This week was marked by the arrival of our symposium, the soft ending to this whole summer adventure. There is still one week left in which to wrap things up, but we have all summarized our experiences and communicated them to a small audience of our mentors and others who supported us. I really enjoyed seeing what everyone ended up doing, comparing it to my impressions of their projects from the beginning. It seems like everyone learned a lot! I found myself being jealous of what other people had done, before remembering that I did just as many cool things as they did. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the event.

After it was over, my mentor and everyone in my lab went out to dinner, along with spouses and a couple other Hatfield people. It was great to experience my coworkers in a casual environment, with no projects to work on or requests to make.

Before the symposium, my week was a rush to put together my presentation, and try to get some data analysis done so I could present results from the videos we took. Unfortunately, just watching them takes too long, so it didn’t work out. However, this is my goal for this last week: to get at least a couple days worth of video watched in every habitat, so Daniel and I can start to analyze it together. He’s been showing me some useful commands in R, and I intend to take full advantage of his knowledge for the rest of the time I have here.

A cabezon I saw while diving

This weekend, after the symposium, a couple friends and I went diving again, to relax! They had just taken finals in their classes this past Thursday, so we were all hankering to get out and have fun. We saw a ton of cool stuff, and it was the first time I really got to play around with my underwater camera. The visibility was only a couple of feet, but considering that, I think the pictures turned out pretty well.

A nudibranch, Hermissenda crassicornis

So, on to the last week!