Our First Week

1/8 - pov marie

This place is crazy. Today was our first day and it started off with a tour of the grounds: they showed us the protected bay and port, the dive shop, the boat house, the labs and the many, many aquariums filled with all kinds of fish, sea anemones, corral, oysters, sea urchins, shrimp, seahorses, etc. Rafi and Liel, the two main people in charge of the marine center, explained to us what they did with each species, who took care of them, and any research that was going on with them.

After the tour was over, we were told that we were going jellyfish catching with Hila, a profesesor, and her student. We were told to put wetsuits on, at which point both of us were a little confused as to what was about to happen. Ready with my wetsuit, flippers and mask, I came out of the boat house and was immediately asked by the student: 'You're going into the water?? Wow, you are so brave!'.

We got into the boat and started driving off - our job was to scream 'medusa!' if we saw any jellyfish near the surface. We saw the first one and approached it. Hila attempted to catch it with her net from the boat, but unfortunately, it was a little too deep. She said: I need a diver. Suddenly, I had my flippers and my mask on and I was jumping into the deep ocean to confront a ginormous jellyfish.

So naturally, I began swimming towards this blob that was larger than my face and that I knew could sting me from multiple feet away. What a great plan. After struggling to maneuver my net underwater, I finally caught the medusa and brought it back to the boat, where Hila, her student and Lilly were ready to pick it up with a bucket.

In total, we caught 10 jellyfish, five that were close enough to the surface that we could just catch them from the boat and five that I had to dive for since they were a little too deep. I felt so cool jumping in and chasing these huge stinging blobs despite all of my natural instincts telling me 'you are an idiot wearing an inside out wetsuit'.

Once back on land, we watched as Hila and her student delicately manhandled the jellyfish and scooped out their gonads.

To finish off the day, we went on a little sunset kayak adventure. It was gorgeous.

Overall 13/10 day - super cool, super unique, crazy school.

1/9 - pov lilly

Today was another gorgeous day in Mevo’ot Yam. After learning the steps to feed all of the different fish in the labs, we woke up ready to go! The first thing we did was determine the amount of rotifers in a their huge tank. Rotifers are superrrr tiny organisms that get fed to all of the fish, and can barely be seen even with a microscope. We put tiny droplets of the water they live in onto a microscope slide and counted them according to a set volume, then estimated the total population in the tank, which helps to determine how much food we feed the fish and coral. Then, our next project was cleaning out the coral tank. It’s full of different types of coral that the students are growing and selling to fund an upcoming sailing trip to Cyprus - we’re so jealous! We siphoned any floating algae from the water, scrubbed the algae off the coral, glued any broken pieces back together, and organized them by type so they wouldn’t sting each other in the water. The final product was pretty impressive :)

For lunch today, we went to the Humus Bar. A favorite spot of our lab manager Liel, it was delicious!! We also went for our sunset kayak/paddle-board this evening. It was absolutely gorgeous, just like yesterday! The water is super clear and it’s getting us excited for diving next week!

1/10 - pov lilly

First thing this morning was feeding the fish, which we are basically professionals at now... not. It’s ok though because Liel is always superrrrr excited to help us with anything we might need. Once the fish were fed, we met up with Karine to go snorkeling with her 10th graders!! I had my GoPro charged and ready, and Liel had given us containers to catch his favorite type of sea slug, Spurilla neapolitana. Since everything that comes up when you google it is ice cream, we’ve attached a picture of Marie with one here - please note that it is definitely to scale!

Anyways, back to the snorkeling! After accidentally walking around with mine on backwards for half an hour, we got into our wetsuits properly and headed out to the other side of the sea wall to get in the water. Some students jumped in right away, while others were a bit more hesitant because of the cold winter water (which is only really cold to them because they don’t swim in New England water). Karine showed us Elysia sea slug that she found, but quickly let us explore on our own while keeping an eye on the kids. The reef was absolutely amazing. The fish would sit in the shadows underneath the ledges, so if we could fight the buoyancy of the wetsuit and the salt water enough, the students and I could dive down and get some good video with my GoPro. In our hour in the water, we saw all sorts of marine life, from corals to snails to fish to jellyfish to crabs to urchins. We’re looking forward to spending more time getting to know the students in and out of the water!

The rest of our day was as usual, cleaning fish tanks and drinking coffee. The sunset was probably the most amazing one we’ve seen since getting here. We were a bit tired from snorkeling, but the sea wall was a great place to watch. It was a beautiful end to an amazing day!

1/11 - pov marie

First thing we did today was follow Liel around as he attempted to fix the power outage and heating problems. Thankfully, only one fish (it was our fav though) died because of the outage (it was swallowed by the anemone?? they are carnivorous??). Once Liel stopped stressing and things were semi working, we began feeding the aquariums!

Then, we worked with students!! First, we met with the senior class to help them with their research projects. Lilly and I split up to help two different halves of the class, me with the corral group and Lilly with the algae group. The kids were so funny and sweet - they were trying their hardest to speak only English and we were trying to say as much as possible in Hebrew (ie. the numbers 1-10, ken and lov, sababa, yofi and ma ze?).

My group and I worked on alkalinity tests for corral water using a very poorly written protocol. The students' project is to examine how different water temperatures affects corral. Once we finished our tests, we headed back to the classroom. Rafi answered some students' questions about alkalinity and pH, which was probably the most I’ve ever understand in Hebrew. This is partly because he was writing chemical equations on the board and many of the words he was saying were just C O shteim and H shteim O and C O shalosh…

Our next project was to remove all the flatworms (🤢) from one of the aquariums that was infested. It was a fun mix of yelling through glass, Liel splashing us with tank water and Lilly forcep-ing corrals to not touch the worms. After that exciting activity, we got to work with the juniors on taking care of the corral tanks. They are hoping to sail to Cyprus for a week, but they need to raise the funds by selling corral. We are jealous to say the least.

Overall super fun day working with the students!

1/12 - pov marie

First things first: feed the fish!

Then we were called into the class of 10th graders to help them with their research projects. It was cool to see what tests they could think of using the organisms that they had to examine the carbon cycle. There was a bit of a language barrier but with enough hand signals and google translate, we successfully communicated.

The first group I helped out was three girls that are testing how different wavelengths of light affect corral growth. I did a mini lesson on how different wavelengths of light penetrate water and they got super excited. Then I helped another group that want to do experiments on micro-algae that grow in jellyfish. Somehow, I was put in charge of helping dissect this jellyfish, which I was super excited to do despite not knowing how to dissect jellyfish? One student said he would cut the head, the other the tentacles - so I chose to call Liel. We got to look at cool things under the microscope - spirullina (yes, the stuff that Whole Foods sells for like 60 bucks) which was super cool because it’s a spiral and the little microalgae that live in the jellyfish. After the kids decided their projects, we had to help them with their write ups which was a whole other kerfuffle.

After that, we helped out three 9th graders with their seaweed photosynthesis project. These girls wanted to see how different levels of carbonized water affect the photosynthesis rate of algae. They were so sweet and so excited to learn how to do things in the lab. And then we had lunch! woo lunch!

We did a bit more cleanup after lunch but then quickly left for the train station because Lilly and I are going to Masada and the Dead Sea for the weekend (stay tuned for next blog to see if we survive)!

Overall exhausting but cool day :) See you in Masada!