B Squad

Team TAN

Team 1 set out for Montaña de Oro in the hopes of finally gathering some concrete data. We sat down the previous week and discussed what went wrong with our initial sampling and how to adjust our technique. We made several changes, which have been discussed in previous posts. One of the key changes to our methodology was breaking up into separate groups. Alpha Team, consisting of Jefferson and Nathan, set of on their own to gather a smaller sample of data because they were only a tandem. The team consisting of myself, Adam and Tomas, affectionately named Team TAN gathered a slightly larger data set.

Data Collection Can Get a Little Messy

Testing out our new data collection methodology excited us all. The data came fast and furious as we worked at a fever pitch. We had to be careful though, because when you're sciencing as rapidly as we were, things can get out of control quickly. One of our transect tapes got entangled with a tree, it was an utter and complete disaster. We were uncertain if we could recover from the tragedy. Team TAN buckled down and persevered though, we would not be undone by knots. We undid the knots and moved on.

The rest our day was a wild success. Through the data we collected we were able to calculate an estimated population size of 3,457. To gauge the accuracy of this estimate we will probably have to head back out to Montaña de Oro and take a complete census of the area.