Thursday, May 15, 2014

April 30, Sandy Hook Gateway National Park

  Went to Sandy Hook on April 30, sorry for the late post. It rained a little for the first part of our visit, but eventually tapered off. We visited one of the labs at the research institute, then went out to the ocean beach. We walked along the trails in the back shore area, and learned about different dune grasses and erosion. Lots of dead horseshoe crabs, which was sad. We did find a live one, a large female. We put her back but unfortunately did not get pictures of her. We also took some kind of measurement using large marked sticks, supposedly relating to the slope of the beach. Accuracy: doubtful. But we still got to carry around big sticks. We also took sand samples. And found a random hypodermic needle (called the beach patrol people and marked its location).
      Back at the lab we looked at the sand through various microscopes and found out that-surprise!-rough sand has larger grains. Who knew?
     They also had terrapin in a tank, which was exciting since I had never seen one before, only nests. They are not very large, but are quite aggressive toward wriggly things (like the drawstring on my hoodie).




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