A day in the mud!

Yesterday was a fieldwork day and a lot happened so I thought I would right up my general impressions of the day before I forgot. I met up with Eunae and the two high school students (whose names I have no idea as to how to spell so I won’t try) outside my dorm at 8 or so and headed for the train station. From there we had to head out to the blue line and take it all the way out to Incheon (about an hour’s ride). After a taxi to the ferry we had to wait for everyone else to meet up before heading out to Jakyakdo, a small island about 15-20 minutes ride away. There we geared up and spent the low tide (which was maximal at 1pm) going around the island looking for things. The island started rocky and then became a huge mudflat before becoming rocky again. In about 3 hours we made it all the way around the island (though we could have made it in less than 1 hour I think if we hadn’t been looking and collecting along the way). Then we gathered everything, looked through what we had collected (fixing a few right there and packing the rest live to be fixed in the lab), grabbed the ferry and headed back. None of us had actually had a meal since breakfast (just snacking on bananas and some fancy bread) so Dr. Song had us stop for a meal. Then we headed back on the long train ride back, brought the specimens up and fixed them.

So there is a bare-bones description of what happened but there are few points worth going into more detail…

First and foremost, Dr. Song is a force of nature. One she gets started, she just goes and you have to really fight to keep up with her. It’s pretty funny actually.

Also, it’s funny how different labs do things. The way this group preps for field work is a bit different from how I do it, particularly their insistence that everyone get a giant set of forceps and a spoon (both on loops that go around your hands). Honestly, a butter knife would have been more helpful in my opinion.

I’m really sorry that I didn’t have my camera to take pictures during this…there are some pictures from the lab camera that I grabbed so I have something from this which I will post on facebook sometime.

I never fail to hurt myself in some way during fieldwork. Usually it is my legs but this time I was wearing waders so the most I could do was bruise my leg (which I did too). But the bad cuts were on my arms this time. Not that they were that bad…they really weren’t and didn’t hurt much (though they are a little sore today). However, cuts on both arms bled like no one’s business. Suddenly there were huge drops of blood on the rocks and on my gloves and it took me a minute to figure out that it was me. The lab kind of freaked out about it (and still seem very worried about it today) but they really are not bad at all.

When working through a mud flat and you are given the option of waders that are too big or too small, definitely pick the too small one. I had waders that were too big, which resulted in me literally getting stuck in the mud. Every time I would go to move my leg, my foot would pop out of the boot and I would have to fight to stay upright (which was not always successful). I had to work so hard to move around that I had to have burned a lot of calories. It was extremely frustrating…but what can you do but laugh. Particularly when a high school student runs over with a shovel to help dig you out…twice.

And, by the way, the waders did not even work that well. When I got out, I could tell I was a bit wet before I got out, but I figured that I had sweat a lot working through the mud. But once I saw how wet I was…I definitely did not sweat that much! Sung-Jin said that hers didn’t work to well either and her pants were clearly wet too. Good thing we both wore fast drying pants. Should have brought an extra shirt though…

When we got back to the Incheon station, Dr. Song decided that we should have dinner in the Chinatown across the street but she didn’t want to bother to bring all the stuff we were carrying so she just went into a police station and asked them to watch our stuff. Judging from the reactions of her students, I don’t think you can generally treat the police station as a storage facility but she is an older woman in a culture that demands respect for someone of age, so what are the police going to do? Obviously, they said yes. The whole exchange was really amusing.

We had a good dinner at a random Chinese resturant in Incheon’s Chinatown. This dinner included drinks and a toast and is officially the first time I have drunk with my lab.

We got back to the lab at about 8 or 8:30 but I didn’t leave until after 11. It took me that long to fix all of my material. And I still had to spend time today making a spreadsheet of samples and better labeling the things I have (I did a pretty quick an dirty labeling yesterday). So it was a very long day. I was going to leave early today to go to a baseball game, but it has rained out so no go. I don’t think I am going to go anywhere or do anything tonight. I’m just going to chill out and relax I think. Save some money for another day (which by the way, I only spent about $4 dollars yesterday and that was off my transit card so really I spent nothing yesterday).

Overall, I got 5 species, including 2 I really wanted. Honestly, there was only one other species at the site that I would have liked to have so it worked out well. Plus the trip was fun so overall it was a very good day.