Turks and Caicos Day 2- Tidal Flat Day

Today was tidal flat day (aka MUD DAY!!!)

It was a beautiful drive out between the islands and onto the platform!

Hook 'em!

Preparing the sediment sampler

Tough life!

MANGROVES!!!

 We sampled some sediment along the way...

and almost caught Jo-Jo the dolphin!

Gooey!

Then we hit the flats!

Mangrove Breathing tubes 

Scratch marks on the microbial mat from wind blowing the plant around. Just like the Ediacaran!

Gastropod shell hash on the "beach"

The most annoying short hike ever! Every step you'd sink either up to your ankles or up to your knees in mud!

Thank goodness for binding mats!

Sponges and Jellies in a little tidal pool 

Taking a core! 

Pleistocene Conch shell

More core!

Binding mats anyone?

Polychaete worm tube

Peloids (poop) on the top of the burrow

Once we were done with the flat, we went to the tidal channel

Quite the current!

Mud (with oxidized (tan) top layer)

"It's like a spa day"

Mangrove roots

gastropods, forams, and mud!

Preparing to swim across the tidal channel! .... and searching for a lost GoPro!

Beautiful lamination on one of the banks

 Some days are just better than others...

Turks and Caicos Day 1

Day 1: We got off the plain and jumped straight into the water. After a walk along some very nice beachrock, we swam out to Scott's Reef for our first snorkel of the trip!

We even saw some "sandstone". Just for the clastics guys!

Check out this gorgeous Beachrock, this stuff is cementing in place as we speak!

It even cements up the conch shells!

The reef isn't the best I have seen but there are a lot of different corals!

Some blurry star corals (Siderastrea)

Blurry Gorgonian corals

Finger coral (Porites porites)

Some beautiful reef rubble

A little lone Caryophyllid coral

Diploria labyrinthiformis (Brain coral)

A parrotfish bioeroding

Munch Marks

Montastraea cavernosa

There were also some nice Thalassa grass banks

Halimeda and Penicillus green algae

Manicia areolata (Faviidae)

Turks and Caicos

Hi Blog followers! This week I'm in the lovely Turks and Caicos (well... just Caicos), a beautiful carbonate platform in the Caribbean. I have joined  Dr. Charlie Kerans' carbonate sedimentology class and we are checking out modern reef and carbonate environments! I will try to update every day or so, but we don't have a ton of down time.

Here's Post #1, flyover!

Gonna dive those reefs!

I am excited for reef day!

Saline Lakes!

Last of 2014

For the last post of 2014, check out this blog post on the Stoney Brook web page by UT Austin PhD student Anna Weiss.

(Blog Post)

Happy New Year and all the best for 2015!

Too much beige!

I decided there was too much beige in the office and microscope room by my office, so I thought I'd add a little bit of relevant artwork!

A shot of one of my field sites in my office!

Some photomicrographs (and other nice shots) in the microscope room

One of my PhD thin sections with bored and encrusted Austrian corals!

A pretty awesome reef shot (taken by Bill Martindale)

Some ooids in cross polars (Turks and Caicos)

And last but not least, an Albertan Ammonite (purchased from the Royal Tyrrell Museum)

For those who want to know, these are photos printed on canvas.

A little decoration

We decided to add some decals of marine organisms to the cabinets.

I think it makes the cabinets look pretty fun/awesome, and it works, since there are fossils of the same creatures inside the cabinets!

We still have another coral and a squid to add once we fix the two cabinet doors on this side.

What do you think? My grad students all think they are pretty awesome.