Day 2 Tuesday: I guess we should do some science...

Hi! I’m Anya.

I just finished my third year as a chemistry major and my first year as a Cal Poly transfer student. Here's some of what we did on Day 2 in French Polynesia.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on methods for pH measurements in marine environments. Today we deployed two pH probes within the coral reef to take continuous measurements for the next week. These probes will allow us to monitor pH fluctuations on a 24 hour cycle, giving insight to the activity within the reef.

While super exciting, deploying the probes was no small task. Our first location was in a very narrow portion of the reef, where waves were constantly throwing us into the rocks and setting back our progress several times. The second location was on a buoy in a wider portion of the reef. To deploy, we had to first snorkel out to the location, quite far from shore. Despite the difficulties, both probes were successfully deployed and we’re looking forward to seeing what data we collect!