It's Raining, No Limestone Creek Trip Today

Since we're in the middle of a monsoon of sorts, I had to cancel a trip to Limestone Creek today to collect scarlet shiners with a new graduate student. Jennifer has just finished her undergraduate degree, and is willing immediately to start work towards her Master's thesis. Her immediate task is to figure out how best to photograph male scarlet shiners in breeding colors, and with those photos, how best to analyze them for intensity and coverage of color. But today the creek is undoubtedly running dangerously high and fast, and as always I have qualms about being in water during a thunderstorm; hanging out with copperheads streamside would be more relaxing.

Tomorrow Ruth and I are driving to Dauphin Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay for a three-day visit. Technically it's a business trip, since I represent UAH on the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Consortium, the overseeing board for the summer school program hosted by the state-operated Sea Lab on the eastern tip of the island. Five of our undergraduates are taking at least one course at the Sea Lab this summer. These courses include Marine Turtles, Marsh Ecology and Marine Invertebrate Zoology. All are high intensity, hands-on field oriented classes that the students always rave about. So I try to stay on top of what's happening at the Sea Lab so that I can convince our biology majors that they should take a class at the Sea Lab if at all possible. I always tell students that this is real biology, and after they try it, they agree.