Fishin for turtles

Woke up. Foot still hurts. NOOOOO! Ok, now that the pity party is out of my system, today was another good day :) My roomie and I woke up super late this morning and just made it in time to meet up with the rest of the group. We headed to the Florida Fish and Wildlife station here in Jacksonville and we got a nice tour of the facility and presentation about what their Fisheries Independent Management project was all about. The most interesting thing we talked about to me at least was the otoliths inside the fish. An otolith is the inner ear bone found in fish that can act the same way that a tree ring does. They have daily and yearly rings that show in the growth of the bone and from this they can find information on age, health, etc. They also had a nice experiment going with using natural systems to diminish the waste from large tilapia tanks. This can be a problem because it is pointless to grow fish in aquaculture (which is aimed at being lower impact on the ecosystem) when you are pumping  waste and pollutants back into the system you are working to conserve.

After our tour, we had some Chick-fil-A, for my first time ever. The verdict? Yes. I enjoyed the quickly prepared chicken sammich very much.

Then more presentations from professors here and freedom after a few hours. This is when the title fishing for turtles happened. As some of us were walking around one of the billion lakes here on campus, we noticed turtles everywhere!!!! So many of them and if you waited near the waters edge, they would swim up close hoping for some grub. There are also so huge fish meandering about, of what species I dont know. We, being the newbies to Florida that we are, really wanted to catch one of these turtles. We had a banana we stole from the cafeteria and we were tossing it into the water to get them closer to us. Just in case you too are ever trying to catch Florida turtles with bananas, it should be noted that they prefer the peel to the actual fruit part. This feeding method turned into a bit of a crazy duck on goose episode. The geese kept snapping at the turtles and the ducks, and we had to battle a mother and her gosling to leave the banana for our turtle friends. After about half an hour (no I am not kidding we really tried hard for half an hour) we had a turtle in our hands and had made a new friend. Though he did not like us and kept attempting love bites, it was still a magical and triumphant moment for us all. And that is the highlight of my day :)

Turtle fishin'

My roommate Elyse with our captured prey

After our crocodile Dun Dee moment, we finished the night off playing some rummy in the courtyard where, of course, I dominated. Farewell all, and to all a turtlely awesome night.