Kaikoura and the Aquarium

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My marine bio field course went much better than I expected it to. Sadly due to the untimely passing of my camera, there are no pictures yet, but we got to play with some great marine invertebrates...man I am lame. The first day we studied both daytime and night time plankton collection samples, then we moved onto empty shells and hermit crabs, then we got to play with the larger animals. Baby octopus, sea anemones, crabs, star fish, brittle stars, paua, snails, barnacles...all sorts of fun stuff that you'd never find in Conesus Lake (sorry Geneseo bio people). Kaikoura is a beautiful little town on a small rocky peninsula and is known for the whale watching and overall robust marine life in the area. University of Canterbury has a field station there, which is where we stayed for the four days. They always had food out which made the work less painful to sit through : ) The view in the mornings was worth the whole trip. It was cloudless and you could see straight across the bay, across the plains and the hills, to the snow capped mountains that are inland. The weather was beautiful and the whole thing turned out much better than I'd imagined. I also started volunteering at an aquarium in Christchurch in the educational lab. It was really great, I'm going to be learning about the fish right along with the students. It will be more good zoo education experience, but it definetly made me miss the snakes and porcupines of good old Fort Rickey. I also got to see my first Kiwis!! They have two at the aquarium...which is odd that they randomly have the two birds in there, but I'm not complaining! They are so funny looking but adorable. If you haven't seen a picture of one before, google it, they are strange little birds. I'd take a pic but they are nocturnal and not only is it dark in their enclosure but you can't take pictures or talk while you are observing them. Other than that I've been enjoying my last week of break. I've gone into the city a few times exploring by myself which is fun to do. Tamara and I are going to check out the art museums today which I'm really excited about. I think we're going to do a small hike tomorrow too, weather permitting. I've heard the weather in NY has been great! Hope it stays that way...no repeats of the Mothers Day snow storm. Love and miss you all! Thanks for reading, mel.

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