Shout out to Summerville Catholic and East Cooper Montessori for providing us with their findings from our L.A.M.P.S. Program!  Keep it coming folks!

We had a great weekend hosting a professional learning workshop with EarthEcho International. South Carolina elementary, middle, and informal educators were introduced to L.A.M.P.S. and challenged to have their classes join in on this citizen science project!

Shout out to Stacy Krueger-Hadfield for lending us her pressed Gracilaria binder of samples she collected from the all over the west coast! 

Our sampling sites are marked by several PVC pipes stuck in the mud. We noticed some barnacles and oysters have made these pipes their new home! 

We had a great day sampling this past Wednesday. It was sunny and the water sure was LOW! Why was that? Wednesday was a new moon, causing us to experience very low and a very high tides throughout the day. Scientists call very low and very high tides spring tides. Spring tides occur when the sun, moon, and earth are in a line. Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. When these two are aligned, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun are combined leading to very high tides and very low tides. The super low tide (-1.2ft) allowed us to quickly walk out to our sampling site... even in our heavy mud boots! 

Brrrrr... it sure is January!  We are excited to say we got back in the field this week for our first image and algae collection date this year!  We also were updated on all the happenings in the Sotka lab, even meeting new lab members!  Check out our January images here and don't forget to get updated on the Sotka lab by clicking here. Always remember you can comment or ask questions either on the blog or send an email to HGiddens@patriotspoint.org .  Happy Friday!

We are hoping to get out to our site this week, but alas water levels are much higher than predicted. Check out the NOAA Tides and Water graph from today. We need the water level to be 0.00ft or lower and so far no luck. We will try again tomorrow!

While we are waiting for the tide levels to be ready for surveying, there are many ways you can get involved with our program.

1. Sign up to submit data with Hannah Giddens. Email her at HGiddens@patriotspoint.org.
2. Count algae from the past months! We have a whole library of images from past months. Check it out here!
3. Can you compare what you found between two different months? What about the data from two different tidal heights?
4. For our older students: Choose a month and use descriptive statistics on the images. For example, can you find the mean number of algae points in the quadrats for April 2015?

Happy Turkey week coming up! We are hoping to get out on the mudflat just after Thanksgiving and take a look around, and hopefully get some pictures.

There are PLENTY of things to do in the mean time! Check out our lessons here!

These past two months have had incredibly higher water levels then predicted. Because of this, our research site has been submerged underwater! Fingers crossed that we can get out in the mudflat and obtain data this coming month.