Girls playing in the mud

So I was helping Julie in the field yesterday...collecting anemones and crabs. We were having a difficult time finding the crab species she needed. Finding holes in the sand/mud at low tide and making a big scoop around the hole and sieving...found very few that way. Finally we started finding bunches around the rocks and in the muddy gravel. I had to laugh out loud as we were picking up rocks and digging in the mud/gravel with our hands where there heaps of worms and crawly things and we were having a great time...except for my few girlfriends I've made in biology, all the rest of them would be disgusted! Afterwards, Julie introduced me to her favorite cafe that is out on the peninsula...I'll definitely be going back there. Aside from that, I had a productive day in the lab as I dissected fish and Julie helped me by setting up my snails for shedding (putting the snails in an incubator with light so any parasites will leave or "shed"). My lab has not previously found this stage of my study species...which I need to do experimental infections. I'm disappointed to say that there were none of my species swimming around in the dishes today. There has to be some infected snails because the fish are infected with the stage that leaves the snail. So now I'll be collecting snails from another site on Monday and trying those. Other than that, I'm spending my weekend dissecting fish - woohoo.