A day in the field

I have a project that is requiring monthly collection at the beach on South Padre Island. The weather hasn’t been great, or I’ve had other tasks to do, most of February. This meant I almost had to go out and collect this weekend.

I was surprised when I got there, because “blue” is not a colour I normally see a lot of on our beach.

And going closer, I realized...

That this was a veritable invasion of Portuguese men of war.

Despite my best efforts to avoid them, one caught in a retreating wave got its tentacles on my shins. And I can now say with certainty that this is not an experience I recommend. I would call it a stinging, burning sort of sensation. Rather like a localized sunburn.

Fortunately, the water was chilly, so the coolness of the water numbed the sensation. Somewhat.

I also learned that the covers of Rite in the Rain all weather notebooks are almost exactly the same colour as the sand on South Padre Island, which means if, say, a notebook were to fall down to the sand on the beach, it can be rather difficult to see.

Furthermore, while Rite in the Rain products – such as their No. 37 pen – are indeed waterproof, they aren’t sand proof. And I discovered sand can get into all sorts of places that can gum up the works of a pen.

The things one does for data.

Excuse me... datum. “Data” is plural, so we would need to have found more than one animal to have data.

Last pic from here.