Nishihara Laboratory

Just this past March, we had a chance to go to Kagoshima to do some field work in a long channel behind the sea wall along the coast of Kagoshima Bay. During the winter to late spring, the channel is home a wide variety of macrophytes, especially seagrass ( Zostera marina ). Since it is behind a seawall, there are almost no waves and provides a safe environment to practice setting up and deploying the equipment. With the help of Dr. Terada's lab (Kagoshima University), we were able to deploy our instruments and retrieve them after a week. The Zostera bed is a bit patchy. We placed some dataloggers for light and dissolved oxygen. You can see the surface buoy where we have an anemometer and an additional light logger.

So the building was incomplete the last time I updated this blog. There were a lot of reasons why this was so, but in the end, Facilities agreed to a large numbers of our requests. In particular, putting a few doors on  the entrance to the restrooms and a larger driveway for the truck. But the building is still pink and still looks like a women's health clinic.

Back in Kagoshima to retrieve the instruments we deployed last week. But I also brought the rain from Nagasaki. Hopefully the rain will remain a drizzle during retrival.

Are they going to finish on time? They are supposed to finish everything by the end of this fiscal year...

Today, the students are having their graduation ceremony. The undergrads and Masters have their ceremony done together.

The field season is already underway, but the semester doesn't begin until April. That doesn't stop us from running surveys, but using grant money is inconvenient. Since my Masters student is graduating, I didn't bring him on this trip, and it really showed. Setting up the instruments took much too long. An hour too long. But, Kotoe and Mako got everything going and with the help of  Prof. Terada, the instruments were placed in a nice dense Zostera patch.

鹿児島にくると、必ずホワイト餃子の餃子を食べに行くんです。昨日の調査は無事に終わって、１３時すぎに行ったら、餃子は完売。 かなしすぎる。 結局、和田屋にいって、みそラーメンにした。 本当は豚トロラーメンにしたかったが、相変わらず行列がながかったのでそちら...