Exploration Station

This morning I had Natural resource management class. Today we continued our lecture on soils and talked about the various orders of soil series and their properties. After class I went into the lab to put the results from the scans I completed into one single excel sheet. During my transfer I realized that one was missing, so I got to do one last scan before I was really done. Greg and I are going to look at those numbers at the beginning of next week. After that I had lab for my class, where we did hands on activities working to classify different soil types from around Hawaii into their orders. We also looked at some examples of soil pedons and learned how to name and define by color the different layers of soil. It was a very fun and informative lab, which took the material from the week and brought it to life, so to speak. After class lab I went back into Greg’s lab to look over what I had done and make sure it was good to go; it was. By that time it was already well into the afternoon and I only had a couple of hours of sunlight left so I decided to go explore another new beach I had seen on my run a few blocks farther down the coast. I walked along the rocks till I could find a place to enter the water and do some snorkeling. The reef was much healthier just these few blocks away from where it had been so bad. But by much healthier I do not want to give the impression that it was thriving. Still there were a few live coral outcroppings here and there, which is more than I can say about the reef off the beach I had been going to, and the fish populations were higher. After my swim I watched the sun go down into the haze over the ocean and started on my journey back. Somewhere among all my exploring I managed to lose my shirt, so it was a chilly ride home. Tomorrow I am going on a hike out at Kaena Point.