The Importance of Note-taking
Our 8-day Galapagos adventure was jam-packed: we’d get up at 5:30 am to begin our day of hiking, snorkeling, more snorkeling, and more hiking. We’d return to the boat at 6 pm for dinner and lecture/ presentations. By 10 pm, the entire boat would be sound asleep, lulled by the boat’s gentle rocking.
With such an action-packed schedule, it’s difficult to remember every animal and plant we saw, every scientific question we asked, every piece of information our guide Ernesto shared with us, so we needed a field notebook of sorts.
If you’ve worked in a research lab, you’ll know how important a lab notebook is– accurately recording information is essential to the scientific process. Not surprisingly, the same is true of field study trips. Before we left for the Galapagos, our profs suggested that we invest in a small, light notebook– one that will easily fit in our small backpacks.Luckily for me, the Caltech bookstore was having a sale during the last week of second term, so I decided to buy my handy dandy notebook there, shown below.
Side note: I practically bought out the bookstore during the sale. By 5:30 pm (which is when the store closes), I’d walked out with two enormous bags containing: my field notebook, a tie for my dad, a Caltech mug, a Caltech pillow, a sweatshirt for my brother, and windbreaker for my mom, and a zip-up jacket for myself.
Day 1, hike 1, we explored La Playa de Las Bachas, a beach with beautiful white sand and dark, basaltic rock.Immediately, wenoticed the striking red crabs that inhabitedthese rocks, and Ernesto took the opportunity toteach us about the colorful creatures. He swiftlypicked up a crab shell we’d stumbled upon, andbegan his ecological lesson.According to Ernesto, Sally Lightfoot crabs shed their hard shell every year and emerge with a softer shell in order to grow larger in size. To harden the shell, the crabs will intake salts to convert their soft shells. As we examined the crab shell, Ernesto mentioned that we can discern the sex of a crab based on the color of its abdomen (the one we’d found was male). With our first-day enthusiasm, the entire class quickly took detailed notes on the crabs.
Our first field lesson
Opuntia cactus and tortoise nests (If I hadn’t labeled these drawings, I would have had no idea what they were trying to depict..)
Sally Lightfoot crabs and Marine Iguanas Fun fact: Marine iguanas inspired the monster Godzilla. If you can’t spot the resemblance from my drawing, here’s some photographic evidence:
(That’s not to say that I didn’t snap 1000+ photographs during the trip).
That’s all for now, Ketaki
