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Preparation, adjustments, organization…

The past days were tough for the Rockies, since we not only had to adjust our sampling method for the benthic community, but also struggled with constructing the Arduino tool for our wave exposure measurements. But let’s start from the beginning: so, the team was divided into two teams of three persons, the Arduino group consisted of Karolina, João and Svenja and  the field sampling group with Marie, Minju and Jen.
Initially, the Arduino team wanted to use an acce… acceleroriafhd....accelerometer (who can actually pronounce this?) to measure the accelerations along three directions. With this information we wanted to back calculate the wave heights. So far our ambitious  original plans. But this didn’t work out. Not only due to our pronunciation problems with the word itself, but rather because of the complex set-up, we decided to use a much more handy tool: an ultrasonic distance meter. Never heard of this before? We are here to explain how this fancy tool works. A distance meter measures …..guess what ehm well not surprisingly, the distance ! No, but seriously,  the ultrasonic Arduino tool measures the distance  between the sensor and the nearest object by sending  out a sound wave that is reflected by the object.  Then, by measuring the time the sound wave needs for the return,  the distance is calculated. By attaching  the distance meter to a 3 m pole and deploying it parallel to the water surface in the rocky shore of the three islets, we can actually measure the distance to the water surface.
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João constructing the Arduino tool. Credits: Jenevieve Hara
As data will be recorded every second, we are then able to see any oscillations/wave heights.  After struggling a bit with programming the distance meter, we finally managed to set  it up. Hurray!
But how to make sure it doesn’t get wet by splashing water? Well, here is our super-duper scientific innovative waterproof technology  2.0 : plastic boxes closed with tape.
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Arduino distance meter stored waterproof in plastic boxes. Credits: Jenevieve Hara
At the same time, the other half of the group with Marie, Minju and Jen went out in the field to test our previously planned methodology and equipment.
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Jen, Marie and Minju testing the equipment in the field. Credits: Freija Hauquier
To investigate the faunal community in the rocky shores of the three islets, we initially planned to set up three belts transects per islets to identify all sessile species along the transect. To identify the more mobile species such as Echinodermata, a visual survey along the transect was planned. When we went out to test the sampling, we realized that both faunal abundance and diversity were high in the field, so we adjusted our methodology : We will sample quadrats along a belt transect and identify the species back in the laboratory. Since identifying mobile fauna while snorkelling along a transect without having any idea of the local fauna might have been a very ambitious initial idea of us (I mean we are good, but not that awesome yet), we will instead collect and take photos of all mobile fauna along the transect to identify them later as well.
So far our adjustments for  the day. We will let you know how it actually worked out in the field in our next blog post. 
by Svenja Neumann

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