China Research

Sediment Analysis

Today, on our final day in Hong Kong, I finished a week long sediment analysis of four surface samples collected around Sharp Island, Hong Kong. I only performed two analysis on the samples- grain size and carbonate content, but it proved to be extremely worthwhile and will hopefully be tied in to Sara’s research on the coral communities around sharp island.

The people in my lab were great at helping me find the supplies needed to run the same kind of analysis techniques I learned at Eckerd’s sediment lab. Asking for a set of seive’s of different sizes was a particularly interesting adventure. The students in the lab usually use sediments for pollutants so they commonly grind them up into powder and extract things from them in various ways. The fact that I wanted to dry the sediments out without baking the muds together seemed like a foreign concept (which…if you think about the situation…it was), as well as my need for a whole stack of seives to separate out the grain sizes.

Eventually most of my needs were met. The only thing that was not available was full time use of a fume hood for adding the HCl. I initially mixed the HCl in a fume hood and then added it to the samples in a fume hood but eventually had to give up the space to other researchers and I was forced to leave the samples sitting in the open air. It seemed safe enough but I wouldn’t like to run too many samples like that.

They don’t use safety goggles here. You have to wear a lab coat at all times. 99% of the time students are wearing latex gloves. I haven’t seen a single pair of safety goggles since I’ve been here. This became most distressing to me when I was mixing concentrated HCl with water. ‘Always do what you outta, add the acid to the water’. The phrase never sounded so important.

Anyway, I’m pretty much finished with my studies in the lab and have to get ready to leave Hong Kong tomorrow. What an interesting adventure it has been. I have met some wonderful people on this trip, most notably a couple from the mainland called Xun Wen and In Ge (or Wen and GeGe as they are known around the lab). They have been extraordinarily kind to me, inviting me out the play baketball, badminton, go to the beach, and even invited me around to their apartment in kowloon city for a home cooked dinner by Wen! Wen is also a great guitarist and we have made a few trips to local music stores as well as having a couple jam sessions ourselves. Words cannot describe how grateful I am to them for making sure I had a friend or two in this massive city.

Farewell Hong Kong, you are a magnetic city that people of all nations are pulled to and I know I’ll be pulled back here again someday.

last week in hong kong

as things wind down while we prepare to leave hong kong, my research is starting to take off. we went to sharp island on monday to do the last transects at sites two and three. however, analyzing the photos has gone so well, dr. qiu decided to add another study site, which makes a total of 6 sites. so my last week here  has been filled with 9 and 10 hour days inputing the data, throwing together preliminary graphs, making figures, and deciding how to put the whole paper together. ive been using a map-based method for calculating wave exposure at all 6 sites, putting together several descriptive figures of the study region, creating depth profiles for each transect at each site, and generally trying not to loose my head in all the numbers! we will carry out two statistical tests on the data, one- way ANOVA and multi variate MDS, to try and find the greatest influential factors on the distribution, density, and richness of the coral communities.

this afternoon i ran into a pretty frustrating road block, because i was trying to average coral cover by depth, but realized that i cannot combine data across different transects at the same site, because then the replicates become what is called a pseudo replicate, which makes each replicate somewhat illegitimate. the hardest part about this is that this type of statistics is completely new to me, and explaining my misunderstanding to people who speak another language proved extremely hard.

on a different note, last night i went up to the top of the peak, which is the highest mountain in hong kong. from up there, the entire city is visible, and on a clear night like last night, i got a sense of the city that i was previously unaware of. i never though a bunch of skyscrapers lit up could be so beautiful. there was also a full moon last night, which may have added to the scene. or the fact that the air was better, more clear and more quiet than anywhere else in the city.

we leave for xiamen on saturday, and while ive sometimes felt overwhelmed by this city, ive had a great time exploring it, getting to know it, and making it my own.

getting started……. with 10 days to go!

my photoquadrat was finally finished by monday, so we went to Sharp Island on tuesday to collect the data. turbidity was high due to huge amounts of rain this past weekend, but we decided the photos would be good enough to quantify coral cover, and identify species at least down to the genus level. two of the sites i was planning on sampling from were way too muddy to take any photos, because they are both in small, protected bays off the shore of mangrove habitats, meaning that there is a freshwater input, and therefore higher levels of sediment than at the other 3, more exposed sites. we will be going back to the island on monday to take photos of those last two sites.

in the lab today, i found identifying the corals to be a piece of cake! there really is not much diversity at all, so after learning to spot the dominant species, the rest was pretty easy. i actually got through analyzing all the photos we have so far! this is good news, given that i have so little timeleft. i really was worried i wouldnt have time to finish the study before i leave, but now it looks like its going to be possible (with some hard work and long days!). i also finished making depth profiles for each transect at each site, which are actually so helpful in getting a visual on the environment. in doing so, i noticed a very interesting, very strong correlation between certain depths, and species richness of coral, that i want to look into further, as i believe it may be an important controlling factor in their growth. im currently downloading a 30-day trial of Adobe Illustrator on to my computer in order to create a grid that i can superimpose onto each photo, to make it easier to quantify percent cover of coral in each photo.

all in all, a great day, and i am very excited to finally be able to get my hands on the data!