What lies 20 meters down on the ocean floor?

Post by Mary Thomas Powell (Colgate ’26)
 
Before embarking on our fieldwork , I was not sure what to expect. I knew we were going to have long, hot days, but I did not anticipate the excitement of seeing so many organisms I had never seen before. While sieving and picking through samples of seafloor sediment, I came across crabs, fish, worms, starfish, shrimp, clams, snails, a shark tooth, and other small marine animals. During the rides out to the sites, I saw dolphins, sea gulls, pelicans, sea turtles, jumping fish, and crabs even larger than those we pulled up with the box core. To my untrained eye, what looked like a bucket of mud quickly turned into a treasure chest of organisms. 
 
Despite spending time on the ocean before this trip, I continued to see new organisms many of the days we were offshore. I also found the diversity among the different types of crabs and clams exciting. Although most of the clams were smaller than my finger nail (some closer to the size of the tip of a bobby pin), we did find a larger clam in Louisiana that was slightly smaller than a tennis ball. Some clams were pink, while others were white. Some had little tentacle-like protrusions when they opened up in the water, while others remained closed. Similarly, some of the crabs had polka dots, while others looked like moles. After much experimentation, I discovered that all the crabs we pulled up pinch. 
 
Although the days were long and hot, they were not as bad as I thought they would be. The length of the days and heat of the sun were eased by the excitement of seeing organisms that I did not know existed. At the end of each day I was the dirtiest and most exhausted that I have been in a while, yet I could not wait to wake up and do it all over again the next day. 
 
The excitement of discovery spans beyond the field back into the lab. Prior to this summer I found the idea of lab or computer work boring and tedious. However, after participating in the process of discovery in the field, I am looking forward to further discoveries in the lab and being able to ask and answer questions with our samples. The anticipation of what we will find in our samples mirrors the suspense of pulling up a new box core. 
 
Although the field portion of our summer has come to a close, I am excited to embark on our lab time. As Paul likes to say, “Studes, we are seeing stuff we ain’t never seen before.”