Clouds: Cloudy inland, out towards the water was almost completely clear
Wind: Slight breeze, was only noticed while writing
Clearwater beach is home to many hotels, restaurants, and crazy spring breakers; as we saw today there was quite an abundance of trash on the beach. We found cigarette butts, a condom wrapper, many plastic bottle labels, obscure plastics and more. (We did a beach cleanup as we were leaving)
So why did we go to Clearwater Beach? This past Tuesday we learned about sand dunes, and the portions of the beach.
This week we met in a swale, which is the area between the primary and secondary dunes. There weren’t any secondary dunes at that particular spot due to a parking lot growing there. After meeting at the small entrance we immediately saw a gopher tortoise climbing up a sand dune, probably scared of all of the people. Following that we looked at sea oats, which are rhizomatous.
After splitting into four groups, two of the groups went to do a beach profile. In my group was, Matt, Julia, Reese, Alice and myself; we did a beach profile that turned out like this:
The two groups that did the beach profile first then went on “A tour of the dunes.”
In the dunes, (that sounds way more adventurous than it actually was) we got to see many plants including: Morning Glory, Dollar Weed, Dune Sunflower, Inkberry, Poor Mans Patch, Sea Grape, and a plant that was very similar to a Kalanchoe. We also were able to see a few signs of animal life as well. Even though animals in the dunes are mostly nocturnal we could see crab holes and a single sand cricket.
No comments:
Post a Comment