We have been very busy with Sophie Lafond Hudson at the UMD lab working on our individual research projects on wild rice. After working through the material last week, we wrote our first drafts of our papers and began our experiments this week. We installed sediment samplers called peepers at the UMD farm where the wild rice mesocosms are located. We also got to go to Fond du Lac Resource Managment and meet Nancy Schultz who is the Water Protection Coordinator. She gave us a historical background of Fond du Lac and the importance of research. It helped us understand the bigger picture of why we are here. We got to work with Natural Resource Management and their Invasive species team. They are using goats to see how effective they would be on buckthorn which is an invasive plant. There is an aquatic invasive species called Chinese Mystery Snail that we hand picked out of a lake. We picked 25 pounds and Matt took some home to see if he can’t make a snail delicacy meal for us all. We have been having some fun while in Duluth too. We ate sushi (Gages first time and he didn’t like it very much), went to the mall for some shopping and eating, went water tubing down Rum River, and we are currently planning a karaoke night and a night at Black Bear Casino where they have all you can eat crab legs. Our team is awesome together!