ebeightol98
Registered: January 2016
City/Town/Province: Matthews
Posts: 1
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This January I had the opportunity to work at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. While I was there, I interned with wildlife biologists, ecologists and marine biologists. I got to work with a wide assortment of wildlife, including scrub jays, beach mice and alligators. One on the best research opportunities I had there was working with the alligators. Gatoring is where we take the truck, or air boat, and ride down the swamp and marsh area on the NASA acres. We look for alligators sitting on banks or in the water and have to haul them onto the road or bank. We would “ride” them to keep them from moving and duct tape their mouth shut. We would then take blood, tissue samples, measurements, urine samples, weight and injected a tracker into them if they were not previously tagged. We were analysing the pH levels in their urine and the white blood cell counts in their blood to determine the effects of recent rocket launches at the NASA center. NASA wanted to the know the effects of the launches on the wildlife around the area and how they might be able to fix the problem. The trackers were used for keeping up with the population size of alligators. We would determine if the population was lower or higher than normal according to the number of trackers placed in the alligators. Our research benefits the health of the ecosystem around the Kennedy Space Center and what NASA can do to strengthen it.
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