Crystal Beach

Crystal Beach

This week our trip was to beautiful Crystal Beach.  This beach is located in between Palm Harbor and Tarpon Springs, nestled at the end of Crystal Beach, and is a very quaint area.  The weather was 82 degrees with around 70% humidity with small cloud cover forming.  The purpose of our trip was to measure diversity of species in the different areas of the beach.  Our group did measurements utilizing the quadrat and measuring tape, along with several calculations to arrive at .6291, which surprisingly was not the lowest. The other groups measured along the pier, which I thought would have had a more diverse population than that of our group or the mangrove group.  Interesting!

The shoreline, mating horeshoe crabs and taking down the data. 

Marine mollusk

The ecosystem is mangrove and estuary.  There was a distinct odor which is given off from the anarobic activity taking place.  Sea grasses lined the waters edge, sea foam and layers of dead sea grasses and seaweed were deposited on the shore.  There were red, white and black mangroves.  Turtle grass, manatee grass and shoal grass were all observed as well.  The day was another enjoyable day with this class and Dr. G.