Mosquito Massacre

At the beginning of the session, my professor talked about how he thought the field station was such a great opportunity for students, because we get to experience many different habitats, and we get to learn what we enjoy and what we absolutely hate. With that being said, today, my entire class discovered what we hate. Yesterday wasn't bad. We went kayaking in what may be considered rough waters for those in the kayaks. But we were all experienced kayakers for the most part, so it wasn't too bad. Today, however, we were taken measurements for trees at the Chincoteague Island National Wildlife Refuge. Now, we have had field labs in the Chincoteague Refuge before, but earlier this week we were hit with a storm. With all that moisture now in the area, the mosquitoes are worst than ever. We pretty much got swarmed when we stepped out of the car.

How our tree evaluations work was, each team, of two or three people, had a GPS with waypoints already recorded for five trees. There wasn't any particular tree we were taking measurements for. You just had to go to the location on your GPS and pick a tree at random. Each group's tree locations were different from the other groups'. The measurements we were taking were the trunk diameter, height, area, volume, and canopy cover. Now, learning the techniques for making these measurements was fun and informative. It is now a skill that I have in my arsenal. But when you are being mauled by mosquitoes while you are doing it, you tend to not enjoy it as much. All of us were in long pants, long sleeves, hats, some had bug suits, some wore raincoats and rain pants, knee higher socks, boots. We wore whatever we could find to keep the mosquitoes off of our skin. Unfortunately, our hands and faces were still exposed, and thus made excellent targets. By the end, most of us were overheating in all of our clothing. Some took the protective clothing off to cool down and surrenders to the bugs.

Interestingly, while we were being eaten alive, there were random people on the trail, just going for a walk. These people were dressed in tank tops and shorts. If we were covered in mosquitoes in all of our protective clothing, I can't even imagine how bad the mosquitoes were for the other people on the trail.

Thankfully, after we arrived back on campus, we dispersed for the day and met back up after lunch. It gave everyone enough time to get back and shower, and depending, even take a nap. I didn't take a nap, but I could have.

The afternoon activities were statistical analysis, working with models, and working with the program VORTEX.