Dylan Radford, UR Conting Blades of Grass

Boat Ride!

This week in lab was probably the most fun yet! The class and I had to go to Oak Hill to see how much Sea grass was in the area. I had never done and experiment like this before so I was pretty excited. The water was also pretty cold and it was kind of windy so everyone in the class has to wear full wet suits.
 Our instructor, Annie, told us that there was a whole bed of sea grass where we were standing just a little off the dock. When I looked down there was hardly any Sea Grass which was very surprising. The sea grass is important for the ecosystem because it creates an environment for fish and is food for manatee's. we actually saw some manatee's that day so it really put in perspective how much they need the Sea Grass. I thought that it was really fun to go out on the boat and get in the water to count the Sea Grass. Field work is always better than going to the class room!
     When we had collected all of our data from our location I need to find some information that I could make a graph out of. I came across the Total Sea Grass coverage(actual count). after I had made my scatter plot I saw something that was pretty interesting.

Total Sea Grass Coverage Graph

I could see that after about 170 meters, the amount of total coverage became less and less. Also, the total coverage for the whole area is very low compared to how I thought it would be when we got out there. It is really surprising to see results like this because it means that the deeper you are, the less Sea Grass there will be, which is not good for the manatees. They cant beach themselves to get to Sea Grass. this was a really fun experience and I cant wait to talk about it more when we go back to lab Friday!
In response to sec. 101 Janice's comment, I believe the reason that the temperature was dropping because we were getting closer to the open ocean and the water is colder out there than in the Tomoka River