Clearwater Beach- Austin Mutnansky

   On last Tuesday's class, we learned how beaches are made and the different points of distance along the beach and shore, as well as  in relation to primary and secondary dunes.  Clearwater Beach was an excellent place to observe this, as well as experience the Florida wildlife of a place many of us know so well.  It was in the mid 80's with no clouds near the beach.

Within just a few minutes, a gopher tortoise appeared in the sand dunes close to the entrance of the beach.

  Class stopped at the backshore and exaimed a primary dune.  Then the noticeable swole allowed us to differentiate from the secondary dune.  There was more diversity, and a larger abundance of secondary dune. Back dunes are more stable.  There is a larger abundance and 'woodier' amount of plants in the back dunes.  There is less salt coming in contact with the plant life in the back dunes.

Salinty should have been 35, but the refractometer malfunctioned.

Along the walk along the beach, sponges, red mangrove, and crabs were seen.  There was dead seaweed along the shore.  Crab holes were seen closer to the secondary dune.  There was an abundance of Dollarweed seen near the secondary shores as well.   Railroad vines and Pour mans patch were also seen along the trip.

There was also Inkberry's seen along the secondary shores.  The native inkberry has black berries, and takes longer to grow.  Non-native inkberry's (from Hawaii) have white berries, and are often planted in Florida because of their faster growth.

Small animals were not really seen too much along the trip because they are nocturnal. That is because it is too hot and they do not want to be eaten.  Seagrapes and cacti were also seen near the very top of end of the dunes.  More dunes are more abundant here in this area of the beach because other beaches have more people, and this area of the beach had planted life to stimulate growth.

My group of 4 demonstrated in  a beach profile. This was done by showing how the beach descends in length.  While I believe our group did the assignment slightly incorrect, I feel like we still learned the basic principles of the beach profile.

Distance from Dune	Beach Profile
0	0
18.5	-18.5
20.2	-1.7
39	-18.8
49	-10
59	-10
65	-6

--------------------------------------------------------

Because we did the Beach profile incorrectly, I could not seem to figure out an effective way to display the dip in distance from the dune with the level of the sand.