Where the river meets the sea

Answer: The estuary.

Estuaries usually end where the mouth of a river meets the sea. They act as nurseries for many marine organisms. They are also important for flood control... resilient salt marsh soils and grasses absorb flood waters and dissipate storm surges. Interactions between open waters and estuaries that line the coast occur during the exchange of tidal waters and help living organisms to feed and spawn. Cool.

Well, it has been quite a while since I last typed a post. A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. I'll do my best to sum it all up. Teaching has been going very well. I just received three letters from students who took part in my classes last week. We caught a stingray in one of our seine nets and most of them were anxious to know how it was doing. I am pleased to say that our stingray is doing very well in the touch tank in our aquarium.

Some other fun things that have happened in some of my classes; dolphins swam up into the tidal creek my students and I were crabbing in and they started doing this cool thing called strand feeding (working together as a pod "group" to catch fish, one of the dolphins will actually beach itself to eat fish its group has forced onto land), my seining class had to pull nets and themselves out of the water as a school of mullet (fish - not the haircut) leaped out of the water as they tried to evade the sharks that were thrashing themselves after them, and so much more. This experience is full of surprises and a lot of fun.

In other news, Mom and Dad came to visit me last week. We had a super nice visit over six days touring around Charleston and then making our way south to Savannah, Georgia. We took in the South Carolina Aquarium, a fun Ghost Tour in Charleston, dinned at many yummy southern restaurants and had our fill of crab and shrimp, rode on a river boat and trolley (neither were the real thing, but did have a certain atmosphere), bought some art in Savannah and ate delectable sweets from the candy shops. I'm so glad that my parents were able to see this place (they even took in one of my classes at Barrier Island) and experienced the south. I already miss them a lot, but am excited to hear about how the rest of their trip up the eastern seaboard went. Here are two pics from our trip:


And finally, here is a photo of some of my fellow staff members (Jenn B. [far left], Callie, myself and Olivia) out for a night of dancing in Charleston. We did cut a rug on that dance floor. Until next time.