Team 1, Day 1:

Jin, Maho, Linda, Mark, Hilary and Hannah, the members of Team 1, arrived eager and ready to jump into the field. After a full day of introductions, lectures on Monterey Bay and sea otters we began our 24 hour sea otter observations. The staff began the first shift at 1am and quickly found out that the lights in the parking lot behind the harbor were so bright that our night scope wouldn't work properly. Without the night scope we couldn’t distinguish the behavior of each otter. We amended our data protocols to record the number of resting otters that were rafted together in the harbor and whether they were active or inactive. The members of Team 1 joined the staff in the field beginning with the 9am shift, after recovering from a bit of jetlag. We will conduct a 24 hour sea otter observation with each of the 7 teams. Over the course of the season we’ll be able to compare these observations and determine the flux of otters in and out of the raft throughout an entire day and an entire tide cycle.