12/10/15-12/11/15
Elisha and I went out with Mark to Seahorse Key Marine Lab on a little island with a pre civil war era lighthouse where UF has a marine lab. Mark is studying the population of cottonmouth snakes that live on the island in a mutualism with the nesting birds there (the birds drop dead fish for the snakes to eat and the snakes keep nest predators like rats away from the bird nests)
We went to the island to spend the night and help Mark catch some snakes to measure and pit-tag for later recapture.
On Thursday we went in the morning and Captain Kenny took us and all of our stuff out to the island. We then hopped in kayaks to get to areas of the island inaccessible by foot to search for cottonmouths. We caught a few to bring back to the lab. After a beautiful sunset, we did a beach walk to count snakes and catch some more for Mark. We caught about 8 in total and took them back to the lab where we massed them, measured their lengths, removed ticks from them, and then inserted pit tags into their tail so that if they are caught again, Mark will know which snake it is and can then see how it's grown, etc.
We released most of the snakes that night, but release the the ones we had caught on the kayak trip the next morning before the captain came to pick us up.
Elisha and I went out with Mark to Seahorse Key Marine Lab on a little island with a pre civil war era lighthouse where UF has a marine lab. Mark is studying the population of cottonmouth snakes that live on the island in a mutualism with the nesting birds there (the birds drop dead fish for the snakes to eat and the snakes keep nest predators like rats away from the bird nests)
We went to the island to spend the night and help Mark catch some snakes to measure and pit-tag for later recapture.
On Thursday we went in the morning and Captain Kenny took us and all of our stuff out to the island. We then hopped in kayaks to get to areas of the island inaccessible by foot to search for cottonmouths. We caught a few to bring back to the lab. After a beautiful sunset, we did a beach walk to count snakes and catch some more for Mark. We caught about 8 in total and took them back to the lab where we massed them, measured their lengths, removed ticks from them, and then inserted pit tags into their tail so that if they are caught again, Mark will know which snake it is and can then see how it's grown, etc.
We released most of the snakes that night, but release the the ones we had caught on the kayak trip the next morning before the captain came to pick us up.
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| The tube the snake goes in so it won't bite you |
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| a juvenile |
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| Elisha nervous when the first snake was released onto the floor for measurement |
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| inserting a pit tag into the tail |
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| putting a caught snake into a bucket |
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