This week was the start of the summer field sampling for the rocky shore team (team iso). Six of us loaded into a big rental van on Monday morning and we headed off to the southern Hokkaido field station for sampling.
Last time I was out at these sites it was late fall so we were sampling during night low tides so I didn't get a very good look at what these places look like. It was nice to come back and do this sampling in beautiful summer weather. With low tide at about 8:00 am, we had to be packed up and leaving the field station to go to the sampling locations by 4:00 am. These sites are all on the eastern side of Hokkaido so we started work with the beautiful Japanese red sunrise to warm our backs as we worked.
Since last time was dark and I didn't get many photos, I thought I would share some images. In most of these you can see that the Japanese coastline in upshore from us is highly reinforced. This is pretty typical of all of the coast that I have seen so far (east and west). In many places small fishing villiages are built right on the edge of the coast and roads pass within meters of the high tide mark. Miles and miles of the coastline is fortified with massive concrete tetrapods (shown in the background here) that we carefully navigate our way through and over to get down to the shore.
We were lucky to have some extra hands helping out and were able to sample all of our sites (5 shores and 25 sample plots) in just 2 days. It meant long hot days, but it was worthwhile to get home a day or two early. The next field trip will be to the northern Hokkaido region in a couple of months. I am crossing my fingers for more great weather.
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