Helen K White Lab

I will admit it, I’m a beach snob. Florida Gulf beaches or bust (see Image 1). I’ve been going to the white sand beaches of Florida that border the clear blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico for as long as I can remember. They’re hard to beat, and still are, even with some tar ball splatterings. It’s crazy to think that 2 years after the oil spill there are still tar balls washing up on beaches daily. Although the beaches we visited today looked fine at first glance, once you took a trained eye (or eye in training) to them, you can start to pick out just how much oil is still washing up on the beaches today (see Image 2), which says a lot about the magnitude of the spill.

In other news, I’ve been earning my keep as the resident Southerner– informing the group of places to eat, including the story behind the Moe’s franchises. Who knew that Mellow Mushroom’s and Einstein’s didn’t exist everywhere? Not to mention I’ve successfully opened their taste buds to the unbelievable deliciousness that is cheese dip. Furthermore, as amateur storm enthusiast of the group, I got to show off my useless knowledge about lightning during the insane storm that raged for hours after we left the last sample site. Contrary to Pat’s former belief, the majority of lightning during a storm is cloud-to-cloud lightning, not cloud-to-ground. And the highest concentration of lightning in the world is found in the Congo (Florida is second though). Luckily, we made it through the storm without getting struck by lightning (even though you’re safe in a car as long as you aren’t touching any metal part of the car).

I am happy to be back along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. This trip is our last for a while so I am doing my best to appreciate the beauty of this  area. White sands and turquoise ocean. Here are some photos from our day.

Seasoned veterans Helen, Liz and I joined forces with Katie, the only member of the lab who had not been with us to the Gulf yet to collect tar balls.  We started, as usual, at some ungodly hour.  After a few easy hours in the air we found ourselves, once again, on the beaches of Perdido, FL.  There we stopped at two new sites and were entirely successful.  After saying goodby to all the highrises and souvenir shops of Perdido we made our way to more familiar hunting grounds.  Little had changed at Gulf Shores and the only really exciting thing that happened was Helen forgetting me in the parking lot.  There I was, getting a tissue from the restrooms, and next thing I know I was stranded in the middle of the redneck riviera looking for a red Jeep that had up and left…

After Gulf Shores we wandered over to Dauphin Island and found some interesting samples.  After a bit at Dauphin Island we called it a day and beat a quick retreat to the car, racing against the gathering storm clouds.  The rest of the evening was a blur of lightening flashes, gallons of rain, and Katie’s television-based knowledge of electrical storms.  We finally pulled into Gulfport, MS rain-soaked and bleary-eyed.  Tomorrow we will be exploring the beaches around Gulfport and possibly make our way back to Ship Island!

1. Success at both east Florida sites- we added a new one and it was awesome!

2. The number of sites (4) and samples (29) hit in one productive day

3. The discussions and laughter in the car

4. Helen’s one-liners that I can’t remember but they were hilarious at the time

5. Return to Ole Maria’s Mexican Restaurant

6. Giant dead fish crawling with maggots (I know, only a bio major would be so psyched about a maggot-infested dead fish…)

7. The CRAZY thunderstorm that we had to drive through to get to our hotel- lightning was blinding and rain was falling so heavily, it was difficult to see the road ahead

8. Sample logging made easy by nature of there being four of us and an awesome spreadsheet that Pat has set up on the computer

9. Map-hunting for new sites around Gulfport and planning tomorrow’s quest

10. The opportunity for sleep at the end of this blog post.

Goodnight y’all!

Tomorrow we leave the lab and head out for our last trip to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The weather looks good, there are no tropical cyclones brewing and we are ready to see what awaits us along the Gulf shores. I am curious to see how the beaches have changed since last time, if there are still tar balls washing ashore and if there are any new sites to find. I am interested in both the differences and the similarities between our sites and samples.

Pat has analyzed 40 tar balls thus far looking at the polar and non-polar constituents. It’s an impressive number although we still have 100 or so in jars and more to bring back. There is much work to be done and Pat is still cranking away in front of the computer as I write this. The numbers of samples, spectra and chromatograms can get a little overwhelming and we plan on spending some time synthesizing the data when we return. The rest of the lab is busily translating nucleotide sequences isolated from Gulf of Mexico sediments into proteins (Liz) and developing the best protocol to separate and quantify every possible lipid and hydrocarbon in deep-water corals (Katie). But all 4 of us are ready to leave the lab behind for a few days and venture out in the sun, sea and sand.

This afternoon we enjoyed some frozen yogurt and discussed trip 3 and what our expectations are in terms of samples and sites, hours of sleep, miles to drive and how many bottles of sunblock to bring. Answers to all of this will be revealed in the next few days. Until then, this is how we like our frozen yogurt. (blue spoon – Pat, pink spoon – Helen, yellow spoon – Liz, purple spoon – Katie).

After landing safely in Philadelphia, we found ourselves stuck on the tarmac watching this amazing storm. Home safe and sound (almost).