Drøbak

Last week my Marine Benthic Ecology class took a week to go down the university's biological station in the fjord-side town of Drøbak, about 50 km down the fjord.  It is situated right on the water, which is amazing!

We stayed in Tollbuten, an old customs station that is now owned by the university.

It is the tan building on the left of this picture, which was taken from the work boat we were on to take some of our samples.  We stayed there all week.  The first three and a half days were spent doing field work in three different habitats; we collected lots of different critters from the fjord, than identified and counted them to look at species diversity.  We were in three different groups for this work, so each habitat got three samples taken from it.  We rearranged groups at the end of the week to work on synthesizing data for one of the habitats (I am in the soft bottom group).  We have a report on it at the end of the month.

I loved being in Drøbak.  It is a really adorable town, and it was amazing being right on the water.  We got to sit out on the pier and watch fish and jellyfish and other stuff out in the water.  Here's a really bad photo of some jellyfish; they came up to the pier when the water was cold. 

And a very pretty sunset out our back door.

And the boat we worked on, Bjørn Føyn.

It was an excellent trip, and very educational!  There is an amazing amount of life down there in the fjord! I also got to know my classmates much better.  It was a lot of fun and an amazing trip!