Well, I didn’t get two posts in yesterday, but I had some time on the bus this morning to work on writing.  Yesterday was another fun adventure.  We started off the morning by touring the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology.  We saw their tanks that are monitored by computer to manage the environment for all of their research fish.  One really interesting thing we learned about while we were there was how some fish, clown fish for example, are able to change gender.  In a clown fish population, all of the fish will be males except for the largest one, which will be female.  If the female is removed, the second largest fish will switch from male to female.  After viewing their research tanks, we toured an exhibit they had developed of specimens of deep-sea fish.  This exhibit is not open to the general public yet, so it was kind of them to show it to us.  One of the species we saw was the lantern fish like the one in Finding Nemo that tries to eat Marlin and Dory.  It was really creepy looking.  A weird fact about the lantern fish is that when a male finds a female he will bite on to her belly and live off of her like a parasite.  This is a survival mechanism for the species because the females are much larger and more capable of catching food, and it is difficult to find mates in the deep, dark ocean so once they find each other they will not separate.

After leaving the museum, the real fun began.  We had the opportunity to wade in an intertidal zone during low tide to look at all of the creatures there.  One neat thing about visiting the intertidal zone was that our program leader, Jack, was also our guide.  He studied marine life during his college years, and even found barnacles that were later proven to be a new species.  We found barnacles, sea urchins, starfish, hermit crabs, hard shell crabs, a sea slug, an anemone, and even a tiny octopus.  We also found plant life such as red and green algae, seaweed, and sea grapes.   My favorites were the sea urchins and the hermit crabs.  I picked up one of the hermit crabs and let him crawl around on my hand. He was so cute! 

When we finished up our seashore visit, we headed back to the dorm to pack for our two-weeks of travel across Taiwan.  I’m so excited to get out of the city and see the countryside!