Today I would like to begin with a little geography. Although this is a scientific expedition there is too much geography here to ignore. Below are a few pictures of the Sarasota Bay area. Which of the 5 themes of geography do you think each best exemplifies? Check in your social studies book for hints if you are having trouble. There may be more than one correct answer for some of the pictures.

It appears that yesterday we had "beginner's luck". After locating Roseanne quite quickly, we expected the same thing to happen today, but it did not. We set the receiver to 602 which is Blinky's frequency and began looking for a green and white tag. We each had a job. One of us was in the lookout tower with binoculars looking for the tag, another put on the earphones and listened for the chirps to become stomps indicating that we were closing in on Blinky. This experience has shown me how patient research scientists are. We spent several hours today staring at the ocean looking for the elusive tag. Here is a picture of the bay. Imagine trying to find a tag that is about 6 inches above the surface. You have heard the expression "like looking for a needle in a haystack", well.... Although we heard him and knew he was nearby we did not locate him.

The day was not a  loss however. Recreational boaters who saw the Mote insignia on our boat and noticed that we had telemetry equipment, flagged us down and let us know that they had seen several manatees in the very near vicinity. We were in City Island Grass Flats.  We continued to look for Blinking, but spent about a half hour documenting the three manatees which we observed there. Below are some photos taken during that sighting.

Pleasure craft which pointed us in the right direction!

At the end of the day we usually tie the boat up at the Mote Marina. Today, however, we took the boat out of the water and loaded it onto a trailer, because on Monday we will be taking the boat and going to a different location, Matlacha Isle, on Monday. This is a site which is of great interest to scientists because manatees tend to congregate there in the winter. The reason this is unusual is that it does not have either a warm water source which is the usual reason for winter aggregation. Some scientists are studying this, but the focus of our study at Malacha will be tide fluctuation. Here are some pictures of Merv, the Mote research boat being pulled from the water.

After Merv was on shore we all pitched in to do boat cleaning. We hosed down the boat inside and out, and then scrubbed the sides, floor, and deck. We also had to clean all of the tools. The salt water rusts the tools and can rot the boat so frequent cleaning is a must. Here I am with the WD40 and sandpaper making sure our tools will be in tip top shape for Monday. This is another task that I did not realize was in the job description of a research scientist!

Our last job of the day was to do a land survey at Pansy Bayou. We do this every day. We stay for between a half hour and an hour and take pictures and record scar patterns of the manatees we see. Because it is a sanctuary boats need a special permit to go into the area. Mote's permit has just run out. They have applied for another one, but have not yet received it. There are so many manatees in the bayou, that they do not want to miss valuable "photo opportunities" so we are doing them from land. We got a few good pictures today. Of course, just as two came very close to us, we had to change the roll of film. The manatees, did not wait for us. There is always tomorrow... Here are a few shots from this afternoon.

My favorite manatee picture of the day!

It has been a very full and exciting week. I am looking forward to doing some sight seeing this weekend. I am planning to visit the aquarium at Mote Marine. Among other things I hope to get a close look at Hugh and Buffet the two captive manatees at Mote. I also hope to visit the Pelican Man Bird Sanctuary. With a little bit of luck I will even get to take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico!