More Fun at the Salt Marsh

Waiting for the tide to go out

One of the group projects we do every year as part of the Marine Ecology class is a comparison of species diversity and abundance based on surveys at Quoddy Head, Maine, and East Point, Massachusetts. We did the East Point, Nahant, surveys this past week. It took longer than we thought for the tide to fall enough for the surveys, so students enjoyed the sunny morning on the rocks at Cunner Ledge.


We surveyed at two sites around East Point, Cunner Ledge (relatively wave-exposed) and Canoe Beach Cove (wave-protected). Between surveys, there was time for an epic photo.


Then, it was on to Canoe Beach Cove to finish the surveys.

Great Marsh Trip

Yesterday, the Marine Botany class took a trip to the Great Marsh of Ipswich. We drove out to our professor Don Cheney's house where we picked up some gear and his dog Nikki, a Golden Retriever. From there we went to the salt marsh Labor in Vain, the younger of the two marshes we visited. We used metal rods to see how thick the marsh was, this one was about 6ft (2m) thick. We could clearly see the zonation that occurs in salt marshes and were able to collect some plants to press for our herbariums.

Labor in Vain Salt Marsh

The next salt marsh we went to was located behind Plum Island near Strawberry Hill. This was a much larger and much older marsh. This salt marsh was over 12ft (4m) thick and probably twice as old as the first one. We found some pannes and caught a few of the mummichog living in them as well. To top off our trip we stopped at Russell's Orchard on the way home. We all were able to enjoy some cider donuts and fudge before coming back to Nahant.

Nikki all muddy Russell's Orchard

All in all it was a great trip! It is always fun to go out in the field for labs and see what we are studying up close. We all came back a little muddier that when we left, especially Nikki, but it could have been worse. The Nor'easter we all thought would dampen our trip missed us completely! It was a beautiful and blustery day for a trip to the Great Marsh of Ipswich.

Quoddy Head

This past week, we all drove from Nahant to Downeast Maine on our annual field trip to Quoddy Head and Cobscook Bay. As in previous years, we surveyed transects to evaluate tide-height distributions of seaweeds and invertebrates at a wave-exposed and wave-protected site. We also checked out lots of cool invertebrates, hiked to a boreal bog, scavenged for amazing algae as part of the Marine Botany course, and worked on some of our experimental biodiversity manipulations in the area.

Surveying transects

Stephanie's friend
West Quoddy Light
Biodiversity experiment