3...2..1..Take Off!

Hi guys! I have had such a good week and I am so excited to tell y'all about it!

The majority of this week has been full of work. I have been working a lot on more data formatting and analysis. To put it in perspective, I have 27 years worth of data about blue crabs in the Maryland Coastal Bays. That means that in order to get meaningful results I have to extract certain facts about the crabs and this is a very time consuming and tedious job. I am getting more and more excited about my work as I am getting closer to having results and I am hoping that I can get everything done within the next three weeks!

Rocket launch pad!

This weekend was our last set of field trips and it was so much fun! On Friday we got up and headed to the NASA center at Wallop's Island. I was so excited to go visit NASA because ever since I saw Hidden Figures I have dreamed about working for NASA. Unfortunately, the field of science that I am really interested in, agriculture, does not actually have a place in NASA. Anyway, we started at the visitor's center and got to learn a little bit about the over all mission of NASA. We stayed there for about an hour and then started on the rest of our tour.
We drove out to a hanger full of cool planes and talked to a man who worked for the Coast Guard for 30+ years and has been at NASA for just over a year. We learned how these vessels have been modified for science because most of them have first been military vehicles. After about another hour there we headed to lunch and then to our next destination!
The next stop on our adventure was the rocket launch pad. This was the coolest place! The man who taught us was named Darrel and he is the launch pad manager. I have never been interested in working on rockets but Darrel was so passionate and excited about his work that all of the interns left the pad wanting to switch from marine biology to rocket science! ;)
The last stop of our NASA trip was a new airstrip that is at Wallop's Island. This was an interesting place because I really do not know much about flying and the man who was teaching us taught us like we were aeronautics students. I loved this trip and am so happy that we got to go! I do not think that I will ever actually work for NASA but I now have enough NASA paraphernalia to make people think that I do!
Our next trip was early Saturday morning so we all went to bed early Friday night and prepared for our coming adventure!

I was so excited to be at NASA!

I was not excited for our field trip on Saturday. We were going to go out on a boat and fish...for four hours. I have fished a couple times before and I have never really caught anything or enjoyed it so I really was not excited. We got to Ocean City around 8am and quickly got on the boat. I was happy to be in the sun but I was hoping that I wouldn't get seasick and wishing that I didn't have to fish! After the captain got us out to where we were to fish we all grabbed a fishing rod and some bait and began to fish. I had the mate, Lucas, come over and teach how to work the rod and then just stood there and held the rod. Even though it was kind of boring at first I was happy to be outside with all of the interns. We went to a couple different spots and at each spot we just stood there and held our rods. A couple of people caught fish but for the most part everything was pretty slow.
After about two hours I actually caught a fish! It is my first fish I have every caught and to be completely honest as soon as I reeled my line in to the surface I just gave my rod to Lucas and had him do the rest for me! It was fun to actually catch something and it was a great pick me up that gave me more motivation for the last couple hours.
At our last fishing spot I suddenly got something very very large. It was so heavy that I thought the line was just hooked to some part of the boat or something. I gave my rod to one of the boys that was standing by me because Lucas was busy and it was just too heavy for me. Once Lucas could, he came over and took control of the situation. Some how I caught two horseshoe crabs that were mating! As Lucas was pulling them in one fell off but he was able to pull the other one in and we all got to see it and touch it! It was honestly pretty cool and for my first time fishing in the bays I was pretty happy with catching one fish and two horseshoe crabs! I really loved this trip and would definitely do it again!
This weekend was incredibly fun and I am sad that our field trips are done for the summer! I am so grateful that I have been able to do all of these cool things here in Maryland and I really hope that I can come back someday and do them again!