Great open house!

The rains held off for the most part and we had a super open house event last Saturday. The folks at the UGA aquarium kept a clicker-count. Adding a little for missed visitors, we estimate roughly 1,900 people visited the campus. Here is a small sample of some photos of the day.

We had lots of boats!

Charles Robertson (L) explains a core sampling device

John Bichy (R) explains the R/V Savannah survival gear.

Hey Mom! Can I drive the boat?

Paul Medders (L)from DNR was here to pass out material.

Making plankton out of pipe cleaners is fun!

OK, what do I do now?

The aquarium touch-tanks were very popular.

Not too young to be fascinated.

Getting closely aquainted with a crab.

Gray’s Reef staff were there with a boat too!

That’s a lot of mud!

One of our scientists, Clark Alexander, just returned from two weeks in China, where he attended the 7^th International Conference in Tidal Sedimentation in Qingdao, China.

A Chinese coastal vessel is intentionally grounded at low tide so the crew can search the mud for shellfish. Come high tide, it floats again.

Prior to the meeting, he took part in a 5-day field trip which covered 1,500 kilometers along the west coast of the Yellow Sea, from Shanghai to Qingdao, where he was excited to observe one of the best tidal bores and some of the muddiest and most extensive tidal flats in the world.

Alexander is a member of the International Scientific Steering Committee for this quadrennial series of meetings, and he gave a keynote presentation on the hammock stratigraphic work being carried out by his lab group.