Mangroves and Stinky Prawns: Straddie Days 5-7

Life is busy with data analysis, report writing, and NSF grant proposal writing, so this will have to be brief!

I am finally done wading through cold, murky, chest-deep water to stake both freshly dead and rancid fish and prawns to the sand flat in order to see how quickly they were eaten.  Surprisingly, it appears that rancid fish are consumed more quickly than freshly dead fish, though we haven't done the data crunching yet to see if this is significant.  In terms of prawns, not many of either age of dead prawn were eaten.  Also, just for the record, 2-day-old prawns smell MUCH worse than 3-day-old fish.

Last night, our professor made us churros and hot chocolate!  They were amazing.  We also roasted marshmallows at a small bonfire on the beach, which was fun.

This morning, we took a walk at Myora Springs, which has both creek and mangrove habitat, and is very nice.

The creek was yellow from the tannins of the trees. 

Root structures that allow mangroves to "breathe"

Snails live in seemingly-unlikely places, like on tree trunks 

Mangrove roots look really neat 

Me standing in mud near some mangroves