not sample any
additional beaches as planned but am postponing additional collections until
the first week of October.
A post explaining my sampling methods and the tools required
will follow soon, but I found the situation above important to note since I'm
coming to terms with the fact I am not suited for field work at a beach, at
least in FL. I also get incredibly sea sick so doing work out on the open water
is out of the question unless I want to be taking Dramamine, a motion-sickness
preventative, on a continuous basis.
Angela--WONDERFUL POST!! You are certainly meeting one of the goals of this Optional Lab--learning more about yourself and what it is you do--and DO NOT--want to do in your career.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I so agree with you about Florida heat. Although I have a PhD in Oceanography I absolutely HATE going to the beach in Florida during the summer--H-A-T-E--I-T!!!! WAAaaayyy too hot for me!! However, I do enjoy working on research vessels--no sea-sickness problems here.
I'm happy you have made this progress and look forward to following your academic adventures! I'm also excited to see what you find in your samples. Great job, Angela!!
Angela--a suggestion--you might want to hold off sampling on the Gulf side until we really hit the fall season! Due to variations in sea-surface temperatures, the air on the west coast is FAR warmer and muggier than the east coast. Sampling on the Atlantic Ocean side would likely include a cooler sea breeze simply because its surface water temps are ALWAYS cooler than that bathtub called the Gulf of Mexico. Just a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteI'm SO glad that you mentioned that because my plan was to do the six beaches on the west coast first! Thank you for the suggestion.
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