Gator Surveyin'

Riding around on an air boat at night shining for alligators isn't really my cup of tea.  It sounds straight up redneck to me.  On top of that I kind of hate air boats.  I'm convinced more of the energy produced from the engine goes into noise.  However, in the name of science I was willing to head out into the vast wetlands of the St. Johns to help conduct an alligator survey.

The main purpose of the survey was to determine how many alligator tags would be handed out for the alligator hunting season.  The survey was fun, but not all fun.  Most of the time I was inputting the data that I was constantly being given by the biologist that I was with.  Also there was a constant stream of bugs hitting us all over.  It was like bug snow rising out of the water.  It definitely gave me a better understanding of ecology and the importance of water.

On to the fun part though!  We got to catch alligators!  Apparently catching alligators is illegal but if it's for science it's okay.  We caught two and measured them to make sure we were accurately estimating their size.  These alligators were small enough to grab with one hand, around 3 feet.  I will add that the alligator I caught was the bigger of the two.

It was a good trip and we counted 513 total alligators from Lake Harney north to mullet lake park.  Although it wasn't all alligator wrangling I still had a blast and look forward to volunteering and building a positive relationship with the FWC in the future.