Pirate researching trip

Believe it or not, every day it's better than the last. This is just the USA! 

Today it's 30th March and I am going to write about 26th March and 27th March. All this began as usual: Prof. L. K. told me about a research trip with her fire lab crew and I, obviusly, said YES!

Mike picked me up on Tuesday 26th March (first day) at 0530AM. We picked up Michelle and then Mike drove us to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office near Savannah, Georgia. There we met with Prof. L. K. and other researcher. We were speaking with USFWS crew and then one of them drove us by boat to BlackBeard Island.

BlackBeard Island is a wildlife research station. It was a reservation until 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed its designation to National Wildlife Refuge. Later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon designated 1214ha of BBI as Wilderness area. Even though BBI became very protected, other President orderer (or maybe also Richard Nixon) to build a couple of dams for having a new fishing place. Only two years ago one of these dams was destroyed in order to try to recover the previous ecosystem state. This is a little introduction to BBI, in order to show you how special is the Island and how lucky I was for being allowed to be there.

The Island is called "BlackBeard" because was used many years ago by the pirate BlarckBeard, who supposedly hid there his treasure. Also BBI was used as a yellow fever quarantine spot. If you want to know more about BBI, please: use wikipedia.

We arrived, we leave our stuff in the refuge (very nice building) and started to work. Mike, the Official Safari Guide, drove us (by UTV or mule) into the Island, right to the research places. 

We were in four stations. The job was basically to measure the electric conductivity and the temperature of the water in the top and in the botton of a PVC cylinder, holding datalogers. Also doing maintenance on this logers. We also helped Mike in colecting pine cores (and had a good time guessing about the pine's age).

GPS data from my Garmin:

I will add some other photos as soon as I collect them.

At the end of the first day and also the morning of the second one, we enjoyed probably one of the prettiest places in all the USA. We visited some places in BBI absolutely wildland, incredible. The greatest landscape I've seen since I am here. As we say in Spain: "vale más una imagen, que mil palabras":

That seems taken from Google:

GPS data from my Garmin:

We also had a great dinner cooked by Prof. L. K and played that game about guessing movies and all that stuff (I can't remember de name). There is no doubt: if was a perfect two-day-trip, I enjoyed a lot and learning many things. Also, very important: I did science.

Thank you all guys!