Crystal Beach, Palm Harbor

Crystal Beach Park is located in Palm Harbor, Fl, off of Crystal Beach avenue.  We visited the park on October 1st, 2015. It is quite nice outside, the sky is partially cloudy and it is about 82 degrees outside. There are not many trees and it is quite breezy. As I walk onto the dock I look into the water and notice it is quite clear. I see two Horseshoe crabs mating in the water. We decide to test the water and discover the PH is 28. Regular Ocean water has a PH of 30 so there is evidence that some fresh water is making its way into the water. Possibly a Spring.

We begin to use measuring tape and a quadrat to take soil samples out of the water. My group has to go along the shore close to the mangroves. Since we went along the shore our soil samples didn't very all too much. Mostly we just found organic plant material and dead shells. However two times we dug up little baby crabs living in the sand and when we got closer to the Mangroves we found small red and white worms in the soil (soil is underwater). Our diversity level was .899. I observed that this ecosystem has Black and Red Mangroves. I found sees from both of these tress
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