Tuesday, May 25 - Monday was a good day! Students started the day with a hearty breakfast and then it was off to their first class. All students started off with a class called Barrier Island Ecology - a quick walk around the complex to see each of the five ecosystems that they will be studying throughout the rest of the week. Their afternoon class got them more in-depth information about one ecosystem. Some students studied the beach, while others went to the salt marsh and sound. This happens to be my favorite class. The students use nets to try to catch a variety of marine specimens living in the salt marsh. While wading knee-deep in the salt water of the sound, the students found a couple of varieties of fish, glass shrimp, oysters, blue crabs, along with many other specimens.

The evening class, Beach Walk/Turtle Talk, allowed the students to learn about the life of the various sea turtles living in the oceans of the world. They learned that of the 100+ eggs layed in a sea turtle nest, only a small percentage actually survive to return to their hatching area to reproduce. They face many perils along the way, including predators present at hatching, predators in the ocean as they travel to the area where they will live until reaching adulthood, the possibility of eating plastic bags and even helium balloons - they think that they are jellyfish - which fills their stomachs preventing them from eating nutritious food, and now oil spills! The students spent a little time on the beach learning how the turtles move across the beach.