The east coast is a beautiful place. The ocean is quite different than the gulf side. The never ending waves roll in pounding the sandy coastline. Ghost crabs and the remnants of deep water molluscs are found scattered on the beach. At night ghost crabs are found scurrying in the foam of the waves that roll across the beach.
The wind howls with just enough droplets of rain the soak your clothes. We wore rain ponchos to stay dry while we shined the beach with flashlights looking for shells and crabs. After a night of rain the weather cleared up and we made our way to the site of Ken Hubbard's research. This would be our last adventure before heading home.
Ken works with invasive species and conducts research to find solutions to problems these species pose to agriculture and live stock. He has been in this line of work for 30+ years. He gave us a seminar covering the issues associated with non-native species and provided a host of research papers identifying invasive species and their potential impact to the agriculture industry and the natural environment.
He also breeds sterile insects and develops methods to breed other select species in the laboratory. He had some interesting specimens stocked in his bug trailer.
After meeting with Ken we went back the the beach for one last swim in the Atlantic ocean.
