It's been one crazy week...

This week, after having a wonderful break from school, we've be working way hard. It's been a week of very little sleep and lots of frustration. In class we injected sea urchins with KCl to get them to spawn, then collected their gametes, and fertilized them. Which, when all is said and done, wasn't hard at all - with the minor exception of injecting the urchins correctly. So you must be wondering why the lack of sleep? and why the frustration? Well, because of these little buggers, we have had to stay up at least part of the night each night so we can see them in all their stages of development - and take pictures of them. Needless to say, no one has slept well. It is now frusturating because in order to see them, we have to take them out of a beaker of water and put them onto a slide. But now they are swimming all over the place and virtually impossible to find. However, I must say that it has been a good experience overall and I have learned a ton.

This is the embryo at the 16 cell stage. Now you all know what a sea urchin looks like when it only has 16 cells. :)


While all of this has been happening, we have taken several field trips and I've been able to get some good photos for my photo journal.
We went out to Cape Arago one of the days and there were about 458972384 school children there. Frusturating when you're actually trying to accomplish something.

Me + Becky + hip boots + fanny packs = legit marine biology students.

This is a nudibranch (aka sea slug) and a sponge. The sponge is the purply stuff.

A red sea urchin and some purple sea urchins.