My first field trip was starting on 9-11 September 2015. One of my course, marine systems, provide field trip to Texel, Den Helder. My group consist of 4 persons. There was a new experience, where if in undergraduate all the things was accommodated by assistant and supervisor to go to the field trip location and opposite, in master degree, each individual has to organize themselves and supervisor will be not able to travelling with. Hereby some more information on the travel to Texel.
All students are expected to arrive with the ferry from Den Helder to Texel of 16:30. If you’re live in Bornsesteeg, you’ll have to take bus from Bornsesteeg at 1.00pm then you’ll arrive to Ede-Wageningen at 1.20 pm or if you can check easily using 9292 apps. Then if you come from Wageningen by train this means you’ll have to take the train at 13:41 at Ede-Wageningen station to Den Helder station. There, you’ll have to take a bus that will go on the ferry. If you get of the ferry you can walk to the Potvis.
Train tickets: To spend money, group tickets sounds very convenient because you can travel up to a maximum of 10 persons on one ticket for 7 euros. After you arrive to Den Helder, you have to cross the road then in the right side you can buy a ticket from ticket counter or you can buy while you entering the bus and it cost about 5.50 euro (bus+ferry).
First day we have to work on board the “RV Navicula” from the NIOZ, a research vessel to explore Wadden Sea , perhaps has cooperation with IMARES (I do not know the information yet). As long as my eyes look at sea and deep down feel the win blowing on my chick, I remember how beautiful Indonesia’s sea. The experience that I have since following the Marine Science Technology Training Course, when we were field trip to Pari Island, blue, pure blue,,,,. But to work on board we need an extra energy to face a stability of board on wave and also with using many manual stuff to doing the research e.g “ekman grap” to take sediment sample. Otherwise, here all the things is going by machine, easily we only waiting for the machine do his job. Then, we can have a sediment sample. Another things, during the field trip on RV Navicula, the captain, supervisor and another assistant clearly said to us what we can learn and what we need to investigate in arrow way, guide to the research question or another phenomenon such as climate change, destructive fishing, or another natural disaster (storm/hurricane) clearly defined.
I still wondering why the research vessel like RV Navicula doing a research in the Wadden Sea. Whereas, due to the fact that the Wadden Sea is one of the nursery ground area which is fish that was found in small size. When we trawling at four sample sites, we found that the average size of fish, plaices, shrimp, crabs, fivebeard rockling and another species no more than 10cm. Then, we dropped all the species that caught back to the sea. I strongly believe that around 70% of species that we were caught by us is died. Sometime, it’s the only one of key point to study, for instance, we have to kill mice, goat, or another living things to investigate the story behind.
I attached what we did in field practical below:
nb: all the typo and grammatical error are my mistake, I am learning on it!