Dear Buccaneers:

Our project concerns the affect of groundwater seeps on the surrounding benthic sessile community. Today was the first day we were able to get successful results in the field. The weather has not permitted many of us from acquiring substantial field data, however the persistent wind has not hampered our abilities to tan it up, YEAH TAN!!! Tomorrow, bright and early, we will be diving in the field to measure the species diversity along our transects. Hopefully we won’t have the buoyancy issues we faced today carrying all of our weighted research gear, and there was a lot of gear. Now that our gear is down and our area of interest has been staked with the transects, we have begun and will continue to take data measurements. Our goal is to see how the changes in salinity are affecting the local organisms of that area compared to that of the local organisms of a similar site without the freshwater input. Over the next couple of days we will be placing quadrats in our study sites. A picture will be taken of the contents within the quadrats, against a known scale, to later calculate the species diversity. Based on our general observations of the area, we do expect to see some difference. 
Hi Mom and Dad!

Liam and Amber