Down to business

The general theme of our lab's research this summer is to elucidate the trophic (=feeding) structure of organisms that live in subtidal habitat in the Galapagos islands. For example, my project aims to figure out what the different starfish species are eating, and what is eating them, in order to establish their role in the food web. One of the ways we are doing this is using these little extreme-sports wearable cameras (with waterproof housings) to record video of starfish (or other study species) that are tethered within the camera's field of view. We can then analyse the video data to determine rates of predation on the starfish (or urchins, or whatever we're tethering) as well as what ate it. The GoPro cameras with extended battery packs are supposed to give us about 4 hours of continuous data.

The past couple of days has just been assembling these camera systems (and the stands) and testing them out to see how well they work, how much area/distance the cameras cover, etc. We've been snorkelling out around the dock in front of the marine research building of the Charles Darwin Station in Puerto Ayora. Here is a picture of a camera housing on its stand, weighted down by rocks. We were checking for stability and the watertight-ness of the housing on this round.

And this is me with the camera setup. I think I was sticking rocks on the base...or something. (Photos by Leslie)
On the way back from deploying the cameras, we ran into an marine iguana nomming on some Ulva (a green, sheety seaweed). I think I am starting to get used to the iguanas (hard not to when you're just about tripping over them every time you get out of the water...) but I still think they are the coolest things ever.