Texas - Days 1 and 2

One of the perks of working for the NERRS system is that each year, I get to travel to two different locations along the coast of the United States where other reserves are located, for meetings. So far I've been to Delaware, Ohio (yes they have a coast on the Great Lakes), Alaska, San Francisco, and now Texas. Texas is actually the newest reserve to be dedicated to the NERRS system and we were all excited to get down here to see it.

After a LONGGGGGG day of traveling on Monday which included four airports, a car ride, a van ride, a tram ride, and lots of layover time in those airports, I finally arrived to my final destination, Port Aransas Monday night around 8pm. We had a great dinner (or maybe it was so great b/c I was starving) at a local seafood place and then checked into the hotel. And after saying hi to some friends and catching up a tad with my roomie, Anne Marie from the Tijuana reserve (yes it's in the US), I hit the hay and passed out!

Tuesday was a full day of meetings. We met at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute - UTMSI. They had some cool exhibits like the sea bean one below! We had an environmental economist talk to us, then we met about lots of national education programs and priorities. I had to present on the teacher training session for which I am the chair of that workgroup and I had to do a project for Willy, so it was kind of a stressful day. But the end of the day we got to do some outside water quality activities and tour the education wet lab.

You can see some of my friends from the NERRS - Brooke (GA) and Jennifer (DE) on the floating dock. And on the right there's Anne Marie (CA) and Bart (MD) deep in discussion with Jill (NC) behind with the notebook.

And then that night we had a reception there where we got to tour the facilities even more and also see the rehab facility which was awesome. There were green, loggerhead, diamondback terrapins, tortoises, and even kemps ridley sea turtles! Again, after all that, I came back to the hotel and passed out.

To be continued....