Last week Julie trained Cait, Bruce (a wonderful local volunteer), and me to use the Hydrolab. It's basically a pole that's about 4 feet long with various probes on one end and a really long cord on the other that connects to a computer to store the data we collect. It's quite a cool piece of equipment that simultaenously measures a bunch of variables we consider for water sampling; important to us are pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, and phycocyanin levels.
Today we were scheduled to go into the field for the first time with the Hydrolab, but with Julie away at a conference, the three of us were left to our own devices. Thanks to our wonderful teamwork we successfully (we think) completed the routine prepwork of washes and calibrations in the office and were ready to tackle the river!
Bruce had selected four sampling sites along the Charles for that are accessible from the shore. After making sure we had all the necessary equipment - the probe, field notebook, and a piece we seem to have dubbed the "hole-y thing" (due to, well, the holes in the structure that allow water to pass through it when taking measurements) - we arrived at our first site: a dock on Ware's Cove.
The sun was a bit spotty, shining down some moments and hiding behind the clouds other, but luckily it didn't rain. While recalibrating the DO probe with river water we were graced by the company of some onlookers. A nearby family of swans decided to see what we were up to and swam towards us! Cait was particularly enthralled by this; check out her
blog post to read more about those lovely birds!
The next site was a dock at the
Charles River Canoe and Kayak (CRCK) location on Commonwealth Avenue. Though nothing particularly exciting happened here, Cait and I felt inspired and agreed return in the afternoon (in about 15 minutes to be exact) and go for a little canoeing adventure!
The third site was located at a parking lot just across the river from CRCK. The geese there made their presence well known with their odor and poop that seemed to be everywhere. Additionally we spotted a single duck and the mechanical water chestnut harvester returning from a day of work.
The last site was right along a path that I actually had walked by before, near Brandeis, where Cait and I both go to school! Since the site was located in Bruce's neighborhood a few friendly neighbors stopped by to chat and check in on the work we were doing.
Overall it was a great morning and I look forward to many more sampling days this month with Cait and Bruce!
- Ingrid
