The BlueBoat Attempts to Make New Friends

This week, we set out to conduct our bimonthly water quality survey amidst 90-degree heat, but clear skies and calm waters. This was our fifth survey and we, along with our collaborators, have collected and processed almost 600 water samples across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I get to present on our initial findings from this work at our MissDelta annual meeting next week, where I will show off some surprising things we've learned so far. 

This week's trips were unique in that the BlueBoat tried to make friends with not one, but two animals we have not seen in the field. First, she was really interested in seeing if the alligator pictured here had time to talk about its car's warranty, but the gator kept swimming away from her and stayed near the river bank. We think that the gator (and another not pictured) may have been guarding their nest(s), but neither tried to ward off the BlueBoat. At another site, the BlueBoat tried to make friends with sea nettles, but she was thankfully unsuccessful. The nettles were drifting right next to our research vessel, which made collecting water samples slightly more difficult than usual. We all managed to keep our hands free from any tentacles and we now have a new set of water samples ready for delivery to our colleagues in Louisiana. 

We will go out for sampling in October and then possibly in December to round out an entire year of this process. The suspended sediments we filter out of the water samples and the dissolved nutrients that our colleagues analyze will help inform our modeling team's sediment transport and biogeochemical models, which will then feed into our ecosystem models for the MissDelta project. 

Next week, I will be driving back to Mississippi from Baton Rouge and will not get back in time to post Thursday, so I will be delaying next week's blog until Friday. Stay tuned for more adventures, though!

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